[dude with glasses in a communist t-shirt, arguing] I’m the only leftist here, your opinions are TRASH
[dude holding a theory book on smug, arguing] Read theory you losers, you’re all WRONG
[dude in an anarchist hoodie, arguing] Nuh-uh, I’m the only leftist here, you’re SHITLIBS
[the three dudes are now caught in a cartoon fight, glasses gone flying, punches everywhere, while a firing squad of nazis are targeting them with rifles]
[a confused nazi asks] Why… why are they still arguing?
The idea that all “leftists” should just work together is stupid.
Leninism, Anarcho-primitivism and Social democracy (for example) are not different approaches to “leftism” that ultimately want the same things; they are completely separate ideologies that naturally come into conflict. The people who follow them disagree with each other because they want and value completely different things. If they were to put aside their differences there would be nothing left.
That doesn’t mean arguing on the internet about ideology is meaningful, or that there can’t be common goals or enemies, just that you should give up the idea that all “leftists” are somehow natural allies, because it doesn’t make any sense.
I believe you are missing the forest for the trees. First, I acknowledge your examples are separate ideologies.
That concept also applies to the right… social conservatives, right-libertarians, and neoliberal ideologies are equally separate. However, those practitioners have no qualms about banding together to suppress dissent (or until such time they are the only voices).
Where the left leaning practitioners are unable to do so, they will be forever tyrannized by the banded majority.
To put it more succinctly, the enemy of my enemy is my friend (when freedom is on the line).
This. They act like they’re giving up fringe beliefs to keep the consensus more left. It’s isolating and alienating
It does help that the overarching theme of the right is centered around taking as much for yourself as possible and not caring about the collateral damage. The right is full of single-issue voters who might, say, not actually explicitly hate gay people but who also don’t give a shit about their rights and safety if it means they can keep their guns. The left, almost definitionally, needs to consider the complexity inherent in not being able to ignore the effects that any given policy might have on others and this means that there is so much more opportunity for conflict.
You’re correct, of course, I’m just pointing out the difference such that it might help attack the issue from a better perspective.
There’s the nuance the original post relies on ignoring. But it’s supposed to be a humorous joke-post anyway.
You are assuming no ideological changes of opinion are possible or useful.
People that vote right wing aren’t better off just because they voted that way. They’re not tyrants oppressing the left, they’re fellow citizens who get oppressed just as much. Their vote for the winning team doesn’t win them anything.
The solution to right-wing banding isn’t left wing banding, it’s disbanding the right wing by showing its voters that they’re being had. And that takes a cohesive and functional alternative.
Leftist “infighting” is healthy. It’s a process of discovering these alternatives, and it regularly churns out consensus issues such as consent-based queer rights, veganism, not funding genocide, and how the US government is now fascist.
Over time these issues get normalized through leftist action until liberal centrists rewrite the histories as if they are responsible for producing them through liberal democracy.
Daily reminder that the DNC does not acknowledge that the US government is now fascist. Uniting under a common front doesn’t mean we fight fascism together, it means we canvas for votes until we’re black bagged one by one.
Ultimately it is important to vote in every election for a candidate that has a good chance of actually getting in to represent you, but that is just one day every year or two. Everything else should be dedicated to finding and testing these alternatives.
K.
In a fascist dictatorship, they have a lot more in common than opposition. What’s more, there’s ample room for compromise when members of these caucuses are able to communicate and collaborate freely.
The biggest hurdle to Left Unity I consistently see is Liberal Wreckers stepping in to insist any one ascendant philosophy is unserious and counterproductive, right before they form a coalition with corporationists and fascists.
There’s a material basis of alliance that stems from the communities that form the base of each faction.
The idea that a Social Democrat like Lulu or Sheinbaum can’t form coalition with Anarcho-Prim native people in the rural Brazilian/Southern Mexican territories is demonstrably untrue.
The idea that a Leninist like Castro or Mandela couldn’t lead a popular Socialist revolution in Cuba or South Africa is demonstrably untrue.
The idea that Bookchin-style Eco-socialists can’t find allies in Xi’s China or among the Maoist factions of North India is demonstrably untrue.
It takes work and it takes the right historical moment, but not everything has to end like the Spanish Civil War. Left Alliance isn’t some impossible dream.
But if the dictatorship is a communist one they have more in common with the nazis! Or if your country is invaded by Russia you might find yourself fighting side by side with the Azov battalion.
There are libertarians who genuinely care about free speech and might make useful allies on those issues.
Just because someone is the enemy of your enemy, or an occasionally useful ally, doesn’t mean you want to unify with them.
A dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the bourgeois are actually the same thing, you idiot, you imbecile.
I was considering putting scare quotes around “communism”, but refrained in order to avoid an argument about what is and isn’t really communism. Yet here we are. So much for left unity! ;D
Of course. Real Communism is everything except AES. As soon as leftists begin making any kind of public policy decisions, they become reactionaries because the anti-communists in the US media told me so.
We’re already seeing this in the NYC Mayoral Race and Mamdani isn’t even elected yet.