Something I see a lot in the Fediverse and left wing spheres is people rejecting, or making enemies of imperfect allies. The video I shared paints a great picture of what it's like.
Here is some examples I've seen, and what reactions they've been met with.
"I ditched Gmail for Proton" is met with "That's terrible the CEO is a Trump boot licker"
"Posts on r/BuyCanadian" is met with "Why are you still using Reddit, it's American?"
"I'm pro trans but, there are some things I'm not 100% onboard with" is met with "Harsh criticism & Ban"
"I sold my diesel SUV for an electric KIA" is met with "You shouldn't support China or drive a SUV, buy European instead"
"I switched to Brave instead of Chrome" is met with "Brave sucks its American and still part of chromium"
etc.
I so often see people harshly criticize and alienate people that are mostly on their side, and might in the near future be fully on their side.
Instead I'd like to see responses like
"Hey fantastic that you switched to Proton away from Gmail, consider moving to Migadu as they're an even better solution"
"Awesome that you're buying Canadian, while you're at it consider checking out Lemmy or PieFed"
"Great job switching to Electric, next time consider buying a smaller European car there are many great reasons why they are better"
"Great that you're pro-trance, what's stopping your from being onboard with XYZ? Maybe I can change your mind?"
"Nice Brave is already a lot better than Chrome, even better would be LibreWolf, also make sure to try out Kagi or Qwant instead of google"
You don't change someone's mind by criticizing them, you need to have a discussion and bring them over, tone matters. How do we stop these criticisms and alienating imperfect allies?
It's tough because "the left" isn't a monolith. There are people who are socially left but economically centrist. Similarly, there are people who are economically left but socially more conservative. Support for an economic system does not necessarily determine support for any one of various social causes.
I would argue that most "leftists" in the West are socially progressive liberals, who are perhaps critical of some aspects of neoliberal capitalism, but aren't necessarily strongly committed to abolishing capitalism in favor of socialism or communism. In that regard, they are not economically left, or only slightly economically left. A lot of Western leftists are far more focused on addressing social justice issues within capitalism rather than completely changing the system.
There just isn't one, singular "left." I think there is a very vocal social justice movement in the West and that is what most of us think of when we think of the left, but that group does not have exclusive ownership of all leftist thoughts and ideas, even if they might think they do and even if they try to police the views of other leftists who might but necessarily agree with them on every issue.