https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
As the party fielded more and more candidates who championed economic-right policies in order to attract corporate donations, the idea of “purity testing” was turned into a stock phrase to attack critics using labels, instead of justifying it on its own terms.
Phrases like “moral purity” now serve two functions: firstly, to dismiss criticisms from the Left wholesale without having to discuss them directly, and secondly, to blame them for the rise of fascism.
In theory it was also supposed to serve a third function of bullying the Left into voting Democrat, but that didn’t work.
😵💫All Heil Israel
Purity test just means “has principles” instead of just a D next to their name.
The Dems absolutely do use the phrase to manipulate conversation. But it’s also a real problem on the left - it’s one of the ways we divide ourselves into smaller and smaller groups leaving us powerless to actually drive policy. I see it happen online every single day.
Yeah I’m pretty far left and I’ve used the phrase unironically when frustrated by dialog. There are people, even in this thread that I’ve encountered before, that act like the exact version of leftism they believe in is the only kind that is correct and every other version makes you evil. I could agree with them on 95% of policy, but if that other 5% doesn’t align I am literally Satan and so are all the candidates I support. There are people on lemmy that will act like AOC, Bernie, Mamdani, and Warren are right wing simply because they understand politics involved consensus building.
Absolutely agreed and that has been my online experience too. And as far as consensus building - a lot of people don’t seem to understand what it takes to create a coalition that has actual policy power in the USA. And they also don’t seem to understand that when you don’t have a bloc with political power you’re never going to get the respect, much less policy consessions, that you’d like to get.
My impression is this is primarily an issue in online spaces, without a clear goal in communication. When you meet leftists involved in a specific project, bigger-picture disagreements tend to fade away into focus and concern around a shared goal. It’s a lot easier to stay focused on the things that are immediately relevant when the route to making a real impact is right in front of you.
Absolutely true, I fear that some here don’t understand that distinction and stay away from left leaning activism because they are so paralysed in online spaces.
I could see it, yeah. I like Lemmy for a lot of reasons but it’s still social media. Commenting here isn’t activism and it doesn’t represent the irl dynamics of leftist circles. Engagement via comments and votes are the only things shown here, there’s no way to track the number of people that see a comment and think “you’re maybe not wrong, but you’re definitely splitting hairs…” and then move on. IRL, though, the dead air in the room would be deafening. (and could be a learning experience!)
That’s because “the dems” aren’t leftists. It doesn’t matter if we subdivide or not, your “leftist” party is a moderate center party drifting right year after year.
Of course you’re going to have trouble gathering leftist support.
I mean you’re totally right, anywhere else in the western world the Dems are a center right at best. But Trump turned the GOP into his party in less than ten years. If we on the left banded together with a common cause with deliberate action we could change the Dems similarly. But instead we’d prefer to fight ourselves.
The left keeps coming up with policy that excites voters and centrists keep kicking them to the curb and whining about those unreasonable leftists wanting to do things other than sell weapons for the genocide that centrists love so fucking dearly.
You still need a majority to create policy, everyone 50% +1 is your ally, or you’re not part of the conversation. You don’t have to like them, but until we can get a majority of support for true leftist ideas, you have to work with people you disagree with, or you don’t actually believe in democracy.
Does anybody “work with” us on the left or are we the only ones that need to sustain this fallacy and always compromise, to the point we no longer are even being represented?
What is there to work with though? There’s no cohesive movement on the left to speak of so which of the umpteen factions would they start with? We’d need to think and vote as a much bigger bloc for the left to get the kind of representation we want.
Who is “us”, are they supposed to reach through your computer screen? I’ve done activism on and off for years, every time I put in the effort it yields results from the Dems, left leaning or not. If you want our side to win, you have to put in the work. You can’t expect the Dems to work with you if you’re not along side them doing the work as well. Your responsibility doesn’t start and end at the voting booth.
Unfortunately, this “working with” is always a one-way street. Never do centrists say, “well, we just have to support the progressive cause to maintain party loyalty.”
The Dems absolutely do use the phrase to manipulate conversation.
Would be nice if they would quit capitulating to every purity test the right throws their way.
They are more afraid of the right than the left and we need to change that
Case in point: the entire post.
Do you have any better evidence of this other than your opinion and your interpretation of a Google trend?
I don’t have a brown envelope marked “Top Secret Evil Plans” that I swiped from the DNC offices if that’s what you’re after. What I do have is literally every single news piece from the last decade where the phrase came up. Every article containing the phrase invariably relates to one of a right/centrist policy, a centrist candidate, or, attempts to secure funding from billionaire donors.
I could paste a long list of URLs here but it’d basically be the same as the results page for https://duckduckgo.com/?q=democrat+purity+test+news
Exactly. No one ever accused Manchin or Lieberman of “purity testing” for refusing to support non-conservative positions. When a centrist digs in their heels and refuses to compromise, they’re just “being pragmatic.” When a progressive does it, they’re “purity testing.” “Vote blue no matter who” is a farce.
If you’ve never encountered the phenomenon, introspect.
Oh I have. I just wanted to see more evidence for the claim that it was establishment Dems pushing it. I always felt it was more an issue of the terminally online leftists who treat political alignment as a social group and an identity instead of a consistent worldview. It’s a big claim, and big claims require big evidence. What was provided was not persuasive, and I’d like to be persuaded if it’s actually the case.
I always felt it was more an issue of the terminally online leftists
Oh look. An additional thought-terminating cliche.
Honestly, anyone who uses “purity test” is just letting you know that they have no standards and expect you to abandon any you have.
Yeah. Generally speaking if you’re using a positive value as a pejorative, you’re probably on the wrong side of history.
The Right did it with “political correctness”, “Woke”, “inclusion” and “equality”, and now they’re in the DNC doing it with “moral purity”.
The only purity test I’m willing to take: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/purity
Shut up and stop arguing with your own side. Y’all do have massive purity tests.
I know I know, I don’t believe in the same tax policy as you. That must make me a racist Nazi.
Edit: y’all just riled up for another 3 terms with Trump because your tax policy isn’t as progressive as you want.
This thread is pure cinema 👨🍳💋
Is there a word for when someone thinks they’re arguing against something, but are really just providing a live demonstration of it?
As thought-terminating clichés go, “Shut up and stop arguing” is as pretty much as on-the-nose as it gets.
Good luck with mid terms!
lol, you do realize that witty comebacks rather lose their impact when you use the exact same one to another poster in the same thread, yeah? I’m beginning to see where you got your username.
Removed by mod
Shut up
How about you shut up. I get that the progressives you’ve always hated keep getting in the way of your enthusiastic capitulation to everything the right wants you to do, but no one’s buying that you’re on anyone’s side but netanyahu’s anymore.
Good luck with mid terms!
Have fun blaming everyone to your left because your party won’t listen.
It’s a term I’ve used. All 320 million of us Americans have to get along on some terms. We’re a big country with a lot of subcultures and variance in needs, experience and standards of living. Defeating fascism will take a majority of those 320 million people agreeing on a complex set of values that aren’t fascistic.
We need to be focusing more on finding allies that share anti-fascist beliefs than subdividing into smaller and less powerful factions. The crime of American politics is that we can’t more closely align our beliefs with our representation. We are vastly under-represented for our size and technological prowess.
Look for allies, not enemies. It’s always easy to find enemies, it’s what the Republican messaging system excels at. Find the people who agree that fascism is wrong and grow a big enough tent to defeat it.
Find the people who agree that fascism is wrong and grow a big enough tent to defeat it.
Maybe democrats should start agreeing that fascism is wrong instead of enabling it every chance they get.
Sounds like MAGA or ML nonsense
Yes, yes, everyone to your left is maga.
