I don’t think a Big Tent approach is going to work here. There is no monolithic Left, and trying to change that is doomed to failure. The Marxists don’t agree with the anarchists, the anarchists don’t agree with the liberals and the liberals don’t agree with the Marxists, that’s just the way things are. Don’t ask the pacifists to be insurrectionists, don’t ask trans people to compromise with TERs.
The resistance of the 1940s was not a Big Tent, it was too ideologically diverse for that to work. The same is true today.
So what do we do instead of a Big Tent? I would suggest looking at other ideas.
From You Are Not So Smart episodes i’ve listened to in regards to having difficult conversations and how to deal with people with opposing (political) views there are strategies that can be taken. One is that as long as a person treats anyone outside of their in-group as an “other” anything you say or do will not work. You can shame folks, you can present facts, etc. It might occasionally reach someone but you’ll actively reinforce beliefs and behaviors you’re trying to fight against.
This isn’t my forte but i will leave episode links related to the topic in case this helps folks here. The podcast has so many episodes that touch on the topic so i will hold back from posting too many links but here are some:
The temporary alliance to fight fascism is a historical fact. There is no reason why such coordination shouldn’t work today. Ideally, the coalition to fight fascism in the US today should be formed of every single non-fascist, because fascism is an existential threat to us all. Practically speaking, there are a lot of people who are just disengaged from politics, but among the politically-engaged, working together at least long enough to end the threat seems like a no-brainer.
Thank you for the links. That was a…heavy read. No surprise that I don’t think we’re yet at the point of violent revolution, but with the current trajectory, I can’t deny that we aren’t far off.
There’s something that’s been bugging me about the arguments against what I’ve been writing in this thread, and it crystallized for me while I was exercising today. I don’t want to get bogged down in electoral politics because that’s not what this thread should be about, but it’s a contradiction that I think is worth pondering.
On one hand, folks are asserting that leftists/progressives are participating in coalition building at a high rate; at such a high rate that the ones who opt out of coalition are a negligible number.
On the other hand, there’s the assertion that Harris lost because of her/the Dems inclusion of anti-T**** conservatives like Liz Cheney. In other words, progressives/leftists abandoned her because of that perceived rightward shift.
These statements directly contradict each other. They are mutually exclusive.
What that says to me is there’s a lot of leftists who won’t form a coalition with someone who doesn’t show interest in forming a coalition with them. That strikes me as very different from the described purity politics where people won’t form a coalition with anyone. I feel like this thread is hard to follow because it keeps sweeping back and forth between particular groups and then leftists/progressives in general.
Where does that come from? Even folks in this thread who have disagreed concede that Harris did reach out to progressive groups like unions and environmentalists. I don’t actually think that happened, but it’s one of the assertions that was arrayed agains what I’ve posted here.
That’s not what PP talked about in her videos and it’s not what I’ve described in my direct experiences locally. The folks who are noping out in the examples from PP and my own experiences are politically-active people who self-identify as leftist/progressive but won’t work with people who they view as moderate or conservative, *even if it’s only on one issue.” It’s not that they won’t form a coalition with anyone, it’s that they won’t form a coalition with other progressives/leftists if it’s going to include those people.
Well, ok, that’s more or less what I meant but that’s on me for being imprecise here. The point is there are different limits though. Obviously there are petty divisions that render us incapable of moving forward, but then as A. R. Moxon put it there are also things like welcoming Nazi billionaires into the tent that are selling out to the point of the same incapability. I trust none of this is disagreeing with him, right? And I don’t think Harris was at all at that point but I do think things like her convention speech and conservative outreach made some people mistake her for that – given that’s something I have argued against a few times.
And if you did think someone was actually going to run as a Republican, would it still be purity politics not to support them? I’m not sure it would. The thing is that there is a spectrum that keeps being described as a single “do we work together or not” thing. I think you have a good idea what part of it you’re talking about, but then when you talk about the contradicting assertions others have made, I’m not sure they are all the same part of the spectrum at all.
I agree that leftists/progressives are participating in coalition building at a high rate.
But… I disagree that the number that opt out are negligible, I think the drop out rate matters and it is easy to alienate people at this point when they reach out socially. Even worse, this experience will likely be compounded by negative press and disinformation.
I think the drop out rate has to be considered in light of the goals of the org though, obviously some groups are going to have a focus on a specific problem or demographic and I strongly believe that needs to be OK too.
The issue I think is that normies and centrists are being considered “the left” in numbers we’ve likely never seen in the US. At least not in some time. Anyone left of Mitt Romney at this point is in the tent.
I also think it is plausible that some segments of the US population who identify as left refused to vote for Harris and honestly… I think of them as I think of the leftists who go for antivax woo. FUCKING ASSHOLES. Are there even that many of them or is that online disinfo though? I remain skeptical of it all kwim? Not in denial, just a touch of scrutiny.
I think both your points and @chenille ’s hint at potential reasons for some of the geographical differences in experience that we discussed up-thread.
In the other thread about Dems, some folks here volunteered (and this seems to be a common theme) that they live in a heavily Dem-dominant state, so they felt like they could safely vote for a 3rd party or not vote. I wonder if that could extend towards attitudes about coalition forming. I’m in a Dem-dominant state with very high voter participation. It could be the folks who left my local group fall into that category.
In areas where statewide elections are more contested, there could be more cohesion out of necessity, both electoral and for safety in collective action.
OK, here’s an example of a temporary coalition that is forming among groups that are often in vehement policy disagreement, but are in alignment about political action (not electoral) against the massive public land grab aspect of the Big Billionaire’s Bill.
Senator and Certified Asshole Mike Lee is responsible for a section of the bill that calls for opening up 250M acres of federal lands in the West for sale of up to 3.5M acres to private companies. It includes national forests and BLM land, but excludes national parks, monuments, and wilderness. They are disingenuously claiming that it will go towards affordable housing (because the lands would be open to development for real estate) but the real reason is for extractive developement - oil & gas, mining, timber, etc. Bear in mind, the land in question makes money for the federal government. The CBO estimates that the proceeds of the sale would be outpaced by the existing income from the average acreage in the sale within a decade. So this doesn’t even make fiscal sense. It’s just a giveaway to private industry.
Groups that are often working against each other are aligned on this. Conservative groups that like their bang sticks and want to be able to shoot anything that moves on public lands are aligning with hiking, climbing, and outdoors groups that don’t like being shot at.
Hikers are still going to push for policies that involve not being shot at. Hunters are still going to push for policies that let them shoot things, even if that means a couple dozen hikers are shot every year. But they are working together to prevent this.
I think part of what makes this work though is that there is already a coalition built separately with the special interests. So people can “come together” somewhat on the value of the land itself for the public. There may be some number in each group that didn’t want to though?
That may be part of it. Where I live there is also major disillusionment. It’s a small pseudo-left oasis in rightland. And part of the MAGA movement originated here. I was talking to some one who seemed mostly interested in almost punishing the US, wanting it to fail, so caught up in what I would call righteous self-victimization. Reminds me of radfems and I hate it. I’m not a stranger to this kind of anger but it also isn’t useful. The right is always saying that everyone left of them hates the US. I, personally, am not motivated by hatred and think the US has many advantages that people really have suffered for in the past and are fighting for currently. Unsupportive and hostile people are too easily manipulated into destructive actions towards themselves and others. Often the people who get hurt the worst are burned allies.
I have always been impressed with how the Nature Conservancy handles the very different bedfellows that make up their donor base. Their marketing materials manage to not piss off anyone. They are excellent at threading that needle. Of course conservatives (by definition) should be into conservation, but so many organizations push them away with ‘hippie’ type language. United we stand; divided we fall: the hippies weren’t wrong, but sometimes you have to be more diplomatic to bring disparate groups together.
