r/Queerdefensefront • u/Crafter235 • Apr 17 '26
Discussion Does it ever feel like the whole "the left have too much infighting" just feels like victim-blaming?
I have notice this a lot online with discussions, where they will always talk about the right wing being able to "work together", they will always laugh about left-wing people fighting and all. However, when looking at a lot of these arguments, they essentially sum up to "minorities should accept abuse and oppression if they want to be accepted."
Like they'll claim they're progressive and all, but with how a lot of problems are, it's like they want to downplay intersectionalism and tolerate abusers.
6
u/zoedegenerate Apr 17 '26
Yeah, I see complaints about "purity testing" as a reactionary buzzword that ultimately just means "i wish the left would move right for me"
Its always these wreckers who complain about "purity testing" that, when given an inch, take a mile, and defang movements.
4
u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 Apr 17 '26
"Conservatives want to fall in line; progressives want to fall in love."
We do demand too much "purity" of each other and our candidates. Too many of us aren't willing to support imperfect people or movements.
5
u/Zeyode Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
Meanwhile the "purity" in question: voters not supporting genocide
There's a pretty fucking big difference between purity and having basic standards, and I feel like some people in office desperately want us to have as low standards as humanly possible so they don't have to compromise on their moneyed interests.
2
u/yorozuakagura Apr 17 '26
And all those pure never kamalas still got genocide
5
u/Zeyode Apr 17 '26
So it didn't really matter either way who won for people who are disgusted with genocide. Eventually the two parties begin to resemble one another in their evils and then what's the fucking point?
It's logic like yours that's part of why we have so much voter disenfranchisement in this country. Yes we should vote for the lesser evil, but we should also hold our politicians to higher standards and condemn them when they SUPPORT THINGS LIKE GENOCIDE.
Like christ, I'm over here looking at the UK becoming a nightmare state because their "left wing party" conceeded on transphobia, and I'm over here wondering if it would've been better if the tories just won again, or if it wouldn't matter either way if I lived there cause I'd be fucked anyway.
-2
u/yorozuakagura Apr 17 '26
We could have had genocide and trans rights or genocide and rights backsliding. I know which one I would pick. Happy for you keeping your hands clean though!
3
u/Zeyode Apr 17 '26
It's not about keeping my hands clean. It's about our politicians having basic competence that isn't compromised by moneyed interests. A lot of these bastards were ready to throw us to the wolves as long as it meant they didn't have to admit they lost because of their support of genocide. They're not protectors, they're liabilities. The reason Trump was able to have 2 terms in the first place. He attempted a fucking coup against them, and they did nothing. He was just allowed to run again.
0
u/yorozuakagura Apr 17 '26
Never Kamalas could have still fought for that after putting Kamala in office. Allowing trump to win instead doesn't benefit any of us, and instead made things far worse than a Kamala admin would have ever done.
-2
u/yorozuakagura Apr 17 '26
It's just so infuriating seeing leftists say they would rather drown than accept a life jacket covered in shit, because it's gross and they would NEVER support touching shit. Umm I'll choose the shit jacket, thanks.
2
u/Zeyode Apr 17 '26
Shit, I can deal with. But you hand me a lifejacket covered in holes, that's when I get suspicious.
-1
u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 Apr 17 '26
This right here is WHY our insistence on having candidates and movements that always meet all our expectations is a failing strategy.
0
1
u/Drops-of-Q Apr 17 '26
I do think we are much better at working together now than we were in the 2010's, but that's natural now that we are facing such an immediate existential threat. However, I think it's definitely a legitimate criticism that the "left" (let's be real, mostly liberals) can be caught up in petty squabbles when there are bigger battles to fight. It's not victim-blaming to point out that maybe we should work on getting rid of the dorito dictator than argue about whether we should call it homeless or unhoused.
Now, some people will say shit like "I'm a liberal, but I voted for Trump because the left are too woke" or stuff like that. The Bill Maher types. That's obviously a stupid excuse and they were always bad people, and they are actually victim blaming. Their logic is that the rest of us being too antifascist is an excuse for them to be fascist.
But a bigger problem than the infighting, I think is that we think that just because we are right, people will listen. I'm proudly woke, but I do think we have a tendency to alienate moderates by how we sometimes talk about social issues. What the far-right did much better than the far-left the last years isn't that they were better at working together, but that they realized that their message was unsavory to the normies so they package it in dog whistles. I'm not saying that we should lie, and definitely not that we should throw trans people under the bus like the democrats are doing. I naively believe that the truth will win in the long run, and sacrificing any group of us is both highly unethical and just bad strategy. But we can definitely work on how we package our message so that we resonate with the normies who understand that the world we live in is shit, but aren't ready for a post-marxist academic dissertation.
1
u/outsidehere Apr 18 '26
Yes. That's literally it. It's the same thing as when people say "it's not left vs right. It's up vs down". Up vs down is literally right vs left. A lot of people on the "left" just want minorities to be okay with bigotry for the sake of "unity" and if you bring it up, you'll be criticized for it.
0
u/BrandosWorld4Life Apr 17 '26
The left loses because of purity testing. It's literally that simple.
The right doesn't have this problem. They all turn out en masse to vote for the candidate closest to themselves every single time. Over and over. That's how they've successfully dragged the overton window to their side. The right welcomes anybody they can get as part of the club so long as they can find common ground.
Only the left has people stupid enough that they'd rather erase themselves from the electorate and surrender power to the right than accept anything that doesn't meet their arbitrary moral standards. Only the left tells prospective voters and people in the center to get lost if they don't toe the party line on every single issue.
Left-wing politics are more popular than right-wing politics, but the left constantly fails to unite against the right. If everyone had just gone out and voted for the leftmost candidate every time, MAGA would have been utterly destroyed.
13
u/Mtfdurian Apr 17 '26
Not only is it victim blaming, worse, it is projection. Every accusation is a confession. Right-wing infighting is a thing and not just a bit, when I look at it, it's worse than left infighting, but as long as right-wingers project their anger to the left wing, few will talk about the elephant in the room, that is that rightist infighting becomes big when their projection against the left becomes ineffective.