Both Angela and I are leftist and progressives. We deal with real, actual people in the politically active community. THIS IS WHAT WE DEAL WITH.
Don’t call us liars because we deal with different dynamics than you do. That starts to approach gaslighting.
So your experiences are more valid than mine? I’m disengaging from this. You are not listening to me, and you seem to think your experiences are more representative of reality than mine, which really isn’t cool. And I never called you a liar.
No, and the sub-topic of PP’s video isn’t about that. It’s about her experiences, and she brings examples. My experience is close to hers, but at a much smaller scale. No one was invalidating your experiences in this conversation.
I very much am. I’m only speaking to my lived experience, not yours.
I’ll just leave this here:
You seem to have missed the point of her video. It isn’t that all or even most leftists won’t coalition-build. It is that there is a not-insignificant number of very loud leftists who won’t. Won’t even sit at the same table with people who they agree with close to 100%, but are (and I do my best not to show my wincing when they do this) are painfully pro-cop. That’s the big schism in my group, and I’m left as the peacemaker. But the irritatingly-pro-cop moderates put in the work, while the purity politics folks won’t if it means working with anyone who doesn’t flip off cops for fun.
Have we forgotten something?
I am NOT AMUSED by the behavior in this thread.
Let me reintroduce a concept that’s apparently been forgotten: “attack the argument, not the poster.”
This topic is going on Slow Mode, and if there is further bad behavior it will be Closed. Any further measures, flags, etc will be discussed with the rest of our Mod team.
Play nice.
Gotta agree. As i said above, it’s not a big number here, but the my way or the highway folks are very vocal and slways feel like there sre more than there are. That said, different folks in different areas with different populations will have different lived experiences. I wish it was easy, but it ain’t.
I am thinking the left is diverse enough that saying anything like “leftists hate to hear” without specifying which leftists is going to be extremely variable in accuracy. Like what Duke had said about generalizing over all Democratic politicians but more so, since here there isn’t any set leadership at all.
In any statement like that that i believe is made in good faith, i always hear an implied “in my experience” or “where i am.” Global generalizations are inherently going to be flawed. Anybody who is lives without “holier than thou” leftists is blessed. I hear and sympathize with her frustrations, because i have had a few (not a lot, mind you) conversations of that sort myself. I hate seeing conversations here escalate, and so damned fast. I don’t think any of you are wrong. I think you are seeing different populations. And PP is rigjt in her concern. The fucking fascists will march in lockstep. It’s part of their “worship dear leader” schtick. We are nearly impossible to corral. Hell, cats could take lessons. I mentioned Beau’s bus ride, and it bears repeating. I onow for damned sure it would be a shitshow if i was running things, consensus is the only hope. And that will inevirably require some compromise. Most of us are good with that.
Which is why it is so important in context that she was talking about “we” and not “you.” [We] hate to hear, which is an important distinction.
She isn’t writing off leftists who are engaging in purity politics - she’s trying to convince them to stay in the fold. In other words, coalition building. Practicing what she preaches. Because we do need everyone who isn’t a fascist on board to pull this off.
Completely agree. The issue isn’t whether enough purists are willing to comprise with centrists to build a coalition. It’s that the possibility of losing a few centrist voters (or corporate donors) is enough to scare leadership away from unapologetically embracing progressive policies. Establishment Dems refuse to learn the right lessons from past losses, constantly doubling down on appealing to the middle.
Those same conservative democrats love to say that the far left is too progressive and that average folks aren’t ready for those views. They argue that purist progressives need to be willing to compromise more. IMO that’s rubbish and the opposite of reality. For every centrist voter who abstains from voting Dem, or votes Republican, because of a perception that the Party is now too lefty, there’s several more left leaning voters who abstain from voting due to what feels like constant Uniparty, milquetoast, corporate-sponsored talking points from those they’re asked to for. Those are the voters we should be appealing to. Screw the centrists.
Thank you for proving my point, I guess?
Relevant to the discussion of organizing against a repressive/tyrannical regime
Appealing to centrists has been a failure over and over again. Why do you think doing it now, when vulnerable peoples’ rights and lives are actively being taken away, will be more successful rather than less? Why is that a more reasonable and effective strategy than pushing the Democrats to actually be progressive for once and fight to protect and represent those people? Nobody else is doing it- that whole voting bloc has been completely untested and untried for my entire life, and probably longer. Why is it never, ever an option?
I don’t even think most centrists want the things that are being compromised to be compromised at this point.
I feel like I’m missing something here. Wasn’t Bill Clinton a centrist? Policies under Obama and Biden were more progressive, but without backlash against GOP-led economic and social disasters maybe their support would not have been as broad.
When it comes to campaign financing, did small donors ever exceed corporate? My understanding was that even Obama’s only reached 30%. Unfortunately, we’ve had a few election cycles with billionaires openly buying elections for the GOP. That makes alienating big donors a very risky move for the Democrats.
That leads to caution in campaigning on progressive policies. For example, pro-worker platforms might encounter issues because so many corporations tend to increase profits by paying workers less and eliminating benefits. Those who favor management will ask which workers are being supported under those policies. Going after corporate welfare and increasing taxes on the rich aren’t policies most billionaires are likely to embrace, either.
So it’s a difficult needle to thread, but when it comes to the voters I think we need a common message / theme that isn’t too specific. Otherwise there are people who will opt out because they don’t hear about the issues that are their highest priority. Just like with the protests, we had people with multiple concerns all coming out to show support for a cause. If the DNC can use similar tactics to drive voter turnout and win elections, we can push pols in a progressive direction. If we don’t have the numbers, we’ll continue to fail because of infighting and never have enough representatives in power to replace the ones harming us now.
Before Citizens United in 2010? Certainly not after.
Parkrose Permaculture once again channeling my ongoing experience:
One of the things that’s been clear from this thread and the sub threads that it was redirected from is that not only are there leftists/progressives who exhibit purity test behavior, but that there are those who exhibit purity test behavior for pointing that out.
It’s not about elections. It’s not about centrists. Stop obsessing with them. They are either on board or not with anti-fascism. We can’t force them. But if they are on-board, then we need to work together.
If you’re warming up to type an angry response to this, I challenge you to take a few minutes to sit with that impulse. Why are you reacting so strongly with the “what about the centrists!?!” response? It’s not about them. It’s about us.
I mean, I know why I did. It’s because the idea that we need to compromise progressive principles to appeal to the center, especially things like throwing minorities like my trans friends to wolves, is a major narrative right now pushed by media and some members of the Democratic party itself. It literally didn’t occur to me this would be about people who insist protests need to be violent or who somehow still think the parties are the same until you explained that’s a serious problem you’ve encountered. I don’t really get out much but based on reactions I am guessing their distribution must be very uneven.
No one said that. I’ve provided examples to the contrary for weeks now. The Italian Communists didn’t suddenly start selling opium when they aligned with the Mafia in resistance to the fascists during World War 2. They only aligned on one thing: killing fucking Nazis.
And for a real-world example from my Indivisible group: I mentioned that a couple folks in the group were more cop-friendly than the rest of the group. They are a married couple. We were discussing priorities, realizing we were a very small local group and had to focus pir energies or be completely ineffective. During the brainstorming session, we talked about how we could champion trans rights at the school district level, since we are in a urban-rural boundary area. One of the couple started saying “Well, I don’t know…” and several of us jumped in to point out how important protecting marginalized communities is in the fight against fascism and the spouse confirmed that trans folks were the canary in the proverbial coal mine in 1930s Germany. And she conceded - “if that’s what we need to do, let’s do it. “
So it wasn’t the more moderate people in my group who abandoned trans kids, it was the self-identified lefties, who left the group rather than sharing it with “copsuckers.” That isn’t going to be the case with everyone or everywhere, but it’s the case here, in my group.
