I’m not a progressive, but I don’t see 1 and 2 as mutually exclusive. 1 is just a different way of stating 2 - leftists classify people on an oppressor-oppressed axis, where the oppressed are people perceived to be in bad situations.
I think “oppressed” is more specific than “in a bad situation”, and “oppressor” is much more specific than “in a comfortable situation”.
Saying that lefties classify people on an oppressor/oppressed axis suggests that they’re addicted to what’s sometimes called “politics of envy”—it’s not enough to help the poor, the rich must be made to suffer becaucse they are evil oppressors, etc. I’m sure there are people who think (and feel) that way, but I think it’s a straw man if presented as an analysis of how lefties generally see the world.
I think most lefties would agree with me that when people are in bad situations it doesn’t have to be because anyone’s oppressing them. They might just have been unlucky, or they might in some sense have done it to themselves (one place where Left and Right commonly disagree: on the left, this is not usually taken to mean that they shouldn’t be helped). And I think most lefties would agree with me that someone very comfortably off is not necessarily oppressing anyone.
(There are some who would say that our society systematically favours some groups and screws others over, to the benefit of the former at the expense of the latter, and that that means that being a rich straight white educated able-bodied man does make you in some sense an oppressor. I, and I think many others, largely agree with the first bit of that but think the conclusion that the rich (etc.) are oppressors is misguided: to benefit from an oppressive system is not necessarily to be an oppressor. And I, and I think many others, think “oppressed” is too strong and too specific a word to describe the ways in which things are bad for most statistically-disadvantaged groups.)
I’m not a progressive, but I don’t see 1 and 2 as mutually exclusive. 1 is just a different way of stating 2 - leftists classify people on an oppressor-oppressed axis, where the oppressed are people perceived to be in bad situations.
I think “oppressed” is more specific than “in a bad situation”, and “oppressor” is much more specific than “in a comfortable situation”.
Saying that lefties classify people on an oppressor/oppressed axis suggests that they’re addicted to what’s sometimes called “politics of envy”—it’s not enough to help the poor, the rich must be made to suffer becaucse they are evil oppressors, etc. I’m sure there are people who think (and feel) that way, but I think it’s a straw man if presented as an analysis of how lefties generally see the world.
I think most lefties would agree with me that when people are in bad situations it doesn’t have to be because anyone’s oppressing them. They might just have been unlucky, or they might in some sense have done it to themselves (one place where Left and Right commonly disagree: on the left, this is not usually taken to mean that they shouldn’t be helped). And I think most lefties would agree with me that someone very comfortably off is not necessarily oppressing anyone.
(There are some who would say that our society systematically favours some groups and screws others over, to the benefit of the former at the expense of the latter, and that that means that being a rich straight white educated able-bodied man does make you in some sense an oppressor. I, and I think many others, largely agree with the first bit of that but think the conclusion that the rich (etc.) are oppressors is misguided: to benefit from an oppressive system is not necessarily to be an oppressor. And I, and I think many others, think “oppressed” is too strong and too specific a word to describe the ways in which things are bad for most statistically-disadvantaged groups.)