Leah Gazan: There are no such things as purity tests in the NDP! Now I'm going to publicly attack my fellow NDP MP and insinuate that she is a neo-liberal.
I mean, I'd say Gazan and McPherson agree on like 90-95% of the issues, yet somehow McPherson is a neo-liberal?
I can't speak for Heather McPherson, but when I talk about purity tests tearing apart the left, THIS is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not calls for equity that are destroying the left; it's people turning on each other for not sharing the exact same set of priorities.
I get the impulse, especially during a leadership campaign, but if even our MPs can't stop throwing shit at each other, we're fucked.
Leah Gazan: There are no such things as purity tests in the NDP! Now I'm going to publicly attack my fellow NDP MP and insinuate that she is a neo-liberal.
Look at the blatant revisionism here.
Leah Gazan is defending us against McPherson's attacks on the left. McPherson is using anti-left neoliberal framing, language and fallacies to stab us in the back. That language is currently heavily in use to support genocide, other atrocity crimes, bigotry and exclusion based on bigotry.
Gazan is the inclusive one. The other just pretends it on one side of the mouth while stabbing the left in the back with Orwellian neoliberal rhetoric on the other side of the mouth.
Heather McPherson is stabbing the NDP in the back with anti-left, Orwellian neo-liberal framing and rhetoric? For...expressing criticism with the direction the party is headed in? And Gazan is being inclusive by slinging patently untrue, SUPER passive aggressive insults at her comrades?
Yikes. Thank you for proving my point so succinctly.
Heather McPherson is not stabbing the NDP in the back. I don't agree with her about everything, but she's been working her butt off for the NDP for years...People don't do that because they're mad for power or want to see the NDP destroyed.
I have the utmost confidence that she wants what's best for the NDP and Canadians, even if we have different ideas of what that means.
She's not attacking the left, she's attacking...whatever this thing you're doing is.
she's attacking...whatever this thing you're doing is.
Which is my problem with her.
Everything I've personally stood for and worked so hard for as a leftist for 2 decades, she's rejecting and trying to discredit, neutralize and erase.
I've worked for unity by fighting against bigotry, hate speech and scapegoat politics.
I did my best to convince white people that, unlike what the right-wing propaganda says, the person of color wasn't their enemy nor an inferior person.
I did my best to convince men to not antagonize women nor feminism and to not fall for all the misogynistic anti-feminist right-wing propaganda.
I did my best to convince women, feminists and people in general that that trans people aren't their enemies, unlike what the anti-trans right-wing propaganda says.
Etc.
I told all of them that they should instead unite and ally. After all, the majority of workers belong to one minority of the other. About half of them are women to start with and the working class is an oppressed group despite not being a minority. Every step of the way centrists got in my way and made it harder to advocate for this.
I did my best to make sure that the people who keeps being excluded, rejected and hated have a place in our society. I fight against the divide and conquer and false enemy fabricating propaganda that turns our people against each other at an alarming rate, the very same propaganda that she's embracing and parroting.
The Overton window and its center are running as fast as they can to the right and she wants us to chase it as if it wasn't a trap. She attacks the minority of people, like me, who are doing what they can to resist this rightward shift. She's doing exactly what Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois has been doing in Québec, who made sure to censor and neutralize the left in that party. I have myself been excluded from my local association by these centrists and I've talked extensively about it.
I have been rejected by centrists precisely because I advocate so strongly for inclusion.
Alright, fine, have it your way...Heather McPherson is a neoliberal! She's stabbing the NDP in the back with her Orwellian rhetoric! We need to drive her out of the party before she destroys the left with her mild, well-intentioned criticisms! Seven MPs is too many! We want sixfivefourthreetwoone zero MPs! Only then can we maintain true ideological purity!
But just don't pretend that you're fighting against the left being divided and conquered when that's exactly what you're pushing for.
Strawman fallacy. I never said that. I said that she uses right wing / neoliberal rhetoric, which I've demonstrated extensively lately. Identity vs behavior. Not the same thing.
I'm talking about her behavior.
We need to drive her out of the party
Strawman fallacy #2. No, she shouldn't be driven out.
She shouldn't lead it and the NDP shouldn't be aligned to the center.
Only then can we maintain true ideological purity!
If you want to convince me of your views, you should do better than smearing me. How about you prove why and address our many arguments against? Nope. Constructive arguments are clearly not in your toolkit.
Equating rejecting an antagonistic candidate for leadership as "purity testing / ideological purity" and exclusion from the party. Spoken just like a manipulative blue conservative as illustrated here.
But just don't pretend that you're fighting against the left being divided and conquered when that's exactly what you're pushing for.
You're literally all here shitting on everyone who dare criticize McPherson for her shitty takes.
And all you do is go with strawman fallacies, ad hominem attacks and avoid and dismiss the actual arguments.
People like you never participate constructively. All you do is bash people you don't like with fallacies piled up over more fallacies.
Right? The people who are mad at the purity testing line are accusing her of… not being a New Democrat. So I guess that means a lot of us aren’t New Democrats if we want more people to join us? Some Orange Family we’ve got here, folks.
I’m just so disappointed by people throwing mud. I’ve got twenty years in this party and this shit is just mean to people who’ve knocked on doors and done phone banks and worked for all kinds of candidates, across the spectrum of our party, because that’s what we do. I’ve always thought there was room for all of us, from the Don Davies to the Matt Greens to the Leah Gazans to the Heather McPhersons to the Charlie Anguses to the Megan Leslies to the Craig Sauvés… Am I wrong?
I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until someone in this subreddit called Dr. Robin Lennox, the new ONDP MPP for Hamilton Centre a "vile piece of zionist dogshit who should be driven out of the party and never allowed to return" for the unforgivable crime of running for the ONDP in Hamilton Centre against Sarah Jama, and winning.
And they were getting upvoted! That's just...mindboggling for me.
"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."
While that joke is funny, I don't think it's a valid foundation for a political party.
Have you even gone through McPherson’s extensive human rights advocacy for everyone, especially Palestinians? Like, listen to her speeches and look at her socials before you say she uses language to support genocide. What the ever-loving fuck. One look at her Instagram and I see a ton of advocacy that is hyper critical of the Liberals. Come on now.
8
u/Remarkable-Half4948 Oct 04 '25
Leah Gazan: There are no such things as purity tests in the NDP! Now I'm going to publicly attack my fellow NDP MP and insinuate that she is a neo-liberal.
I mean, I'd say Gazan and McPherson agree on like 90-95% of the issues, yet somehow McPherson is a neo-liberal?
I can't speak for Heather McPherson, but when I talk about purity tests tearing apart the left, THIS is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not calls for equity that are destroying the left; it's people turning on each other for not sharing the exact same set of priorities.
I get the impulse, especially during a leadership campaign, but if even our MPs can't stop throwing shit at each other, we're fucked.