This is kind of the tl;dr 30-second elevator version of it.
Hegel's Dialectic is at its simplest the belief in a positive idea (the thesis), a competing negative or contradictory idea (the antithesis), and the end result, a new concept that nullifies and replaces both the thesis and antithesis, the synthesis.
Social Marxists, cultural anthropologists, and other leftist thinkers have loved to rely on the Hegelian dialectic to attack Western thought for many years. Edward Said (a literature professor) wrote the famous book "Orientalism" that basically says everything that Westerners believe about the Middle East is pure fantasy, wish fulfillment, the Other; that which the West is not. The West is civilized, therefore the East is savage. Western women are chaste and virtuous, therefore Eastern women are sultry whores (harem fantasy). Western men are honorable, Eastern men are untrustworthy, etc. Said, incidentally, just built his book on the prior work of everyone's famous pedophile, Foucault.
Ok, getting to the point.
Today, why do leftists of all stripes love drag queen toddler time? Why do they love kids burlesque shows? To reference a post from today, why do leftists NPCs love cities and hate suburbs.
Thesis. Antithesis.
The left today is defined entirely by what the right is NOT. To be more accurate, the left today defines itself in opposition to their perverse imaginary view of what the right is.
The left believes the right is Christian, therefore the left exults in atheism, satanism, Islam, etc--anything that is NOT Christian.
The left believes the right is ignorant rural and suburban dwellers, therefore the left is modern and urban--anything that is NOT rural.
The left believes that the right requires strict gender roles and rules, therefore the left wants to tear down the very concept of gender.
The left believes that the right wants to kill all gay people, therefore the left wants to groom more children to be gay.
Edit to add: The left believes the right is irredeemably racist and white, therefore the left exults and honors anyone non-white over anyone white.
Edit to add: The left believes the right is male-dominated and patriarchal, therefore the left attacks anything masculine and praises the feminine.
Some of these points are a bit (but only a bit) exaggerated, but the point is that the modern left is an entirely intellectually bankrupt movement. It is a negative. It can only define itself as the opposite of the right.
This is why engaging with the progressive framework is always a loss. There is no gay or straight. There is sin and grace. There is no oppression or liberation. There is hierarchy and anarchy. There is no cis or trans. There is reality and madness. There is no secularism or religion. There is only lies and Truth.
I agree with your description of Hegelian synthesis, but I think one thing you forgot to point out is that the hard-left is skipping the final "synthesis" step in all your examples. In fact their moral system remains just as dualistic as the old religion it replaced.
Take for example their favorite morality play: "Love vs Hate," which they installed in place of "Good vs Evil."
Sure, some things like traditional family values and teaching toddlers about sex toys got shuffled to the opposite side, but it's fundamentally the same structure. They just sort everything into love or hate, nothing "synthetic" about it.
On this topic I always go back to this uncannily prophetic scene from Donnie Darko (2001). It's such a bullseye, I can hardly believe it.
Obviously the analogy I'm making here is teacher as the looming blight of dualistic Libstianity and recalcitrant student as Hegel arguing for more nuanced (synthetic) reasoning.
The only slight miss was contraposing "Fear" instead of "Hate" against "Love." But then again, Libstians never miss an opportunity to label someone a "-phobe," so there certainly is still the projection of fear there.
Really great movie if you haven't seen it. It was edgy and leftist in its day, but I'm sure many would call it "far-right propaganda" now.
You've actually got it entirely backwards.
Even the very foundation view of "left-right" politics is a purely Leftist construction of reality.
The Left-Right Dynamic comes from the physical location of specific political factions in the revolutionary council that ruled France during the revolution. The Jacobins and their allies were seated on the Left side of the room, and the people in opposition to them, including what would become the Thermidorians. The Jacobins were "Leftists", who were basically responsible for the Reign of Terror and had control over the entire government, which they had been subverting since the beginning of the Revolution, including driving out and threatening to kill Liberals like the Marquis de Lafayette.
The Jacobins asserted Rousseauian arguments: claiming knowledge of, and representation of, the "General Will" of France. And therefore, as Rousseau described, enforcing the General Will on anyone who dissented by means of force was a moral imperative. The Leftists thought the Reign of Terror was a moral imperative. Please understand that and it's implications. The "Rightists" were literally everyone who was in government but hadn't been forced out or executed by the Jacobins that were spiraling wildly out of control and covering themselves in human blood. Fundamentally, they were people we would identify as "Left Wing", because all the philosophical liberals, monarchists, and French conservatives were either dead, or have gone into hiding.
"Rightists" are literally everyone who has an objection to Leftist power. They are, by definition: reactionary. Which is why the Left calls "Rightists": Reactionaries and Counter-Revolutionaries. It's because they literally are those things, because the Left decides what the Revolution is, how it works, and anyone who disagrees is reacting to their aggression.
The Jacobins literally set the "tempo" of the political conflict, had establishment power, and had the initiative. The Rightists were the people who agreed with them in principle (including the murders) but didn't want to be enslaved to the Jacobins assertion of the General Will.
Very long story short, the Jacobins spiraled until they got themselves killed by giving the Rightists an opportunity to seize power from them, and purge the government. Historians like to pretend that the revolution entirely stopped there, but this is a Leftist lie designed to protect the inevitable result of "Leftist" revolutions. Once the Rightists seized power a strongman (Napoleon) walked in and took on the mantle of responsibility of the revolution itself, going so far as to declare himself emperor of the revolution. France was the Revolution, and the Revolution was Napoleon. Germany did something similar a century later.
Now, you are not wrong that the Left engages in a Higelian Dialectic, but this is because they are operating from principles of power alone. What you need to understand is that the Left is prepared to change any position in order to achieve power. It is not true that the Left are reacting to what Rightists are. As with France, the Left are seeking to destroy any power structure that they do not control. Then they decalre someone, or something to be an enemy.
Leftists have taken both sides of any conflict so long as it benefits them. Leftists both opposed, and supported, the European Union. Leftists both supported and condemned homosexuality. Leftists both supported and condemned white racialism. Leftists both supported and condemned farmers and people who lived in a rural environment. Leftists both supported (and invented) Nationalism, and also condemned it (sometimes in the same time period). Leftists both supported and condemned Trotsky. This is because the Left, as you noted, has no principled topical stance, as it differs from country to country, and time period to time period.
This is because, following from Rousseau: Leftism is a Philosophy of War.
Rousseau is insane and obsessive about destroying all structures of order in all societies in all civilizations because all civilizations are "oppressive", meaning they impose any restriction on conduct. Rousseau's concept of Free Will is to enact is other idea of the Noble Savage, who is just a perfect sustained, perfectly strong, and fully atomized individual who has no constraints of any kind. He asserts that the first moment someone, anyone, ever, imposed an idea of "this is mine": utopia was destroyed. So, all of that must be destroyed until we get back to that utopia.
That's literal madness, and is also so historically ignorant, he was mocked and challenged on this at the time, and he (himself) said it probably wasn't even true.
This utopia (being a utopia) may be achieved at any and all costs whatsoever. This is because civilization is always worse than the Noble Savage. There are no necessary restraints on his philosophy, because he is seeking to achieve utopia by... any means necessary. He asserts that since civilization is an oppressive force, and all institutions are marks of civilization; following the "General Will" will dissolve those structures. The General Will is a vague abstract concept of the population just unanimously agreeing on something that is only magically revealed by votes. When it is discovered by winning a simple majority in a vote, the General Will must be followed. In fact, it is a moral imperative to coerce anyone who disagrees into becoming in compliance with the General Will. Including exile, social pressure, starvation, torture, and death. That is why the Jacobins wanted the Reign of Terror.
WHEREFORE, since:
Then you've got an equation that makes a different dialectic. A Hegelian Dialectic is how the Left is presenting itself. But this equation is of a Melian Dialogue.
That Dialogue is from a story that literally coins the concept of: "The strong do as they will, the weak suffer what they must." Otherwise known as: might makes right.
Anyone who is strong enough to assert the General Will is morally required to impose that will on everyone, regardless of consequences, savagery, or violence. Tyranny is a moral imperative.
TL;DR:
So, no the Left are not defining themselves in opposition to the Right. They are defining the Right in opposition to them, and their position is whatever they say it is, because they said so.
"Hegelian" is a rhetorical smoke bomb you throw to bamboozle people who might be catching on to your bullshit.
Nine times out of ten when people start trotting out pretentious words like "dialectic" and "Other" or pretty much anything any post-modernist has ever said, it can be reduced to pseudo-intellectual masturbation and puffery.
The idea of the Hegelian dialectic at its core is a very powerful idea. Two ideas compete, changing in form in opposition to the other, until a truce, something new, something stable, emerges. It just seems feels natural and right.
I don't know what comes out of our current social turmoil.
Continental philosophy enthusiasts are the most pretentious bloviating least humble "people" imaginable
Hegel was before it all went to shit (right around when WWII ended, oddly enough). Don't lump him in with postmodern faggotry.
He does have his critics though - Schopenhauer despised him.
WW2 was instigated by postmodern faggotry.
I'd like to hear this explanation.
Me too. Personally I think it was just the WWI bandage coming off for the most part, but do tell Assassin.
I'm not Assassin47 but I figure they were going to be referring to Weimar-era sexual practices
Also not really their strategy. Leftism is just deconstruction and postmodernism. That’s really it. And that functions by taking existing value hierarchies and militantly inverting them. That’s why it’s easy to predict what they’ll do, and why they’re basically evil in one way or another. If you view all value hierarchies as things to flip, you’re basically on the side of evil in somewhat of a literal sense.
Wanting gay people to get gay married or not is one thing. Leftism is wanting them to get married BECAUSE the traditional value hierarchy would say they shouldn’t be. That gay marriage is preferable to traditional marriage BECAUSE it goes against traditional marriage, not because there’s merit to it or not. Or with the body acceptance for women thing. Plenty of the girls held up in that are actually hot, but that’s not why they like them. They just want to put someone up as hot BECAUSE traditionally that same girl wouldn’t be idolized for beauty.
It’s all that on repeat. There’s no dialectic going on. Just postmodern deconstruction. They’re not trying to synthesis new ideas from a productive critical exchange, just flip whatever traditionally worked.
In short, Apollo vs Dionysus.
But Cygnus is AWOL.
For the majority of the hive mind it's simple tribalism. Team Red likes A so We like B.
The only part I'd disagree with is "...therefore the left wants to tear down the very concept of gender". It's the left that created the concept of gender to destroy traditional norms of sexuality (not just sex roles but courtship behavior), then they strawmanned the failings of their ideology onto their perceived enemies and proceeded to create a new extended gender framework to rationalize the warped mental illnesses they have fostered by rejecting traditional sexuality.
It hurt itself in it's confusion.
I would agree, but I have degrees in cultural anthropology, and have witnessed first hand how academia treats things. The left views the Other by it's stereotype of other. They want Said to remain Oriental even when he proves his culture is nothing like that.
I'll give an example. Hawaii has two major cultures in it. One is the Pidgen culture of a melting pot. Almost every food, idea, and modern use of Hawaii comes from that culture. The native Hawaiians have their own culture, and have been working to rebuild it. However, all attempts to modernize it meet academics who want the culture to remain 'pure'. We can't imagine a native Hawaiian sci Fi, because that would be against the culture. Literally the belief is modernism will die, and the Hawaiians will go back to how they were beforehand.
This is ironic because none of the same native Hawaiian academics, the kind that complain about Moana not being accurate enough, can live without the latest iPhone. They want to sail the old ships, using traditional methods, but post on Twitter at the same time.
The other must be other to remain pure. Said was very critical about this in academia. The academics used his statements to prove themselves right against him. I honestly don't know if he caught on to what was happening.
So black people must be crude, because they are other. Poor people, rednecks, are other because they are unable to get onto the internet. Even though this can be disproven, the people in charge believe this to be true. I can text my activities from a reservation, and chat in that language to friends, but the academic, or people in charge, truly believe I can't. I knew a guy int he middle of nowhere Navajo Land, who could speak Chinese because he watched so much Jackie Chan. This guy used relays to get the internet and download the movies. There are tons of folks like that, but if I bring them up in academic circles, no one believes me.
It's not a dialect, it's a leadership unable to get beyond their 50 year old ideas of how things work.
“It’s Hegelian Dialectics not personal animosity”
Ave, true to Caesar. The Legion obeys.
I think it's derived from Marxist thought. Marx defined all aspects of society not directly involved with production as the superstructure of society: culture, religion, family, etc. Marx wrote that the superstructure arose to maintain the economic base of society. Because the superstructure maintains the base, dismantling the superstructure helps bring about the end of that economic system.
The modern left seems to have a slightly different idea. The economic base has been replaced with racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, etc. The superstructure of society arose from these ideas (they claim) and must be dismantled. I don't think they know exactly what a society would look like with their ideals as a base except that it'd be completely different from our current one.
The left is a coalition of fringe interests and minority demographics. Collectively, these groups hold many mutually exclusive beliefs, so the separate groups require an enemy in order to maintain their unity and effectiveness. That enemy is straight white Christian patriarchy.
Naturally, the left likes to project this behavior on to the straight white Christian enemy. “You guys are only united by your hatred of the other!” This is, of course, total nonsense. A homogeneous society is already united by shared values and culture. Only a band of mercenaries require a common enemy for unification.
Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh