I put a poster up for a women/trans/non-binary inclusive group in an anarchist cafe, with their approval, only to get a literal essay from the cafe the next day about the miss-use of a word pertaining to our trans inclusivity. I can’t recall what the “right” word was supposed to be, and the poster’s verbiage was already researched/reviewed by trans people in the group. Due diligence was done.

Queue people leaving the group because we didn’t feel it was necessary to print new posters. They felt we should be less hostile to “people taking the time to educate.” Yeah, I made a few comments.

But you know what? I much prefer that to the kind of shit I had to deal with in conservative spaces. I worked on a couple political campaigns, had back room discussions where people don’t “educate” when you’re not one of them, they insult and back-stab you.

I can at least see the essay as an attempt to share knowledge, to include rather than exclude, even if it was from a place of self-importance and ignorance.

The friction I see in progressive spaces is usually about making things more equitable. It can be poorly thought out, but no one’s perfect. I prefer flawed inclusivity to hostile exclusivity.

In American leftism there is a definite divide between black and white.

For example second wave feminism is often thought of as Women seeking entry into the workplace, but at the same time black feminists were trying to leave the workforce and take care of their own kids.

The labor movement has an explicitly racist history. A fact that Capitalists often took advantage of by leveraging black scabs who were often ineligible for union membership. Eugne Debs identified this as a problem with the socialist movement.

I’m not saying that racism is common among today’s lefties, just that white lefties are often ignorant of black American life and especially black radical thought and activism.

If you are vexed by Bernie Sanders’ struggle with black voters, you’re probably not very familiar with this history.

A frequent frustration is recursive guilt-by-association.

“Yeah so okay we do align on everything however you refuse to denounce your friend who didn’t really do anything but he is a fan of a controversial figure who also didn’t really say or do much but they are friends with a bad person so… Get lost?”

Another is translation based on the assumption that one’s assumptions are universal.

“You said you think Terry Davis was a technical genius for his OS. Honestly his work is nothing compared to a modern OS. I think so so therefore you must think so, and so you must mean something else. What you are really praising is his extremist christianity.”

Good examples from others but I also want to bring up microaggressions. Basically, small things that add up, like a white woman gripping her bag tightly when a black man enters an elevator, or a white man crossing the street because a Latino guy is approaching who looks a little “gangy.” Usually they aren’t that progressive (e.g. they support diversity but critical race theory is a bridge too far).

That said, prejudice is something we all have and is part of human nature. It protects us historically from things like snakes and spiders who may not be venomous but on the off chance they are, better safe than sorry. Prejudice leads to stereotypes, stereotypes lead to discrimination. Conscious effort is needed to overcome that, and progressives do that better than not but no one is fully immune to your natural instincts.

“Progressive” describes a position, not a person. A person can be many things. A person can hold contradictory viewpoints, and fully believe two incompatible thoughts at the same time. It’s tragically naive to assume that people are rational or consistent.

Can a person think they are progressive and also be a bigot? Of course a person can. Everybody is the hero in their own story.

Yes, I have a friend who is extremely progressive but is still very much a slut shamer. She really looks down with disgust on women who like sex or have more boyfriends than she deems acceptable.

She also shows bigotry against other groups of people. Although she would never in a million years look down on someone because of their skin colour, she absolutely takes on a tribalistic Us vs Them mentality for other reasons. An example is the war in Ukraine started by Russia. Did Russia start it? Yes. Is Putin evil? Yes. Are there many Russians who support this war? Yes. BUT… not every Russian person in the world is inherently evil, not all of them want this, many are victims trapped in a system that will literally throw them out the god damned window if they dissent. And my friend absolutely fucking hates Russians. All of them. No empathy about the nightmare situation so many of them are stuck in. It has gotten so bad that she has literally started to hate her chickens that are a Russian breed. She has started assigning negative human traits to them and is insisting that they are negative and bad because they are Russian chickens. It’s honestly getting ridiculous.

On larger scale , Very distressing amounts “men are oppressed ackshually wamenz have it tꝏ gꝏd they need to be brought back to their place ‼️” laundered thru progressive sounding language (example : people who think “(trans)?(misandry|androphobia)” exists)

I’ve seen liberal POCs say racist shit about White people more times than I can count.

Are we counting speciesism? Because “progressive” people are still generally a bunch of cruel, violent murderers.