Being a progressive activist made me miserable

Boston Globe

a day ago

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My anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms were at their worst when I was most invested in the left-wing ideology I'd built my professional and social life around. That all changed in late 2020, when I quit my job after months of growing disillusionment. I 'graduated' from therapy at that point, and over the following years, my mental health kept improving, despite fluctuating income and the eventual loss of formerly close connections.
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As my political views and social networks shifted, my emotional trajectory tracked with longstanding research showing that the further left a person's political views lean, the more likely they are to be diagnosed with certain kinds of mental or emotional distress.
Researchers have documented a happiness gap between conservatives and liberals for decades. This pattern holds across
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Such uncharitable assumptions about conservatives reflect a cultural problem that I believe at least partially drives this happiness gap: leftists' unwillingness to fairly consider other viewpoints or question their own. Though they are often well-intentioned, their culture subverts those intentions. Leftists often embrace negative beliefs and are often unwilling to rethink those beliefs — even when those beliefs distort or contradict reality.
Sabrina Joy Stevens is a communications consultant.
Sam Cruz
For example, the belief that racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry are the root cause of inequalities and disparate outcomes ignores countless other macroeconomic, cultural, and natural conditions that affect people's choices and circumstances. This causes people on the left to misinterpret reality in divisive, anxiety-inducing ways that undermine their social and emotional well-being.
Leftists' tendency toward self-segregation not only weakens the social support necessary for mental health, it makes it harder for them to encounter information that could help them abandon unhealthy ideas and thought patterns. It also increases the likelihood that they will spend more of their time surrounded by people who share their psychological struggles. By denigrating and dismissing perspectives they disagree with, many leftists forfeit opportunities to cultivate relationships and habits of mind that promote mental health.
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My political evolution
If there is anyone who should be a lifer in the lefty political camp, it's me. I am a college-educated Black woman raised by lifelong Democrats.
I am an advocate by nature, with a lifelong passion for civil and human rights. I actually ran my first campaign in elementary school, unseating our safety patrol captain for abusing his power. After my dad survived the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, where he worked, I became an antiwar activist in the hope that peace activism could prevent more terrorism. In college, I joined multiple causes promoting environmentalism and fighting against animal cruelty, human rights abuses, sweatshop labor, mass incarceration, educational injustice, racial injustice, and gender inequality. I added union organizing to the list of my causes after being mistreated as a public school teacher in my early 20s, and eventually I became a professional communications strategist, working at several progressive advocacy organizations.
I should note, though, that there is nothing inherently or exclusively 'progressive' about these causes. Any well-meaning person could take an interest in promoting issues like workers' rights and environmental protection, because there are multiple ways to pursue cultural and policy shifts that support those goals. But after years of learning from left-leaning professors, and especially after enduring ideological purity conflicts where more militant left-wing partisans convert, silence, or push out peers who are less committed to leftist ideology, I conformed. To fully advance civil and human rights, I believed, being a leftist was required.
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My disenchantment with left-wing ideology began during the spring of 2020, when the disconnect between progressives' alarming rhetoric — such as the assertion that racism constituted a deadly pandemic of its own — and our unserious actions became too frustrating for me to ignore. Then, as now, professional progressives and left-leaning politicians claimed that our country was all but collapsing under the weight of bigotry and fascism. Yet we continued the same performative protests, petitions, and social media stunts as ever. Meanwhile, more-militant leftists responded to the perceived urgency of the moment by rioting. Hearing our narratives echoed by those destroying ordinary people's livelihoods and property disturbed me.
This began a process of investigating whether the ideas I'd been steeped in were actually based in reality. That prompted me to reexamine and eventually abandon the 'systemic injustice' worldview I learned in college and subsequent activist spaces, along with the accompanying 'oppressors versus victims' narrative.
Though I would never want to relive 2020's public health, political, or economic crises, I am grateful for the way they disrupted the echo chambers I used to inhabit. That enabled me to engage with contradictory evidence and spot logical fallacies in my political beliefs that were harder to notice when I was constantly surrounded by like-minded people.
The enforcers of ideological conformity
Lefty partisans' dominance of many influential professions and institutions makes rethinking harder to do. Though the 'progressive left' and 'establishment liberals' are estimated to account for just
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It's important to note, however, that this dominance didn't happen by chance. It's the result of leftist pressure campaigns in various professions, institutions, and organizations. For example, left-wing activists in academia agitate to change curriculum, admissions, and hiring decisions in ways that promote their ideology in the classroom and beyond. They protest to get certain ideas taught and other ideas and speakers suppressed, and they use practices like
Even spaces like online knitting communities and breastfeeding support groups have been beset by leftists
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One field where left-wing activism has distorted public knowledge is climate science. Many climate activists believe that carbon emissions are the biggest threat to our future and that government interventions are the most important solution. Accordingly, the activist-approved narrative on climate focuses on dramatic information they hope will scare people into supporting such interventions. Longtime climate scientist
how members of his field are incentivized to oversimplify and overemphasize climate change at the expense of other relevant information: 'I sacrificed contributing the most valuable knowledge for society in order for the research to be compatible with the confirmation bias of the editors and reviewers of the journals I was targeting.'
Neither Pielke nor Brown ever denied the existence or significance of climate change. Nonetheless, left-wing climate activists and academics slandered both men as 'climate deniers,' 'unhinged,' 'irresponsible,' and so on.
By discouraging scientists and journalists from sharing nuanced and practical explanations of our environmental challenges, militant climate activists have fostered an alarmist conversation that causes millions of people unnecessary anxiety. Thankfully, some researchers are finding the courage to stop self-censoring. But hardline activists and academics continue to label those who deviate even slightly from their approved narrative 'climate deniers,' which functions as a thought-stopping tactic.
A more extreme example of this dynamic exists in the field promoting gender drugs and surgeries for youth. Gender activists within academia and prominent medical organizations built the alleged 'expert consensus' on these interventions with deceptive practices like
In the communications training sessions I lead, I regularly warn clients against manipulating audiences through fear and anger — for example, by mislabeling reasonable objections as 'bigotry.' Not only does this poison public discourse, it sabotages campaigners' own mental health. I speak from experience here.
The belief that entrenched, identity-based socioeconomic systems dictate most of our life outcomes fosters what psychologists call an external locus of control,
Reflecting on my journals and medical history during my last few months of therapy, I noticed that my PTSD symptoms, from an experience I had suffered years before, had gotten considerably worse once I started working in progressive organizations. They peaked in 2018 and 2019 while I was working at a feminist legal organization. I spent my days there generating and consuming alarmist rhetoric for our internal and external campaigns, and my free time in a social media bubble full of people mirroring my then-obsessive Trump hatred. I spent multiple hours a day catastrophizing with my friends and colleagues, doing the exact opposite of what I was trying to learn in therapy.
Around that same time, attorney Greg Lukianoff and psychologist Jonathan Haidt published 'The Coddling of the American Mind.' In that book, they share Lukianoff's hypothesis that by reinforcing politically induced cognitive distortions (for example, promoting the idea that controversial speech 'harms' marginalized people), colleges and universities were inadvertently performing reverse cognitive behavioral therapy on students. I ultimately found it very insightful, but only after ignoring it for years simply because my tribe hated Lukianoff and Haidt.
Back when 'Coddling'
debuted, Lukianoff and the organization he leads, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, held villain status in my circles because they opposed cancel culture and weren't aligned with our stance on Title IX regulations.
and
those accused of it' (emphasis added), was reasonable. But in our communications, we accused groups like this of demanding '
If leftists honestly examined the shortcomings of their beliefs, they could improve their mental and political prospects. But their pride often gets in their way. When you spend years vilifying anyone who disagrees with you, it's difficult to notice (much less concede) when they have a point.
Particularly for those in academia and professional advocacy — whose incomes are tied up in their faulty beliefs — there's also a strong financial disincentive against rethinking. Academics whose work offends their most dogmatic colleagues risk not only their reputations but funding and career opportunities. Likewise, activist organizations that attempt to course-correct risk being financially and socially punished by the very supporters they helped to radicalize. That perverse incentive against self-correction is one of the many risks of building a supporter base on exaggerated, emotionally manipulative communications. Yet failing to adjust their approach is costing them credibility, while exacerbating burnout and mental illness among staff and supporters.
I understand that dilemma. It cost me a lot to rethink my beliefs, but those losses hardly compare to the freedom I've gained by divesting from left-wing ideology and culture. Leaving the left allowed me to relax and reclaim the energy I previously spent feeling unjustifiably threatened by disagreement or stressing over how everything I think or do might be perceived by judgmental peers. Losing fake friends freed up space for real ones. Dropping unethical clients freed up space to pursue other passions and work with principled people who care more about solving problems than enforcing ideological conformity.
Instead of vetting clients based on which 'side' they represent on an arbitrary political spectrum, I now consider whether they can show that their ideas and approaches would protect our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. Rejecting demands for ideological purity freed me to deepen my Christian faith, follow evidence instead of emotional appeals, and develop an outlook on life that doesn't make me anxious or depressed.
I've chosen political independence now. Doing this in a partisan environment is challenging, but reclaiming my reasoning and emotional well-being from unhealthy tribal dynamics has been well worth it.
Doing good in the world doesn't have to feel terrible. Being 'part of the solution' doesn't require being part of a political tribe. It simply requires us to have the humility and curiosity to prioritize truth over personal validation, acknowledging that we're not always right and that those we consider opponents aren't always wrong.