The cliques, the hierarchies, the policing of others
This piece by Bailey Lamon, Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture, is being passed around. I certainly recognize the culture she’s talking about.
I’m tired of the cliques, the hierarchies, the policing of others, and the power imbalances that exist between people who claim to be friends and comrades. I am exhausted and saddened by the fact that any type of disagreement or difference of opinion in an activist circle will lead to a fight, which sometimes includes abandonment of certain people, deeming them “unsafe” as well as public shaming and slander. It is disgusting that we claim to be building a new world, a new society, a better way of dealing with social problems — but if a person makes a mistake, says and/or does something wrong, they are not even given a chance to explain their side of what happened because the process of conflict resolution is in itself driven by ideology rather than a willingness to understand facts. Actually, in today’s activist circles one is lucky to be given any sort of due process at all, while everyone is put under social pressure to believe everything they are told regardless of what actually occurred in a given situation. This is not freedom. This is not social justice. There is nothing “progressive” or “radical” about it, unless you are referring to fascism.
I would expand her description, because it’s not even limited to when “a person makes a mistake, says and/or does something wrong” – it also covers when a person says something perceived as wrong, like for instance when she dissents from a local bit of dogma that’s only been dogma for about five minutes and will probably be overturned by tomorrow. It also covers when the only mistake the person made was letting the policers into the room. It also covers when the person flatly refuses to believe things simply because someone said them. It covers a whole lot of situations that people have no business policing at all.
“I am exhausted and saddened by the fact that any type of disagreement or difference of opinion in an activist circle will lead to a fight, which sometimes includes abandonment of certain people, deeming them “unsafe” as well as public shaming and slander.”
Leftist infighting isn’t new, but accusations of words and ideas being “harmful” and “violent” have only escalated within the past few years or so. (In my experience, at least, and I’ve been a liberal longer than many of these thinkpiece writers have been alive.) For a while, it was easy to chalk it up to the medium itself. You’re only as good as your last tweet, or that last article you shared. Social media is to blame for a lot of “empty signaling,” but it’s ridiculous how predictable the language has become.
Thanks for sharing! Great article, there is something so perverse about the way the language of privilege is a product of privilige.
Thanks. The ferocity of language policing SEEMS novel. But the ignorant, shallow, children may be reminiscent of Hitler Jugend or Comsomol members busily informing on their parents
The expansion of violence to mean all sorts of things that are neither threats nor actions is harmful in all kinds of ways. I worked in an office where the zero-tolerance policy on violence meant you could be punished for turning red or white while being chewed out by a supervisor, shaking from stress, having a change in your vocal intonation that indicated any emotional state. It was perfect for bully bosses and terrible for anyone who was a subordinate and a human being. Because of that experience, I become distrustful of anyone who is too expansive of what violence means.