How the Left Eats Itself Every. Single. Time. (With Receipts)
The Resistance Sabotage Manual: 12 Ways We Accidentally Collaborate with Our Own Defeat
Day 9 of 12
August 31, 2025
The War We're Losing Against Ourselves
While they were building detention infrastructure, we were fighting about whether "Latinx" is culturally imperialist. While they passed voting restrictions, we canceled organizers over 2015 tweets. While they consolidated power, we held struggle sessions about who's allowed to use which tactical frameworks.
The right built a machine. We built a circular firing squad.
They Did It Too. They Lost.
Spanish Civil War: Anarchists (CNT-FAI) and Communists (PCE) murdered each other in Barcelona's "May Days" 1937 while Franco advanced
Weimar Germany: Social Democrats (SPD) called police on Communists (KPD) who called SPD "social fascists" while Nazis grew from 2.6% to 37%
Chile 1970-73: MIR criticized Allende from the left, splitting Popular Unity while the right unified behind Pinochet
France 1934-36: SFIO socialists and PCF communists refused collaboration until fascist leagues nearly toppled the republic
The Purity Testing That Guarantees Defeat
Purity testing operates as an ideological authentication ritual where movements consume themselves validating member credentials rather than building power. It manifests as retroactive punishment for growth, competitive performative radicalism, and the elevation of theoretical precision over material victories.
Current patterns destroying coalitions:
Land acknowledgment wars: Organizations spending months debating proper acknowledgment protocols while indigenous water protectors face immediate prosecution
Pronoun policing evolution: Canceling 60-year-old union organizers for adding pronouns "wrong" while union-busting accelerates
Mutual aid gatekeeping: Destroying food programs over whether participants read the "right" theory while people go hungry
Action certification battles: Six-month debates over who can claim credit for tactics while opposition consolidates power
Why We Cannibalize Our Own
Narcissism of small differences: Freud identified that communities with adjoining territories engage in constant feuds precisely because of their similarity. The left fights itself because minor differences feel more threatening to identity than major opposition.
Control what you can control: When facing overwhelming systemic power, policing allies' language feels achievable while defeating fascism feels impossible. We shrink our ambitions to manageable domains.
Easier to fight allies than enemies: Calling out a comrade on Twitter requires no courage. Confronting armed authoritarians requires everything. We choose the battle that won't hurt us.
Moral superiority as social capital: In movements lacking material resources, ideological purity becomes currency. The most radical position accumulates social power regardless of strategic value.
The Historical Pattern We're Repeating
Spanish Republic 1936-1939: How infighting enabled Franco
May 3-8, 1937, Barcelona: While Franco's Nationalists advanced, Republican forces turned on themselves. Communist PSUC attacked anarchist CNT positions. POUM (Workers' Party) caught in crossfire. Death toll: 500 Republicans killing Republicans. George Orwell, witnessing the fratricidal combat, wrote: "The whole experience was a foretaste of what political life is coming to be like."
Cost of infighting: While Barcelona Republicans murdered each other, Franco captured Málaga (February), Bilbao (June), Santander (August), and Gijón (October) almost unopposed. The Republic lost the entire northern front during their "May Days" feuding.
Weimar Germany: SPD vs KPD
The Social Democratic SPD controlled Prussia's police. The Communist KPD called them "social fascists" - claiming social democracy was fascism's twin. Ernst Thälmann (KPD leader) declared the SPD the "main enemy." 1929: SPD police chief banned KPD May Day demonstrations; 33 dead in "Bloody May." 1932: KPD helped Nazis in transport strike against SPD government.
Cost of infighting: While SPD and KPD fought each other, Nazi party membership grew from 108,000 (1929) to 1.4 million (1932). January 1933: Hitler took power. March 1933: Both parties banned. Thälmann died in Buchenwald; SPD leaders fled or died in camps. They ended in the same camps they couldn't unite to prevent.
Chile 1970-1973: Left fragmentation
Allende's Popular Unity: a fragile coalition of six parties. The Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) attacked from the left - demanding faster nationalization, arming workers. Socialist Party split between moderates and radicals. Communist Party opposed arming workers, MIR demanded it, Allende caught between.
Cost of infighting: While the left debated revolutionary purity, the right conducted 320 bombing attacks (1972-73), organized the October 1972 strike paralyzing the economy, and built paramilitary groups. September 11, 1973: Pinochet struck. MIR, Socialists, Communists all ended in the same torture centers they failed to unite against.
What Authoritarians Do While We Purity Test
They know our weakness. They count on it. Here's their playbook while we fight ourselves:
Unify their coalition: Merge their 30% true believers with 20% reluctant supporters into a governing majority
Pass legislation: 500+ voter suppression bills passed while we debated inclusive language
Build infrastructure: Create parallel institutions while we destroy our own over ideological impurity
Establish discipline: Enforce message consistency while we have 47 competing theories of change
Expand incrementally: Take ground inch by inch while we demand immediate revolution or nothing
What they think while watching us: "Let them fight about pronouns and land acknowledgments. Every canceled organizer is one less leader we have to neutralize. Every split coalition saves us the work of dividing them."
"But What About Accountability?"
The objection: "We MUST maintain principles! We can't work with problematic people!"
The response: Accountability builds power. Purity testing destroys it.
Accountability says: "That harm was real. Here's how we address it while fighting together."
Purity testing says: "You're canceled. One less person in our shrinking army."
Accountability creates processes for growth and repair
Purity testing creates enemies from potential allies
Accountability happens in private, results show in public
Purity testing happens in public for social capital
The question isn't whether to have standards. It's whether your standards build a movement that can win or a club that feels pure while losing.
This Week's Circular Firing Squad
DSA chapters splitting over whether electoral work is "revolutionary enough" while 19 states passed 34 voter suppression laws this session
Abolitionists canceling prison reform advocates as "carceral feminists" while private prison stocks hit record highs
Climate groups fragmenting over whether to accept former oil workers as allies while drilling permits approved at fastest rate since 2016
Tenant unions collapsing in Oakland, Portland, Austin over whether homeowners can participate while corporate buyers acquired 28% of homes sold
Palestine solidarity fractures over tactical diversity while AIPAC spent $100 million unopposed in primaries
How to Build Despite Differences
Easy Mode: The 80% Rule
Accept 80% ideological alignment as sufficient for collaboration
Save theoretical debates for after material victories
Create "parkour politics" - find the path that works, not the perfect path
Establish "criticism timing" - critique after action, not during planning
Practice "yes, and" organizing instead of "actually" activism
Medium Mode: Strategic Unity
Adopt "diversity of tactics" frameworks that validate multiple approaches
Focus targeting on common enemies, not imperfect allies
Build "spokes councils" allowing autonomous action within loose coordination
Create "principles of unity" documents focusing on shared goals, not methods
Establish "non-aggression pacts" between movement factions
Hard Mode: Principled Solidarity
Publicly call out purity testing when you see it happening
Model grace by acknowledging your own political evolution
Create "accountability not cancelation" processes for growth
Build "big tent" coalitions that include seemingly incompatible elements
Practice "revolutionary discipline" - critique internally, support publicly
Your Purity Testing Inventory
☐ Refused to work with "problematic" allies
☐ Spent more time critiquing left than organizing against right
☐ Canceled someone for views they no longer hold
☐ Left a group over theoretical disagreement
☐ Prioritized ideological purity over strategic effectiveness
☐ Watched coalitions crumble over minor differences, did nothing
☐ Used "liberal" as an insult toward potential allies
☐ Demanded perfect politics from imperfect people
☐ Valued being right over being effective
☐ Confused education with organizing
☐ Policed language more than built power
☐ Let the perfect be the enemy of the good
Count your checks. That's how many victories you handed them.
The Success Stories You Need
The Rainbow Coalition (1969): Fred Hampton's Black Panthers allied with the Young Patriots (Confederate flag-wearing white migrants) and Young Lords (Puerto Rican street gang). Hampton didn't demand ideological purity - he demanded commitment to shared material goals: free breakfast programs, health clinics, police accountability. The Patriots kept their problematic symbols initially but showed up for Black liberation. The FBI assassinated Hampton precisely because this coalition threatened power. His model: "We're not going to fight fire with fire. We're going to fight fire with water."
ACT UP (1987-1996): HIV-positive activists didn't purity test. Wall Street brokers worked with sex workers. Lesbian separatists collaborated with gay Republicans. They shared one goal: ending AIDS deaths. Tactics ranged from die-ins to FDA negotiations. No one got canceled for insufficient radicalism. Result: They forced fastest drug approval process in FDA history, saved millions of lives. Their principle: "United in anger, diverse in tactics."
The lesson: Every successful movement prioritized victory over purity. Every defeated movement did the opposite.
Tomorrow: The warning from 2021 that everyone forgot — and why forgetting it might cost everything.
The Resistance Sabotage Manual is a 12-day series examining the specific ways we accidentally collaborate with authoritarianism — and how to stop. Each day reveals one self-sabotage pattern we must break. Based on analysis of democratic collapses from Weimar Germany to present day.
What coalition have you avoided joining because it wasn't pure enough? What victory did that cost?