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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Everyone - Part 2 - Universal Friendship is a Radical Goal
BTW Anyone who declares me evil for holding the views expressed in this piece, and demands that they (or I) be scrubbed from this website for expressing them, is simply illustrating my point. Also, if you happen to think I'm not entitled to hold or express these opinions because I happen to be a "Cis-Het White Class-Analysis Man", I highly recommend 'Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice' and 'No Justice Without Love: Why Activism Must Be Generous', two important essays on the same topic by Frances Lee, who is neither cisgendered, heterosexual, white, nor a man.
This is a response to a 2005 article, '10 things the left should see the back of right now ' by Isla Williams. I know this is now an old post, but the issues she responds to in points #5 and #8 have not gone away. In point #5, Williams says:
I agree with the comment made by Biffard Misqueegan, when the article was posted on LibCom by Joseph Kay, that this misses the point. There may still be the occasional old-school, workerist paper-seller who thinks that anything other than workplace-based labour struggle is a middle class issues. But the main criticism being raised against Safer Spaces Policing is not about it's content, but it's practice.
It's possible to show support for women's liberation, anti-racism, decolonizations, queer solidarity, animal rights, environmental defence, and so on, while building relationships and broad alliances. Doing this makes the left more diverse, and thus more resilient and effective, and many of us have been arguing tooth and nail for doing this since the 1990s. I would argue it was this kind of intersectional work that resulted in the massive movement of movements dismissed in Williams' piece as a "summit-hopping activist milleux" (thus buying into talking points, carefully cultivated via the corporate media, that focused attention on the summit-disrupting mushrooms so as to totally ignore and dismiss the mycelium of ongoing grassroots organizing that produced them, but I digress ...). Safer Spaces Policing, on the other hand, not only fails at building relationships and alliances, it valourizes destroying them as a political practice.
When one's family, friends, co-workers, or online correspondent makes a comment that shows a lack of solidarity, this can be seen as an opportunity for a teaching moment. A chance to clearly communicating one's objections to the comment, while also using a rigorous exchange of views to gain a deeper understanding of why people hold reactionary views, and maintaining a respectful tone to build a platform for further teaching moments in the future. Safer Spaces Policing, on the other hand, involves declaring to the person that they are not only wrong, but *evil* for holding such a view, and demanding that they immediately recant it. If they do not, they must be immediately de-friended, blocked, banished, declared a non-person, and an enemy of the left and humanity in general (note: I'm not saying that these response are never appropriate as a last resort, just that it's counterproductive for them to be the first response).
In point #8, Williams says:
This kind of practice does split the left. Not by increasing its theoretical or social diversity, but by fragmenting it into ever-smaller shards that cannot work together, because that group still talks to so-and-so, despite their heretical views on whatever. It's high school snobbery as politics, with all its elitist in-group/ out-group melodrama. It's also a practice that, once normalized, is easily manipulated to break up groups, campaigns, and networks, and destroy activist infrastructure projects, on behalf of corporations and their PR companies, the cops, or the alphabet agencies (remember COINTELPRO?). I'm sure I'm not the only one who has seen this happen, yet our inability to have free, uncensored discussions about it without devolving into flame wars and excommunications (online *and* in-person) leaves us vulnerable to it.
Another result of this approach is that many working class people feel they are not welcome in the left because they don't have the correct views. Sadly, most working class people do not yet have progressive views on every aspect of gender, race, trans-/homosexuality, and so on (arguably *nobody* does). Indeed, given that the most progressive views on these issues (from an anarchist perspective) are not mainstream views, the only way anyone could end up holding any of them is to be regularly exposed to respectful debates with people who already hold them. If any and all discussion on these topics (especially online) boils down to "agree with me or fuck off fascist", this is both counter-productive and self-marginalizing.
Ironically, this elitist and vanguardist practice offers an explanation for why conservative nationalist movements have been able to attract increasingly large numbers of working class people who are left-leaning, but not "activists", into their orbit. Along with many others whose anti-authoritarian/ libertarian attitudes would normally make anarchist movements attractive to them. If a person knows they can go into conservative nationalist spaces and openly express dissenting views about discrimination, but that they can't go into liberal internationalist spaces and question our sacred cows without being shouted down or kicked out, guess which ones seem more attractive to them, let alone more democratic and libertarian?
The solution is not, of course, to jettison anti-discrimination politics, which have always been part of the left (although there's always been rigorous debate about the nitty-gritty details of them), but to jettison the vanguardist, scorched earth approach to them. There is an urgent need to rediscover the value of open-minded debate, tolerance of dissenting views, and the ability to continue trusting people even when we disagree with them about important things. More importantly, there is an urgent need to resist the capitalist tendency to dehumanize and instrumentalize each other, to ensure that we see each other as complete human being, whether friends, allies, or even enemies, but never tools to be used or discarded in service of "the cause". If we can achieve universal friendship among all oppressed people, revolution becomes just a matter of organizing with our friends.
This is a response to a 2005 article, '10 things the left should see the back of right now ' by Isla Williams. I know this is now an old post, but the issues she responds to in points #5 and #8 have not gone away. In point #5, Williams says:
"Look there Mr Cis-Het White Class-Analysis Man! I’m gonna let you into a little secret: most of the working class people in the world are neither male nor white! A great number of them are neither cis nor straight! An intersectional analysis is, as it has always been, also an empirically and materially proper class analysis because this is the way the world is."
I agree with the comment made by Biffard Misqueegan, when the article was posted on LibCom by Joseph Kay, that this misses the point. There may still be the occasional old-school, workerist paper-seller who thinks that anything other than workplace-based labour struggle is a middle class issues. But the main criticism being raised against Safer Spaces Policing is not about it's content, but it's practice.
It's possible to show support for women's liberation, anti-racism, decolonizations, queer solidarity, animal rights, environmental defence, and so on, while building relationships and broad alliances. Doing this makes the left more diverse, and thus more resilient and effective, and many of us have been arguing tooth and nail for doing this since the 1990s. I would argue it was this kind of intersectional work that resulted in the massive movement of movements dismissed in Williams' piece as a "summit-hopping activist milleux" (thus buying into talking points, carefully cultivated via the corporate media, that focused attention on the summit-disrupting mushrooms so as to totally ignore and dismiss the mycelium of ongoing grassroots organizing that produced them, but I digress ...). Safer Spaces Policing, on the other hand, not only fails at building relationships and alliances, it valourizes destroying them as a political practice.
When one's family, friends, co-workers, or online correspondent makes a comment that shows a lack of solidarity, this can be seen as an opportunity for a teaching moment. A chance to clearly communicating one's objections to the comment, while also using a rigorous exchange of views to gain a deeper understanding of why people hold reactionary views, and maintaining a respectful tone to build a platform for further teaching moments in the future. Safer Spaces Policing, on the other hand, involves declaring to the person that they are not only wrong, but *evil* for holding such a view, and demanding that they immediately recant it. If they do not, they must be immediately de-friended, blocked, banished, declared a non-person, and an enemy of the left and humanity in general (note: I'm not saying that these response are never appropriate as a last resort, just that it's counterproductive for them to be the first response).
In point #8, Williams says:
"If you are saying things like 'stop splitting the left' because you are protecting your sexually-abusive and/or racist mates, then jog the fuck on. The left should feel glad to split from you.
If you are saying 'stop splitting the left' because you want the ideas of your groupsicle to be hegemonic, then get a grip. The left has always been diverse and has always had real internal disagreement – read some of the letters of the 19th century greats to work this out if you must. This has nothing to do with it being an effective force."
This kind of practice does split the left. Not by increasing its theoretical or social diversity, but by fragmenting it into ever-smaller shards that cannot work together, because that group still talks to so-and-so, despite their heretical views on whatever. It's high school snobbery as politics, with all its elitist in-group/ out-group melodrama. It's also a practice that, once normalized, is easily manipulated to break up groups, campaigns, and networks, and destroy activist infrastructure projects, on behalf of corporations and their PR companies, the cops, or the alphabet agencies (remember COINTELPRO?). I'm sure I'm not the only one who has seen this happen, yet our inability to have free, uncensored discussions about it without devolving into flame wars and excommunications (online *and* in-person) leaves us vulnerable to it.
Another result of this approach is that many working class people feel they are not welcome in the left because they don't have the correct views. Sadly, most working class people do not yet have progressive views on every aspect of gender, race, trans-/homosexuality, and so on (arguably *nobody* does). Indeed, given that the most progressive views on these issues (from an anarchist perspective) are not mainstream views, the only way anyone could end up holding any of them is to be regularly exposed to respectful debates with people who already hold them. If any and all discussion on these topics (especially online) boils down to "agree with me or fuck off fascist", this is both counter-productive and self-marginalizing.
Ironically, this elitist and vanguardist practice offers an explanation for why conservative nationalist movements have been able to attract increasingly large numbers of working class people who are left-leaning, but not "activists", into their orbit. Along with many others whose anti-authoritarian/ libertarian attitudes would normally make anarchist movements attractive to them. If a person knows they can go into conservative nationalist spaces and openly express dissenting views about discrimination, but that they can't go into liberal internationalist spaces and question our sacred cows without being shouted down or kicked out, guess which ones seem more attractive to them, let alone more democratic and libertarian?
The solution is not, of course, to jettison anti-discrimination politics, which have always been part of the left (although there's always been rigorous debate about the nitty-gritty details of them), but to jettison the vanguardist, scorched earth approach to them. There is an urgent need to rediscover the value of open-minded debate, tolerance of dissenting views, and the ability to continue trusting people even when we disagree with them about important things. More importantly, there is an urgent need to resist the capitalist tendency to dehumanize and instrumentalize each other, to ensure that we see each other as complete human being, whether friends, allies, or even enemies, but never tools to be used or discarded in service of "the cause". If we can achieve universal friendship among all oppressed people, revolution becomes just a matter of organizing with our friends.