I’m sick and tired of purity police who think that because Hillary Clinton is not perfect enough, that we should focus on getting her indicted. What the purity police don’t realize is that if Donald Trump becomes the next President of the United States, our country will return to the dark days when coathanger abortions were practiced by women who had no other choice.
I voted for Bernie. I’m glad I supported him. He should fight for every vote. But when June 15th rolls around, it will only be a matter of time before he concedes and throws his support behind Hillary Clinton. The purity police do not reflect either Bernie Sanders’ thoughts or reflect on the lessons of history.
We need to create a united left in order to turn back the forces of fascism and dictatorship. We have lessons of history to guide us. When Hitler rose to power, the Communists, instead of joining the rest of the left in fighting him, instead decided to play purity police and savagely attacked fellow travelers on the left, claiming they were worse than Hitler:
Effective opposition to the rise of the Nazis would therefore depend on the strategy pursued by the Communist Party. Tragically it was at this time that the party adopted what was called the "Third Period" line. At the very time when the crisis of capitalism was destroying the lives of millions and Hitler's Nazis were making huge electoral gains (rising from 2.6 percent of the vote in 1928 to 37.4 percent in 1932) the KPD concentrated its attention on attacking another part of the left. It made preposterous accusations against the socialists, accusing them of being "social fascists" and "1,000 times worse than an open fascist dictatorship".
This was a disastrous distraction from the real issues of the time - the economic crisis and the threat of fascism - and opened up a division in the forces of the left from which it would not recover. The result was that the most powerful labour movement in the world was in turmoil and Hitler rose to power virtually unopposed. It was not until 1934 that the first major challenge came with the rising of the Austrian workers. From here there developed mass struggles against fascism in France, Spain, and ultimately during the Second World War.
And while certain purity police would rather attack Hillary, coathanger abortions are already coming back thanks to right-wing states criminalizing the procedure:
In September of this year, Anna Yocca, 31, allegedly attempted to perform an abortion on herself by untwisting a wire coat hanger and inserting it into her vagina in order to induce her own miscarriage. She was 24 weeks pregnant. It was apparently the amount of blood in the water that caused the Murfreesboro, Tennessee, woman to go to a hospital, in fear for her life. Eventually, she gave birth to a severely premature infant who will likely survive but may have permanent medical issues.
"Even though the baby survived the trauma, physicians said the boy's quality of life 'will be forever harmed,'" reports the Murfreesboro Post. "He will need a medically-experienced foster parent, remain on oxygen and take medication daily because of problems with his eyes, lungs and heart stemming from damage caused by the coat hanger. Medical staff also said other physical problems will arise when the child grows older."
Note to purity police — people like this person are the real enemy:
But we don’t live in a just world. We live in a world, in a country, where women who want to end their pregnancies are considered contemptible. And so Yocca, after her 24-week fetus was delivered, was arrested for first-degree attempted murder.
In an interview with local media, police sergeant Kyle Evans – displaying an incredible amount of anti-abortion bias – said that Yocca “wanted to kill the child” and that she “made very incriminating statements ... regarding wanting to end the child’s life”. (Apparently wanting an abortion is criminal.)
He added: “the whole time she was concerned for her health and her safety, and never gave any attention to the health and safety of the unborn child”. As if a woman is selfish for not wanting to bleed to death in her bathtub.
If you’re going to criticize Hillary, do it from the left, from places like The Nation, Mother Jones, In These Times, Al-Jazeera, Nation of Change, Democracy Now, or The Guardian. This is not a place to post right-wing sources just because they support Bernie. You are not respecting Bernie Sanders, who has always said that he will support Hillary and that the most important priority is to beat Donald Trump when all is said and done.
I have no use for purity police of any stripe, either certain Hillary supporters who say Bernie is not really a Democrat, or certain “Bernie supporters” who call you a shill for Hill just because you don’t accept all their RW tripe. Such individuals certainly do not support Bernie; they only support a fantasy of him that has no basis in reality.
People like that are enablers for the likes of Judith Miller and Bev Harris and other hacks who manipulate the news for their personal agendas. It’s better to be skeptical than it is to be gullible enough to believe whatever supports your pet theory no matter how outrageous it is to the average person. Gullible people, whether on the right or left, serve as enablers for wars like Iraq which took a million lives. And if Donald Trump wins, people like that will have served as enablers for the return to coathanger abortions.