Those who analyze the American left, both from outside and within, often deny the constant assault the left is under in this country. Most of the essays, articles, and videos which demand to know what’s wrong with the left are great examples of this. Very few of them find the obvious answer: what’s wrong with the left is that it is under constant assault from multiple well-funded sources, and has been for many decades.

The denial of this fact is not of an obvious and simple kind, like climate change denial or denial of the Holocaust. In those cases, a group of people, for self-serving and inappropriate reasons, have chosen to ignore both rational evidence and the popular consensus and assert their views with impermeable persistence. But there’s more than one way to deny a truth, and the simplest one is not the most effective. It’s much more effective to acknowledge the fact you want to deny, while simultaneously dismissing it as unimportant. Best of all is waving off a fact because everybody already knows it. As John Stewart once said, the best way to hide evil in America is to wrap it in something profoundly boring. If people are bored, or are willing to be convinced that they are bored, then they will ignore the fact that you want to deny.

People ask why it’s necessary to belabor this unpleasant fact which everybody already knows. The answer is that, if you’re being more or less constantly shelled, it’s going to have an effect on almost everything you do; it will even have an effect on your understanding of yourself and your political philosophy. If you ignore these effects, then you will be mesmerized by the specific issues of the day and unaware of the ways in which those issues are being deployed against you like weapons. You will be left vulnerable to manipulation and near-incapable of self-defense.

The current uproar over censorship and bigotry is a good example of this. Someone examined the left and found its soft underbelly: unresolved conflicts in our thinking that are easy to exploit. We believe in democracy and populist politics, which necessitates an opposition to censorship, but we also strongly oppose bigotry and the use of language in its service. Since we did not resolve this conflict in our thinking, it provided a convenient way for our enemies to tie us into knots (especially once they had the internet, the greatest device for promoting division and character assassination ever constructed).

Similarly, we had the idea that oppressed people were automatically better than the rest of us. The original conception of this idea was actually sound: we supposed that when different groups have radically different histories (such as one group being brought to America against its will as slave labor, and the other group arriving mostly voluntarily), the first group will probably know things that the second group doesn’t. I find the following scene from Norma Rae useful in this regard. Norma looks at the Jewish union organizer and says, “People always told me you Jews are different. You don’t look that different to me.” He replies “We are, though.” She asks, “Why? What makes you different?” and he says “History.”

It’s pretty obvious that when talking about what it’s like to be black in America, it’s better to ask a black person than a white one, and equally obvious that there are plenty of things that white people know less about than people of color. We not only have a different history than people of color. Our education in their history is also truncated, and the social segregation of the country usually means we have few windows into what their lives are currently like.

However, it’s a long way from acknowledging those facts to insisting that individual members of an oppressed group must always be good guys, incapable of lying or being corrupted--a belief that actually robs those people of their humanity. There’s nothing even to suggest that every member of an oppressed group must be left-wing, an assumption often made by both liberals and the left in defiance of the existence of people like Ben Carson, Michael Steele, and Condi Rice. White people on the left also tend to deny the fact that Black Christianity can, and often does, promote right-wing beliefs right along with the left-wing beliefs of the Civil Rights movement.

These unresolved conflicts and foolish beliefs make it easy for the enemies of the left. All they had to do was find some black people, trans people, gay men, lesbians, white women, and other people of color who were willing to promote right-wing talking points for pay. The idea that no one from these communities would ever be willing to do such a job has already been disproved for anybody who recognizes that Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, and the Log Cabin Republicans exist. That should put the kibosh on the idea that everybody with black skin or female organs or a preference for same-sex partners is a virtuous left-wing reformer or idealistic left-wing revolutionary. But these facts too are waved aside. Yes, of course there are some weirdos from oppressed groups who become Republicans. But most of them are Democrats, immune to corruption and guaranteed to be correct.

Unfortunately, being a Democrat is no guarantor of accuracy or ethics:

About a decade after the CBC’s 1971 founding, some 20 black lobbyists started holding informal gatherings around Washington. The Civil Rights movement had ushered more African Americans into Congress, and those lawmakers brought black staffers with them. Many of them, like former staffers all over Capitol Hill, wound up on K Street.
...
Today, the organization—now known as the Washington Government Relations Group—is a significant nexus of influence. At its regular policy gatherings, lobbyists can interact with lawmakers and staffers…[and]the corporate world...has been paying close attention. The CBC represents roughly 10 percent of the House and about a fifth of the Democratic minority. That alone makes it an attractive target for lobbyists. But two characteristics have helped it amass particular power. Its aura of moral credibility, earned during the Civil Rights era, can provide valuable progressive cover for controversial measures. And its tradition of voting as a bloc, forged in its early years to avoid marginalization, means that persuading the right CBC member can secure dozens of additional votes…

as one bank lobbyist put it, “Sophisticated companies have sophisticated lobbying operations.” He explains, “Almost every big bank has a lobbyist who has experience and can work with the Congressional Black Caucus.” The industry’s term for these lobbyists: CBC specialists. And by targeting the ten CBC members who sit on the financial services panel, these lobbyists can potentially win over the entire caucus.

The lobbyist knows first hand how effective this tactic can be. “We go right to the CBC because they are open-minded and they often vote as a bloc,” he says, asking for anonymity because he frequently relies on CBC members for support on deregulation bills. “And the professional left is scared of them. Every white liberal—media, politician, advocacy group—knows better than fucking with a CBC member.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/117874/congressional-black-caucus-war-it...

Hillary's "firewall" strategy is simply an electoral application of this idea, and it has become the primary tactic of those tasked with suppressing the left. And it's not just the white left which is suppressed (usually via character assassination). What is done to left-wing members of oppressed groups is arguably worse: though occasionally they too suffer character assassination, most of the time, they are simply erased from notice, as if they didn't exist. As one black man put it, #BernieMadeMeWhite. (Follow the link to read his story: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/bernie-sanders-whites-race-voters-pri...)

At some point, if we are to have a left, we will need to admit both the fact that we are under constant assault and the somewhat humbling reality that our thinking contains some serious conflicts. Delaying this come-to-Jesus moment will only hand more ammunition to our enemies, as it has for the past forty or more years.