A couple of days ago I got a hit to my post The Role of Ideology in Leftist Violence. Coincidentally there was a relevant point made at Founding Questions at the same time (more on that in a second).
So this is a good occasion to signal boost this topic. It’s an important point that people on the “right” often overlook: the importance of the intra-left focus of much leftist rhetoric.
Leftist rhetoric has (at least) three purposes. The first two, which are fairly obvious, are (in no particular order):
(1) To gain numbers. E.g. lefties say to women, “You’re being oppressed by men! Support us and we’ll give you lots of goodies – we’ll affirmative-action you into jobs, give you ‘welfare’ support so you can bear alpha males’ children without having to marry disgusting betas, etc.”
(2) To confuse, distract, and disarm those they’re attacking. There are several variants of this. Moral disarmament by means of saying “You’re guilty because of the history of (blah blah) so you should let us win this particular battle (whatever the battle du jour is).” There’s also the bullshit salami-slicing gradualism: “Look, we just want this one thing; after that we’ll stop.” Which always turns out to be a lie, of course. Etc.
This is all pretty straightforward. A less obvious aspect of leftist rhetoric was brought out in an exchange at Jim’s place a year or so ago:
(3) A significant amount of leftist rhetoric is directed at other leftists. Leftists spill a lot of ink to establish “My faction is correct and all the other factions are wrong and should defer and submit to us.” Those doctrinal disputes are both the terrain on which leftist conflicts are fought and the prize that is being fought over: Who has the One Right Answer? Consider as an example the current ideowar between third-wave feminists and the trans crowd.
Fun fact: more than a hundred years ago, when the communists in Russia were just another revolutionary group hammering out their policies and strategies, a small, minority group of commies started calling themselves Bolsheviks, which literally means “men of the majority.” The tactical advantage of calling yourselves this, if you can get enough other commies to believe it, are obvious. (By the way, Wikipedia retcons this history, not surprisingly.)
The relevant quote at Founding Questions focuses on a different aspect of intra-left communication: “The Journalist doesn’t think in terms of causality, or in terms of real-world effects; it simply never occurs to her that her Narrative might cause actual Real World people to do Real World things. They — Real World people; Dirt People — never cross her mind at all. Her Narratives aren’t directed down; that is, at Dirt People. They’re always directed up — at her fellow Cloud People…”
I would only amend that last “They’re always directed up” to “They’re often directed up and/or across” i.e. at other leftists. Severian at FQ emphasizes the internal leftist virtue-signaling aspect of intra-left communication, while Jim emphasizes the function that internally-directed rhetoric has in intra-left power struggles. The difference is one of submission versus an attempt at dominance. When your average journalist at a local paper writes about the problem of “racism” in the local (blah blah) industry, she’s just creating an item that she can cite on her resume when she wants to change jobs. It’s pure submission: Look, I wrote this piece on “racism,” I’m a goodthinkful leftist; you should hire me. In contrast, when trans activists and old-school feminists duke it out rhetorically, they are not submitting to each other. They’re fighting. Each one is trying to prevail over the other, to beat the other faction down into helpless defeat.
Leftists don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about the truth value of their doctrines. So why do they care so much about doctrine? Because the stakes are power, which is all that leftists care about, up to and including life and death. Robespierre had his head lopped off by his fellow revolutionaries. Stalin killed innumerable hordes of his fellow Commies. Leftists of different factions are still physically attacking each other.
Above I wrote “Those doctrinal disputes are both the terrain on which leftist conflicts are fought and the prize that is being fought over.” But the doctrinal disputes are the terrain of the conflicts only as long as the conflicts stay sub-violent. Lefties being lefties, they always become violent sooner or later. The ideological wars to the knife are vitally important because they draw up the battle lines in preparation for the literal wars to the knife.
Neurotoxin 