Sanewashing The Left

(Note, I am not, in this article, talking about liberals or typical Democrats. I am talking about leftists—those opposed to capitalism, generally in favor of some sort of radical revolution rather than modest reform, who tend to think Bernie Sanders is a puppet of corporate power. Or, to give the definition most succinctly, “the people who, when progressives say ‘Nobody is saying X.’ are in fact, saying X”)

Around 2020 an interesting phenomenon began on the left: people began insisting that words don’t mean what they mean.

Even more curiously, the words were those that they used to describe their own position. People would describe their support for abolishing the police, while insisting that abolishing the police doesn’t mean what any competent English speaker knows it does—making the police become no more. They call for defunding the police, while aggressively insisting that you’re some sort of rube if you take that to mean that they don’t want the police to be funded. They say that all cops are bastards and then insist that this is not casting aspersions on any individual cop but simply pointing to institutional problems in policing.

They chant “from the river to the sea,” and then insist that they want Israel to remain a state—just one that doesn’t oppress Palestinians. They flippantly joke about killing all men or white people, and act like finding this offputting is indicative that you’re either very stupid or sexist. They claim that all white people are racist, and then claim that this means nothing more than that white people are, as a group, systemically advantaged.

Inverse Florida has an excellent article on the subject that’s extremely worth reading. Her thesis is the same as one that I’ve given before: those on the left spend a lot of time with other people on the left. They consider themselves on roughly the same team, and are generally afraid to punch left (they’re quite willing to fight over minute differences surrounding obscure bits of theory, but only because that makes them seem even more left-wing, rather than right-wing). In these spaces, there’s extreme homogeneity in their views, on account of the general tendency to conform—a tendency particularly enforced in these spaces by an aggressive cadre of shrill activists.

We tend to see the world as a battle of us vs. them. Them, the outgroup, are those we regard as the ideological enemy. Our sense of ourselves is constructed in opposition to the outgroup; while we’re not horses, we don’t think of ourselves primarily as non-horses, but a liberal does think of their identity as being substantially about being not being a conservative. Even when a person recognizes that, say, Isis is a lot worse than the outgroup, it’s hard to get that outraged about the things that Isis does. Isis is not your outgroup—your identity is not in opposition to them—and it’s hard to feel that much rage at something just because it’s very bad.

In leftist spaces, the outgroup is conservatives. Even when leftists disagree with those to their left, it’s hard for them to get outraged about it in the same way they get outraged about those to their right. When people deny well-documented atrocities of the Soviet Union, leftists get nowhere near as outraged as they do when people express moderate conservative views. Leftists hate Mitt Romney far more than Stalin.

Because of the gratuitous loathing of anything remotely conservative, no one says anything that could be remotely imagined to be right-wing. No one disagrees with extremely fringe, far-left ideas, for that’s conservative coded. On the rare occasions when they do critique anyone on the far left, they do it in a mealy-mouthed way, always tiptoing around their main critique, and attempting to frame their criticism as a way that other people aren’t far left enough. In the days when I did high school debate, when one team would claim that arguing for the topic was racist or transphobic, the other side would tend to argue that the first claim fractures anticapitalist movements (debate was really very silly).

But some people in these spaces are not completely insane. Some of them recognize that if there were no police in the world, then people could do crime without any punishment. Furthermore, they think that would be bad.

These people have a conundrum. On the one hand, they are not fucking crazy, and so do not want to advocate abolishing the police. On the other hand, all their friends are constantly talking about the importance of abolishing the police and how anyone who disagrees with it is a racist police defender. As a result, they sanewash.

They act like the insanity of their side isn’t really insane. They act like the people saying all cops are bastards and that the police are abolished aren’t really saying that, and are really saying something much more moderate. Because their caucus includes crazy people, they need to make it sound like they really agree with the people making utterly deranged claims.

When they do acknowledge that some people on their side really deny Stalin’s crimes or want to fully get rid of the police or think that normal right-wing writers should be thrown in Gulags, they downplay it. When you notice that much of their side is crazy, they mock you. Often scorn is enough—in left-wing spaces, the mere fact that everyone agrees to mock some idea, say it on Twitter using AlTeRnAtING CaPItaL aNd LoWERcAse LeTTErs or in a sneering tone of voice is enough to totally dismiss the idea. I remember in debate, all the obvious objections to insane leftist ideas were mocked, and so no one raised them (for instance, no one seemed to have thought very hard about how we would prosecute crimes if the police were abolished, but bringing that extremely obvious objection up was mocked).

The online left is a very bizarre place. There’s extreme focus on discourse—ways discourse might be problematic, ways certain forms of rhetoric might be effective or not (of course, what they consider effective is what allows one to steamroll another in conversation, not what’s actually true). There’s excessive deference to arrogant online Twitch streamers, who make a living by fighting with people on the internet and mocking those who disagree with them. Generally, they don’t know what they’re talking about, but are able to bullshit their way to rhetorical dominance in most conversations.

People punch right with impunity—including attacking those who are on the left but who disagree with their insane leftist views—but punching left is scoffed at. There’s excessive deference to members of minority groups. It’s widely assumed that the proclamations of shrill activists on behalf of a group represent, in some sense, what the group wants. There’s a strange viciousness practiced in these spaces; cackling about the idea that your political opponents would be thrown in the gulag is a common form of comedy deemed totally innocuous.

Because it is filled with crazy people, those who are reasonable and don’t want to lose their friends have no choice but to sanewash—to downplay the craziness and act like the extremism isn’t there. They laugh along to things that they’d call racist or antisemitic dogwhistles if done by the other side.

Probably there are rather few leftists reading this article. My blog is mostly read by gray tribe members—moderate liberals and libertarians. But for those who call themselves leftists and go to great lengths to defend other leftists, I’d encourage you to take a careful look at your own movement. If you find yourself denying the plain meaning of words to shield blame from bloodthirsty psychopaths who’d throw Ezra Klein in a reeducation camp, you shouldn’t be surprised by right wingers who defend Trump.