Why the word „should“ is destroying the left. Zitat 31

The word “should” is the worst thing that ever happened to the left. “Should” has become a virus in the contemporary left, a word that is more effective at defeating left-wing resistance than any right-wing argument ever could be. It seems like every day I read fellow leftists telling me what they should and shouldn’t have to do, rather than what they are compelled by injustice to do. “Feminists should not have to teach people the importance of feminism; it’s their responsibility to educate themselves.” Perhaps it is. But they won’t educate themselves. No one will make the world a just place but us. That’s why there is such a thing as feminism. The struggle exists precisely because the world does not fix itself and its people do not educate themselves. That’s such a basic statement of political principles it frightens me that it has to be said at all.

I ask this basic question of young leftists I meet all the time, the ones who insist to me, with great passion, that my suggestion that we have a duty to fix a broken world is itself oppression: are we winning, or are we losing? That’s what I want to know.

– Fredrik de Boer