In the culture war, the right has done nothing but concede territory. They fall back into petty, vindictive subterfuge as they lose each new skirmish and a new oppressed minority gains a higher foothold in their climb to complete enfranchisement. And the right will triangulate again. Where they lost on “Marriage is between a man and a woman”, they shifted to a “Freedom of Association” fight over gay wedding cakes.

They have set themselves up to lose this one, too.

The false dichotomy between a liberal Identity Politic and a materialist Class-Consciousness as represented by the fight between Clinton-backing liberals and Sanders supporters in 2016 must be summarily collapsed, and their analyses synthesized. This is a tag-team fight. If we, as the opposition to reactionary politics fail to reunite these analytic tendencies, we will essentially be eternally trying to pin one opponent, leaving our backs open to its partner.

Quite true. As an Angeleno, you may know that one of the major streets in your home is named for Henry Gaylord Wilshire, a socialist whose writing and political work spanned from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. But, he was also racist, the product of Enlightenment-era pseudoscientific racism that had been passed down through the decades, filtered through the words of white supremacist intellectuals and thinkers still vaunted by academia today. This racism ultimately hamstrung early 20th century socialism in the United States, and, if left unchecked, will do it again and again.

Any type of systemic oppression can and will do the same. Socialism absent a robust anti-oppressive framework is as ineffectual as anti-oppressive frameworks that ignore capital or empire. Weak points can be exploited by a ‘liberal’ media that spins narratives of irreconcilable divides from stories about very broachable disagreements.