I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever consider that those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
Stupid thing is that it’s the humanity and empathy of the left that is both the draw and the weakness of the movement.
Conservatives can come into leftist discourse spaces and either pose as the extreme leftists you describe, or even just the more reasonable end of the conservatives (non facist/maga types, rare as they are any more) an they’ll be engaged with in good faith. Since they’re ultimately not there for a proper discussion though it results in nothing more than creating chaos and arguments
Liberal/leftists who walk into conservative spaces are greeted with scorn and derision, treated as lunatics from the start not worth listening to. Since the left would generally be coming in with honest intent though at best they waste their time shouting into an established echo chamber, or worse get convinced that there’s a good middle ground to work towards.
I tried going to conservative spaces on Lemmy. The liberals wouldn’t allow any dialogue. Not the conservatives, the liberals.
liberals are conservatives. What we call conservatives are regressives.
I’d need some examples to get what you mean here. My experiences, both personal and simply observed, is that you can you can roughly split both conservatives and liberals into two sub-groups, although the distinction on the liberal side is a lot more fuzzy.
There’s the emotive/moralizing side that fight based on what they feel rather than any concrete justification. What’s right is decided simply by an assumption of how the world should work, either collaboratively or selfishly looking out for yourself only.
Then there are the logical logical arguments. On the conservative side these end up being a lot more in the form of ‘I am right, you need to prove otherwise’ while liberals (myself guilty of it as well) will go through these elaborate deliberations backing one point with another and somehow hoping to convince these people who have already decided they’re right of their error.
If you’ve ever tried beating your head into a brick wall you might recognize the feeling that last one, but it’s hardly an obstruction to dialogue, just a frustration of trying to engage rationally with largely irrational beings.
Absolutely. Conservatives have, unfortunately, sailed straight past us on political effectiveness in recent years. We’re spending our time wringing our hands about doing the right thing and cajoling one another into doing the same. Unfortunately in a lot of cases modern leftism favors atomizing based on who a particular segment sees as having sufficient moral purity over solidarity. Meanwhile, conservatives don’t really care about much of anything other than maintaining a socially conservative status quo. They’ll even let people they hate pretend to be part of the club if they debase themselves enough to be politically useful. At the same time, they’ll viciously attack anyone who isn’t politically useful to them.
I’m not saying we ought to abandon our principles or start viciously attacking anyone who doesn’t toe the line of being politically useful, but we need to remember how to build coalitions and think strategically.