What Infighting Is

Infighting is fighting between or among members of a particular group. Infighting is, in many ways, the same as what we could call “outfighting”—as any kind of fighting—except that it’s instigated by and directed toward members of one’s own group.

In general, people fight when they have a difference of opinion or need from someone else and use force or aggression to try to influence or change that individual.

Infighting occurs on all levels of a movement. It occurs between individual advocates who may or may not be affiliated with an organization or group, between organizations or groups that are competing rather than cooperating with each other, and within organizations and groups whose staff or members interact in ways that are dysfunctional. (On an even broader level, if we think of our individual movements for justice as part of a broader “metamovement” to create a more just world, we could also consider fighting between these movements as a form of infighting.)

The more extreme fighting in a movement is usually driven by a vocal minority of advocates who are supported by an unaware majority. The less extreme fighting is generally the result of advocates simply not realizing that the way they’re relating is fueling the problem.

Infighting can take many forms, from smear campaigns to divisive debates. In all cases, the framework is competitive: the goal is to win and to make the other(s) lose. (Although the debate model can be useful in a few situations, it’s typically not an effective method to bring about change.)

Toxic, nonrelational communication

Most commonly, infighting is expressed through toxic, or nonrelational, communication, which ranges from mildly disrespectful commentary to verbal assaults.

Often such toxicity is so subtle that it’s hard to recognize. For instance, it may be presented as an intellectual critique of another advocate’s work: long sentences and complicated vocabulary mask the fact that the “critique” is actually a disrespectful put-down.

Defining reality

Nonrelational communication also frequently takes the form of defining reality.

Defining reality is dictating the truth of another’s experience—appointing oneself the expert on what another individual is thinking or feeling, even when they say otherwise.

For example, a climate activist who’s a manager in a retail store tells another climate activist, “I’m really passionate about anticapitalism!” and the other activist responds with, “No, you aren’t—you can’t feel that way and make a living working in retail.”

Defining reality in its more extreme form is gaslighting—a type of emotional bullying in which the communicator creates a false narrative, causing the person being bullied to question their own judgment and reality. For example, suppose an activist with a large YouTube following invites on the show another activist whose approach to promoting their mutual cause the YouTuber disagrees with. The invitee declines the invitation. The YouTuber responds by telling the other activist that their “fear” of engaging in a public debate is proof that they know they can’t win, because their opinion is wrong. The invitee, who had been clear that their reason for declining the invitation was because they didn’t want to feed the divisions in the movement, starts questioning their own motives and beliefs.

Infighting is nonrelational

Whatever form infighting takes, the dynamic is the same: it’s interacting in a way that’s nonrelational. So building relational literacy is critical to ending the problem.