s always the same whining about¶

These takes are always so funny to me because:

A) It's always the same whining about "purity tests" and "real power" and "X% we have in common"

and B) They never actually elaborate on what those Purity Tests™️ are, what makes them irrelevant, or what that Common Cause™️ is. https://t.co/EeX8pIZTt2 You may have heard that humans and chimpanzees "share 99% of their genes." Sounds like we would make natural breeding pairs, right?

Except that statistic is misleading. You have to completely toss out the vast majority of the genome to get that number. The "99% similarity" refers to homologous genes, of which we share a lot.

For example, humans and chumps both have the AMY1 gene, which is used to make amylase, an enzyme for digesting starch. Chimp and human amylases themselves have very similar structures and functions. However, chimps generally only have two copies of AMY1, while humans have a wide variety of different copies, with some populations having dozens. Recent population genetic studies have shown a correlation between historical dependence on grains and AMY1 copy number. It's not just the gene itself that matters, but how it's used. Genes are turned on or off, dialed up or down, their products modified and transported in different ways, all as part of an absurdly complicated regulatory system involving the "junk DNA" comprising 98% of our genome. Our supposed 99% similarity to chimps completely ignores that intricate dance of promoters and enhancers and microRNA and histone modification and DNA methylation and chromosomal fusion and so much more, all of which come together to make us wholly different species. Crucially, two of our ancestral chromosomes fused into one. Humans now have 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared to chimps' 24. Translocation events have also shuffled vital gene loci around. This means that during reproduction, the zygote would have mismatched gene pairs, and die. When liberals say "focus on the 90% we agree on, not the 10% we don't," they are referring to superficial impressions of "policy preferences," disregarding the ideological scaffolding underpinning the entire project as "junk DNA." "You want affordable healthcare, an end to climate change, and queer rights, same as us!"

Wrong. Those are not things we "want," like items on a shopping list, items we are prepared to bargain for. They are part of the foundation of our project. Our "purity tests" aren't about being petulant children who don't play well with others. It's simply recognition of what we are actually trying to do. Our goal is a world free from exploitation. Your goal is to soothe your troubled soul by feeling like you've "made progress." A human and a chimpanzee cannot produce viable offspring together. Our respective genomes quite literally do not line up.

If we want to reproduce our ideology, we can only do that with those who share that ideological genome. Diversity is good, but we need the same chromosomes. What does "genetic diversity" look like in terms of ideology? For that, we look at the wide variety of liberation struggles across the world and throughout history. Revolutionary traditions that liberals reject out hand, acknowledging that they represent ideological speciation. We have more in common with Juche than we do with liberalism. We have more in common with the PFLP and than we do with Democrats. Our ideology is perfectly suited to producing viable offspring with those who share our ®evolutionary niche. (In fact, just like in biological evolution, without embracing that diversity, our ability to adapt the ideology to our own environment is severely hampered. But that's a topic for a different discussion, one aimed at communists, not liberals.) As eager as liberals are to reject the "horrors" of liberation struggles, we are just as eager to reject liberals. We are not all part of the blob known as "the left." We are communists. You complain when we reject you, but you detest who we really are. We have nothing in common.