Being nice to the liberals (a bitter post)

Liberals draw a false binary between ‘hardened experienced radical’ and ‘young naive liberal’, and use this to play innocent and to pressure anti-capitalists to be ‘nicer’ to liberals, but really, we’re usually already holding back A LOT.

Most of the time, when we talk about disagreeing with liberals, we’re focusisng only on their ideas and we’re not adressing interpersonal harm to us. 

We’re rarely adressing all the times liberal protestors have testified to the police against ‘radicals’, resulting in our convinction, incarceration and other things that ruin our whole lives.

We’re rarely adressing the pain and trauma of being blamed when we experience police brutality, the lack of community support we get when we’re at our most vulnerable.

We’re rarely adressing how often liberals co-opt protests we organize to promote their NGO brands or election campaigns. How they come to us to work ‘in solidarity’ when they need extra bodies and stab us in the back when they need to boost their own respectability.

We’re rarely adressing how liberals exclude us from places of power by not recognizing the work we did outside of official organisations, by excluding people with a criminal record, by networks where people of privilege help each other get positions on boards and hand power from one rich white kid to the next.

We’re rarely adressing the academic liberals making a career by writing queer studies thesis about our fights, our blood on the street, to file those stories in universities where only the privileged few will read them.

I could go on, but my point is: liberals, moderates, democrats, whatever they call themselves are CONSTANTLY undermining and betraying us, excluding us, exploiting us, ruining our lives and helping put us in jail. Often doing so from places of power and targetting the most vulnerable of us.

So if you see an anti-capitalist being a bit bitter and angry about liberals, before you tell them that they should be nicer, consider that they’re probably still holding back 99% of their pain.