#ideological purity

[unsolicited-opinions]

Ideological purity often pretends to be moral clarity...

...but it's really a fear of thinking too hard.

You've seen it.

"True revolutionaries reject reform."

Suggests compromise and progress are betrayal, shields them from having to adapt ideas to meaningful, practical reality.

"If you question our tactics, you're siding with the oppressors."

Intolerance of dissent only reveals a brittle belief system.

"No real environmentalist eats meat."

Overextends a moral cause into a personal purity test.

"Support every war for democracy or you're unpatriotic."

Absolutism cloaked in virtue. Avoids confronting the ethics of specific conflicts.

"All religion is brainwashing."

A declaration of supposed liberation that ironically reveals an unexamined rigidity and ignorance.

"You can't be feminist and disagree with our stance on X."

Leverages identity to police ideological boundaries rather than inviting pluralism and an open exchange of ideas.

"If you read that author, you're complicit in harm."

Moral stance as social armor. This let's them avoid having to wrestle with uncomfortably complex reality.

"If you don't use all the right terminology, you're bigoted."

Turns evolving norms into purity litmus tests rather than opportunities to educate.

"Real activists never make money from their cause."

Assumes purity equals poverty. Suspiciously allergic to ambiguity about scale or sustainability.

[lavender-jedi]

Anyone wanting to participate in leftist discourse should be required to learn about “holy watching” in Puritan communities (proving your status as one of the elect by rooting out imposters) so we can Maybe Not Do That.

[floatingbook]

I’m not gonna lie, this got a good chuckle out of me. Better than tears I guess, but what a way of putting proof to what I wrote here.

So if “deadass this is what i'm talking about when i say we need to stop w the expectation of ideological purity in radblr”, then I guess expecting coherence is a problem. Is it really, really crazy though, to expect you to act according to your own values? Is it really so weird to expect you to examine your own beliefs and not to pretend to adhere to positions you don’t really care about? Is it so strange to expect words to have meaning?

And “this rhetoric has made rad-leaning women decide that they are not perfect enough to call themselves radical feminists because they………” are not? By those anonymous words these women are not radical feminists, they are “rad-leaning”. There’s a world of difference between being sympathetic to ideas, or recognising that some ideas have merit, and actually acting for change and working towards women’s liberation. Whether one is better is not even what is at stake; the point is just that they are different experiences, and that words have meanings. If you call yourself a chef when you only know how to boil pasta and make hard eggs, I’m entitled to calling you out for misdirection and dishonesty; when you pretend to care about women’s liberation but simply whine from behind a screen, I will similarly point out your lack of coherence.

“[S]ome of you need to fucking stop and feel some goddamn shame because you are actively driving women away from feminism”. Feel some shame for what, having values and beliefs and actually standing by them? Feel some shame from having opinions and sharing them? Feel some shame from not being fine with the status quo, as anon seems to be? Feel some shame by not finding a few words on the internet to be enough in terms of women’s liberation? And as for “driving women away from feminism”, honestly, what better wording to show that to some women, feminism is nothing but a club, an online-space to complain about men for a few minutes a day and then go back to their lives as usual. And in a way, they are entitled to their opinions of “feminism” and to maintain their club-space dynamic. But it’s foolish to pretend that any woman can drive another away from her own liberation. If one post on here is enough to get a woman to throw up her hands and say, “well I’ll just stay oppressed then!”, quite honestly, she was never interested in her own liberation in the first place. It goes back to what I wrote, really. “‘Purity politics’ is an excuse. You either believe in something or you don’t. That’s it. “

Other extracts relevant to this, for which anonymous here proved my point: “‘Purity politics’ is often brandished in response to a call to action, as a way to not act and not be blamed for it” and “Rather than living and acting, it has become fashionable to share witty-sounding lines on social media and adopt the most well-known labels to quickly share what ideology you think is the best equipped to give you clout”. Perhaps stop being so adamant about calling yourself a “radical feminist” or whatever, anonymous, and maybe do something about women’s liberation.

Finally, “at some point you have to wonder why you resist action so much, when this action is a logical consequence of the ideas you pretend to share.”

I’m sensible to the fact that being honest with yourself and others, when you’ve been pretending to care, can be painful. But there’s no avoiding it if you want to reconcile your own beliefs and your actions. What a terrible life it would be, to keep pretending while in your heart and thoughts you disagree with every conclusion. Do yourself a favour. Stop pretending. Embrace what you believe in. Don’t pretend just to make yourself palatable or to gain clout.

[tomorrowusa]

People on the left who have voted for fringe candidates for president since 2000 are responsible (so far) for four current right wing Supreme Court justices. Their nearsighted quest for ideological purity displays a disturbing ignorance of how politics really works.

Successful progressive politics in the US is coalition politics. Ignoring voters outside the West Coast, the Acela corridor, and college campuses is how people like Donald Trump and George W. Bush become president and pack the Supreme Court with Fox News favorites.

The Electoral College is a thing, deal with it. It is not going away anytime soon. No non-Democrat or non-Republican has been elected president since 1848; no third party bozo is going to change that. Signing petitions or having public hissy fits won’t do away with the Electoral College. What’s needed is a long term strategy for electing people to the US House and Senate and especially to state legislatures in order to change the Constitution.

Activists who are truly progressive listen to people they have minor differences with instead of preaching to them. You gain power by mutually ironing out differences rather than through ideological rigidity.

To gain power, build bridges instead of liberal bunkers.

[forgotn1]

Sorry to break it to you, but you've got shitty, problematic opinions. We all do. It's literally unavoidable in a world as broken as the one we live in. You cannot make it to adulthood and beyond without learning or internalizing something problematic.

And that's okay. Because the point of progress isn't perfection, it's being better than you were. When someone tells you you've done something problematic or hurtful, don't defend it by touting other areas where you've made progress. Accept it, apologize, and start the process of learning so that you can avoid doing it again in the future. Only when you dig in and refuse to change your behavior does it become an issue.

[rev-olution]

It's definitely been said before, and probably said better than I will here, but I feel like one of the most damaging traits of modern activism that I've seen is the push for ideological purity.

No, I don't mean "cancel culture" (read: consequences of personal actions/decisions) causing bigots to lose their jobs. I also don't mean people (rightfully) refusing to listen to or associate with fascists.

I mean people tearing into others for past beliefs that they have apologized for and definitely no longer hold. I mean people being mocked and ridiculed for saying something when they didn't know any better. I mean people being attacked for making honest mistakes because they're still learning- and we are all still learning, always.

I get it. Terrible beliefs can have terrible consequences, and it's good to want to hold people accountable so they don't hurt others. It's also so easy to feel jaded and spiteful when nothing ever really seems to change, and to use that anger as both a shield and spear.

But no one is perfect, especially in a society where terrible beliefs are shoved down our throats from day one. Every single one of us, from the most privileged to the most marginalized, has been exposed to those beliefs and has the potential to act on them- consciously or subconsciously. If we were to try to round up everyone who had never ever been anything but the "perfect leftist", never had a single accidentally biased thought or said something offhand that hurt someone else, do you think we'd find even one?

I'm not asking you to forgive and forget. I'm not asking you to suddenly like people who are better now than they were before. I'm not even asking you to just play nice.

By all means, criticize. Call out hurtful beliefs. Challenge misinformation. Demand consequences when someone's actions deserve them.

At the same time, allow for growth. Every mistake someone has made is another chance for them to have learned something. If someone is willing to learn, you do not have to teach them, but you should let them learn. And don't pretend like people stay the same forever - who someone was two years ago might be a completely different person than who they are now.

Again, to reiterate, I am not saying to forgive and forget people's past wrongdoings, nor am I saying that someone who has done terrible things should be welcomed with open arms. And I am not saying we need to let bad things slide just because someone is trying to do better. If Trump suddenly began studying socialism tomorrow and wanted to become a leftist, I'd still tell him to get fucked any chance I got.

What I am saying is, there is no such thing as ideological purity. There is no "perfect leftist", no one is born the world's greatest activist. Everyone starts somewhere different, and our progress is never linear. We need to recognize the difference between someone who has honestly stumbled in their journey versus someone who has done irreparable harm with their actions, and react accordingly.

[rowandriftwood]

“There are no saints in politics. But imperfect people can still change the world for the better.”

— Ken Follett, A Column of Fire

[clatterbane]

I would go further with this one.

If kids are limited to "simple plots, with clearly defined teachable morals, uncomplicated characters, explicit statements on what you should take away from the story, etc. etc."...how/when are they going to learn to deal with more complexity or ambiguity?

That seems like an excellent way to get adults who do continue to have trouble with this. And who too often do want to restrict everyone else's access For Their Own Good. It's kinda self-perpetuating, no matter the ideological details that behavior comes wrapped up in.

I mean, I have written a little before about how disconcerting some common base assumptions can be, to a former hyperlexic kid with some weird special interests raised by a librarian. (With a decent grounding in critical thinking, very much including "anybody sufficiently motivated can write any type of horseshit they want, and likely get it published".) Not going to repeat half of that now.

But, I am personally not so sure that "[a]lso, children should not be reading material dealing with that stuff anyway" is a safe starting assumption.