So, historical materialism time: certain other banned subreddits with lemmy forks had issues early on rooting out racists and transphobes. There was a lot of pushback from the aggressively white/masc subset community for what they considered overreactions to microaggressions. But when push came to shove, they would often show their whole ass and post the most vitriolic and honestly boomer chud shit to grace the modlogs.
Please keep your minority comrades in mind when posting and moderating your communities. We are service workers, factory workers, and low-level clerks in this together with everyone else, and we would like to believe that socialists care about us too. This is not to say I doubt this community at all, but just wanted to convey lessons from the past.
Trans issues, pronouns, and race issues also make a great litmus tests for weeding out Maupin-type “nationalists” who are mainly self interested.
Hoping to see great things from this community, and nice to meet you all! (っ_)っ
I don’t think Caleb wants to destroy the USA. Like this is the heart of being a patsoc, they want to redeem the USA, remake it and share “it’s” wealth amongst its people. While they talk a good anti imperialist game, they often side with the wrong people, Netflix over workers, Petit boug truck owners over employee drivers, they are oportunists - bonapartists as Caleb would say.
Yeah, that’s problematic but I see where he’s coming from. I mean, I want the American Empire to be destroyed, and if that harms the American people temporarily that is simply an unavoidable reality.
But desiring to destroy the USA, I guess it’s semantic, there are a lot of people here who are oppressed severely they should be liberated in the end. Idk lmao if I’m wrong I’d love to hear why
What you’re talking about is the difference between a government and its people. But patriotism is a means of conflating those two things in order to justify particular actions of the government. It works because it creates an in and out group and makes people less critical of actions of the in group. In the case of patsoc in the US, it’s advocating for particular actions contrary to the US’s current interests and its ingroup can fluctuate wildly depending on who is advocating for it.
Maupin aside, patsoc has major potential for cooption specifically because it is not critical in nature. Patriotism is just not a vehicle for self-criticism, particularly for people benefiting more from the existing system. If you’re not familiar with Freire, he talks in Pedagogy of the Oppressed about how critical consciousness is always liberating for oppressed people. Those who are accustomed to power will insist that oppressed people learning of their oppression will make them angry and irrational. In reality, oppressed people experience liberation when exposed to truth of their situation. Putting a group of people (patsoc’s ingroup) up on a pedestal is not an act which encourages critical consciousness. It encourages a sectarian worldview, which in turns creates taboos around certain subjects.
I get why you don’t want to dismiss Caleb, he is well read and he seems genuinely interested in educating people and he even seems like a nice person. Of all the patsocs, him and Mid Western Marx seem like the most genuine.
But should we let his followers into our movement? Of this I am very skeptical. I know he has no control over the vast majority of his community but he put Infrared Haz up on stage to speak at his CPI conference.
I can understand why caleb went to other conferences and spoke with questionable people like Dugin but when he does his own thing, who he puts up on stage does matter.
You can find caleb’s books online (Z library) rather than subject yourself to a multi hour breadtube video.
Caleb is clearly building his own movement with the CPI, if you want to be involved with that then I guess that’s your choice and if the CPI wants to collaborate with other orgs on issues where we align I could even go along with that.