Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

I don’t have to look far to see how much trouble the left is in, because I’m confronted with it almost every day.
Here’s a brief thread about my experience, and why we urgently need to get over ourselves and unite against our common threats.

In February 2020, I was asked on the BBC who I supported for Labour leader. I hadn't given much thought to it. I’ve never been a member of any party, and none of the candidates inspired me. I said something nice about Lisa Nandy, partly because no one else had mentioned her.

Almost every day since then, I’ve been attacked for it. It is flourished, on Twitter and elsewhere, as evidence that I’m an evil traitor. Here’s today’s iteration.

https://twitter.com/Jackiew80333500/status/1467389984978219012

It’s exhausting but, more importantly, completely pointless. The only possible thing it achieves is to make the people pointing the finger feel morally superior. Yup, I should have been more careful in what I said. But seriously? After almost 2 years you can’t move on from this?

There are some things in the past we shouldn’t move on from: the Iraq war, Grenfell Tower, spycops, the Windrush scandal, the many other cases in which justice has not been done. But this …. well, it just illustrates the obsessive pettiness of so much of the infighting.

This vast and Earth-shattering issue - a throwaway remark made almost 2 years ago - has now been built into evidence that I was “anti-Corbyn”. Never mind that I supported him strongly in print and on film, and worked with his team for a year on the Land for the Many report ....

The underlying problem, for people with this mindset, is that my support for him was not unconditional. I sometimes criticised him and his team, and expressed my exasperation, as open goals were missed and gifts handed to the Tories.

I don’t offer unconditional support to anyone in public life. The demand that we should do so is arguably the most offputting and self-destructive of all traits on the left. Corbyn did not demand unconditional support – he’s not like that – but some of his followers did.

In doing so, they built a wall of intolerance, excluding anyone not considered a true believer. Nothing could be better designed to repel undecided people than this purity policing. Nothing could do more to drive away potential converts than the demand for unwavering loyalty.

The pettiness, the futility, the obsession with trivia, the determination, like the Hapsburgs, to forget nothing and learn nothing: all these act like a gigantic warning sign, reading "unless you are prepared to leave your critical faculties at the door, this is not for you".

We can't afford this. We face the greatest threat humanity has ever confronted: the possible collapse of our life support systems. We face a government ripping down our liberties and curtailing democracy. Rather than turning friends into enemies, we need to work together.

Fighting pointless, petty wars over who is the purest of them all is an indulgence that serves only the Tories.
As the old saying goes, the right looks for converts, the left looks for traitors. Isn’t it time we started looking for converts?

I don't get everything right. I get plenty wrong. It arises from an incurable condition called being human. I don't agree with everything said by other campaigners for a just and green world. But that doesn't mean we can't unite.

We should value each other not despite our differences but because of them. We need diverse movements, with a wide range of perspectives and ideas, if we are to have any hope of escaping the vast challenges we face.

I believe that the reason why humans have so many different kinds of intelligence and ways of seeing the world is that groups of hominins with diverse minds were more likely to survive than those who all saw everything the same way. I think the same applies today to politics.

No one has a monopoly on wisdom. There is no single, surefire strategy that works every time. We have to be constantly innovative and creative to succeed, and this requires diversity of thought and openness to new perspectives and ideas.

There is strength in diversity.
We need to find it and build on it.
So though I might get frustrated and annoyed by these futile attacks, I'm not going to hate anyone for them.
There is too much hate in the world.
There is too little solidarity and love.

Pick your battles.
Fight your opponents, not your allies.
Build the movement, and keep it open.
Find the solidarity.
Look for the love.