Stop talking to other leftists
By: Michael Guevarra
Tags: Politics, Echo Chamber, Discourse, Leftists, Allyship

Photo by Korney Violin on Unsplash

Navigating 2020

Stop talking to other leftists

How anti-capitalist navel-gazing undermines progress

Far too much is made of the anti-capitalist left and how we posture or strategize regarding our pressure on establishment forces.

And not nearly enough discourse is aimed at Dem casuals despite their hand in bringing us to this point — their resistance to analyzing class conflict, their susceptibility to weaponized identity politics, their utter lack of imagination regarding what function government has in the promotion of its people’s well-being.

And less still is aimed at so-called conservatives whose political and historical ignorance is so far divorced from reality that they truly are the perfection of working class exploitation: they suffer many of the same ills as us, yet have been convinced to the point of violent rage that we, in our attempts to liberate the working class, are their enemies.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

I’m not telling you to berate these people or that discourse would consist of the finger-wagging woke-scolding bullshit we’re so good at (of which this article is not an exception). It’s easy to perceive as evil or personal failure what is really just the product of a tremendous effort to manufacture consent. In any case, the focus of our energy needs to be directed at the actual problem in America: not how the existing left is interacting with the establishment (these will always be dumpster fire lose-lose conversations because we’re hyper-focused on binary outcomes), but rather how to grow anti-capitalist sentiment itself by talking to people that don’t yet agree with us, people that haven’t even had an introduction to concepts like socialism or critical theory. In different terms, how to bring the left’s ideas toward the center of mainstream discourse.

Our ideas will remain fringe and radical only so long as we fail to promote them aggressively to the common people.

And of course, there is a space of maximum reach that is different for each of us. For instance, I don’t expect my Black trans allies to be reaching out to somebody’s racist uncle who proudly flies the Confederate flag and spends time in comment sections cheering on the death of non-violent protestors. But especially to our white allies whose circle of friends and family reaches into the All Lives Matter crowd or even Trump-supporters, I’m telling you directly that we need you to have those tough conversations on our behalf.

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Allyship is hard.

And if those conversations strike you as awkward or stressful or inviting of conflict, good. That shows how necessary they are to have. Allyship isn’t easy. It means acting as a white blood cell in the immune system of a nation ravaged by the disease of capitalist lies about meritocracy and individualism. Being a useful part of this movement is strenuous. So if you really want to help us move forward and break free, we need you to do some difficult things.

If your definition of being a good ally is believing what we believe but never manifesting this as action, one must question the value of this sort of allyship beyond the confines of your ego.

Do not rest in the privilege of inaction and convince yourself you’re a good person by merely feeling bad for us. Fuck that. Fight for the oppressed.

I do what I can with people I knew from the military. I talk to classmates from campus who’ve never been “into” this stuff. I talk to casual and apolitical family who watch The View and think the usual faces in the Democratic Party are the “good guys.” I slogged through the mud of conversations about Bernie Sanders’s platform that began with the interjection, “but he doesn’t have a chance, right?”

Art courtesy @retrainingpavlov on instagram

Some of the longest talks I had over the course of the primary were with ardent Buttigieg supporters (feel my pain). I put in time with a conservative woman who grew up never leaving her rural bubble, Fox News on 24/7, convinced socialism is bad without being able to define the term. Balanced against a great deal of self-care and many, many restful days unplugged, I trudged through the Dem establishment’s talking points, the GOP’s talking points, and the type of confidence in completely erroneous ideas one can only get from some noxious mix of the U.S. education system and heavy doses of cleverly edited, emotionally potent YouTube videos.

And while most of my friends know me for my rhetoric and the essays I compose or a speech they heard me give at a pre-COVID rally, I consider most of the work I’ve done for the movement in those spectacularly draining, unsexy conversations. Even if I don’t flip an immediate switch in someone’s mind that brings them to class consciousness. Even if it doesn’t feel immediately effective or rewarding. Even if it doesn’t come with Likes and Shares and clout™.

The path forward demands redirecting our passion and energy outward instead of inward.

I know it’s easy to talk to other leftists (even as infighting) because we have that common ground. Believe me, I’ve been there: lost in the rabbit hole of leftbook echo bubbles, debating red-faced about Noam Chomsky’s signature on an open letter, the value of Sam Harris’s opinions regarding BLM, Angela Davis’s electoral position in 2020, references to dusty texts volleyed by gatekeeping M-Ls whose entire existence seem to indicate that once you read enough theory, you actually just graduate from meaningful action entirely.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

But recognize this: we anti-capitalists are a growing minority whose power resides in our unity as a collective, which means we grow in power through our ability to popularize and normalize our ideas. The many ills of late-stage capitalism, healthcare as a human right, the intersectionality between profit motives and their undermining of human dignity in the world, action on climate change, the need for a robust labor movement, mutual aid, prison abolition, on and on and on. We want to help working people and we know the path to get it done. It begins, first and foremost, with extending our ideas and getting people to question toxic systemic and cultural norms. We can’t get that done if we stay in our bubbles.

We are armed with reality itself. We need to lean on that and spend more of our effort reaching out to people who aren’t yet in our tent.

This is not as difficult as it seems — many casuals are already sympathetic to the struggles of marginalized communities in a social justice context. We need only help them see the next step — the deep and undeniable connection between those issues and capitalism’s role in perpetuating them.

So, let’s get out of our bubbles. Let’s talk to people. Let’s grind away the machine of capitalism — one tough conversation at a time.