Rant

As much as I despise the idea of getting a Newsom presidency when he's about as "mediocre centrist" as politicians in the US come; it would still be leaps and bounds better than four more years of Trump, Vance, or whatever corrupt fuck crawls out from under the MAGA movement in 2028. I'm hoping primaries mean we get an actual candidate, so we could, I dunno, win on a progressive platform for a change -- but being realistic, if we're driving off a cliff and turning around is not an option, pumping the brakes is still better than stamping down on the gas.

This all, of course, assumes we still have free and fair elections come 2028, which is looking like an increasingly fanciful idea.

There are lines that need to be drawn. If a neo-nazi says they want to push neo-nazi policies in the name of defeating Trump, nope, still not letting them in the tent just because they said they're trying to beat Trump.

And if you can agree with that extreme hypothetical, then it just becomes a debate over where we draw that line, not over whether a line should be drawn at all. I think for a lot of people, "leftist infighting" is something that's only bad when other people do it, because they drew the line in a different place from you.

Getting a little less hypothetical here, I don't think it's acceptable to throw LGBTQ people under the bus in the name of defeating Trump. Even if you want a big tent, you're still stuck with a conflict on whether that tent should include LGBTQ people or Gavin Newsom. I'd rather have the former.

We have almost four years to find a better nominee than Gavin Newsom. I am positive that we can do better than him.

The main issue for leftists is that both of your two parties are full of corrupt unabashed neoliberal capitalists who are so far to the right they would make even Margaret Thatcher blush, the main difference being that one party is more openly racist and fascist than the other. That's not a purity test, it's a fundamental difference of values.

Are you really living in a democracy when only one of two parties can ever win, and both are 100% commited to neoliberal economics? Nothing is gonna get better in the long run under a system that is designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. No war but class war.

This is the problem with leftist mobilisation on the whole and basically always has been. The right is mostly made up of single issues. Things like opposing LGBT+ rights, reproductive rights, racial integration, social welfare etc. Any one of things are your main bag and Conservative it is. All the others basically aren't deal breakers. For example, you could be closeted homosexual but also an ardent racist, you're definitely not going to vote left.

On the flip side, all the left has are deal-breakers. Leftists will constantly come up against purity tests for a myriad of different factions, interest groups, loud parts of the Internet etc etc.

As an example, you may be the scion of the left in terms of your electoral ability but if you say women's sport should be protected from those born with a potential innate advantage of a higher amount of testosterone, you're pissing off a part of your base who now would rather anyone but you got into power.

Look at how the different sides (socialists, communists, anarchists, Basque and Catalan nationalists etc), descended into infighting during the Spanish Civil War even while on the brink of victory against Franco's Nationalists. (who for example brought together the anti-Catholic and anti-monarchist Falangists and the pro-Catholic and pro-monarchist CEDA because they could all agree on wanting to destroy the Reds).

edit: added word for clarity

Lesser evilism is a race to the bottom. While it's easy to tut tut about how you're the most reasonable person in the conversation, it's plain to people with either memory or the werewithal to study ancient history that you and Gruesome Newsome are defending positions that were considered extreme far right 20 years ago. This is called the ratchet effect. The dems bravely hold the line against the mean, critical, STERN left, who are committing the worst crime of all (demanding results), laud themselves for being less Hitlerian (sometimes), and then the next brownshirt aficionado turns the heat up further

It's not just online. Monty Python made a joke about the exact same infighting back in the 70's.

I’m not asking people to change their mind on what they think of a person because of an isolated good thing they do, but to at least acknowledge it as a good thing or add nuance describing what about it you like or don’t. I can accept saying “I don’t think this is a good thing in this circumstance”, “this person will not follow through with this thing I think is good thing because ___”, or “they are doing a good thing for wrong and selfish reasons” too. But to outright deny any support for an action because of a wildly extrapolated character judgement of the person doing it, when that user would support it otherwise, vexes me greatly.

Ah, but nuance isn't very motivating to the vast majority of people. Ego and having an identity is, though, and some people also crave conflict. Thinking this way serves all three, and having genuine convictions and good intentions doesn't preclude falling into that.

Balanced people tend not to burn time and emotional energy on politics for free, basically. Yes, I know that's a self-own.

Ed Koch said it best.

"If you agree with me 51% of the time, vote for me. If you agree with me 100% of the time, see a psychiatrist."

While lemmy itself isn't a target for propaganda bots, the narratives they push kinda seep in.

Propaganda doesn't seek to convert a leftist to the right, their strategy is to fragment the left - factions spend their energy arguing amongst themselves instead of presenting a cohesive opposition.

For example, elements of the left were protesting about Palestine outside Kamala's campaign events.

You know the concept of Critical Support? In the case of Newsom, who if he didn’t lose a general, would demonstrate to another generation of voters that the dem party is not a potential vehicle for positive social change, its the opposite, critical opposition.

I'm sure there were social democrats in 1933 complaining that communists weren't getting in line behind the left-most faction of the NSDAP.

I hear ya. In fact your rant overlaps quite a bit with my own rants against witch hunters (people who screech, bash, or try to denounce someone else, online and in the open, with little to no grounds to do so).

I know this is not every or most interactions on Lemmy, but...

...but it's like biting into something rotten: the foul taste lingers for a while, no matter how much good food you have afterwards.

I'm very left-wing but the thing with 'us' is, that we still have principles. The extreme right is long past any kind of principle or fact. They just live in a fantasy world inventing things to get themselves angry about. Anyone who disagrees in the slightest with today's narrative will be cancelled from their community. But for us the facts still matter. And that meand we sometimes disagree.

I wouldn't call someone like Newsom 'left' though. He's left by US standards but for the rest of the world he would still be pretty right-wing. And strongly capitalist/neoliberal.

Anyway you can rant all you like but I'm not going to 'fall in line'. It's just a concept alien to me. I have my own goals and principles and I don't align with others. I might join forces temporarily but that's about it. I still remain the only one who decides how I feel on each topic. And I will change my political alliances as I go.

Leftist infighting is often people being bigots, predators, or defenders. The right will not be held to account with conversations and discussion but the left will - though you should listen to survivor's warnings if they say someone has been dodging accountability for years and that they aren't worth the effort.

As an organiser, a large chunk of my work is ensuring that certain predators, bigots and defenders don't worm back in without changing anything. It means that survivors are safer to take part and that there is further freedom to speak up.

Prioritizing avoiding infighting to keep the peace is cop shit and is useful for predators, bigots and defenders to bide time. It also allows for a culture where those unaffected by those issues gain power.

I have an overwhelmingly negative view of Newsom, and let me tell you: most of the people shitting themselves in fury over Newsom on here are the kind of people who celebrate their 'principled' advocacy of nonvoting in order to allow literal fascists to murder American minorities. They do not want to express approval of any good policy from 'the Dems', because that would weaken their argument that no one in the current system is capable of doing anything to improve anyone's life, which justifies their total abstention and visceral hatred for participation in 'electoral' politics.

And on the side of the spectrum I’m calling left to left-centre, we seem to let the fewer things we disagree with get in the way of the many more things we would agree with each other.

The problem is the same issue that leads to right-unity, but in reverse.

Most people do not make political allegiances based on policy opinions.

The right doesn't agree on anything, despite how it appears to many who are unfamiliar with right-wing discourse. But they define themselves as a community, largely defined in objection to modernity.

The left defines itself as many communities, and what ends up being important is not policy, but in-groups and out-groups. It doesn't matter what policy would help the working class, or minorities, or establish a more just or even more left-friendly situation going forward. What matters is the in-group being opposed to the out-group.

There are people on here who literally and openly decry 'turbolibs' as worse than literal Nazis. There are many who equate liberals with literal fascists (and they would spare not an instant reminding you that Bernie Sanders is a liberal).

They don't care about the people they claim to champion. They don't have actual policy concerns, though they might express opinions on policy in the abstract. All they care about is in-group and out-group.

This is my biggest problem with this place. Disagree a little and you're scum. Someone recently told me to kill myself because I said "Nazis are horrible people, but they are in fact human". This literally got me called a Nazi sympathizer. Because anything less than saying they're literal cockroaches means you support awful right wing ideas.

People can't wait to find a way to claim you believe horrible shit that you never said and is unlikely you believe. It's fucking bizarre.

ITT: @PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au spams every comment with left-wing infighting.

There are some discussions about this topic in France too, and let me explain my POV to you: I am leaning toward anarcho-communism, but it's not represented by any big political party. The compromise I can make is LFI, as they are able to criticize capitalism. Other left party are like "I don't know what else" for the greens, our communist party does not use class warfare since a long time, and the socialist party has always betrayed any idea of left politic. Any alliance between LFI and such parties would mean compromission at some point. I'd rather have them over promise on the left to apply social policies, that compromise with the socialists and having nothing done.

In the end, it usually boils down to political orientation that are fundamentally inconsistent, eg social-liberalism and social democratism. And if you ask me, being pro-capital is right leaning, as trying to be socialist with capitalism in place is doomed to fail in the end