The idea is that the purist has unrealistic standards and makes everything worse by refusing to support a lesser evil (or an imperfect socialist). In some contexts, “purity” has positive connotations, but this version of the term highlights its negative qualities: moralism, naivete, obstinacy. The purist is a liability to the successful implementation of socialism in the United States.

Nobody gets branded a “purist” more frequently than people who refuse to compromise their opposition to Zionism on behalf of an aspiring DSA politician. It is a parochial accusation. Palestine, after all, is not any American’s compromise to make. The accusation tells us nothing of value about either Zionism or anti-Zionism and doesn’t even pretend to give a damn about Palestinians. In fact, the only thing the term illuminates is a lack of imagination among those who use it.

What does it mean to be pure in the political arena, which is universally considered dirty? It means nothing, which is the point of the accusation. It is way of expunging anti-Zionism from the moral calculus of electoralism. If politics is a dirty business, then there is no place for principle or sincerity. These qualities merely get in the way of what pragmatists routinely defeated by power like to call “winning.”

The indignant pragmatist always punching left doesn’t want to avoid purity. He thinks that avoiding purity is his strategy, but only because he is even more confused about language than he is about politics. His actual desire is to cleanse the left of impurities that might disrupt the ascent of a new influencer class in the United States. The entire production is rooted in U.S. exceptionalism, particularly in its positioning of Palestine as a faraway problem that needs to be deferred or diminished. The language of purity means nothing without the resurrection of America as its ultimate goal. That goal is anathema to Palestinian liberation.

And so the indignant pragmatist repeats bromides like “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” another formulation that consigns Palestine to a utopian realm extraneous to the material world. Palestine is a luxury, the bromide suggests, not an essential element of our politics. Moreover, the bromide contradicts its own apparent generosity because while the indignant pragmatist positions Palestine in opposition to “the good,” he clearly doesn’t view it as “the perfect,” either. It would be much easier if Palestine just went away.