Anti-work sounds like you just don’t want to work. Defund the police makes it sound like you want to get rid of all law enforcement. Black Lives Matter suggests others don’t. Hell, even Global Warming is often misinterpreted if there is cold weather.
Wouldn’t names that better represent the goals of the movement be better? Or is there some reason behind this?
Comments
I feel like you have to work hard to misunderstand these and if you do then it can’t be helped
Every movement has a bad name when you are fixated on being against such things. It doesn’t matter what the names are, people who don’t agree will find anything to disagree with it.
>Hell, even Global Warming is often misinterpreted if there is cold weather.
But the cold areas are getting warmer… hence the name. Saying x place is warm is not saying no cold areas exist. This is a fallacy.
>Black Lives Matter suggests others don’t.
Not really… I think you’ve fallen for the rhetorical attacks from the political right.
>Global Warming is often misinterpreted
Climate change has been used for over 20 years. Global warming is not a “progressive movement” but NASA’s official term for the phenomenon when they presented their research to the Senate in the 80s.
Because progressives name things for what they are whereas the right wing names things as propaganda to disguise what they are (the Patriot Act and the like)
In general progressives are bad at politics and propaganda. They naively believe that people just agree with them and their positions.
Whereas the right wing has mastered propaganda and deceiving people about their true intentions because they know their true intentions are unpopular.
Nah.
Those are all your interpretation of what those names mean. And what mostly right wing propagandists tell you to think.
>Black Lives Matter suggests others don’t.
Not even remotely.
Saying “I like waffles” in no way means I’m saying I hate pancakes. But your logic leads to exactly that conclusion.
>Black Lives Matter suggests others don’t
It really does not, anyone who says that is reaching hard enough to dislocate an arm
Only one of these is awful, and that’s Defund the Police. Just a colossally bad name for such a well meaning movement. Imagine ‘Defund Public Schools’ if you feel I’m wrong
engagement makes it catch viral, so the trolliest slogans get top visibility
Reductive slogans becoming the name of the movement? They’ve always been a problem, yeah.
Not for me, really. But for incurious people who only look at the surface of an issue? Sure.
Because people are dedicated to finding reasons to dismiss and discredit leftist movements and quibbling over vocabulary is the easiest way to distract people.
Edit: I think what OP is describing is called strategic misunderstanding
There’s a famous computer science quote that goes “there are only two hard things in CompSci – cache invalidation and naming things”
For people focused on solving a problem, picking a name isn’t always the most important thing – it’s just one of a bunch of steps toward the goal.
For people focused on marketing a position that isn’t mainstream, where the goal is to shift public opinion, picking a catchy name can be the majority of the work.
Yeah you undermined your own credibility by saying that black lives matter implies other lives don’t matter. I don’t think this is a good-faith question tbh
Because, as the saying goes, you are not immune to propaganda
nothing wrong with saying black lives matter, it does not suggest others dont. let me come to your grandma’s funeral and tell you why my grandma matters too.
Senior shelter cats need homes!
Oh, so other shelter cats don’t?!
Of course all cats deserve homes, but seniors are often overlooked while younger cats are adopted quicker. Just because you’re bringing attention to one issue doesn’t mean you’re diminishing all others.
How people are such victims that they can’t say Black Lives Matter without making it about themselves is beyond me 🤦♀️
Most people who are politically active are dweebs. This isn’t something exclusive to the left.
Defund the police doesn’t sell because it is a bad policy. The phrase BLM only is misrepresented by people who don’t give a shit about black people. Global Warming is demonstrably real.
How’s global warming a leftist movement 😂
The reality is that opponents of these movements put a lot of time and effort into deliberately framing and misinterpreting these names to the public.
“Black Lives Matter” should be a very inoffensive concept. It was a short way of saying “Black people are disproportionately targeted by police, are disproportionately treated violently by the police, and the media treats these things as commonplace or deserved.”
Literally nothing in there saying white lives matter less, nothing in their about violence against cops being good.
Would black lives also matters clear it up?
If you decide to do a false interpretation, you can ALWAYS do it.
That’s how religion debate fucking works, and they’ve been working for thousands of years. You can slap the interpretation you want on basically any text.
If you want to demonize, you can make them look bad no matter what they say. It’s fucking easy.
If you really read “black lives matter” and think to yourself “that imply that only black lives matter” you’re dumb. The only movement mentioned that is reductive like you say is the defund the police. But that’s only partially so. Mainly because the defund the police movement wasn’t one movement with a consistent message. Some people wanted to redirect police funding into social programs. Other people straight up wanted to completely defund the police.
Two of your examples, “Anti- work” and “Defund the Police” are made up of two groups: Those who say “Well, it doesn’t mean that…” and those who very much do mean that and are usually happy to let the apologists do PR for their movement.
I always thought it should be “Deburden the police.” Frame it as a positive.
For instance, police really shouldn’t be handling health care issues. Take that burden from them and place it in the hands of health care providers.
The hard truth is that most progressive movements are geared towards making progressives feel good instead of enacting progressive policy.
They have stupid names because “Defund the Police” isn’t about actually passing a law that abolishes law enforcement, it’s about loudly letting people know that you hate cops. The “policy,” such as it is, crumbles under even the most minimal scrutiny, but that doesn’t matter. Supporters don’t have an answer to what happens in domestic violence cases without police because it’s all just posturing, so they just say “Do The Reading” and go on patting themselves on the back.
You’ve got this one pretty much sewn up. I’ve seen lots of lefty (or quasi-lefty) movements that had terrible names. Black Lives Matter definitely should have been Black Lives Matter Too. Global Warming has actually been trying to rebrand for a while as Climate Change (or even Climate Crisis) because they realize that it isn’t just about warming, it’s also about the secondary results of warming (heavier tornadoes, desertification, etc.)
But I also see some leftist movements that hit it square on the head: Occupy Wall Street had a good name (terrible tactics, but a good name). Animal Liberation Front got the naming right. Anonymous.
Rightist movements are not immune from bad naming. MAGA? Well, a lot of people want to know when exactly the Again is coming from. When was America great in the first place? The 1950s? When we lobotomized people and surgically sterilized Native American women without their consent? The 1950s when being gay lost you your job and got you thrown into prison? The 1950s when the gasoline had lead in it? Polio? If Trump had called it Make America Great, he probably would have won by a lot more.
I think the problem (for both sides) is that a lot of people who are attracted to such movements aren’t really capable of “The Long Think.” Thinking is hard. I mean that in the most sincere manner. Really, really thinking is exhausting. Just as much as physical labor. “What did you do today?” “I worked the high steel for 10 hours. I can barely move, I’m so tired. You?” “I’ve been working on my fucking thesis. I spent 12 hours with a 20 minute bathroom break in the middle, and I managed to get a page and a half. So it was a good day. But I’m beat.”
This is something I regularly think about as a Left-leaning Extremist, and I believe the problem is that people are so desperate to do anything at all that they latch onto the first (often terrible) idea they find. And it’s no wonder at all that this methodology blows up in their faces.
Oh you’ve really pissed off the liberals with this one 🤣
> Black Lives Matter suggests others don’t
Sure, if you are republican or lack critical thinking
Actually, same thing I guess 🤷♂️
In the contemporary era the progressive movements tend to be more decentralized grassroots movements. Progressives forget actual progress results from a a centralized team doggedly pursuing things for decades.
The best example of this is the Civil Rights Movement. They made centralized decisions to push certain narratives as well as train and self regulate their protestors. For the Civil rights organizers they would hold training in gyms to make sure that no matter was was said to their non violent protesters that they wouldn’t react violently. And over the decades they carefully chose which cases to pursue in court and which to ignore. For example a few weeks before Rosa Parks, a pregnant black woman did the same thing Rosa Parks did, but because she was unmarried the Civil Rights Committee decided she was not the poster child they wanted.
The people who actually learned from this are the regressives who’ve been using the courts to slowly take apart the achievements of the Civil Rights movement.
And ultimately the greatest achievement regressives ever made was to convince Americans that terms like progressive and liberal were for weak willed people. Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive. Franklin Roosevelt was a Liberal.
Global warming isn’t a progressive movement. It’s science that has become controversial.
A statement indicating something is true doesn’t indicate other things aren’t true.
‘Florida is sunny’ doesn’t imply another state isn’t sunny.
Black Lives Matter is pretty much only misunderstood by people who think Black lives don’t matter.
Global Warming is no longer used, but you’re right that the right loves to hang this albatross around our necks every time it snows.
Defund the Police is an overly simplistic name for a nuanced position, and that bit us on the ass. I live in a city that defunded the police without reallocating the funds for social services. I 💯 believe that the police punished us for it by going on a soft strike. Crime spiked by design. The police have since been generously funded and crime has gone down.
I live in a very progressive city, and even my Black neighbors have turned against defunding the police.
Yeah, these progressive movement names are basically just political clickbait. They’re deliberately designed to grab attention and stir up strong reactions, intentionally provocative phrases that spread like wildfire but create totally unnecessary division.
What’s worse is how these names let supporters instantly shut down any criticism by flipping the conversation. Disagree with BLM’s name? “Oh, so you’re racist.” Question “Defund the Police”? “Guess you support police brutality.” It’s a cheap trick that kills actual policy discussions before they can even start.
Sure, this strategy gets them tons of social media attention and fires up people who already agree with them, but it pushes away folks who might otherwise support their actual goals.
Take my down vote. 💩
Have you heard of “right to work” or “citizens united”?
Global warming isn’t a progressive movement, it is a scientific fact, which different movements are trying to adress.
I mean and conservative movements don’t?
MAGA – what a fuckin horrible name
OP I agree with you 100%.
It is entirely asinine the way things get named. “Defund the Police” is almost entirely in opposition to what it actually is supposed to mean, and makes the whole of what people are trying to accomplish almost impossible because of the misinterpretation that is completely rational.
Edit: this, for whatever reason makes me think of bad television plots. Like, it just doesn’t seem real. A “how did we get here moment” because the actions and behaviors of the people seemingly in-charge appear to be moronic and self sabotaging.
Those slogans only have negative connotations because the conservative media have worked to create them.
If I told you I liked cats would you assume I dislike dogs? I’ll give you global warming but the other argument is often used by bad faith arguers
You’ve gotten your answer just by the comments. Everyone here saying you’re wrong etc etc are the ones making up the names
It’s a Motte and Bailey.
Perhaps the names serve as a filter, sort of like how the bad spelling and grammar in scam emails weed out people who are too smart to fall for the scam. If you’re too dense, incurious, or plain dumb to learn or understand what the name means, you would only be hinderance, anyway. Also, I do want to get rid of all modern American law enforcement. It is incurably rotten.
I am struggling to respond to your very bad take on the name “Black Lives Matter” without dunking on you, but I know that’s not what this sub is for. Personally, I don’t believe you’re asking this question in good faith, but I will pretend you are for purposes of this answer. Black lives are singled out in that slogan because black lives are specifically treated as disposable and worthless. I am sure you have seen the “all houses matter” meme by now. It’s not important to talk about how all houses matter when only one of them is on fire. It’s worth noting that the only people who get mad about that slogan in any meaningful numbers are white people, who are in the majority, and whose lives already matter both in culture and in law. You rarely see Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, or other minority groups whining about Black Lives Matter. When you pretend to be very concerned about “all lives,” you really just mean white lives, and those are the lives least in danger by a wide, wide margin.
Edit: It’s also worth pointing out that hand-wringing about names is also an easy way to dismiss movements without having to address what the movements are actually about, a strategy that works extremely well with the sort of people who already don’t want to deal with the actual problems.
Global Warming isn’t what most scientist call what is happening. The correct term is Climate Change. Climate being the overall temperature variation of an area over many years. The term global warming is used to discredit climate change especially when everyone says, “global warming? Then why do we have snow?”. These movements are being slandered by subtle language manufactured by interested parties to help their bottom line.
Remember when Texas was hit with a -40 snowstorm a few years ago. That’s the consequences of climate change. The fact North Carolina barely had snow for the past 10 years is climate change. Forest fires in Canada and Australia are climate change related. The average global temperature going up. All of these things are climate change related.
Because they originally wanted what they sound like. Anti-work originally didn’t want to work at all. BLM originally started only caring about black people.
It’s when the movements want to expand that they need to drop their exclusivity to cater to more people.
Either that or the people who come up with the names are literally braindead.
>Black Lives Matter suggests others don’t.
No it doesn’t.
“Black Lives Matter suggests others don’t.” Breast cancer charities suggest other cancers don’t matter.
Anti work was just a modern reinterpreting of the old working your contract movement from the 70s combined with stories of shit management. It got co opted by bunch of people who shouldn’t have been associated with it to begin with.
You know things are BAD when the fact of global warning is depicted as a « progressive movement »
The goal is often a phrase that is a bit controversial and goes viral.
Consider that the organizations leading a protest movement are by their nature not the establishment moderate left. They may not even exist on a strict left-right spectrum at all. So to call these “progressive” isn’t right. They’re single-issue movements.
Their goal is ostensibly to change policy on their issue. A slogan designed to go viral will best raise awareness on an issue, but may act as a political wedge, dividing parts of the coalition you need to enact policy.
Defund the police is a good example of this. Every R voter is against it, as well as some D voters. I’m pretty far left personally, but I’m an adult who recognizes that if you want change you need to convince enough moderates of your position to win support for your issue.
Slogans like defund the police don’t come out of thoughtful political strategy, but from individual groups looking to leverage social media for their own interest, without a long-term vision for winning political power.
(I won’t speak towards the rest, because those examples don’t fit my argument. Global warming is just a scientific descriptor, and the fallout from Black Lives Matter was more of a result of COVID and other difficult-to-predict events as well as the news coverage that followed them)
In no world does Black Lives Matter suggest others don’t you guys are just insecure and believe that any uplifting of black people is to the detriment of others when historically any time black people were allowed a win everyone else won because of it too
People care more about the name than the meaning behind the movement…
There is no name that can be given that won’t be attacked by morons.
Call it the Patriotic, Jesus-Loving, Guns, Tits, and Fireworks Movement that works to decriminalize drugs, overhall the prison and military industrial complexes, and remove private money from public elections and the right wing will still find a term like “job creators” to replace what their base calls it.
Anti-work has always bothered me yeah. Work is a fundamental part of humanity that is cut up and bastardized into what we call “jobs”.
The reason we can’t have nice things is that conscientious people can’t come up with slogans that fit on a bumper sticker but also can’t possibly be willfully misinterpreted by billionaires paying the best ad men on the planet.
Maybe? Kinda? Global Warming is now Climate Change, but that sounds less like an existential threat. “The climate’s always changing! It’s called seasons,” would be the discrediting from the right
BLM has been willfully misinterpreted the same way.
Defund the Police I guess could be “Reallocate Excessive Police Funding.” But people still have to do the legwork of “…to fund social services better suited to preventing crime and reducing police violence” etc etc. It’s still gonna be discredited as pro-lawlessness
But I mean, how much can the title of a book or movie tell? You got like 3 words
I’ll give you a hint…
Global warming is real and black lives do matter. Also trans rights are human rights. Also free Palestine.
I don’t think “diminish the budgetary allowance of the armed power tripping property protectors” has the same ring to it. Although I do kind of agree on that one, people very quickly jumped to the strawman of “liberals want there to be zero police” and it scared the dummies in Middle America.
It’s almost like these movements didn’t consult a branding agency at all!
OP’s not completely wrong. Planned Parenthood has the reputation for being abortion clinics when anyone in the left will emphasize its services in basic health care for women.
Hey why not change the name to reflect the Health Care for Women part!!! Not the abortion part that pisses so many off!!!
How does Black Lives Matter imply others don’t?
No one would ever interpret “support the troops” as “don’t support others
Anti work is hardly a movement. Defund the police doesn’t even suggest we want to get rid of police, Americans are just morons. Black lives matter doesn’t suggest that, you’re just insecure so you read it that way. Global warming isn’t a movement, it’s science.