Realist left

The realist left is a new loose political grouping which seeks to retake "the left" (broadly defined) from what it perceives as an excessive and reputationally-harmful focus on identity politics issues as opposed to economic progress for the working class and middle class, and to move the left-wing away from neoliberal/centrist politics. It is a broad church, having few defining principles aside from the aforementioned opposition to identity politics "excesses" and to neoliberalism.

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Certain statements by politicians and commentators on the left could be argued to place them in the realist left's ambit:

  • "I think people are tired of the same old politically correct rhetoric." — Bernie Sanders, discussing Donald Trump's election victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Trump's use of politically-incorrect speech, by stark contrast to Hillary Clinton's prominent embrace of feminism, diversity and pro-immigration rhetoric.
  • "The huge mistake we've made, we have played the game of identity politics and identified groups, whether it is by ethnicity or sexuality or whatever you might want to call it, rather than say, 'we stand up for everyone in this country and that includes you, the white working class'."[1] — Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP in the UK.
  • "This move of the new Left, or new radicals, towards a problem of identity politics (minority politics, gay rights, etc.) lacks a certain more radical insight into the basically antagonistic character of society. This radical questioning has simply disappeared."[2] — Slavoj Žižek
  • "During the same period in which socially accepted sadism diminished, economic inequality and economic insecurity have steadily increased. It’s as if the American Left could not handle more than one initiative at a time — as if it either had to ignore stigma in order to concentrate on money, or vice versa."[3] — Richard RortyFile:Wikipedia's W.svg
  • "Liberalism today is an expression of an enlightened professional class, and their core economic interests simply do not align with those of working people. One thing we know about professionalism is that it exists to shield insiders from public accountability. If coming up with a solution to what ails liberalism means listening to people who aren’t part of the existing nonprofit/journalistic in-group, then there will be no solution. Liberals would rather lose than do that." - Thomas FrankFile:Wikipedia's W.svg[4]

The Realist Left and a large portion of its members also has a focus on economic issues, particularly to heterodox economic theories like Post-Keynesian Economics or Modern Monetary Theory, which are skeptical of deficit hysteria. Thus, in addition to its criticisms of the identity-politics-based post-structuralism, postmodernism and critical theory within academia, the Realist Left also is critical of "mainstream" neoclassical economics (in particular in Macroeconomics) and libertarian-based Austrian economics and its relative, neoliberalism.

The Realist Left also tends to be anti-interventionist in foreign policy, and moderately environmentalist - e.g. supporting investment, research and regulations in support of green energy.

Alt-left

Possibly the earliest reference to an "alternative left" comes from the blog of freelance journalist Robert A. Lindsay in August 2015.[5] Lindsay, describing some on the far-left moving away from identity and social justice politics and moving towards focusing more on Economic Populism, proposed the alt-left as a "mirror" of the alt-right and described it as left-wing on economics and right-wing on social issues.[5][6]

In general the "Alt-Left" could be considered more radical than the "Realist Left", being to their right on social issues and to their left on most everything else.

Unrelated uses of the term
For more information, see: Alt-right glossary § Alt-left

The Alt-Left (also CTRL-Left) is a term that was made up by the right to create a sense of false equivalence between the far right and "anything vaguely left-seeming that they didn't like."[7]

It also originated as a term used by centrist and moderate Democrats against the "far"-left people within the party (as well as left-aligned independents) who support "progressive ideals" (like pushing Seth Rich murder conspiracies, praising Assad, claiming chemical attacks were false flags, and still denying that Russia meddled in the US election).[8][9][10][11][12]

The term has even been used by Sean Hannity to describe mainstream media.[13][14][15]

The term "regressive left" is often used as a substitute for "alt-left" and an insult for the far-right to use against the far-left ("see? the Left has crazies, too!"). However, the original meaning of the term "regressive left" was as a political epithet against liberals/leftists who allegedly fail to criticize reactionary or ideologically authoritarian elements within radical Islam -- or Islam in general, depending on who you talk to -- in the name of tolerance, multiculturalism, diversity and/or other forms of alleged Cultural Marxism. The term has also seen some use in leftists who are (seen as being) too friendly towards authoritarian regimes as long as they profess to be "anti-imperialist".

gollark: I did say "non-proud UK-dweller", you know.
gollark: Paraphrased: "Who cares what your MATHS says about it not being possible to have encryption only the government can break, we want this impossible thing done by Tuesday!"
gollark: “Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia," - former prime minister.
gollark: Mostly because the politicians are just utterly moronic.
gollark: Oh no, the stupid country.

References
  1. Labour Must Stop ‘Obsessing’ About Diversity, Says Stephen Kinnock: MP tells party to end 'identity politics' by Ned Simons (22/11/2016 13:16) Huffington Post.
  2. Slavoj Žižek interview with The Believer
  3. This philosopher predicted Trump's rise in 1998 — and he has another warning for the left by Sean Illing (9/2/2017) Vox
  4. Thomas Frank, How the Democrats could win again, if they wanted. The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2016.
  5. Donald Trump's dangerous new low: alt-right vs. alt-left. Mashable. August 17, 2017.
  6. Lindsay, Robert A. Proposal for an Alternative Left. Beyond Highbrow. August 18, 2015.
  7. Alt-Right, Alt-Left, Antifa: A Glossary of Extremist Language by Liam Stack (Aug. 15, 2017) New York Times.
  8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8noaimoNzk
  9. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/16/what-is-alt-left-myth-215496
  10. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/08/17/the-alt-right-didnt-invent-alt-left-liberals-did/?utm_term=.9d3d73ec5065
  11. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbbvbx/stop-saying-alt-left
  12. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-alt-left-20170816-story.html
  13. Here’s the best thing the media can do when reporting on ‘antifa’ by Margaret Sullivan (September 3, 2017 at 4:00 PM) The Washington Post.
  14. Sean Hannity: Alt-left media killed journalism in quest to bury Trump (March 16, 2017) Fox News.
  15. Sean Hannity: Alt-left media pushes Russia fantasy despite no evidence (March 14, 2017) Fox News.
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