Left Opportunists and Oppressive Allies

It’s hard to begin a piece like this without a couple of acknowledgements to contextualize. What I fear most in this kind of essay is that some reactionary or fascist sympathizer will use this as ammunition for “left in disarray!” or “wokeness bad” takes. So just quickly at the top:

• Black people are killed at disproportionate rates by police, which is why we say Black Lives Matter and why we should never question the experiences of people who have faced police brutality by blaming them for being murdered.
• Women are disproportionate targets of masculine violence and similarly, we should not doubt women who say they’ve been targets of this violence. Such a claim should be taken seriously and investigated with immediacy.
• People with the lived experience of being targeted by systemic oppression have every right not to be questioned in how we unravel systemic oppression.
• Every person is victim to one form or another of systemic oppression, but people who are disproportionate targets of multiple systems of oppression have unique experiences worth hearing and incorporating into a widespread analysis of how we unravel systems of oppression. We can not simply address racism, or sexism, we must also address misogynoir, as well as the anti-Indigenous sexism that targets missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. This does not take away from the fight to end sexism writ large, or racism writ large – it expands upon these fights, into specific manifestations of them. Intersectional analysis helps us to recognize where singular focus movements fall short.
• For these reasons we must abandon class reductionism if we wish to achieve global justice, a feminist economy, and a transformed constellation of regenerative global economies.
• We need more people in elected and appointed office who aren’t white and aren’t men and aren’t able-bodied and aren’t straight and aren’t cis.

I’m writing this because a problem is happening consistently in organizing spaces on the left. Opportunists are tokenizing themselves to achieve power, and liberal allies who think they’re standing on the right side of history are enabling them. This problem is going to get people killed. Our political system, expressing fear of becoming obsolete, is ignoring serious problems while engaging in fruitless infighting and performative allyship to elevate opportunists. For brevity, I refer to this problem as “opportunism.” But it is made up of the combined problems of self-proclaimed allies to anti-oppression work acting in oppressive ways, and self-tokenizing people who experience oppression uplifting themselves as the new and rightful leadership. What results is a grift occurring unacknowledged in movements for justice.

The problem starts rather innocently, with a growing, liberal consensus around the bullet points listed above. Acknowledging historic wrongdoing is increasingly popular among liberal arbiters of power. The consensus has arrived at a particular cultural moment. Street-based cries of “Black Lives Matter” and “Believe Women” are loud, and those in power who wish to preserve power respond with an affirmative agreement, not necessarily out of actual agreement but out of self-preservation. They echo these statements in public communications. They recognize holidays related to important dates on the calendar of injustice – the razing of Black Wall Street, Juneteenth, and so on. Many in power are rightly threatened by the increasingly hostile climate of street activism to systems of oppression, because that oppression is so often enshrined in their station and the laws they tacitly endorse. But in this swarm of activity purported to bring about the end of patriarchy, white supremacy, police brutality, and other pernicious injustices, we have allowed a particular type of individualism to remain unchecked in the midst of our movement. We are incredibly vulnerable – and at this very moment, being victimized by – the opportunist.

To use these words – to note that there are grifters and opportunists on the left – is to tread dangerously close to reactionary positions, and it is for this reason that I must remind you dear reader that I do not take injustice for granted. Many people who privately converse about these problems – I am not alone in this position but perhaps uncommonly willing to speak up about it – are among the most committed radicals, grassroots feminists, and revolutionary thinkers in communities of color, disability communities, and gender and sexual minority communities. We must critically examine how consensus attitudes and responses to widely-acknowledged injustice are being driven by the elevation of certain opportunists by allies who tokenize marginalized leadership. Rather than believe foolishly that a society built on injustice has suddenly had a change of heart, we must ensure that the unjust values of this society are not infecting, distorting, and even nullifying our movements by selling us radicalism-flavored inertia.

As a consensus around Black Lives Matter and Believe Women has emerged, street movements have loudly begun to make specific demands tied to these goals. Some, such as “defund the police” are rooted in producing a precise demand to meet the problem. “Black Lives Matter” is about the state-sanctioned and extrajudicial killings of Black Americans, and “defund the police” takes aim at the perpetrators of a very large segment of this broader injustice. But it is in this context – the loud street movement – that the maladaptive behavior of some segments of our movement has been allowed to grow, and grow louder than the crowd, and to grow louder than the definite demands of people impacted by definite systemic oppression. “A study conducted in the early 2000s found that 6.2% of the general population would meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and 3.7% would meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder. These conditions officially capture the maladaptive behavior we refer to as sociopathy. ” In a world where as much at 6 out of every 100 people expresses maladaptive and manipulative behaviors, it should not come as a shock that some people will use a veneer of rhetoric and beliefs about justice and how it must be won and use it for their own advancement and to manipulate others.

If you know me, you’ll know I opine often on the need to root out individualism. In fact, my last essay on this site was on that topic and might be a helpful contextualization of this essay. But suffice to say, I am committed to collective life. As a part of that commitment, I refuse distancing anyone of any ideology or set of actions from being ultimately redeemable and useful to the collective. This means, among many things, that I believe that every white person, from Neo-Nazis to well-meaning white people can become committed anti-racist activists, I believe that men who perpetrate gender-based violence can become committed accomplices to smashing the patriarchy, and that police and military who perpetrate crimes against people of color at home and abroad can become active participants in the movement to end racist law enforcement and white nationalist imperialism. To my mind, the alternative to these positions is a remnant of individualistic Puritanism that has shown itself remarkably ineffective at organizing victories or changes in the material conditions for oppressed people and nations. There are not “good people” and “bad people.” There are actions and ideologies that justify those actions and compel us to be in wrong relationship with one another, and there are different actions, right actions, and the ideologies that support right actions and compel us to be in right relationship with one another.

The core of the problem is when the loud demands of opportunists meet the desire among oppressive allies who haven’t reconsidered their individualism to appear “good.” In a climate of escalating noise in the demands of the masses, a few opportunists have found a welcome environment to insert their personal politics as a stand-in for the politics that materially improve conditions for the oppressed. Simple statements of fact – that we have created space for opportunism – will infuriate opportunists and their oppressive allies, who have settled comfortably into the belief that all marginalized people feel the same way, and that’s the way dictated by the loudest and most vehement marginalized people. This belief is born of a left-liberal cultural shift toward viewing identity as the only indicator of political alignment. This shift offers a quick and simple explanation of historic wrongs and how to right them. But anyone critical of liberal cooptation of radicalism, and the convenience it offers particularly to Americans must recognize when – not if – opportunism can emerge.

Identity markers of oppression are important and worthy of respect and efforts to address injustice. Many of us, due to race, gender, ability, and class, face systemic oppressions in our own unique ways. But those moving along with this shift appear to have either missed the point of, or intentionally co-opted, that identity is a means of oppression to asserting that identity is the means of oppression. This shift flattens individuals’ experiences into neat categories and gives people who carry white guilt a means of carrying forward on a “correct” course of action – allyship rooted in abandoning anlysis and taking up the cause of people who tokenize themselves. Incidentally that course of action requires very little introspection and props up opportunists willing to step into the spotlight it provides.

Beware anyone, of any identity, who offers you a simple answer to the complex questions in American political life. To those of us who operate outside the ideological constraints of neoliberal identity politics, the whole thing is just weird. A recent article drew attention to a Democratic data researcher who was fired in 2020 because he dared to say something that other Democrats hated to hear:

While Shor believes immigration is a place where Democrats shouldn’t focus too intently, he also sees a larger problem afflicting the party. The people running it are just, well, odd.

“I think the biggest fundamental problem in American politics is that the people who work in politics are super, super weird,” he said. “The people who actually staff, all of these organizations are very different, you know, obviously, than the people we’re trying to persuade.”

The cult of Shor – Politico

This is someone trying to elect more Democrats, looking at data about how Democrats are operating, and saying, “this is ineffective.” He was fired. The liberals have adopted a line which has noble enough origins, but which has been distorted to essentially prevent discourse that could lead to tangible political victory. While the political goals of mainstream Democrats are first and foremost to maintain power, they somehow also demand to remove people from their ranks if they threaten the great cultural shift toward the unimpeachable identity politics of the 21st century. They believe in the 2010-era political consensus of the “New American Majority,” meaning they pander extensively to the increasingly diverse and young electorate in order to win.

Certain opportunists have given permission to liberals to adopt distorted radical notions without understanding those notions or their relationship to power. This in turn has given those oppressive allies permission to weaponize identity – whether they have it, pretend to have it, or simply wish to “be an ally to” it – in a way that prevents solidarity and in many ways alienates the masses of people who are hungry for political power and political change. Allyship, instead of leading to increased solidarity, has allowed cults of personality and identity to crop up, in usual formation around traditionally-power-hungry people. Opportunists are ready to use this environment to get what they want for themselves, even if they cloak that individualism in notions of community and collectivity.

Whether a person in power shares your identity should be a question that comes following your shared political alignment and desire to meet certain specific ends. Unfortunately for left movements, the language of radicalism has been so co-opted and the identities of our movement actors so totalizing, it can be quite difficult for those outside of left spaces to access, join, or learn from them.

Our movement will fracture endlessly if fights over identity are foregrounded while we don’t discuss goals. Sure, there is critical work to do in making each of us the best version of ourselves, and there is critical work to do in the repairing historic harms of socioeconomic division, and the lack of representation of nonwhite nonmen in office. But this is work for all of us, not just the small number of people who meet every identity marker qualifying them for leadership. If we want to grow our movements they must become inclusive and not exclusive, or the reactionary movements will welcome with open arms those we oust, into an ideology that justifies being in the wrong relationship to others, and acting like it.