I’m almost convinced that people don’t become ultraleft; they end up ultraleft. What type of confusion, abuse, bigotry, whatever- it doesn’t matter- turns someone into an ultraleft?
I’m at my wits end, are they just neoliberals that haven’t accepted that fact?
I think the kindest interpretation of ultras is that they move the line of “what is an acceptable level of mistakes for a country/movement/person/etc to make” all the way to zero. IE: If you have ever done anything wrong ever in history then you are immediately “not ethical” and therefore cannot be part of the leftist movement.
It’s a really dumb way of thinking because it is absolutely impossible for any individual to be perfect for their entire existence, let alone a movement or a country. But if you know any real life ultras and talk to them about things, it always boils down to this. They do not do critical support; if there is anything to be critical of at all, then their support does not exist.
I think on some level this makes sense; why should anyone ever accept any injustice whatsoever? It’s just not practical unfortunately to live as a human being among other human beings and expect that there will be zero mistakes and zero injustices. They’re going to happen. Even in a perfectly utopian communist society mistakes are going to happen. It’s not that we should accept ALL injustices, but we cannot expect ZERO injustices. Or we have to change the definition of what it means to accept them. Can someone make a mistake and then go through a restorative justice process? Does that count as “accepting” the injustice, or does it count as working to resolve it? An ultra wouldn’t believe in restorative justice, they would say that because an injustice happened the entity that caused it cannot be redeemed and must be utterly destroyed. Ironically I personally believe that the ultra take of “restorative justice is impossible” makes them the actual perpetrators of injustice, but that’s just me.
I think the unkind interpretation of ultras is that they’re western government plants, which I’m sure at least some of them are.
They definitely kept me from reaching my full communist awakening for a while. I was stuck in radlibville because these types would come out and bring up red scare propaganda or whatever mistakes they made and be like “SeE??? iT dOeSnT wOrK!!!” so it kinda just made me feel like ??? I guess you can’t do anything but vote then??? Idk (how convenient… )