Poison pill radicalism

The right is destroying the radical left - by imitating its criticism.

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Guess what?

• A significant number of people who position themselves as socialists are effectively just liberal Democrats who’ve found a way to rationalize their politics as radical. All they ever do is come up with reasons for “critically supporting” Democrat positions and candidates and singling out Republicans for criticism.

• Liberals and leftists often decide that certain ideas and positions are not up for debate, and that certain people do not deserve a hearing, not because of facts or sound reasoning or left political values — but because they are closed-minded, or ignorant, or cruel and looking for someone to bully, or because of petty social considerations.

• Liberal and left media is overrun by cliquishness, careerism, and often just serves as a mouthpiece for the interests of upper-middle-class white collar workers, particularly those who live in NYC, DC, and LA.

• Liberals and leftists often champion identity politics in ways that are at odds with class struggle, either by deferring it (“the fight against Xism is our priority right now”), by co-opting it (“the fight against Xism is a fight against capitalism”) or by attacking it (“only white bros care about socialism”).

• Liberals and leftists often go well beyond principled criticism of reactionary religious doctrine and practice and proceed to attacks against the religious that are directly at odds with the basic left values of pluralism and tolerance.

These are all points that lefties from Lenin to Malcolm X to Mark Fisher to Amber A’Lee Frost to yours truly have been making since the beginning of time, but when most people hear them today they probably don’t associate them with the left.