Movements are essential for gathering and directing the energy for large-scale change effort. However, that same energy and transformative power also makes them unstable and volatile. Achieving their goals requires members to conform to a set of tightly-coordinated beliefs and behaviors; and they often become ideologically dogmatic and socially exclusive as a result. Furthermore, making a big impact requires people with big visions—and often, big egos and a big appetite for drama to match, which in turn fuels the rise of personality cults and power-hoarding leadership. These inherent instabilities explain why many movements don't outlast their founders.She suggests that the model of building a progressive community alongside and overlapping the diffuse progressive movement we have today. As she notes, this is the beginning of a long conversation.
Also, as the conservatives learned the hard way, in the heat of battle, it's easy to lose touch with your own principles. You can justify anything if you're doing it "for the cause." So far, our movement has shown tremendous discipline in resisting this impulse, because we understood that our progressive principles were our core source of moral strength in opposing the conservatives. Everybody understood that compromising those principles was a fatal error, because it would make us just like them.
Unfortunately, it's going to be much too easy to relax those standards as our opposition wanes, and our group identity no longer depends highlighting the sharp contrasts between us and the conservatives. And things could devolve very quickly once the infighting starts over who's going to actually wield our newly won power. (Don't be too surprised if those fights start breaking out within a matter of days.)
Tags: sara robinson, progressive movement
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