It’s sad it has to be mentioned but glad the article calls out the purity test mindset and arrogance as two reasons why a ripe youth from 2010-now has gone unfortunately more to the right than it should have. There have been many charlatans gaining followers for no purpose other than their own self-aggrandizement and ego–rather than knitting the fabric of collective needs and power together.

Gatekeepers are the opposite of big tent and historically one of the approaches has worked–and it’s not the one that often arrives with an air of superiority and performative division.

I saw this all a ton after Occupy Wall Street; new, vocal, passionate lefties who made overly-broad claims they were divisive and went unchallenged. Men, particularly were broadly and publicly denounced by such charlatans without qualifiers, criteria, though many were shoulder to shoulder with those looking to change and fix historically inequitable structures and systems. What did this do? Gave a bunch of males–many of them young and impressionable-- the message they had no place on the left since they were not a partner in fixing things but someone to “shut up and dribble” at best and at worst a target or enemy of those you might be trying to support. It’s super important that more female voices are heard, leaders chosen and that opportunity is made more equal–but these charlatans did a decade’s worth of damage before in the early 2020s a few articles finally came out against the approach that perhaps the idea that roundly bashing “men” as a category might not be the path to building a broader movement and coalition. The left went from 99% vs. the super rich oligarchs with middle america totally aligned with the occupy movement to withering away to small factions protecting and advocating for their “own” cause.