It's a Good Thing Not All Leftists Get Along, Right?
Unpacking the problematic meme of leftist unity
If you look at some corners of the Internet (including, shamefully, my own), the problem is that leftists can't agree. We are all feuding with each other when we just need to unify so that we can establish a stronger coalition. As I argued in How Psychological Mechanisms Undermine Movements On The Left:
“You see this same dynamic play out again and again in leftist spaces, especially anonymous spaces online. Spend a couple of hours persuing Twitter or Instagram, and you will see two users with roses in their bios tearing each other down over a disagreement an outside viewer can hardly understand. Eventually, someone blocks the other person, and they brag about how they have happily burned a bridge with someone more ideologically aligned to them than 90% of the country.”
I used to think this. I used to have a lot of terrible opinions (and probably still do). I have changed my tune on this stance for several reasons. One is interpersonal. I recently left the Democratic Socialists of America, mainly because of a bad relationship with the leadership of Metro DC DSA, and I have no desire to unify with a faction I consider toxic. I do not like them and probably never will.
Something that I think often gets lost in the shuffle with this very academic conversation is that leftists are people, and sometimes, people do not get along with other people for perfectly valid interpersonal reasons. It's okay for leftists not to like each other, even to hate each other. Society is not going to come apart at the seams because two leftists can't work with one another. This type of thinking is a form of white saviorism, or at the very least, a nasty case of the spotlight effect. No two people, not even one organization, is the movement. The world is larger and more complex than that, and we need to stop narcissistically over-inflating the importance of our beefs.
