“When online left purists attempt to give advice on electoral strategy or what needs to be done to shift popular opinion, remember that their only real interest is in infinite purity tests; Zohran Mamdani is a shitlib to them. Their advice is thus invariably either bad faith, or from a worldview so far detached from reality that the effect is the same.”
I’m trying to think of practical upshots. Best I see is “we should alienate these folks”? which doesn’t seem great; a failure of my imagination.
They look at Zohran Mamdani, one of the furthest left politicians with any success in all of the US, and say that he’s a liberal shill. I don’t think anything we do or say can alienate them further than they already are from any sort of civic participation.
I think the first observation is basically true, and the generalization: “some people are not working with your world model or goals. Electoral strategy and persuading arguments should be evaluated on their merit, not the person giving them.” I think is also true.
In that setting, Mamdani is a useful test case (‘is this progress? No? Then your model is alien to mine!’). I would prefer counter arguments (over examples) to purity tests, or a readership aligned enough to downvote them. I would especially like to not have to put my interlocutor in a bucket (‘are they tankie?’), because that seems inefficient and often alienating. Folks often parrot points they don’t understand nor deeply hold.
I think the second observation is also basically right. Also remember the folks who agree with doomer sentiment, because it matches the feeling that all is going bad, but don’t know why. It may be worth writing and arguing to persuade them (even if the person who argues back is a lost cause).
Would be interested in data on how many folks hold beliefs like “Mamdani is still far right”, how many of them vote, and how many of them can explain their position. My guess is that this is a fair few people, but only a sliver of them act on it or understand if deeply, but data would be great.
“When online left purists attempt to give advice on electoral strategy or what needs to be done to shift popular opinion, remember that their only real interest is in infinite purity tests; Zohran Mamdani is a shitlib to them. Their advice is thus invariably either bad faith, or from a worldview so far detached from reality that the effect is the same.”
They look at Zohran Mamdani, one of the furthest left politicians with any success in all of the US, and say that he’s a liberal shill. I don’t think anything we do or say can alienate them further than they already are from any sort of civic participation.
I think the first observation is basically true, and the generalization: “some people are not working with your world model or goals. Electoral strategy and persuading arguments should be evaluated on their merit, not the person giving them.” I think is also true.
In that setting, Mamdani is a useful test case (‘is this progress? No? Then your model is alien to mine!’). I would prefer counter arguments (over examples) to purity tests, or a readership aligned enough to downvote them. I would especially like to not have to put my interlocutor in a bucket (‘are they tankie?’), because that seems inefficient and often alienating. Folks often parrot points they don’t understand nor deeply hold.
I think the second observation is also basically right. Also remember the folks who agree with doomer sentiment, because it matches the feeling that all is going bad, but don’t know why. It may be worth writing and arguing to persuade them (even if the person who argues back is a lost cause).
Would be interested in data on how many folks hold beliefs like “Mamdani is still far right”, how many of them vote, and how many of them can explain their position. My guess is that this is a fair few people, but only a sliver of them act on it or understand if deeply, but data would be great.