It’s the kind of thing that’s probably obvious being in a space like this, so why am I bringing it up?

Because many of us grow up immersed in liberal individualism and it goes something like this, “Be who you want to be! Whoever that is!”

Liberalism loves to act inclusive, while not really being inclusive (like when it backs systemic racism), but nevertheless, the thought of it gets embedded into people. As a result, people who have no proximity to power can become too open-minded about the behavior and beliefs of others.

Not only does this make it harder for the “left” to be distinct from liberalism, it makes it harder for the “left” to hold each other accountable. This is not a judgment of lemmygrad, mind you, but a point about being on “the left” in general and the transition of going from liberal to something like marxist-leninist. Just as every group, organization, and society has hierarchy of a kind for managing decisions, whether explicitly written and enforced, or unstated and informal, every group has conceptions of acceptable and unacceptable behavior and beliefs.

Liberalism, as noted before with things like racism where it often fails to be inclusive, does not bypass this basic aspect of material reality. What it does do is pretend it is not there. No liberal pundit is going to get on national television and say in response to a mass shooting, “The shooter was just living his best life and being who he wanted to be.” Because whether they get said outright or not, there are hard limits on what liberalism finds acceptable, no matter how accommodating it tries to act.

So, “being who you want to be” is as real as the “free market” is free. These are lies that make liberalism seem more freedom free than it actually is and that promotes a softer view toward barbaric behavior from people who have no proximity to power. The liberals who are close to power have no problems calling upon it as needed to brutalize a people, but the liberals who aren’t, the ones who might otherwise be drawn to a revolutionary mind, are made to think you should stand aside and let people be.

Thereby keeping them safely away from wanting to engage with power, away from wanting to set boundaries, and away from wanting to force a just society rather than simply yearn and hope for one. Overcoming this means embracing that there should be explicitly, collectively agreed upon acceptable behaviors and beliefs, and that this should be enforced. And that these should consciously derive from what furthers goals of liberation, decolonization, and so on. And consciously steer away from exploitation and abuse.

And again, on the surface level, this might seem obvious. But it’s still something many of us will have to contend with at times, in revisiting the instinct of liberal accommodation and unlearning the lie that we can simply let others be, no matter who they are, and society will turn out fine.

This doesn’t mean be a controlling ass in your personal relationships. What it does mean is organize around uncompromising principles and question the assumption that something is automatically okay “just cause it’s how somebody is”. Maybe it really is okay and even needs better accommodation / help with it (like what gets called neurodivergence). Or maybe it’s a fucking Nazi and needs far more pushback. But every problem won’t be as obvious as a Nazi, so investigate and have principles you can look to.