by ButterflyEffect

One might think that the radical, anti-liberal left is just bitter that they have been pushed off the edge of the spectrum of political discourse and relegated to ever-shrinking university departments and a handful of sympathetic periodicals. The story, however, is more complicated than that—and its complications have profound relevance to the frustrations and peculiarities of the current Western political landscape. The burgeoning anti-oppression movement is concerned primarily with manifestations of false consciousness, and their diagnoses consequently center not on the overtly reactionary forces of society, but on those claiming to be liberal and progressive. Yet what does it mean to be focused on “racism without racists” when racists are hardly an extinct breed? What led to this focus, and what does it mean to the future of leftism? Classifying leftist ideology in a framework of agency and trust, I find a buried contradiction at the heart of anti-oppressive activism, one in which practitioners pathologically self-position themselves in a space of chronic moral jeopardy.