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Nobody hates working together with leftists more than leftists (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 day ago by AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee to c/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[-] SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com 49 points 1 day ago

Seeing this meme play out in the comment section is really fucking funny.

Ethics be what they may, shaming every individual you interact with who doesn’t conform to your beliefs is a really shitty way to try to effect societal change.

[-] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

Actually it's the most effective way.

I read a great biography of William Lloyd Garrison (the American abolitionist) a couple of years ago and it made it clear how he, and other radicals, dramatically changed the course of history through their constant focus and activism on how slavery was wrong. Their radicalism shifted the middle. That's what "extreme" views do, they make it easier for people in the middle to move towards embracing justice.

We (most of us) don't remember all the people who said "Yeah, slavery is wrong but we have to be practical," or "I would like to end slavery but we have to compensate owners," or "But what will we do with all the black people?" These were real positions within the anti-slavery movement. When Garrison began his career, they were the dominant positions and he spent much of his career being vilified by gradualists who thought he was too extreme.

They wanted to end slavery "someday." And they didn't want those who claimed to own other humans to be too uncomfortable. We don't remember gradualists today. We remember the men and women with the courage and ethical wisdom to look at slavery and say "This is wrong. It needs to stop." And their "extremism" is part of why it did stop, because the moral pressure they exerted made the South conclude it was inevitable that slavery would end unless they broke free of the Union.

I think we have to be careful in drawing parallels between veganism and past social justice movements, but there is a valuable lesson for us here. We can serve animals by not being in the middle because by being extreme, we can change what the middle even is. Today it is becoming mainstream to critique things like gestation crates or foie gras. We did that. We changed the middle. (This "we," obviously, is broad).

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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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