disagreements between leftists
Why do disagreements between leftists become so adversarial so quickly?
First example: the protest which led to Bitch being disinvited from the Boston Dyke March. Even more recently: in the town where i live, which has a large Armenian-American population, there was an argument over the Anti-Defamation League’s rejection of the Armenian Genocide, which resulted in the town council’s vote to pull out of the ADL’s “No Place For Hate” program.
It kinda disturbs me to see that protest, division, and boycott seems to be the first resort among leftists these days. It’s as if no one has any patience for difference of opinion.
I am not dismissing the importance of the disagreements in the two examples i cited, but in my not-so-humble opinion, we should be saving serious things like boycotts and shunning for war profiteers and the School of the Americas and union-busting corporations. Not people who are members of our own community, people with whom we have many concerns in common, people who may actually listen to us and learn.
Maybe what it comes down to is that people want to be able to do their thing without any fear whatsoever of being offended or troubled.
Thing is, people are not identical, and so from time to time you are just going to be offended. It’s part of the package that comes with this whole “living in society” thing. There is no right to not be offended. When we do anything in public, we have to coexist occasionally with people who offend us. We just do.
Don’t take this to mean that we shouldn’t call someone on being a jerk. Jerks, trolls, deliberately rude, insensitive, dismissive people — by all means, call them on their crap or disassociate yourself. I’m not talking about jerks, i’m talking about situations where someone takes offense even though the other person is polite and respectful. In other words, those situations where someone offends you simply by existing, or having an opinion that differs from yours.
We need more effective strategies for dealing with these situations besides rushing to disassociate with anyone who offends us. Because we are stronger when we can learn to build coalitions.
I’ve written before about “coalition space” vs. “safe space.” It’s not a simple distinction, so i’m going to try to describe it again.
A “safe space” is a place you and a few of your friends create in order to be yourselves and feel safe in doing so. It’s just for you and your friends and you don’t want anyone to intrude.
But whenever there’s a good thing, the people who belong to it want to bring their other friends, too. And they find it’s a good thing, and they want to bring their friends. And as long as everyone’s cool, all this is cool, even when there are now people there who don’t know each other going in.
When a group grows beyond a certain size, it can no longer be a safe space. It’s not just a few friends getting together anymore. When a group grows beyond a certain size, its acts become political acts. Its policies become political policies. This happens whether you like it or not. Once your group gets to a certain size, it begins to influence what other people do and think.
And while the people inside might feel relative safety there, it really isn’t; get 50 or more people together and you will find at least one jerk in the crowd, or one bully, or at the very least someone who disagrees with you about something important to you. And when you encounter that person you no longer feel safe there.
It has passed from “safe space” to “coalition space.” Coalition space is not safe, but it is useful and purposeful. It is a space where you meet people who think in more or less the same way as you, who have more or less the same concerns as you. But it is not the group it once was.
In a coalition space, you can get things done, you can flex the strength of your numbers. But you are operating alongside people who sometimes tick you off. And you CAN co-exist with that person. And unless they are rude or bullyish, if they show up for the same purpose you do, they deserve a chance to prove themselves.