https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
As the party fielded more and more candidates who championed economic-right policies in order to attract corporate donations, the idea of “purity testing” was turned into a stock phrase to attack critics using labels, instead of justifying it on its own terms.
Phrases like “moral purity” now serve two functions: firstly, to dismiss criticisms from the Left wholesale without having to discuss them directly, and secondly, to blame them for the rise of fascism.
In theory it was also supposed to serve a third function of bullying the Left into voting Democrat, but that didn’t work.
The Dems absolutely do use the phrase to manipulate conversation. But it’s also a real problem on the left - it’s one of the ways we divide ourselves into smaller and smaller groups leaving us powerless to actually drive policy. I see it happen online every single day.
Yeah I’m pretty far left and I’ve used the phrase unironically when frustrated by dialog. There are people, even in this thread that I’ve encountered before, that act like the exact version of leftism they believe in is the only kind that is correct and every other version makes you evil. I could agree with them on 95% of policy, but if that other 5% doesn’t align I am literally Satan and so are all the candidates I support. There are people on lemmy that will act like AOC, Bernie, Mamdani, and Warren are right wing simply because they understand politics involved consensus building.
My impression is this is primarily an issue in online spaces, without a clear goal in communication. When you meet leftists involved in a specific project, bigger-picture disagreements tend to fade away into focus and concern around a shared goal. It’s a lot easier to stay focused on the things that are immediately relevant when the route to making a real impact is right in front of you.
Absolutely true, I fear that some here don’t understand that distinction and stay away from left leaning activism because they are so paralysed in online spaces.
I could see it, yeah. I like Lemmy for a lot of reasons but it’s still social media. Commenting here isn’t activism and it doesn’t represent the irl dynamics of leftist circles. Engagement via comments and votes are the only things shown here, there’s no way to track the number of people that see a comment and think “you’re maybe not wrong, but you’re definitely splitting hairs…” and then move on. IRL, though, the dead air in the room would be deafening. (and could be a learning experience!)
Absolutely agreed and that has been my online experience too. And as far as consensus building - a lot of people don’t seem to understand what it takes to create a coalition that has actual policy power in the USA. And they also don’t seem to understand that when you don’t have a bloc with political power you’re never going to get the respect, much less policy consessions, that you’d like to get.
“They just don’t understand what it takes to create a coalition!” I cry, as I fail to create a coalition.
Special thanks to the users at .ml for being the best at dividing the left
I do not understand how you managed to type that out without realising the irony.
I don’t understand how you type anything out without realizing you’re tools for rightwing authoritarians
Eugene V. Debs
How’s that “coalition building” working out for you?
Would be nice if they would quit capitulating to every purity test the right throws their way.
They are more afraid of the right than the left and we need to change that
That’s because “the dems” aren’t leftists. It doesn’t matter if we subdivide or not, your “leftist” party is a moderate center party drifting right year after year.
Of course you’re going to have trouble gathering leftist support.
I mean you’re totally right, anywhere else in the western world the Dems are a center right at best. But Trump turned the GOP into his party in less than ten years. If we on the left banded together with a common cause with deliberate action we could change the Dems similarly. But instead we’d prefer to fight ourselves.
The left keeps coming up with policy that excites voters and centrists keep kicking them to the curb and whining about those unreasonable leftists wanting to do things other than sell weapons for the genocide that centrists love so fucking dearly.
You still need a majority to create policy, everyone 50% +1 is your ally, or you’re not part of the conversation. You don’t have to like them, but until we can get a majority of support for true leftist ideas, you have to work with people you disagree with, or you don’t actually believe in democracy.
Unfortunately, this “working with” is always a one-way street. Never do centrists say, “well, we just have to support the progressive cause to maintain party loyalty.”
Uh… Why would they? Progressive policies are on the far end of the left spectrum by definition. If they had the political weight to carry the party then they would no longer be progressive.
What you’re actually complaining about is the window of modern politics being dragged so far to the right, which is due to external factors and separate from any party loyalty concerns.
Because we’re supposed to be one party. The centrists will pull more towards the right, the progressives to the left. But there’s supposed to be a mutual give-and-take. Centrists can’t pass anything without the progressive wing; the progressives can’t pass anything without the centrists. We’re supposed to support each other and compromise when needed. And the centrists can’t just compromise with liberal Republicans, as that era of politics ended quite awhile ago.
The problem is this is a one-way street. Progressives will support centrists, but then centrist turn around and stab progressives in the back.
What are you on about? There is no progressive wing. The center doesn’t need the left to get anything done, as evidenced by the last 50+ years. All they need is the permission of the right.
Again, you’re complaining that there’s no space for your platform but that has nothing to do with centrists secretly favoring the right. In the USA (and most 21st century democracies, to some extent) we have a rigged spectrum with only Center, Center-Right and Hard Right.
If you want to play the political game as it stands then you’re submitting yourself to the Center. It’s not back stabbing, you just have no political weight to merit anything but lip service. Gaining the clout to influence policy isn’t going to come from the good will of the Centrists, it has to be built independently.
It’s arguably an insurmountable task but it starts by making policy that appeals to voters across the current spectrum. That means a hard focus on economic solutions for the wage-earning class. Look at the success of Bernie, AOC and Mamdani, their focus is generally-to-exclusively economic. Once you build that Center-Left you sap some life from the right and can build from there.
Of course, all of this is going against coordinated establishment attacks. You can see those headliners getting it from all media outlets, but as long as they stay on message they have success. Attacking them for not being progressive enough is silly when they’re actively pushing the limits of what the system allows. That is the essence of the “purity test”.
Does anybody “work with” us on the left or are we the only ones that need to sustain this fallacy and always compromise, to the point we no longer are even being represented?
What is there to work with though? There’s no cohesive movement on the left to speak of so which of the umpteen factions would they start with? We’d need to think and vote as a much bigger bloc for the left to get the kind of representation we want.
Who is “us”, are they supposed to reach through your computer screen? I’ve done activism on and off for years, every time I put in the effort it yields results from the Dems, left leaning or not. If you want our side to win, you have to put in the work. You can’t expect the Dems to work with you if you’re not along side them doing the work as well. Your responsibility doesn’t start and end at the voting booth.
Case in point: the entire post.