Can we talk about moral purity?

[howonearthdidwegethere]

I see this come up a lot on this board and want to offer up a couple of examples from my experience that bolster the case for working with a range of voices on a single issue. (I'd welcome counter examples, as I genuinely want to unpick this for my own sanity!)

Example #1: Named Person law
In Scotland, the SNP Govt passed a law (supported by all the opposition parties bar the Tories) that would have assigned every child in Scotland a state guardian. Please Google for more details if you're interested.

A groundswell of grassroots opposition rose up to challenge this law and it was largely fronted and resourced by a Christian group (forget the name of the organisation). They set up a campaign group (No2NP) and were joined by a children's law centre and a former senior social worker but the Christian group were the driving force.

I could see this law was an affront to civil liberties and yet Liberty were nowhere to be seen (waves at Shami). My most generous interpretation is that Liberty has no real presence in Scotland so weren't up on it all. Nonetheless, no human/civil rights groups spoke up.

Anyway, lots of my left-leaning, liberal mates tried to warn me off supporting the campaign, because of the Christian group and what other causes they had supported.

But the campaign group ploughed on, took a legal case and were vindicated in their concerns by the UK Supreme Court.

Example #2: EU referendum
I spent some time campaigning for Remain and most memorably spent a few hours in my hometown leafleting a few days before the vote. Standing on the same block were a former senior advisor to the Tory party, an SNP member and a lifelong Labour voter.

That individuals with very differing (often oppositional) politics could come together to fight for the same issue I found really moving. I remember too a photocall of Cameron, Ashdown and Kinnock doing a stint on a Remain phonebank, and felt similarly moved.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn refused to share a platform with any Tory or even (horrors) Brown or Blair. Of course, we can only speculate here but you have to wonder if we would be where we are now had he not taken such a puritanical view re engaging with the main Remain campaign.

If we indulge the culture wars narrative, aren't we ourselves just being complicit in the polarisation of politics, which is what's got us where we are today (Trump, Brexit etc.)?

It's an interesting question. I have woke feminist friends who are uneasy about speaking out on gender issues because they are concerned about seeming allied to right wing conservative groups. They are not our natural bedfellows!

As for Corbyn I was a fan but I feel like Labour as a whole have behaved unforgiveably over Brexit. They need to get their house in order before the Tory infighting drags us off a cliff.

Sorry I'm slightly hungover and typing one handed in a cafe ramming a bagel down my throat 😁

Agreed - ideological purity is what's got us into this mess and is what's keeping many people from seeing reality at the moment. It's really noticeable in the press - for so long, if you were leftish you could trust the BBC, the Guardian, and you sneered at the Torygraph. I haven't clicked on a Sun link for decades (grew up in Merseyside, you can understand!), and the Mail was intolerable.

And yet, here we are. Strange bedfellows, to be sure.

Example #1: Named Person law
In Scotland, the SNP Govt passed a law (supported by all the opposition parties bar the Tories) that would have assigned every child in Scotland a state guardian. Please Google for more details if you're interested

It was an idiotic proposal which , as far as I can see, never had any support outside Holyrood. The tragic ironic twist is that poor Liam Fee had a "named person" under Fife Council's pilot.

Example 2 - "Better Together " brilliant campaign and great outcome. Corbyn of course would have refused to have anything to do with it in case it sullied the purity of his ideals, as he idiotically did during the Remain campaign.

MN is awash with this sort of purity nonsense- all the "I hate Tories/ I'd never date a Tory" posts or the Rod Liddle thread today or a previous one where a poster declared "Rod Liddle hates women"

I don‘t care for moral purity. I am staunchly antiwar, and if that means allying with Ron Paul libertarians (US) I will (on this particular matter). Even though they have batshit crazy ideas in other areas.

People of good will can work together, despite differences in ideology. Just being a Christian group wouldn’t necessarily mean right-wing or deeply conservative views, movements like liberation theology certainly embrace radical politics.

On the other hand, a confluence of views between feminists and right-wing groups might be a kind of artificial agreement springing from very different motives. Right-wing groups rarely centre the rights of women.

Discerning the difference might be a matter of working out what succcess for each group looks like and then interrogating whether any agreement is real or incidental.

Very interesting post- the polarisation that's happening is really worrying.
I saw a documentary on silicon valley a while back. The tech company reps talked about how technology will ultimately solve humanity's problems but in order to do so we will need to go through a complete breakdown of the established social structures. They referred to this process as 'disruption '. Sounds a bit 'tinfoil hat', but it feels like that is exactly what's happening and the tech companies are driving it.

Thanks for the responses so far.

I've been challenged in my views just recently. I follow a group that campaigns on digital rights (e.g. preventing corporations and governmental organisations gaining access to the private data of citizens). And now I find out one of its directors is a lawyer who campaigns to stop the censorship of extreme pornography.

It drives me nuts. As already said, this need for Idealogical purity is what drove us into this mess - it's certainly not going to get us out of it.

I'd forgotten about Corbyn refusing to share a platform with Blair or the Tories on Brexit. What a difference that might have made. Tosser.

There are fine examples of moral purity (ie blinkered thinking) this morning on the Rod Liddle and Posy ate my homework threads.

We should be able to work with others on areas of common interest. Purity politics is a zero sum game in the end, but it is, as others have said, important to look at the differing motivations and what you hope to achieve from activism compared to what others hope to achieve.

Many groups or individuals opposed to trans ideology are ultimately interested in upholding the gender binary and clearly delineated sex roles despite not agreeing that a person can change sex.

This is very different from the outcome I would hope for which is for a person of either sex to outwardly present as they wish but with an acknowledgement that biological sex is an important reality and dangerous to supersede in law.

Yes it's bollocks. And it has caused me to actually listen more to people who I would have previously written off (yes, I mean conservatives).

What really pisses me off is the utter arrogance of people dictating beliefs to people. Fuck right off, I can think for myself thanks.

The Named Person stuff is awful. I used to think the SNP had pretty good policies, although I'm not a nationalist. Now I think they are a small step away from authoritarianism. And they are already there within their own party.

I am yet another politically homeless woman die to the trans bollocks.

Agreed. Nelson Mandela is an example. His strategy was to find ways of working with the enemy even though their goals were initially very different. He talks a lot about this in his book ‘Long Walk To Freedom’

Moral purity annoys me. I'm pretty left wing but obviously read too much Orwell in my youth.

I don't think it's a purely left wing problem although it might feel like one at the moment.

This is really interesting! I had not heard the term before today but have often been infuriated by people criticising my views "how can you agree with the Mail?" or "typical right wing attitude" when my views are exactly that - my views. If a radfem journalist writes something insightful for the Mail why shouldn't I agree with it? Just because I grew up with the Guardian, why shouldn't I disagree with a columnist who writes something in it that I hate?

My male gay friends have been the worst offenders. They think I should be supporting minority groups to the exclusion of women all others because I am a socialist and "that's what we do". When I don't toe the line, it must be because I am a right wing extremist, in thrall to the US Christian fundamentalists. Of course

I prefer to take the view (like Jo Cox and Steve Hogarth and many others) that "there is more that binds us than divides us" and try to share my activities with people who also enjoy the same activity. A bit like going shopping with one friend but cocktails with another - we're not all into the same thing!

The Rod Liddle thread was tedious.
I will vote for anyone regardless of their politics, as long as they don't believe in self ID

My impression from today's Liddle thread is that by far the majority of posters took the view that he's a twerp, but right on this particular topic, and that the two opinions were not incompatible.

The posters suggesting that aligning with him on this one issue meant aligning with him on all issues were very much in the minority.

One of the reasons I am really open about being Catholic here is to undercut the moral purity thing. Because this isn't about tribalism - women are women are women. I'm not here because I'm a labour voter, or a conservative, or because I'm bisexual, or because I'm Catholic, or because I favour certain print media over others.

My basic motivation is an understanding that women are important and I want to stand up for all of them. Personally, my faith is a factor in how I behave and why I make the arguments I do, but I understand that there are many voices here coming at it from very different angles. We have common cause in this. We might not agree on anything else, but that genuinely doesn't matter. I believe in right and wrong. If something is right, it doesn't bother me who supports it. Objectivity is very useful in a world of conflicting ideas.

Well said.

Tribalism prevents critical and intelligent thought and leads to 'othering' which is a first step in any major human rights violation. It is both stupid and dangerous.

My impression from today's Liddle thread is that by far the majority of posters took the view that he's a twerp, but right on this particular topic, and that the two opinions were not incompatible

I don't think he's a twerp. I think describing Rod Liddle, who has had a long and successful career in journalism and who is articulate, clever and quite often funny , as a "twerp" is itself an example of narrow minded purity of thinking.

I'm very, very tired of 'right wing' being thrown out as the worst thing one can be and 'left wing' being held up as the standard.

Common decency is simply that - ime, most people agree what the aims are, even if they disagree with the ways to get there. Diversity of opinion is a good thing. The only we all have to agree on to get things done are provable material facts.

The modern definition of the progressive point of view is so damned illiberal.

It bothers me that we arebeing judged on which men somtimes agree with us on particular issues. Some right wing religious groups or individuals may agree that men cannit be women, this does not mean all women who oppose self-id must also be religious and right wing.

This guilty-by-association propaganda always centre mens groups, and judges women if and when such groups align with some of our views.

It really says more about the so-called self-identified left wingers, that they are willing to throw all women and girls under the bus.

And as many examples mentioned in the Posie ate my homework thread-show, the diversity of people speaking up against self-id, is a strength.

Of course Most people would initially quite like if everybody agreed with them on every single issue under the sun, but I honstly don’t think that would be useful or interesting for very long. People saying things that that surprise us, or shock, are often useful to start some critical thinking.

I think dismissing people who say things we don’t agree with, and keep disagreeing with, is lazy. -it is certainly a quick way to shut down all talk and requirement to think very quickly.
If we can show that people and groups from all walks of life come together on a given issue, that is useful.

I think I’m just trying to say that strategic alliances arenot necessarily a bad thing.

I'm involved in interfaith activities. Just before the summer holidays I attended quite a large group discussing celebrating life-events.

We had Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahais, atheists present, other faiths, too. A huge diversity of ethnic types. Members of different factions within individual religions. Some very wary looks as people introduced themselves or identified their religious belief.

Discussions that began with cautious, polite, curiosity, became heated and animated - but never angry. Many agreements, many disagreements. Yet we all managed to keep our tempers, to treat each other with respect, to enjoy our evening despite our conflicting views.

At the end of the evening some participants left convinced that their view was confirmed as right, others that they enjoyed other views and might incorporate them.

Who had the moral high ground? Who was right?

IMO everyone who came. With an open mind, with a willingness to listen and to learn. With an interest to discover commonalities between us.

Bluetits can you point us to your doc? that sounds really interesting.

I think it’s more powerful to have campaigns that see unusual allies working together on a single issue. Exactly as OP says with Better Together.

That said dating pool choice is not the same as cooperating with a cross section of organisations on single issue activism.
It’s ‘moral purity’ not to want to fuck or date a Tory/Labour Party/Lib Dem/Green Party member whoever or whatever. Unless people have a pre-set list of Topics Never to Be Discussed (?)

I explained why I think he's a twerp lass, and it has nothing to do with purity and everything to do with laziness of critical thinking and an aversion to reviewing actual science on subjects.

I posted an example of such lazy thinking where he concludes that sex differences in stem representation are down to differences in 'innate aptitudes' between the sexes.

I evaluate the man on his written arguments. I know nothing about him and his stance other than that.

I agree he's articulate, clever and funny.
Is this incompatible with being a twerp?

He's more than clever enough to give more than a cursory thought to a subject, and that in part gives rise to my annoyance that he doesn't.

He considers himself able to pronounce "it's all innate, see" without bothering to read some very compelling scientific evidence that it really isn't. He dismisses evidence, if he even has considered it might exist.

So yes, he's right about some things, wrong about others, and doesn't appear especially interested in challenging his own prejudices.