The only thing more important than “do nothing wrong” is to loudly correct those who are doing “almost right” and “in the right direction.”
I think it’s a tossup between “loudly correct” and “vilify as a disappointing libshit.”
I had an interaction once where I thought I used double quotes around a word to imply something obvious related to the posted article. A random person got mad at me and claimed I knew nothing about solidarity.
I felt insulted, they didn’t know my life experiences up to that point. I chose to ignore my feelings and pressed them to teach my why I was so wrong. They eventually disappeared from replies because they had nothing behind that image of righteousness. Rare win but I’ll take it.
If someone put themselves in harms way to punch an authoritarian follower in the face in my defence and also uses slurs I could find offensive to myself, that’s not my enemy. That’s someone awesome who could use a little more education. Later. When the current situation isn’t so wild.
Words are just words. That’s not as effective as punching a fascist in face.
Reminded me of an old meme I saw in like 2009.
CW homophobic slur
Also a content warning for a couple slurs, but the point from Patton Oswalt a while back is roughly the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkKo1_RP_0c
We are really lacking in fascist faces punched these days, no one can have a civil conversation without them screeching and throwing shit
I haved discussions with others here where its people are just not happy with baby steps and want full change right away. Problem is we need to make more friends not enemies with each other.
I’ve started to make a habit on the internet to make amends and give grace to people who get upset in the comments as fast as possible. Textual online spaces are seemingly quite prone to disagreement, so it’s a huge help just to mindfully counteract that tendency.
Well easy for you my brave little Hitachi wand! Who can stay angry at you!
It helps if you’re fun.
Ball big. Need lots of hands. Take long time move. Come. Help. Roll big ball with us.
Also, we don’t actually know which way we need to roll it. Some people have strong ideas, other understand the vague direction but there’s lots of invisible obstacles strewn across the landscape, and whenever we hit one there are a hundred different people with a thousand different explanations about what the fuck just happened.
It bothers me that I see genocide trivialize so often, like implying it’s a full step that needs to wait. The problem is that they would rather take the steps that help Israel commit heinous acts then start with small steps that benefit their constituents.
Stopping the sale of weapons to a apartheid state committing genocide and condemning them is now seen as too much? I can’t expect anything good to come from them if that’s the kind of slack we insist on giving.
They had the same foreign policy every administration since Israel became a country did but some people chose now to get upset about it.
The world is a worse place now because Harris didn’t win.
Biden second term would have be heaven compared to this.
It’s almost like if blatant genocide changes the equation. Honestly, Israel should have lost our support a long time ago. It’s easy to see how deep corruption and most likely black mail had a big role to play.
Yes, the world would be a better place with Harris at the helm. It’s a shame she tried her hardest to lose. FYI, I voted for her but I’m also mature enough to realize that she basically gave all her voters the finger and that’s why she lost.
Keep blaming the evil voters who couldn’t stomach genocide and we will get the exact same play next election. You are enabling, not helping. It’s their job to get votes and care about our opinion ffs.
Single issue voters always make the world a worse place.
I find it crazier that the dems decided to make genocide a voting issue in the first place. Weaponized incompetence, I swear. They could have told Israel to pound sand, but they chose a foreign state over us. They screwed you too man, have a spine.
Nah, people who didn’t vote for Harris screwed the world.
Glad to hear you’re not one of them.
obviously a trap set by bougie liberals to try and get me to vote for a Democrat.
but i’m too smart for them
I spent a bunch of time in such spaces before the election and was shocked how much time and energy was squandered with virtue signaling and purity testing. There was literally no room for anything else in some of them.
This one is fun because it could be both about tankies and actual leftists depending on what you believe in.
Oh it’s definitely leftists in general
Nah.
I think this “do nothing wrong” tendency has something to do with intragroup power dynamics. I’ve often seen it used as a cudgel to knock down others within a group and stop mild dissent even though everyone is on the same team. Usually the most prolific wielder of the “do nothing wrong” cudgel rises to a position of some authority in the group, after which the group fragments because the person is insufferable but unassailable due to their moral superiority.
Very good take.
I complained to a partner once about something they’d done that seemed vaguely unethical (by my understanding of their ethics). After they apologised, I was still upset, and they said “maybe I’m a little bit shit, just like everyone else.”
That really stuck with me. People (including myself) are often OK with accepting imperfections in other people in some spaces, but not in others. It’s pretty weird… Life is messy, even the bits that seems straightforward. And no one has a perfect understanding of any situation…
The problem is they keep dissagreeing on details and forget, they’ll never agree on everything.
online leftist
Important things happen offline, online is more or less a distraction.
I don’t know if that’s really true anymore. Or, maybe more accurately, I think we’re in between when that was true in the pre-social media age and when it’ll be true again after the social web breathes its last. There are just too many ways that megacorps, bad actors, and foreign agents can manipulate offline activity with online action.
Some of those things are manipulating small groups into large-scale action (see: Qanon), but misinformation and meme warfare also have a measurable effect on election, direct action, etc. Not to mention that local organization is best done online, and that has a very real effect.
Now, is offline action more important than online action? Absolutely, and if you’re saying that being an “online leftist” (as an identity) is a distraction, I think I agree with you. But online action is more than just a distraction, and to ignore it is probably counterproductive.
Trump is literally a 4chan meme gone too far, homie.
Simpsons did it first
still had to happen offline yes?
That’s not only a problem of online leftists spaces. The left has always been pretty busy with discussing what page of the capital is more beautiful written…
And sometimes those people will even destroy active progress because it doesn’t meet their definition of perfect.
Yes let’s start a 3rd party
wave of downvotes and idiots screaming about RCV even though that’s not a disqualifier
But you’ll continue to support democrats in higher offices until your third party has support in lower offices and a functioning party structure, right?
No!!! The lesser of two evils is still evil so I’d rather vote for a weak 3rd party candidate to help secure the win for the more evil candidate
At first I didn’t think you were left enough but you just proved me wrong.
Welcome to the salty spitoon. How left are ya?
If it were only that, but traditionally 3rd party candidates are all the rage 2 weeks before the US elections, and then the day after the elections they’re gone from the discourse, and you’ll hear nothing about them for the next 4 years.
Jill Stein is like a 4-year cicada cycle. She emerges, screams for awhile, then disappears again
I have referenced this post so many times but was never able to find it so thanks
Not to ironically quibble, the sentiment is there, but I think “more important to do nothing correctly than something incorrectly” is closer to the mark
