Author: Rob Francis
Publication: Medium.com
Date: December 17, 2017
URL:   https://medium.com/@rob_francis/the-left-that-wont-listen-bc1a1bf1710e

“If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you’re not going to be able to govern”

So said Barack Obama in October, taking a fairly obvious swipe at Donald Trump whilst campaigning in New Jersey. Personally I’d take it further; whether it succeeds or fails, divisive politics is extremely damaging, a toxin in the bloodstream of the body politic. Regardless of whether it works or not, I want my politics to seek to bring people together, to find common solutions and answers, to build a better civic space.

Which is why the current state of the British left and the Labour Party saddens me so. It has become a movement led and supported by people who don’t care about listening, making arguments, or compromise. Instead the focus is on imposing positions and punishing those who dare to dissent.

This has been the case for the fringe left for some time; for example, the Stop the War coalition has never been keen on hearing from victims of Assad’s brutalities when meeting to discuss intervention in Syria, believing Syrian voices which disagree with their line to be “inappropriate”.

But, as the fringe has become the mainstream, so have these attitudes. Jewish voices in the Labour Party, desperately concerned about the rising tide of antisemitism, have been ignored. Instead it is asserted that this is really all part of a leadership plot.

And since the election, as the far left have become emboldened by their glorious defeat, everything has become much, much worse. Led by Owen Jones, who seems determined to wriggle back into the far left’s affections after having the temerity to waver in his support for Dear Leader pre-election, Corbynites are now pushing on with their attempts to force everyone into a binary us-or-them choice, and to cast anyone who raises questions out of the community.

Anti-Assadists, “centrists”, Jews, people who believe the siege of Sarajevo happened, anyone who understands that Corbyn’s IRA links matter, councillors who won’t drink the Kool-Aid; even Angela Rayner was pilloried online recently for the crime of speaking against deselections and calling for party unity. In this new world, anyone who goes against the party line is rhetorically as bad as a fascist.

(As an aside, the type of people who happily label anyone who disagrees with them a fascist aren’t actually that interested in stopping genuine fascists. Plus ça change, perhaps.)

And of course, Owen has now opened up a new front, this time over self-identification; as with so much else, he attempts to reduce a complex, nuanced situation worthy of serious discussion into a binary, polarised slanging match, with one “side” being painted as irredeemably evil.

Whether you agree with Owen or not, the route to progressivism surely doesn’t lie in telling women to shut up, but in listening to all sides and seeking out a compromise. Eliding genuine transphobes with reasonable, thoughtful arguments such as this does nobody any favours, entrenches opinion amongst more moderate voices, leaves people feeling disinclined to speak up, and makes it harder to reach a consensus. But it gets clicks, I suppose.

Back to Barack:

“ We’ve got folks who are deliberately trying to make folks angry, to demonize people who have different ideas, to get the base all riled up because it provides a short-term tactical advantage”

This is exactly what Owen Jones et al are doing. This politics that the new left espouses, of believing in its own righteousness so entirely that it not only refuses to hear other voices but actively shouts them down, is dangerous. Politics should look to bring people along with it, win backing from beyond your tribe, but this is something very different. This is a politics that is so convinced of its own self-worth that it either can’t or won’t make reasoned arguments. Instead it relies on making people angry, pushing them to extremes, and shutting dissenters out.