I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
Great points! Now that the election is over, let’s focus on revamping the Dem party instead of huffing copium by blaming 3rd party leftists for not being conservative enough to vote for a rightwing party!
Glad to have you with us. We’re talking about David Hogg below, who is one of the people who is trying to do this. Let’s rock.
Please stop strawmanning us (I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate) for long enough to get behind some kind of effort like that. Our main complaint about one certain subset of the “3rd party leftists” so called is that, on Lemmy, the sum total of their efforts seems to be not producing any success for 3rd parties, or for the left, or for reforming the Democrats, or against the Republicans, or anything like that, but actually interfering with the “revamping” as you say. By shitting on people like Bernie, or Elizabeth Warren, or David Hogg, or encouraging people not to vote letting Trump get in office which now makes things much harder, or encouraging them to vote for someone who definitely won’t win, and so on.
@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
Never heard of him, but if he’s like Bernie, I’ll endorse that.
Nope, just responding to OP. I fit 3 of the items on their list, 5 depending on who you ask, and I take exception to having my issues with the party that’s supposed to represent my interests dismissed as “maga cuckoo infiltration.”
If it is as you say, then that sounds like bad faith actors posing as 3rd party alright. People will do anything to get you sucked into engagement to drain you and keep you from being productive. I guess reminding everyone of that is a public service
Yeah, I sort of saw talking with t3rmit3 that me and OP do actually see things a little differently maybe in some important respects. I actually don’t think everyone who fits a lot of OP’s criteria is necessarily (or even probably) a fake account. I definitely think there’s a huge problem of fake accounts but the way OP has framed it I think also includes some people who are just speaking their mind.
Some of the accounts that I would place in that category also hate Bernie. They call him a “sheepdog” or say that he is controlled opposition designed to siphon off support that could productively go towards some 3rd party candidate that 99% of the country has never heard of, and that’s who we should be voting for. I mean sure, that viewpoint could be legitimate from some kind of person who’s got a comprehensive master plan I’m just too thick to understand, how doing that will tie in with the left finally seizing power in this country if we can all dump Bernie, but you surely should understand that me (and presumably OP) will be skeptical.