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Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy

SOLVED! #14 - How to Be An Imperfectionist: Fighting the infighting and building a resilient Left movement

Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy

Jay Tomlinson

Marx, Political, Feminism, Jacobin, Left, Hightower, Politics, Counterspin, News, News Commentary, Maddow, Hartmann, Democracynow, Antiracism, Marxism, Socialism, Capitalism, Ezra, Liberal, Intercepted, Hayes, Progressive, Intercept, Intersectionality, Wolff

4.63.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Air Date: 7–7-25

Today, Jay!, Amanda, Deon, and Erin discuss:

  • Some advice on understanding how to identify imperfect allies vs. true opponents
  • Good-faith critiques of (and agreements with) socialist NYU Professor Vivek Chibber’s views on identity politics on the Left
  • Working Families Party head Maurice Mitchell’s ideas on “neoliberal identity” politics for those in the Left movement
  • How Gov. Wes Moore rejected our political “charade” and what we should do instead
  • …and more in BACKSTAGE: Beyond the Algorithm (MEMBERS ONLY!)

 

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REFERENCES:

The Left Needs to Learn the Difference Between Imperfect Allies and Our True Opponents - Films for Action

“America Has No Left Wing” with Vivek Chibber - Factually with Adam Conover

(Only between time codes 27:36-52:20)

Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis - Convergence Magazine

The Left is Eating Itself - First Person from The New York Times

American Politics Only Pretends to Work - The New Republic

 

MEMBERS ONLY:

It’s Nice to Be right - New York Magazine

MAMDANI” via @astorwalk on Instagram

 

 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast, although today we're sharing a sample of this week's episode of our other show, solved.

0:11.9

Best of Left members get solved early, ad-free, and complete with a members-only backstage segment all via podcast.

0:19.7

But we're also putting the show out on the Best

0:22.0

of Left YouTube channel where we're attempting to find a new audience. Consider supporting us

0:26.6

directly by signing up for a membership or help us grow on YouTube by subscribing to the

0:31.3

Best of Left YouTube channel and catching every episode of Solved there. And now here's a few minutes

0:37.0

for free to wet your appetite, but just like Best of

0:40.0

the Left, the real benefits kick in when you hear the whole show, which is greater than

0:44.5

the sum of its parts.

0:46.2

Next up, we're continuing the discussion on how to have discussions, and we're continuing

0:52.7

to talk about race in a way that I, as a white person

0:57.5

who's been paying attention to this stuff for 15 years, found like clarifying, clarifying

1:05.2

in one of those ways that you're like, I'm annoyed that this was clarifying because I feel like

1:09.4

this should have been clear before. But it wasn't in this way it needed to be said. So Maurice Mitchell, he's the head of the

1:15.7

Working Families Party, wrote an essay a couple of years ago, and it made a bit of a splash,

1:23.1

particularly in the organized left, you know, the organizations. And it was written in response to a phenomenon

1:31.7

of left-wing organizations, like genuinely struggling to manage their missions because of

1:38.3

internal strife. And so it got complicated and messy. And we're only picking at one of the threads of this very multifaceted conversation because Maurice Mitchell wrote something very clarifying, as I said.

1:54.7

So he talks about a concept that he refers to as neoliberal identity.

2:00.0

I don't know if he coined that term, but that's how he

2:03.0

refers to it. And he explains it this way. He says, quote, using one's identity or personal

2:07.9

experience as a justification for a political position, you may hear someone argue, as a working

...

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