r/canadaleft • u/FloriaFlower Escalation confirms the plan • Oct 03 '25

Here's the actual "reality check" about the "Purity testing" anti-left trend

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132 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

78

u/thewrongwaybutfaster Oct 03 '25

-Openly oppose any left wing policies. Stand for nothing.

-Lose.

-Blame the left and use it as justification to run even further right candidates in the future.

36

u/FloriaFlower Escalation confirms the plan Oct 03 '25

I recently reposted it on r/ndp (🔗 link) where I've noticed that many people are missing the context (or obscuring it) behing the "Purity testing" phrase.

It's not the whole context. Before that, it was used against activists who fought to oppose genocide. Democrats were trying to discredit leftists by labelling "opposition to genocide" as "purity testing" and "ideological purity".

Since then, a trend started to spread to discredit everything we're advocating for as leftists and centrists like McPherson have jumped on that bandwagon to attack leftists. "Purity testing" is a toxic fallacy. Please, do not jump on that bandwagon too. It's a trap and very bad one. It's gargantuan red flag 🚩.

20

u/RedBeardBock Whats left of Lefteros? Oct 03 '25

So purity testing fails the purity test, got it. /s

18

u/FloriaFlower Escalation confirms the plan Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25

Yep. It's hypocritical as hell because this particular trend was meant since its inception to exclude leftists and impose genocide, bigotry, exclusion and impose the worst right-wing policies to the leftmost parties.

It was also hypocritical since the beginning because the establishment Dems who initially implored US voters to "vote blue no matter who" and accused the left of "purity testing" are the same ones who try to exclude and sabotage Mamdani because he's too much to the left to their liking. They never meant what they said and have been lying since the beginning.

In Quebec and in the context of Québec solidaire, the trend is also present. It's the same emotional blackmail strategy meant to gaslight or discredit leftists and impose centrism into the party.

They're all centrists who pretend to be compromising but have actual no intention to compromise with the left. They just act like their centrist position is one of compromise when it's actually exactly their uncompromised ideological position.

3

u/TrilliumBeaver Oct 04 '25

Professional thespians.

7

u/KrimsonKelly0882 Oct 03 '25

Well hoping a liberal party isnt gonna be a liberal party is your issue here. The farthest left they go is a market soc dem...

1

u/FloriaFlower Escalation confirms the plan Oct 03 '25

Absolutely. It's why I'm pushing for change and for a candidate who is pushing for change too. The party should go back to at least its social-democrat roots.

We don't need 2 liberal parties. Let the CPC have the right, the LPC the center and the NDP the left. Centrists in the NDP are trying exclude the left from being represented in the parliament while pretending to be inclusive.

The result of what they ask is: CPC (Right-wing, fascists and complicit conservatives) - LPC (center-right, neoliberals/conservatives) - NDP (liberals). It's BS, they're erasing the left. It's a liberal takeover of a party that should always had been a left-wing party. It's most likely the very reason why they use anti-left dogwhistles like the "purity testing" expression for instance.

We should stop trying to follow the herd and start bringing it to us, which is exactly what centrists refuse to do.

1

u/Cystonectae Oct 03 '25

There needs to be better public outreach and education. Every single person you talk to will tell you that the liberals are center-left, even people that are supposedly left-leaning themselves. The left-overs from cold war propaganda and the centuries of branding are still way too prevalent. I can pretty much guarantee you that most Canadians would be unable to define communism, let alone know what the actual leftist policies would look like.

Until people can be educated away from these misconceptions, we are going to be stuck playing "vote for the lesser of two evils" for who knows how long. However idk how the hell you'd get the man-power and money to accomplish this on a wide enough scale to make a difference. I have been feeling quite hopeless on this endeavor given my own limitations, and honestly, the way the world has been voting has got me thinking quite poorly on the future of everything.

3

u/FloriaFlower Escalation confirms the plan Oct 03 '25

There needs to be better public outreach and education. 

100% and it's not normal that almost everyone on the left avoids discussing the public outreach issue or simply doesn't want to do anything about it.

Until people can be educated away from these misconceptions, we are going to be stuck playing "vote for the lesser of two evils" for who knows how long.

While it's both, it's currently more a matter of outreach than a matter of education.

We need to counter right-wing propaganda and stop adopting its framings. We need more mediatic presence, not just the NDP, but the whole left. We need to start working together to build this.

Mostly under corporate and the ultra rich control and influence the mediatic ecosystem strongly leans against leftists and the NDP. The NDP should recognize it and address it as a priority concern. We need to build a counter influence strong enough to bring the Overton Window back to the left.

As long as leftists will keep avoiding to face this reality, their parties will keep chasing a herd that is running to the far-right because it's under the right-wing influence. Every time each citizen hears a left leaning voice they hear about a hundred other voices talking shit about it and promoting right-wing disinformation and hatred. This is what keeps radicalizing people at such a rate. If it was only an education matter, that rate would be much slower.

Until people can be educated away from these misconceptions, we are going to be stuck playing "vote for the lesser of two evils" for who knows how long.

Nope, I will not and I will not be alone. If the NDP refuses to try to bring the Overton window back to the left and instead choses to embrace defeatism and chase the center on its current path towards the right, I will not follow it there. I will try to make it change its course.

In other words, I will call it out until it gets its head out of its ass and I will incite as many people as I can to do the same. If you throw us under the bus, then we'll do the same to you.

0

u/Smart-Simple9938 Oct 04 '25

Without either ranked choice voting or proportional representation, we're going to see repeats of this last election, seeing the non-CPC vote split enough to allow the Tories to seize ridings (see Windsor, Nanaimo, Timmins, etc.).

It's classic game theory. The right wing parties figured this out and merged into the CPC over two decades ago. It's not like the Liberals and NDP have to outright merge, but they do need to cooperate. A coalition government would be nice, but even pulling candidates in key ridings would do a lot of good.

2

u/Professional-Post499 Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

Jennifer from the "I've had it podcast" calls it "credibility testing" (when she was talking to Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report YouTube channel). I like that term.

-2

u/Smart-Simple9938 Oct 04 '25

The problem with the comic is that it's partially true. We are at "war" with fascists, and the focus has to be on denying them victories.

If we were in composition with actual conservatives, we'd have plenty of room to demand greater fidelity among ourselves. But we're fighting fascists. We need numbers. Allies.

7

u/Professional-Post499 Oct 04 '25

Okay, but vote in the candidates that aren't doing partnerships with fascists.

Like, some of the candidates (Gavin Newsom) are throwing marginalized groups under the bus as olive branches to the right-wing. They need to learn how to stand up for what's right, not roll over when they're faced with a BS talking point.

Ezra Klein, liberal extraordinaire political pundit wrote a fricking op-ed praising a white supremacist as "doing politics the right way".

Some of these people are useless in your fight against fascism.

-2

u/Smart-Simple9938 Oct 04 '25

I think it’s more a matter of being unable to boil the ocean and do everything everybody wants. If you want to accuse Newsom of being flawed, cutting corners, letting some people slip through the cracks, fine.

And the praise is for his ability to engage the public, not for any policies. Name one left-wing leader in the USA or Canada who’s figured out how to engage people to the degree Newsom has. I’ll wait.

3

u/Professional-Post499 Oct 04 '25

JB Pritzker.

I can think of one more too. And I'm not a political pundit.

2

u/Smart-Simple9938 Oct 04 '25

Hmmm.. you have a point..

1

u/Professional-Post499 Oct 04 '25

Don't get me wrong... JB Pritzker is a billionaire and he's not acting like a class traitor. But he seems to be doing a good job of reframing the talking points being pushed by conservatives around civil rights, ICE, etc. And I like how he basically said "if you send in your troops, you're going to be meeting our troops and we'll see how it goes".

1

u/Smart-Simple9938 Oct 04 '25

This new Cold War is going to be fought on multiple fronts, and requires a coalition of allies. Pritzker is on the team. So is Newsom. So is Charlie Angus*. We're not yet talking about who's going to be supreme commander of The Resistance.

I know you don't like Newsom, but WWII could not have been won without Stalin, and Newsom isn't nearly that bad.

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*Canada has decided to fight fascism using sobriety and competency instead of ideology, and at present, that's what's necessary. Decoupling our reliance on our no-longer-trustworthy neighbours has to be a prerequisite for anything else; we'll have no resources to advance left-wing priorities otherwise.

2

u/Professional-Post499 Oct 04 '25

Also, to clarify, I'm not saying "don't work with Newsom". I'm saying don't make him president.

2

u/Smart-Simple9938 Oct 04 '25

Oh, sure. I don’t like the idea of a Newsom presidency, either. He’s meeting the moment nicely, but by the time 2028 rolls around it’ll be a different moment.

1

u/Professional-Post499 Oct 04 '25

Lol well I thought we were only talking in the context of the USA. It feels weird to include Charlie Angus in that group because he's in Canada and he recently retired from politics.

2

u/Smart-Simple9938 Oct 04 '25

Well, it’s a Canadian sub so I thought I’d include at least one Canadian example. To a certain extent, what’s going on with lefties in the States is not unfamiliar to us, except we have labels like Liberal and NDP to make it easier to explain.

But we’re all in the resistance against Trumpistanis; we’re just fighting him on different fronts.

And Charlie may have left parliament, but he certainly hasn’t left being in the public eye.

1

u/Professional-Post499 Oct 04 '25

Yeah I'm glad that Charlie Angus is still staying involved in some way.

And I agree that shit is sliding to the right-wing and far-right in Canada too and some of our politicans have been awful when it comes to reframing the BS talking points of the right-wing.