From Trotsky to Torah: Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Seven years ago I walked off a cliff, quitting the tiny Trotskyist organization that had given my life purpose and a sense of belonging for over a quarter century. For a long time after, I knew only that I had no idea what I knew. As a middle-aged woman whose entire adult life had been defined by beliefs, this was hard to deal with. How much of what I’d fought for all those years had been flat-out wrong? Could it be that my former comrades—the often funny, brilliant, aggravating people I’d considered my surrogate family—were right to stick the course, while I was just a quitter? Had all those annoying people been right to say someday I’d regret not having kids? What on earth was the point of my life?

So I volunteered at a North London hospital near my home with my then-husband and tried to find some kind of Meaning serving lunches and teas to mostly elderly patients. An atmosphere of cheerful chaos prevailed in the ward, and feeling indispensable was a simple enough matter of successfully begging the kitchen for more servings of shepherd’s pie. I’d get lost in tasks and banter, patients would laugh at my stubbornly American way of saying “tomato,” and I’d forget to think about Meaning for a while. Afterward I’d walk home, stopping at my favorite Turkish-run fruit-and-veg shop for dinner ingredients, and my old life would overtake me. Because as I stood on the sidewalk selecting eggplant, I was terrified of running into one of the former comrades I loved, hated and missed so much it hurt.

I’d been won over to a set of ideas that had to be publicly upheld for membership, and quit when I could no longer say I truly believed them. But real attachment to a group like my party comes not through the head, what you believe, but the heart—what you feel. Life inside is infused with intensity, and you cling to this headiness against what you learn to call “a biological existence.” (“I hear Frank is taking a pottery class these days,” you might hear about a once-cherished comrade who’d joined the ranks of the cowards by quitting. “He’s just living a biological existence.”) An exhausting meeting is experienced as profound, both because it taps your need to sacrifice yourself and because the misery is shared. Laughter is sweeter during a grueling campaign. Few experiences in the world can be as stirring as singing “The Internationale” alongside fellow warriors, choking back tears, in honor of a beloved comrade who just broke your heart by dying. The love you feel for comrades inside an embattled, widely maligned organization is unlike anything you feel elsewhere.

And nothing enhances such love so much as hate against a common enemy. I’d have sincerely denied I hated anyone: I thought my heart was pure and I was fighting for the most righteous of causes. Righteousness can only be defined against evil, however, and every ugliness seems justified in the fight against evil. The capitalist class, other leftwing groups, “bourgeois feminists” and—maybe most of all—“Zionists”: Raging against these groups intensified our bonds to each other while summoning the basest emotions. Hate masquerading as virtue warmed a cold and lonely world.

I quit the party in 2016 only to find mainstream society infested with the same toxicity and divisiveness. It exists on both sides of the political spectrum, but I’m unavoidably more troubled by what I still consider my political home, the left. It’s there not only when radical “trans” activists howl down “TERFs” at “Let Women Speak” rallies where women try to assert their rights, but in comfortable living rooms where expressing respect for allegedly “rightwing” figures can get you uninvited from your mah jongg group. Certain books, newspapers, podcasters, news programs, children’s book authors are deemed out of bounds: Only a bad person would consider them. I regard this world and think: I’ve seen it all before. The authoritarianism I experienced in the party has gone mainstream. For too many people meaning, justice and a sense of belonging seems attainable only by demonizing and shutting down “enemies.”

“Dare to know” is said to have been the motto of the Enlightenment—meaning have the courage to think for yourself, even if it means going against your tribe. I can verify from painful experience that this is hard to do. Challenge those you love and you may find yourself out in the cold for a while, but you’ll make the marvelous discovery that the world is a more vibrant and rewarding place than you ever dreamed. Meaningful connections can be had with people you fundamentally disagree with when you learn to civilly engage with them. Intellectual riches can be found in places you long ago learned to dismiss. You may even conclude that good people exist everywhere. In short, you may find a truer source of meaning and love. And you’ll wonder what took you so long to face the cold.

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”