The problem is not with the anti-pat-soc crowd. The problem is that when leftists adopt intersectionality, particularly with LGBTQ+ and indigenous minorities, it always happens that some people start arguing that because a particular segment of the working class disagrees with these things that we should abandon intersectionality because it will not be able to build a mass movement because the working class will reject it.

This argument arises predictably from active enough discussions that address intersectionality and inevitably lead from tolerance of anti-LGBTQ+ to denial of settler colonialism to espousal of patriotic socialism as a means of organizing a mass movement. And no matter how much writing and theory we pull out to show how lack of intersectionality is a non-starter for a sustainable socialist revolution, it’s the people who espouse patriotic socialism who accuse everyone else of being bourgeois reactionary idealists.

This continues until, inevitably, enough anecdotes are gathered from public figures that espouse patriotic socialism to demonstrate that, in fact, patriotic socialism is reactionary and the people espousing patriotic socialism continue to spew their talking points about tolerating intolerance and we basically have to make the choice between admitting reactionaries who genuinely believe we can build a socialist revolution that denies some of its members the right to exist as equals or repressing these tendencies within our community to prevent the community from devolving into a reactionary one.