Don’t Let Past Mistakes Become Current Ones

Luis-Enrique Marquez

The American Left is the biggest threat to marginalized communities—the communities they care about, the ones they fight for. The American Left seems intent on making the same mistakes that the German Left made when the Nazis were climbing to power.

A refusal to work with each other, an insistence that only their worldview was the right one, regardless of whether it was anarchist, communist, liberal, progressive—each thought they were right and smarter and knew more than the others. And, since they knew more, why should they work with the others? History has given us the answer why. Ultimately, we have the German Left and their absolute refusal to work with each other to thank for the rise of Nazism there.

That same arrogance seems to be prevalent in the American Left, that and a delusionalism that is really quite scary.

The American Left, while well-meaning, is often as dangerous as the Right to the communities the Left says it wants to defend. Its gatekeeping, quickness to spread rumors and believe them, and inability to see beyond its own cliques is perilous. It’s almost like navigating high school, which would be fine, if we were teenagers but many of us are “grown” adults.

Former President Donald Trump has been very clear about his intentions regarding a second term. He is currently the front runner against all known candidates from the Left and the Right.

The American Left lives in a bubble that it has created for itself. It seems to think that the second term will look a lot like the first. I don’t. I see a country that will be at home in any dystopian sci fi novel. Trump has already spoken about sending U.S. troops into Mexico. We have a rightwing Supreme Court that has already shown its willingness to take away rights that we thought we would never see taken away (abortion). What other rights are on the docket to be taken away?

A few years ago people were in the streets yelling, “Black lives matter!” What happened? Why are more black and brown men being murdered by the police? Where is the outrage? Remember when people spoke and acknowledged they stood on stolen land? What happened to that? I know and you know what happened, but you may not want to hear it said. I’ll say it. It was never real. It was for the most part performative. In an age of social media, it was all about getting likes.

So what needs to be done? In my opinion the American Left needs to be fighting and preparing for what is to come. It might almost be too late, or the American Left might do the thing that is most American and that is get it together and swoop in at the last minute.

It’s almost like in some parts we have “given up the streets” to fascists. I know in my town of Portland, Oregon well-known fascist organizer and convicted murderer Kyle Brewster is allowed to live in a community of marginalized people and we all know it. Every single antifascist organizing group in my city knows about him and where he lives, but we don’t work together to get him out. So our community remains unsafe for people of color. I myself have published and made public information about Proud Boys who were or are in the NW Chapter and you can find that information here. Imagine if groups worked together to make this place safe. Fighting also includes voting. I am not here to tell you how to vote, or have the discussion about if you should vote. However, the American Fascist Movement is such a threat, we must use any weapon in our power to fight it, which includes voting.

We used to say all tactics are valid and needed in fighting fascism and Leftists need to reclaim that Praxis. While we fight and defend our streets from fascists, we need to plan for a time when they truly are in power and have the power and authority of the federal government behind them. Also we need to understand what being an ally really means. It doesn’t mean acceptance of all thoughts and ideas, and in the Left it seems to mean that. To say that if we don’t agree 100 percent we can’t be allies is stupid and fascist-thinking.

The coming year is going to be hard. We can win before it’s too late, before a time when fighting will just get us killed or imprisoned. But we have to start now. We must make our door wider so more can come in.

Luis-Enrique Marquez recently released his new book Antifascist: A Memoir of the Portland Uprising 2016-2020.