Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

*Activist Labor Board finds - fixed that headline for you

The push for diversity is not that sinister, they just want the widest customer base they can get. Neoliberal diversity and identity politics lets them be moral without threatening their power base.

What we've seen from Amazon's anti-union efforts this round is that they are not sophisticated enough to be pulling some kind of machiavellian plot.

If unions are going to work in America, they have be able to navigate a diverse group of people. The American working class is incredibly diverse, more than the country itself. It's a challenge but it's not insurmountable. But the left/union approach to diversity and the corporate approach are completely different from each other and have different material motivations.

Using leverage isn't the same thing as belonging to a corrupt union. If anything, your leverage should be used to improve said union, if you have it. The same energy and fervor that goes into establishing a union presence and and should also be used to maintain it through positions of leadership and involvement within the union.

I agree that not all unions are fantastic, but staying on the sidelines when you could use your position to influence for the betterment of everyone is a very privileged, selfish act.

I think you're missing the point.

If someone comes at me, attempting to persuade me that their side is the right one, but their persuasion style is to be adversarial and say I'm a shithead if I don't pick their side, I am more likely to reject their side.

This has little to do with the "facts are stronger" argument. I agree that many people do not pay attention to objective facts, and instead make decisions based on emotional factors. And that's exactly what would be happening here: this type of adversarial argument would give me a bad feeling, and I would reject it.

Beyond that, you can still make emotional arguments that use facts as their foundation. I would respond much better to something like "75% of your co-workers have shit wages, and a union can help them get fair pay; don't you want the best for your colleagues?" That sort of argument isn't all positive, as it tries to make the other person feel guilty, but it's a much better argument than "if you don't want to join the union you're an asshole".

> I think it's fairly naive to think that "we developed [our opinions regarding unions] over time by deciding on the arguments advanced," as though it were always a conscious process or that a broadly fair view of unions was widely disseminated with which to make an informed decision.

I don't think anyone's claiming it's a rational, conscious process. Very much of it can be emotional and subconscious. But the result is still the same: if you tell me that I have to "support the union or else", I will -- consciously and rationally, or subconsciously and emotionally: it doesn't matter -- gradually develop a negative opinion about unions.

I think this is the trap a lot of people (myself included, sometimes) fall into: they want people to evaluate their arguments on their terms, how they themselves would evaluate them if they were the recipient of them. But that's not how it works. People evaluate arguments in their own way (regardless of whether the argument is intended to evoke a rational or emotional response). If you want to make an argument, you need to focus on outcomes, not on your own personal preferences as to how things should turn out. Tailor your argument to the recipient. Sure, for some people the "you're either for us or against us" type argument might be the most effective. But it's not for everyone, and it can alienate people as well.

I like to remind people that "Identity Politics" as envisioned by Barbara Smith and the Combahee River Collective in the 1970's as an approach to left-wing organizing is virtually unrecognizable when compared to today's neoliberal "woke" corporate identity politics. The former is about recognizing individual and group needs while organizing towards a universal, collective goal. The latter is about internecine conflict based on differences and the rejection of a collective goal entirely in favor of means-tested and targeted "reforms".

It's rare in the economic left to reject identity politics entirely (outside of some wretched nazbol twitter types), because people like CTH, Adolph Reed, Mark Fisher, Barbara Smith, Bernie Sanders, etc. all recognize the need for navigating identity in left movements. Where they reject neoliberal identity politics is in accepting a need for a greater collective goal.