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.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      14 hours ago

      Back in the day I used to know a group of old school Communists. Folks who’d gone to Spain to fight Franco and who had been blacklisted by McCarthy. One of the stories they told was about how back in 1968 they told young folks that they had to vote for Hubert Humphrey because Richard Nixon was going to be truly awful.

              • anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                0·
                14 hours ago

                ? Does that have relevance to his letter from Birmingham…? Are you saying MLK was not one of Americas most effective civil rights advocates, or…?

                Winston Churchill was a homophobe but that doesn’t mean I think he was on the wrong side of WWII…

                • Dagwood222@lemm.eeEnglish
                  0·
                  13 hours ago

                  You keep on making my point for me.

                  Thanks for bringing in Winnie, because another thing I often post is that in WW2 many people who hated racism and imperialism joined hands with the racist USA and imperialist England to fight the Nazis.

                  As Winnie said, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I should find something nice to say about The Devil.”

                  Again, thank you for proving me right.

                  • anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                    0·
                    13 hours ago

                    Ok… so it has no relevance with MLK’s letter then? You agree fully with his methods and contentions in the letter, like the below? I don’t have any idea what you’re trying to say, you’ll have to use more of your words.

                    spoiler

                    The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

                    spoiler

                    We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

                    spoiler

                    While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights.

                    spoiler

                    Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.

                    spoiler

                    We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

                    spoiler

                    And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies—a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

                    spoiler

                    So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

                    spoiler

                    So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

                    spoiler

                    But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.