I keep hearing people say that the far-left is significantly less organised, more fragmented than the far-right. Why is that? (And to be clear: I’m asking about the far-left, not just the left in general (though they may be linked)
I keep hearing people say that the far-left is significantly less organised, more fragmented than the far-right. Why is that? (And to be clear: I’m asking about the far-left, not just the left in general (though they may be linked)
To begin to analyze this we have to have clear, simple definitions of the left and right. I think it very easily maps on to authoritarianism vs. freedom. You could take “being racist” as a right-wing position and say “but they want to be free to do that”, but freedom only extends until you’re compromising someone else’s freedom, then it’s power. Whether it’s about being racist, controlling trans people or queer people, or whatever it is, the right worships one thing and that is power.
When you do that, by the very nature, it’s more easy to be organized and disciplined. There’s no one to push back on orders from above no matter how dumb because that’s the goal. If we try to strive for their level of organization and discipline, we become like them. We have to stop, every moment, and make sure that what we’re doing is something being consented to by the wider community. That’s just the nature of the fight.
And I don’t think it will ever end. There will always be this tension between permissiveness and discipline. We’ve just been stuck in the disciplined, authoritarian mode, since the authoritarians gained the upper hand by stealing the Americas.
If you’re looking for more reading along these lines I believe Graeber and Wengrow talk about this in The Dawn of Everything. But I’m also drawing from my own experience and understanding.