While I don’t disagree with this video, it kinda misses the point or rather seems to only consider the strawman of a person advocating for unquestioned “leftist unity”. Which to be honest I have not seen in the “wild” (online or offline).
However what I have seen in the “wild” (but more online) are people that seem to spend more effort and time on fighting against other people that are broadly advocating for the same idea than actually doing something for said idea and fighting against real enemies of that idea.
actually doing something for said idea and fighting against real enemies of that idea.
I suspect it’s because it’s the actual difficult and scary part. (Not that I would claim I do any better, I’ve done close to nothing in that regard in my life.)
You’ve never witnessed a marxist-leninist or a traditionalist anarchist say that feminists or anti-racists are dividing our struggles and we should all unite as a class and then after the great revolution we can tackle other issues? Lucky you ;)
Thats a bit of a strawman of both but ok
No it’s not a strawman argument: it’s an actual argument used in certain circles. If you don’t know such people, lucky you. To be fair, at least in anarchist circles i feel like the past 20y have evolved this notion a lot: intersectional anarchism used to be on the margin but is now a core part of anarchist organizations (except maybe for unions).
WWP, PSL, FRSO, Redfightback say hello intersectionality
Well… I have been accused of class-reductionism myself, so I guess I am biased to not see mild forms of that as promoting leftist-unity but rather a reasonable objection to some types of leftist infighting.
I think it’s not binary between “unity” and “infighting”. We can probably recognize that we have some common agenda as well as disagreements :)
