“If somebody says that you are lying, that is not an attack on Jews, that is an attack on you, and just stop hiding behind identity. This is all the snowflake behavior that the right is supposedly criticizing the left for that you’re simply repeating here.”
The thing the left isn’t ready for apparently: you have to be an asshole to get things done and put your foot down. You can’t hold hands and sing to run a country. You don’t beat Nazis dancing in a frog costume. The guys who beat the Nazis last time were definitely assholes. They had to be. At some point you have to step up and get aggressive. The frog suit and no kings day is bs and useless. They’re not listening to you
Oh it’s not useless. Each time people go to the streets, it lowers the bar to do it next time too. Dancing frogs and that kind of things might lower the initial barrier for some, and from there it just gets easier to organize in general too.
It’s not immediately useful, but this improves the will and tendency to organize. And shows the strong nature of solidarity, of standing together.
One day it’ll be extremely beneficial that a lot more people have lower barriers to join the other people in the streets. The US isn’t that far from their own Maidan experience starting to feel nigh.
I think I would agree that at least part of the “left” aren’t ready for that first premise (I mean, Blave is there, handwringing, call out the “being an asshole” as a “major weakness”). But Cenk, and their audience, is the counter example. Mehdi Hasan would be another counter example. Wajahat Ali as another counter example. Franny Fiorrentini as another counter example. Jenifer Welch, another. I can keep going.
Blave is looking for “suave Finnesse” because, I would argue, that this agrees with the liberal sensibility of professionalism and elitism which defines what “leadership” should look and sound like. Mature, prepared, studied, cultured. The Obamas, the Harris, the Bidens, the Clintons, the Ezra Kleins, the Schumers, the Jefferies. There is a specific “size and shape”, a specific culture leadership is expected to come from among liberals.
And that’s at contrast with the people whom I mentioned, and especially Cenk, whom I would characterized as “brawlers”.
I don’t want to trivialize the importance of this separation within the “apparent left”, because I really think without addressing this divide, there is no unified coalition to stop fascism.
Even 1% of 7 million might be enough