The only thing more important than "do nothing wrong" is to loudly correct those who are doing "almost right" and "in the right direction."

And sometimes those people will even destroy active progress because it doesn't meet their definition of perfect.

I think this "do nothing wrong" tendency has something to do with intragroup power dynamics. I've often seen it used as a cudgel to knock down others within a group and stop mild dissent even though everyone is on the same team. Usually the most prolific wielder of the "do nothing wrong" cudgel rises to a position of some authority in the group, after which the group fragments because the person is insufferable but unassailable due to their moral superiority.

Very good take.

I complained to a partner once about something they'd done that seemed vaguely unethical (by my understanding of their ethics). After they apologised, I was still upset, and they said "maybe I'm a little bit shit, just like everyone else."

That really stuck with me. People (including myself) are often OK with accepting imperfections in other people in some spaces, but not in others. It's pretty weird.. Life is messy, even the bits that seems straightforward. And no one has a perfect understanding of any situation..

I had an interaction once where I thought I used double quotes around a word to imply something obvious related to the posted article. A random person got mad at me and claimed I knew nothing about solidarity.

I felt insulted, they didn't know my life experiences up to that point. I chose to ignore my feelings and pressed them to teach my why I was so wrong. They eventually disappeared from replies because they had nothing behind that image of righteousness. Rare win but I'll take it.

If someone put themselves in harms way to punch an authoritarian follower in the face in my defence and also uses slurs I could find offensive to myself, that's not my enemy. That's someone awesome who could use a little more education. Later. When the current situation isn't so wild.

Words are just words. That's not as effective as punching a fascist in face.

I haved discussions with others here where its people are just not happy with baby steps and want full change right away. Problem is we need to make more friends not enemies with each other.

Gatekeeping, purity testing, virtue signaling, and no self accountability. These are the four reasons why every leftist space outside of the center left is a complete and utter joke. These traits are cultural in left wing spaces, and they are very common. They are so common that they'll never be going away and they are the root reasons why the left will NEVER accomplish anything substantial during my lifetime.

An alarming number of leftists are not revolutionaries but dictators without power.

Every time I see the idiots calling for abolishment of the police, I never see anything remotely approaching a viable replacement for what they should be doing.

We're not solving murder, rape, burglaries, drunk driving, general assaults, etc overnight. And we're certainly not within a five year plan of solving those things either.

So yeah, hardline abolishment fanatics can shove off. Come back with actual solutions, even if they arent perfect, thanks.

some people are all 'the system is broken' and other people are like 'the system is working exactly as intended' and im just screaming 'DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT VOTE IN THE LAST ELECTION?'

online leftist

Important things happen offline, online is more or less a distraction.

obviously a trap set by bougie liberals to try and get me to vote for a Democrat.

but i'm too smart for them

the other problem with leftist spaces online is a general intolerance to trolls

I believe it's actually the opposite. So many extremists or "I don’t agree with you therefore you’re a troll" bullshit.

You get censored and banned for pretty much anything. Lemmy is no exception and pretty obviously like that.

This is what I've been saying. The gatekeeping is unreal. How the fuck are we supposed to grow as a movement if we can't accept those who maybe did and/or said some questionable shit in the past? If someone is trying to make positive changes and is demonstrating it with their actions and/or words than we should accept them. I guarantee the vast majority of you here have said or did something that goes against your current beliefs.

No improving the current system allowed!

Yes let's start a 3rd party

wave of downvotes and idiots screaming about RCV even though that's not a disqualifier

I spent a bunch of time in such spaces before the election and was shocked how much time and energy was squandered with virtue signaling and purity testing. There was literally no room for anything else in some of them.

I would say largest problem with leftist spaces is a little more challenging to identify; it's that leftists are broadly intellectuals or at least identify as intellectual because of effort they put into honoring nuance. And the primary opponent of leftists are conservatives, and they are proudly not intellectual and view people who use the lens of intellectualism and nuance as weak or elitist.

Because it's incredibly difficult to have any kind of meaningful intellectual debate with your opponents, we have all retreated to our safe-spaces and online bubbles, our discord groups and algorithm-driven feeds. We don't even walk in the same environments or view the same media anymore,

So in order for people on the left to feel any kind of satisfaction and feel like their mental strength actually has a use, they find someone else who is ostensibly on the left and attack something that person said or did which they feel does not represent their own leftist values.

Our eternal, infernal infighting problem is because we have an army of head-warriors who have no heads to butt against. Even if there were people on the right willing to have intellectual debates, they're not even in the same talking-space anymore. The only place you can go to have debates are contentious battleground where nobody is even arguing in good faith and just screaming their talking points for audience upvotes. So leftists, being humans, take the easy path and turn on each other to feel like they're making any progress or are involved at all in making things better.

On the right it's much easier to feel like you're part of the movement or doing something for your group, all you have to do is buy a gun or stockpile trumpcoins and canned food or harass someone or get drunk and scream about minorities. It's mindless and pointless but it feels like action. And sadly, more and more people are being turned away by this kind of mental effort and emotional labor of "doing the right thing" so they're getting sucked in by the mindless orcs who have more fun and have easier victory conditions.