Why is the right at war with cyclists? We’re not ‘wokerati’ – we’re just trying to get around | Zoe Williams
Why is the right at war with cyclists? We’re not ‘wokerati’ – we’re just trying to get around | Zoe Williams
Riding a bike is not a political act, yet cyclists have become the bete noire for the anti-woke, anti-green, anti-liberal crowd, writes Zoe Williams
I feel like this article is really missing out the part where oil interests are intentionally funding hatred of other modes of transportation. The PragerU video on "The War on Cars" is a good example. They are funded by oil companies, and this is public information that is easy to find. And they use that platform to prevent other modes of transportation from being safe or viable.
Bicycling industry lobbyists need to step up their game
I think one of the main points in the article is that there is no group of cyclists able to come together to lobby and tbh, I don't see how it's really possible. It's something I've been thinking for a while.
I am a cyclist and a driver. I am not personally in a lobbying group for either. However, like another poster said, oil companies and car manufacturers have the money and reasoning to come together to lobby on behalf of drivers regardless of my actual wishes but they've got lots of my money from having bought and maintained a car. Cyclist manufacturers aren't exactly large, have much money or are as combined into a few multinationals. There is no fuel industry either.
I don't really know any other cyclists like me who are more casual, and use it for local journeys. I want better segregated lanes, better and more secure parking (my bike got stolen recently), the police to actually care about bike thefts, and more considered routes/junctions. There are social groups of long distance weekend cyclists but tbh, they have completely different priorities and interests to me. Even when I used to commute my cycling habits were completely different so my requests would be different.
I've been to the Pacific Cycle corporate headquarters, the current owner of well-known brands like Mongoose, Schwinn, GT, and Rioadmaster, supplier of most of the bicycle-shaped objects sold by mass-retailers like Walmart and Target.
That's right, into the very belly of Big Bike!
And, uhh, they're not very big. I'll bet more people work at the Toyota dealership just down the highway. That is to say, bicycle industry lobbyists don't stand a chance against automobile lobbyists.
Agree. Bad media is bad.
its from british neoliberal media what did you expect
We're not 'wokerati'
But we are, though: cyclists are "better people" than drivers. And the right hates better people.
Huh, interesting article, thanks!
the study didn’t attempt to determine whether people more oriented toward the common good are simply more likely to ride bikes, or whether riding bikes actually increases people’s interest in the common good.
I'd be curious which is the chicken and which is the egg.
Yeah asking why conservatives think bicyclists are all radical leftists is a boring question full of answers we already know.
The real question is why the hell anybody who enjoys riding a bicycle (and walkable infrastructure in general) can at the same time be a conservative or even a centrist?
Like…. what are you doing? Have you not thought through the history of why the simple act of riding a bicycle or walking through your community puts your life at risk because our public spaces starting right outside our front door are utterly devoted to cars?
If you ride a bicycle on public streets and you vote conservative or even centrist you are literally using your vote to make yourself more likely to be killed.
There could not be a more direct example of how the idea of neoliberal individualism and libertarianism totally ignores material realities where an individual’s actions, such as driving a 6000 pound pickup truck for no reason, can directly lead to your death.
There could not be a more direct example of how prioritizing individual freedoms (and let’s be frank, only certain individuals) to an extreme degree can result in tragic consequences for everyone.
The freedom of the group has to be considered too… which is basically the whole point of leftism.
I think cyclists secretly love cars. Otherwise why do so many end up on a car hood or under its wheels? It's probably one of those BDSM things really...
Look, I'm generalizing here, but there seems to be an almost intentional effort on the part of many journalists and journalistic outlets to misunderstand "The Right".
Its the charity part, which, like I get the journalistic training and the importance of giving someone you might disagree with the the charity required to have a conversation, but "The Right" has been using this act of good faith to further their agenda. We shouldn't be giving them charity. Period. They've broken with the good faith required to support that charity. "The RIght" aren't arguing or acting in good faith, and so charity shouldn't be extended to them. They are captured by a kind of cynicism that is not compatible with civil society.
I frequent both right and left wing areas of the web to try and keep tabs on what everyone is talking about, and literally the only place I've ever seen this sort of anti-cyclist circle jerk is on reddit.
It absolutely happens many other places, including Facebook, nextdoor, local blogs, and get this, irl. I have been threatened more than a couple of times directly, and even more times indirectly. People fucking hate cyclists. All because they dare to not drive a fucking car (sometimes).
I used to be annoyed by cyclists because from my perspective I thought I could easily kill them by accident and they were clogging up the road. That was a very selfish attitude but it was mine. I don't know if that's what others are thinking but the hatred is very, very real.
Google Aaron Freeman and Indiana SB-52. Granted, he was opposing dedicated bus lanes rather than bike lanes, but it's the same argument. Then google who his biggest donors are.
It definitely still happens in the conservative tabloids, although that has been around for many years already.
Really? Try riding a bike in a city once.
Really? I've seen it literally on fuckCars, here on Lemmy!
I have a hypothesis about the right. Some of what happens is to protect the ego.
Consider bike riding. Riding a bike is better for the environment and their health. This prompts questions like "why am I not being better for the environment? Why am I not being better for my health?"
One option when faced with that sort of uncomfortable question is to reject thinking about it and get mad at other people. Do not consider anything negative about oneself. That's uncomfortable and difficult. Being mad about other people is easy.
This resolves the cognitive dissonance, though in its own expensive way with its own tradeoffs.
Yes, a friend clued me in years ago that the key to understanding the conservative mindset is their deep shame and self-hatred. A lot of people say it's fear, but that's only partly true. Everybody is motivated by fear; liberals just fear other things.
But for conservatives, it's fear that they're worthless and inferior. That's why so much of their ideology concerns groups that they denigrate and oppress in order to feel superior. This is why they have bicyclists in their crosshairs recently.
And not just bicyclists. It's not enough just to have a car. Oh no! They have to have a truck. And not just a truck, but a grotesquely enormous truck, with a grill that juts 6 feet straight into the air, perhaps with a lift kit, too. That way, they can roll coal on and intimidate drivers of smaller, weaker vehicles, like Prius drivers.
It's a performative doubling-down on the behavior that they subconsciously feel others are judging them for, in order to redirect the shame and self-hatred outward as anger at others.
Followed by the culture of you aren't a real man if you don't go into debt to drive a massive truck which the bed will be empty 99% of the time and you can barely afford to put gas in it (but its the carbon tax bankrupting them they'll claim).
You’re overthinking this. I mean, you’re right in general, but I have a hard time believing all this is going through their heads when they see a cyclist.
I think it’s just different. Conservatives dn’ t like seeing change or difference. Clearly only cars should be on the road, and everything else is change, different, an affront to the “rules”
I don't think it's happening consciously. Most people don't introspect that clearly or often
But you may also be right that a generalized, acontextual, resistance to change may be a factor. Like if bike lanes were common and someone wanted to remove them, a lot of basic conservatives would resist that just because it's a change.
Exactly, and it should be noted they also never consider the other reasons to bike. Health and environment are part of why I want my city bikable, but mostly it’s because I enjoy biking more than any other mode of getting around. It makes me happy to be on my bicycle and getting to use it to get groceries turns a chore into a delight. Even if I had a perfectly clean and safe automobile and perfect health I’d still choose to bike to the grocery store when I can because fun.
I am so tired of the "everything I don't like is woke" crowd. How long did it take for the "everything I don't like is communist/socialist" crowd to be publicly ridiculed for having such juvenile worldviews?
How long did it take for the "everything I don't like is communist/socialist" crowd to be publicly ridiculed for having such juvenile worldviews?
well, looking at McCarthyism... too long
How long did it take for the “everything I don’t like is communist/socialist” crowd to be publicly ridiculed
They must be getting the last laugh because they are still around that's why we [as in US] can't have good health insurance.
The “everything I don’t like is communist/socialist” crowd has never been ridiculed, what the hell are you thinking?
It is LITERALLY the American hegemonic ideal.
It has in other countries
Okay I am going to play a devil's advocate here. So of you are not wrong. Many of these people are lashing out at charge unnecessarily, though I do think it is important to look at why. First the politicians and talking head that are driving this are just trying to make hay out of non issues for their own personal agendas. Fuck them they are toxic, but why are there so many common people so willing to buy in. Simply because they are scared of losing their way of life and ability to support themselves. I don't mean losing the "right" to drive giant trucks, but losing what their parents and grandparents had. These people have seen it with the loss of good quality blue collar work. The work their parents and grandparents had, which one person could support a family and buy a house with. They have seen how the loss of manufacturing, steel, lumber, etc. jobs have affected others and they are scared that they are next.
They have the exact same existential dread of the future that the rest of have and or more or less the same reasons, they are just reacting in a different way. Just like how some people react to the loss of a family member with sadness and some with anger.
Hard right politicians have found that they can swing some of these people to their extreme views by capitalizing on this fear and offering a solution. Obviously isolationism and hate are not good longer term solutions, but they sadly do work well in the short term. I firmly believe many people that are just kind of going along with the hard right are only there because see no other solution being offered to their problems. Remember many Germans were not Nazis but they let the Nazis take power not because they agreed with them, but because no one offered anything else. Yes it is a lie but it is very important to remember why the lie exists. Sadly ignoring or dismissing it will not make things better.
I genuinely wish I had a solution, but I don't maybe smarter people than me do.
First of all the "everything I don't like is communist/socialist" were never ridiculed for their viewpoint, once Russia collapsed and China went mostly capitalist the communist rhetoric mostly dried up, but the anti socialist rhetoric remained and still remains, as does the much less talked about red-scare rhetoric, especially after a bunch of supposed "Antifa" dingbats allowed themselves to be interviewed on Fox News and admitted to being Communist/Anarchist, in the same way that the antiwork movement got derailed by that idiotic moderator going on Fox news.
Secondly the "everything I don't like is communist/socialist" crowd is the "everything I don't like is woke" crowd, if we had a Venn diagram about this is would be like a 90% overlap, same type of people, same types of mindsets, both with white Christian fundamentalism at it's root, and if you dig a little deeper you'll find that under that those roots are built right on top of Confederate ideals and white supremacy.
What do you mean, "did"?
The truth? It stems from fear based mentality and personal insecurity. If you spend enough time evaluating the conservative mindset you come to realize it is grounded in fear and a disdain for oneself. They don't want more cyclists because they think it's an affront to them personally, as if they would need to start cycling to fit in.
Because car is freeeeddddooommmm.
And as we know all too well from history, enabling other freedoms (women's suffrage, marriage equality, or now getting around by bike) disrupts those already established freedoms!
For many drivers, a car is debt in addition to a large recurring expense.
Debt == freedom?
Yea thats pretty much the lie we are sold and forced to participate in for most of car centric North America.
A lot of people miss the fact that cyclists are just people getting about the place. As for example when you hear people say, 'Oh, it's only middle-class men who cycle, so why should we build bike lanes?' as though it's somehow the case that middle class men who choose to cycle just like... deserve to die? It's a really common argument that people make and they've not even thought about the obvious implication of what they're saying.
Even if it were true that all or most cyclists were middle-class and male, which it isn't, I'm never sure whether it's the maleness, the middle-classness, or the cycling that has apparently warranted the death sentence.
Making it seem like it's predominately something done by middle-class men, or even rich people, helps to undermine public support for it because of the image people have of a stereotypical male cyclist, ie a well-off person riding a $1400 bike with a bunch of lycra clothes and tech gear pretending they're training for the Tour de France while they go through their midlife crisis. It's much less relatable an image for many people, who might say "Well, why do they need to ride on all the roads? They can just go on the paths in the park, or if they have so much money, they can go to a purpose-built facility."
If you frame it as though it's just going to benefit a bunch of people perceived to be living it up, you can drum up opposition from poor people, who don't want their taxes going to fund some BS project that only benefits people who are already doing alright. Your aunt that's busting her back trying to make ends meet and is trying to get back and forth to work and the shops on a bike one step up from a Wal-mart special can be much more relatable for many people who are struggling to keep up, can't really afford their car payment and might even use a bike if there were dedicated bike lanes. So people looking to discourage building out bike infrastructure will naturally prefer that everyone thinks the only ones who would benefit from these developments would be some middle-manager who owns his home, rides a bike that costs more than your rent and that has gone on more vacations in the last year than you have in the last two decades.
You're absolutely right! As a middle-class man who cycles and just doesn't want to die, I still find it very annoying.
The same argument is used to attack veganism, even though the diet aspect of it is cheaper (as long as most meat imitations are avoided, although those will get cheap too in the long run).
Also, the main reason women and children rarely cycle is because women are more risk averse and nobody wants their kid riding a bike on the road with people driving emotional support trucks. That mostly just leaves men who are willing to risk it or who can't afford to drive.
Yeah, definitely. It's not really surprising that the group most likely to cycle is also the group that's socialised into taking risks!
@Moneo @frankPodmore Avoid generalizations and stereotypes if you want to meaningfully analyze an issue. Women score higher than men on risk aversion *on average*. There’s no evidence of enough biological or socialized difference in risk taking to explain the entire difference in bicycling. Various other factors are in play, including childcare burden, street harassment, access to leisure time, social support for cycling by parents & peers, and gendered dress codes/norms at work & school.
@frankPodmore @vividspecter Since middle aged, middle to upper class white men are also most likely to drive monster trucks for everyday transportation & recreation, we could also argue that for the safety and comfort of all we should do everything possible to get that group onto bikes instead of trucks.
But instead, they turn around and blame traffic problems on women taking their kids to school!
I’m wokerati! But no shit, we’re doing what the left wants, so of course the right is mad. It doesn’t matter if it’s for our health, cheap transit, or the environment or any other reason we aren’t guzzling oil to get somewhere and so they’re mad
It’s pretty much just rural vs urban divide.
Bikes don’t work well in rural or suburban communities and so if you are for it, then you are one of the “urban liberals” and so I must oppose you at all costs.
Of course there are also urban conservatives that are against cycling but we have a name for those,
idiotspeople with a financial interest in the current car centric infrastructureBikes don’t work well in rural or suburban communities
It can work to an extent in some of those places too, it's just the infrastructure and sprawl has gotten so bad. Small towns in Europe often have quite good cycling infrastructure and public transport, for example.
But I agree with your overall point that the culture and politics of surburban/exurban/rural areas are a big part of it (along with the history that drove people from the cities to these areas in the first place).
The major problem against cycling for rural/suburban, people have a commute that makes cycling impossible. I happen to work in the same small town that I live in but I still can only bike to work during the summers when the kids are out of school and my wife is home.
Pretty sure bikes have serviced rural communities since well before cars were a thing
rural communities also used to have better rail infrastructure as well. With our current car prioritizing infrastructure, you are going to have a hard time convincing rural people give up the agency that a automobile gives them with regards to being able to have a career, grocery shop, get their kids to school, etc.
Hopefully remote work can fix that first problem as that will help the other issues as well.
The safety bike was invented in 1885 and the model T was invented in 1908. So the precar bike heyday was pretty short.
Nah, people love bikes in the suburbs where I live. Maybe it varies by state!
The Mennonite rural communities near me are all absolutely dependent on bikes to maintain their lifestyle.
Riding a bike, my fellow patriots, is a clear sign of deviance and disloyalty to the core values of our great nation. The leftist elites have brainwashed these so-called "cyclists" into believing that their petty little two-wheeled devices are some sort of symbol of environmental progress. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Cycling is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at undermining our cherished car culture. They claim they're fighting climate change, but their real motive is to erode our freedom - the freedom to drive wherever we want without pesky road taxes or emissions regulations.
These cycle-huggers think they'll win our hearts by peddling (pun intended) around our cities in their lycra ensembles and smug smiles. But let me tell you something: we won't fall for their tricks. We love our SUVs, our loud exhausts, and our cheap gas - and we will protect these cornerstones of American life, come what may.
As true Americans, we must unite against this cycling menace. Our roads should belong to those who value their country enough to keep its economy thriving with their fuel consumption. It's time to put an end to this two-wheeled insurrection and defend the freedom of movement that makes us great.
Careful someone might actually believe this instead of taking it as a joke. (Although bikes do directly threaten car culture which is why I love them so much)
Careful someone might actually believe this instead of taking it as a joke. (Although bikes do directly threaten car culture which is why I love them so much)
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?
There's a couple of things at play here:
Where the infra (say it's the road) isn't adequately engineered to accommodate cycling and driving at the same time, it's going to give drivers the experience that the road is a scarce resource and when resources are scarce, some folks are going to think in eliminationist terms (e.g. if those people just didn't exist, everything would be fine) or the part of their brains that descends from people that wiped out competing clans and took their resources rules the moment and they set about violently defending 'their' resources.
The folks most-triggered at being made to share the road with cyclists really do some mental gymnastics to frame it in a way that they're really the victims here and it's cyclists, not the road engineering, that are the problem. Oh, poor me those cyclists don't pay taxes and I subsidize their use of my roads bla bla bla and eventually that comes out in the form of vehicular assault to teach cyclists a lesson to stay off their roads. It's bullshit all the way down of course, but that way they get to feel like the good guys while still bullying and murdering cyclists.
Also, it's not by accident that the 'everything is woke' people are the first to engage in whatever moral panic that's directing political violence at today's boogeyman- whether it's trans people in bathrooms, or gay people generally, or pregnant women that have ideas about bodily autonomy, their targets are always a tiny vulnerable demographic and uniting to put them in their place is an exercise in maintaining or restoring what they think order ought to look like. If they're not putting people into the bottom rung of whatever hierarchy they think they're defending, probably they think it's the end of order or civilization or the like and they've failed in their duties to uphold order. Keeping them agitated about (and acting out about) moral panics is an effective way for lobby groups to pit people against scapegoats to keep their ire focused away from themselves or their patrons.
Your second and third paragraph neatly provide one of the best explanations I’ve seen for what people mean when we call the modern right wing fascists. They see people violating the order as they’ve decided it is and are encouraged to respond with vehicular homicide
they find the concept of the do-gooder infuriating and the idea of minding their own business untenable.
Indeed!
The GOP want to maintain civil liberties.
Just not YOUR civil liberties.
This is an article in a British paper, written by a British journalist, about her experience in Britain, and names multiple British people.
There is no mention at all of America, nor Americans.
So what does your republican party have to do with it?
Far right conservatives around the globe are using the same playbook.
Yeah my bad I didn't read it, just kind of browsed through and left my two cents on the headline.
I also didn’t read the article, although I was clued in By an earlier comment, but …. A lot of these comments could have been about the US. Conservatism seems to have the same hatred problem everywhere you go. All the big truck comments probably were from the US: that can’t be as prevalent in the UK
Oil industry profits and exceptionalism.
Because if they're riding bikes they might not be buying $70k cars. How are the poor car companies going to afford to survive now? Someone think of the shareholders.
I am thinking of the shareholders. I am thinking that the smart shareholders would see the trend and move to investing in e-bike companies, LOL.
I love cyclists. Always let them go first.
I just hate the bike racing people who think public traffic is their personal sporting grounds. Meaning they don't have to follow the rules of the road because it might mean they don't get to break their speed record that day. Or that close down entire roads just so they can race one another.
They should find a hobby that isn't in public traffic. Imagine if tennis closed down train tracks just so they can use the train tracks to put up their net.
I love cyclists. Always let them go first.
FYI as a cyclist this is super annoying and just leads to politeness chicken. Just go when it's your turn.
How many roadies do you encounter that they slow you down for more than a minute a day really? Way to channel your hate i guess, i know how irrationally angry it can make you to sit in a car.
I assume this is unpopular but I've decided not to get annoyed if I see people breaking the rules of the road. Sometimes I think "what a prick" or "he's going to kill himself doing that" but it's not worth anything more.
Or that close down entire roads just so they can race one another
How often do you actually get caught behind a crit race? Maybe twice a year tops in some cities? Where I live marathoners fuck up traffic far worse and more often but somehow they don't arouse the same vitriol.
Cyclists have every right to be on the road. We pay the same taxes, but this attitude is why I get menace passed and have coal rolled on me every couple of weeks. Show a video of acyclist following the law but getting hit on a bike and the comments section is people saying they deserved it. If I ride my mountain bike on trails away from cars the horse people and hikers get up in arms. I guess I should just fuck myself, eh?
Fearing change.
because they're antisocial, hetero normative, fascist wannabe, assholes that despise wholesome solutions to the world's problems. there's only one way to deal with these sociopaths.
conservatives don't get mad at anything they don't personally do or don't make things up about other people to get mad at challenges (impossible)
Because oil companies and their useful idiots have propagandised them into believing that every cyclist that inconveniences their morning commute and causes them to lose 20 seconds of their drive deserves to die.
Because the right are a bunch of fucking screaming babies that need their goddamn asses beaten to a fucking pulp.
LIBERALS: STOP BEING NICE TO THESE FUCKING SHITS. NO, THEY DO NOT HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN YOU.
The same reason they fight against vegetarians, the same reason they fight against gay men, the same reason they fight against renewable energy, all of it is toxic masculinity. The standardized male eats steaks, drives a loud truck, works at the coal plant, complains about his wife, enjoys smoking and drinking and watching sports. If you deviate from this whatsoever, conservatives are against you.
I do not think they are anti-cyclists. Anyone have objective proof on this claim, thanks.
Edit: For the record. I think bikers are more anti-car or anti-car infrastructure or worry about safety. Which is a valid criticism. A biker vs a 3,000lbs piece of metal is obvious. Drivers do not care about bikers outside liability or annoyance.
I think that Americans corralate freedom of movement with cars so they do not want to give that. It is about nuance. But I have never read anti-bike rethoric anywhere from reasonable people, left or right.
Only over emotional or extremist people seem to be quoted as unfairly being the voice of everyone else. And I say that as someone who bikes 50km, for fun and who also likes to drive.
I'm not at war with them... The cyclists here are at war with cross walk signals!
Two times in the last couple of years I've tried to turn right on red coming home at night, watching traffic on the left, turn back to the right and a cyclist is literally in front of my car as I'm about to apply the gas to turn! They would be laying across my hood without a fast reaction time.
Number one, I don't believe they are supposed to be riding on sidewalks, and number two they completely disregard traffic signals/walk signals.
Granted this is in the U.S., specifically in Florida, and I don't blame them for not wanting to be on the normal roads here as they will literally be run over by a jackass in a lifted F350; but I do wish they would at least abide by the pedestrian crossing signs as I really would prefer not to hit anyone!
Our state is so backwards the concept of public transit is an afterthought and very few places are remotely walkable... We have some bike trails here and there, but everything is designed for cars because living near a population center is too expensive for most and requires you to commute by car.
Two times in the last couple of years! I see a trend here those are numbers we can't ignore
It is true that people ride bikes on sidewalks here in an effort to stay out of the road, I see them every day and am passed by several when I walk to work. Even the ebikes are on the sidewalk. Also true that at intersections it's dangerous as fuck, and by law they are supposed to be in the road and stopped at Red light. But if you are turning right on red, the pedestrian presumably has the right of way - you have a red light. I've had to slap the hood of several cars who were looking only at traffic in one direction and not the direction their car is about to move in, while I'm crossing a street on foot.
It was more a commentary of my county and how poorly it is laid out for bicycles, did you read the rest of it or stop after the first line?
I wouldn't be caught dead on a bike here, I drive what many could consider an economy car (to me it's a 4 door smaller sedan) and I am often asked why I drive something so small.
Even our smaller main roads here are 3 lanes each way, and nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, barring trails is designed with bicycles in mind.
Two times in the last couple of years I’ve tried to turn right on red coming home at night, watching traffic on the left, turn back to the right and a cyclist is literally in front of my car as I’m about to apply the gas to turn! They would be laying across my hood without a fast reaction time.
Maybe don't try accelerate without looking where you're going???
Let me further explain to you what is occurring here:
People on bicycles, without stopping, will ride from a sidewalk, across an intersection, 2 or 3 lanes per side here, fairly big roads. When you pull up to a light, you are watching for oncoming traffic in addition to any changes to the area you may turn into. A bicycle, who wasn't there and rides into an intersection with complete disregard for traffic or crosswalk signals can be in front of your car in a literal split second. If I wasn't looking before accelerating (I am in a manual car and have to put it into gear and all), I would simply run them over. Clearly, that isn't the case, but I imagine with the age of people here and the size of the vehicles they drive it is not an infrequent occurrence.
I'm really surprised how many people missed the sarcasm of my first sentence and literally the rest of the post...
Right on red is dangerous and kills pedestrians and cyclists alike because of
moronsmotorists looking left and turning right.Right on red is standard driving practice in my entire state unless otherwise posted. No one has a 180 FOV, your head has to swivel, and generally you look in multiple directions multiple times before turning.
Just like people in cars pedestrians and cyclists alike can also be negligent of the law and break right of way.
If we didn't have right on red here, the traffic nightmare would be significantly exacerbated.