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(WEEKLY) Leftist Infighting vs. The Real World

1mon 25d ago by lemmy.ca/u/AceTKen in actual_discussion@lemmy.ca from lemmy.ca

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I've seen the phrase "leftist infighting" mentioned here and there around Lemmy, but prior to joining it wasn't something I'd ever seen brought up. After it was mentioned, however, I saw it absolutely everywhere leftists are.

The belief system of the infighters seems to be the same even if the details aren't: "There can be no leftist victory without (veganism / giving perceived oppressed group rights that others don't have / complete overhaul and policing of language / rewriting power dynamics to match the stack I have in my head / complete governmental overthrow / anarchy)."

It's one of the reasons my activity on Lemmy has dipped severely. The platform is rife with well-meaning, but overly-aggressive people who are more interested in their particular sliver of political ideology instead of coming together to solve issues. They can't explain why they're right, but they'll sure be angry if challenged even slightly and yell at you before blocking you, sometimes reporting you, maybe PMing you vitriol, and definitely using the word "nazi" in there somewhere (because there's nothing a politically-motivated person likes better than exaggerating and using the worst word they can think of to describe someone they don't like).

Recently (since I'm in Canada), I watched the NDP Convention and it was... well, you can watch for yourself. To call it "inept" would be polite. I can't blame you if you don't want to watch. It's long, it's pretty boring, and everyone has their own pet issues that they feel are more important than running things correctly. There's little to no structure, and everyone is tripping over themselves to not step on toes (even saying that would be a verbal slight against people without legs and now you have people booing you, you ablest jerk) in invented and arbitrary power dynamics.

I described it as "watching a philosophy teacher attempt to teach calculus to cats." Nobody knows how to run it, it wouldn't work if you tried, and the cats all fucking hate each other because they're different cats.

In response to this criticism, you often get people who tell you that people can focus on more than thing at once, which is objectively true... as individuals. But as a group, you wind up with a hot mess and run a show where you prove you can't govern a single room of diverse people and views, let alone a whole country full of them. Even members of just that room can't cohesively come together, how are they going to convince normal voters?

Am I overreacting? Am I overlooking something? Should we be rejecting solutions that do 90% of the population some good and can actually be implemented over letting 1% of leftists angrily dictate a different issue be addressed first? Are you also leftist and angry and now want to block me because I'm not your brand of leftist?

I vote for this group. I want them to win. So how can a leftist group solve this and actually come into power without infighting when we can't even work together between servers on Lemmy?

I think if the FBI leaders who ran cointelpro could see the culture of leftist spaces online today (and offline to an extent), they'd be really fuckin proud of themselves.

We have absolutely allowed ourselves to buy into the notion that "doing the work" is the same thing as finding someone among us to label the enemy and attempting to punish them.

It kinda affects any space dedicated to folks who care about doing something because its good, honestly. I see it a lot from open source people a lot too

FD signifier and Lindsay Ellis* both have really good videos about this subject. Lindsay's is on her cancelation if you go looking for it.

We have to learn to kill the cops in our minds. No more carceral justice, for our fellow leftists or otherwise. We have to learn how to build something together rather than just tear eachother down; when we can do that we'll be an actual threat to the system. Until then, the agents that destroyed the last effective leftist movement in the US are pointing and laughing.

Edit: added a link for FD's video. Apparently the Lindsay Ellis video was taken down or unlisted, so sadly I can't link to it. It was a very effective portrayal of some of the deepest dysfunctions of leftist spaces online

I don't think it's that big of an issue. There will always be a jackass obsessed with some minutia in a large group of people. some specific spaces encourage that (twitter, maybe .world?), and I've seen some videos of presenters trying very desperately to be the annoying twitter lib instead of addressing the real points, but i don't think it's the majority of actual leftists. I mean, Hassan is currently beloved and you've seen the hit pieces that libs were putting out on him.