I'm going to need the helmet for thus...But somehow we need to work together. Clearly fascism is a problem + we need to eradicate it. However, we only do that with the help of right wing moderates + not by alienating them. People are allowed (as much as I disagree) to have conservative values.
No, I'm asking you. It's all very well you saying that we should team up with them that stabbed us in the back. 2017 was a betrayal. People who we thought were on our side smeared us daily. Centrists + liberals proved that they would rather have a fascist government than a moderate centre left one
Yeh--that's politics. It will change again in time but politics is politics. To say "all" centrists + liberals smeared you daily is a bit "OTT". Clearly that is not the case. Politics is always fluid, it's always about compromise. The problem now is fascism is back + how do we stop it?
The alternative is building a principled political bloc of workers, the poor and the marginalised to fight for a socialist alternative to fascism. We ourselves.
Honestly, it was also Corbyn's mild social democracy - he largely hadn't moved from being a pre-Blair Labour moderate. Now that's described as fire-breathing communism. Shows how rapidly far-right the Overton window has shifted.
Having been in leftwing activism I can sadly attest that many don’t even want to collaborate between themselves because each has a pet cause (e.g. pronouns, hedgehog rights, transexualpaninclusivity, etc) on which they won’t compromise.
A sad, useless way to condemn the world to right wing folly.
There's a lot of "oh no, look what the right wing is doing - those dastardly leftists are to blame" energy going around on Bluesky today. Who kicked the centrist/ #BlueMAGA anthill?
I wonder why minority groups, who are mostly left wing in nature, don't like working with people whose stated political aim is to kill them all, it's a mystery
Some on the left wanted Lexit. That doesn't make them the same as the far right who want a white ethnostate. I doubt you could appreciate the difference though.
Never claimed they wanted the same thing, but the ⬜️ on the ballot were just two (and I don't think it's a controversial claim to say that the reformers alone could never have done it).
And.. uh, "pragmatically"? I think we are closer to the ethnostate than Corbyn's utopia with blackjack and hookers.
We offered you socialism. You chose barbarism. And you are fine with that. Because you would rather have a fascist government than a moderate centre left one.
Not at all? I'd be cool with a left one too (that is without auth-lefts), I don't know who you think I am or what I am saying.
I just had a pretty sour observation about the "loop" of your fish hook sometimes having quite the longer and different "reach" from the one in your illustration.
Was it the prominent people in Westminster, Fleet Street and the Police working, both openly and clandestinely, with the far right as part of a multi-year project to destroy the organised left wing?
No, it was the anti-fascists with zero institutional power.
The willingness to go the extra yard to protect vulnerable groups combined with the complete lack of empathy for ordinary people that defines, most recently, Corbynism. No-one needed research to show this.
'Lack of empathy for ordinary people' = not being willing to throw said minorities into a woodchipper in order to appease the imaginary racists invented by the Right-wing press.
Really? Are your "journalists" thinking clearly? I seem to remember Jeremy Corbyn had centrists in his cabinet, including Watson as deputy. Corbyn was working with centrists (& further to the right than centre) but it seems they refused to work with the left to such a degree they expelled them.
Nowadays being 'humanly', 'just', 'fair'& 'relevant' in UK is being managed to be seen very easily via the attitude against the desperately pumped up far right 'XENOPHOBIA, RACISM, HATE SPEECH AND MASKED NAZISM'! WHAT ABOUT LEFT Labour co-oping IT'S NAZI TORIES RIVALS ON ANTI-MIGRANT RULE RCENTLY!
The left are stupid for not working with people of different politics, but also the left are collectively accountable for every action of every person at every left wing protest and therefore evil for working with those people of different politics.
The left should be more willing to work with people further left and centre left, it's an issue I've noticed that "perfect stands in the way of progress" all too often with the left
The ACTUAL issue though, is that centre/centre right/right wings are TOO EAGER to work with fucking fascists
Give a centrist the choice between working with someone even slightly left of centre, or literally anyone right of centre, and they lean right every🖕single 🖕time
I've heard some pretty backhanded, rank-ass shit from Liberals and Democratic Party types on THIS end of the Pond lately, but "lack of understanding..." ...maa-an, that just makes me want to punch a motherfucker's lights out.
The Guardian has framed this report as: ‘Left-wing activists are less likely to work with political rivals than other UK groups, a study finds.’ Another way to frame this is that 54% of progressives refuse to work with transphobes, 40% with anti-abortionists, & 35% with climate deniers.
I would also normally think that you should consider working with people who had voted for a party you disagree with some time in the past, but the people who voted Reform would have done so last year! (Or possibly some local election in the past 5).
So not very likely to be, well, reformed yet.
Quickly, everyone is noticing that Labour are shit, we need distractions, what have we got? Blame the people who were right when they said Labour were conservatives in red? That's it!
The mainstream media have consistently platformed the far right over the libdem and greens, while the other two parties continually work towards their own self interests. No wonder 19m registered voters out of 48m didn't turn up, the lowest turnout in decades, that must also be the lefts fault.
I know, but how will you persuade us to join in with genocide and fascism 'just a little bit'?
We're such extremists, we don't want starving kids even if it's only theirs
We don't want freezing pensioners, even if they're only yours
We're to blame for not compromising on your choice to harm people.
One could argue the big failing of the corbyn run labour, at least internally, was to try and work with people whose political goals were opposed. This is what allowed them to continue wrecking from inside and for Labour right to take over the party completely by 2023.
Dear colleague: Sadly due to your purity tests I have had to sabotage you, usher in a tory government, ensure a diamond hard brexit, lie to your face over and over to secure power, then purge and publicly smear you.
Maybe next time you will consider the great benefits of working with others.
Funny how it's always exclusively"the left's" job to meet these Nazi scumfuckers in the middle, and not the fascists', almost like y'all are deliberately trying to ratchet us all toward yet another boring, repressed, sex-hating right wing hell 🤔
3 The one in ten people dubbed "progressive activists" hold big potential influence. But, as in Monty Python's film Life of Brian, factionalism ensures marginal outcomes. Groups must unite on common goals, rather than what they all oppose,
2 Socialists must both value newcomers and demand help for UK-born people. Excessive reference to fascists alienates those who equate the word with Nazis.
Remainers' support for a neoliberal EU, run by unelected commissioners, betrays radicalism.
1 I became a leftist after a refugee childhood home without a bathroom or indoor toilet. Many liberals view migrants from their own middle class privilege. Few call for living standards and public services to match population growth.
They’d rather be in opposition than dilute their purity. And it’s easier to snipe from the sidelines than take responsibility for decisions in government.
I did, it was just a dogshit article that cites a study by a lifelong Tory Party member and former government advisors, written for credulous right-wingers to feel morally superior.
Saw a response flash up before you deleted which said something along the lines of you wouldn't ask someone's political leaning but would stand by a cause you believed in despite that 👏
Not everyone can have principles I guess. Sure that has nothing to do with why Starmer and Blairite Labour routinely gets curb stomped, and when they do win, it's in spite of themselves
You seem to have published a story based on a report by More In Common, an organisation dedicated to horseshoe theory and how centrists are the only wise and sensible people
"Working with political rivals" is demonstrably how you get fascists in power, as evidenced by several major world nations, so it actually seems like the correct strategy and liberals should learn and replicate it.
'More in Common’s new report takes a detailed look into the worldviews and attitudes of Progressive Activists, exploring what makes them different from the rest of the country, and why progressive campaigns in recent years increasingly seem to be backfiring'.
This is Luke Tryl from MoreinCommon, a weird centrist setup that sounds all fluffy, but by the headline obvs has a basic agenda. Btw, for context, Tryl worked under Sally Morgan in the Cameron government. And the "research" appears to be riddled with inaccuracies and dodgy characterisations.
He was on Novara Media tonight having a go at the trans community and blaming us for the toxicity in politics. *Not Donald Trump or Nigel Farage. The disempowered minority with hardly any representation in government that the fascists are scapegoating. Luke thinks us trans folk are to blame. 😒
Yes, many of us in the trans community feel so besieged at the moment. On one hand, the far-right are scapegoating us for being trans and on the other, many of the liberal centrists are now scapegoating us for the rise of the far-right.
"My political rivals want me dead" is a pretty understandable reason for not wanting to work with fascists, but I guess some weird ass decorum in Parliament is more important than our right to life to you
Sounds like the progressives we have in the US. Even though actual Gazans living in Gaza wanted Harris to win, they sat home or voted third party. Brilliant move.
Sounds like the Democrat party we have in the US. Even though their voters made their preference clear, Harris chose to flip them the bird. So she lost. Brilliant move on her part. Who knew ignoring voters would make them not vote for you? 🙄 From the article cited above:
I wonder if they are going to self reflect to see why they are so deeply unpopular with the general public and why they have made no policy gains in decades? I'm being silly now
The Left's 'rivals' (ie centrists, liberals, conservatives) have been actively collaborating with neo-Nazis for the past few years, resulting in the rise of fascism across Europe and the US.
The Left is literally the only anti-Nazi force in politics. Why would we join forces with Nazi enablers?
Your commentators spent most of the 2019 election campaign openly mocking left wing policies and activists, how dare you print this absolute shite, your paper is a disgrace
That's like saying POC activists less likely to work with racists.
There is no working with people who are opposed to everything youare, stand and work for.
Just why the fuck would anyone on the left want to work with people like this?
We wouldn't work with fucking tories or Niggle Fartarse's fascists, so why the fuck would we want to work with a tory in all but name who told us all to fuck off. He doesn't want us, so we won't give the c**t our votes.
I like how after Corbyn they just put all the same shadow heads back in the same positions prior to Corbyn and just pretended he never existed. The only exception was Milliband (leader) who they relegated to "green stuff" and then keep blocking anything he proposes. They didn't change at all...
It was only the complete collapse of the tories that gave them the stonking victory, a victory they are now wasting because they never had any ideas beyond "we are not tories, we are not left wing, we are not Corbyn". If it helps the little people, they don't want to do it. A single non-dom however!
Pretty rich coming from a newspaper that did everything to go against left-wing politicians and activists who actually had alternatives to address social inequality, environmental and climate crises and the cost of living crisis?
"The group [...] represents about 8% of the population" vs "authors argue has contributed to the [...] rise of the global far right" in the same article. So fringe and misguided you'd be crazy to agree with them and so powerful they ushered in worldwide fascism. Which is it dude
My great uncle was a leftwing activist who "refused to work with his political rivals". They sent him to a concentration camp. Perhaps you'd like to tell his family that he should have collaborated a little more?
I once saw a guy urinate on a dog in the night and I'm pretty sure the left made it happen by collaborating with the right/not collaborating with the right enough, delete as appropriate
Hmm weird didn’t the Labour Party purge anyone who liked Corbyn a few years ago? Sounds like the centrists are the ones who can’t work with anyone else
This study was co-authored by Luke Tryl, who joined the Conservative Party at the age of 14 and is a former special advisor to Conservative education secretary Nicky Morgan, if that helps to elucidate these findings any further
His linkedin shows he was SpAd within the civil service rather than one of the spads employed by the Tory party, but taken with all the other factors, it's hard not to see Tryl as someone who's far more at home with right-wingers than the left or what he calls progressives.
The Left just needs to meet people where they are, frothing with manufactured bigotry and jingoism and dreams of personal enrichment intended to disrupt class consciousness.
I see Labour insiders got the FAKE LEFT and PHONEY PROGRESSIVES in the Guardian to write this puffpiece to salvage Starmer's racist policies which failed to appease Reform and to get back to their core base, the ACTUAL LEFT and REAL PROGRESSIVES who have long since moved to Greens and Independents
If everyone but the leftwing is adopting wall-to-wall fascist policy then we are correct to do so. Almost every Labour policy announcement comes direct from the far-right? Why are we expected to work with nazis? Is this article really attacking the left for having principles?
So it is not 40yrs of neoliberalism and increasing economic inequality that is the main cause of the rise of the far right? It is actually the fault of the progressive left (who haven’t been in power for the period). Remind me who threw the socialists out of the LP and ape Reform on key policies
Comments
You ... you haven't seen any incidence of centrists attacking the left, have you?
...
Are you sure?
#CentrismLeadsToFascism
#FuckTheGuardian
As opposed to populist stunts to capture votes with catchy phrases one doesn't care about in order to elevate ones own station.
If you need us, join us.
Let me rephrase: You need us. Join us.
That's literally square one, and even the current Labour government fails that miserably.
Conservatives and liberals ARE far-right now, that's the whole problem.
A sad, useless way to condemn the world to right wing folly.
Every time.
The left’s fault my arse
And.. uh, "pragmatically"? I think we are closer to the ethnostate than Corbyn's utopia with blackjack and hookers.
I just had a pretty sour observation about the "loop" of your fish hook sometimes having quite the longer and different "reach" from the one in your illustration.
So this study concludes the 'woke' left caused the rise of the far right, but not the far right Reform voters installing Farage in parliament?
No, it was the anti-fascists with zero institutional power.
The ACTUAL issue though, is that centre/centre right/right wings are TOO EAGER to work with fucking fascists
Fucking mindless take
Oh no, sorry, it’s the left fault for being less likely to be overtly racist and transphobic
Fuck off 🖕🏻
So not very likely to be, well, reformed yet.
Not even the hard rights own choices and actions
We're such extremists, we don't want starving kids even if it's only theirs
We don't want freezing pensioners, even if they're only yours
We're to blame for not compromising on your choice to harm people.
Not the center and right thinking they need to court the far right vote
That article should have read ‘leftwing activists less likely to be corrupted by evil scum’ ya scones
Is that the left childishly not working with rivals or is that centrist wanks ditching us to directly appeal to fascists instead
They didn't listen (as they never ever do) and that's our fault for some reason
9
Maybe next time you will consider the great benefits of working with others.
not willing to work with the groups who just keep giving power to the ownership class is a good thing.
Remainers' support for a neoliberal EU, run by unelected commissioners, betrays radicalism.
Yea, i wonder why people wouldn’t want to be a part of that…
labour are sacrificing my civil rights. that’s why i won’t support them.
Any interaction with them is an opportunity they use to lie. You become their platform. Refute their outrageous lies, and you validate them.
Looks like it worked 👍
If your only reason is because they voted reform it's a weak argument at best and comes back to my original point tbh.
Or do you think the police have sufficient resource after years of cuts?
The left starts at anticapitalism. We do not compromise with Capital. It must be destroyed
https://issuepedia.org/wikiup/3/3a/Negotiation-cartoon.jpg
'More in Common’s new report takes a detailed look into the worldviews and attitudes of Progressive Activists, exploring what makes them different from the rest of the country, and why progressive campaigns in recent years increasingly seem to be backfiring'.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/biden-voters-passed-kamala-harris-because-gaza-new-poll-shows
How it started 🤝 how it’s going
But they pretend to be unified and some people fall for that because it sounds easier.
We will not make that mistake.
The Left is literally the only anti-Nazi force in politics. Why would we join forces with Nazi enablers?
You can't "I'm just a little guy" this, you mouthpiece for hatemongers
I can't imagine why we don't want to work with people that want us dead.
There is no working with people who are opposed to everything youare, stand and work for.
look at labour’s assault on immigrants, disabled ppl, trans rights, economic inequality — they won’t compromise on any of it.
We wouldn't work with fucking tories or Niggle Fartarse's fascists, so why the fuck would we want to work with a tory in all but name who told us all to fuck off. He doesn't want us, so we won't give the c**t our votes.
I'm chronically unwell
And trans
Why the blithering FUCK would I ever vote "Labour" literally ever again?
their political rivals want them dead. what exactly are they supposed to work together on?
https://bsky.app/profile/theguardian.com/post/3lijkueldnk2c
Just not with us because we refuse to legitimise and normalise Nazis
Disingenuous at best.
"why don't you trust us?"
Just think how useful A.I. is going to be for this stuff
They could train it up on Labour Right MPs and Guardian journos’ Whatsapp messages
They could call it a “trot-bot”
Can't wait