And I thought Reddit was bad…
I want to preface with this: 1. I’m not western. I don’t think anyone in this world would consider my country part of the west or the imperial core. I’m from the global south and working class. 2. I’m young and only a couple of years ago started engaging with marxist theory and as a consequence the online western left. And 3. Everything here is my opinion and some details escape me due to the fact that I don’t follow the discussion on the internet 100%. While I spend a lot of time online, most of that time is not wasted on Twitter or Reddit or what not. That being said, this is an insomnia induced rant aimed mainly to my american comrades, but anyone else in the western/anglo sphere also can take something useful from here. I don’t know.
I started following western/internet leftists on twitter recently as a consequence of me making a twitter account. I’ve come to the conclusion that the western/western adjacent left (ie. All the anglosphere) is completely useless staying on the internet in any capacity. American and european communists debate the dumbest possible shit and reach no useful results. Motherfuckers agree on 99% of things and start attacking each other like rabid dogs for the stupid 1% in which they disagree. I wouldn’t even call it infighting because that would compare it with the debates and disagreements of the historic left like the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks were debating and discussing actually important thing while actually doing something, while going to the people and organizing. Imbeciles do jackshit and pretend that by attacking someone else on twitter they are achieving something valuable or reaching to the people and making a change. Their “propaganda” is garbage. While the people that actually do something to bring about the revolution aren’t concerned by their idiocy. The example of this are the “discussions” that a lot of “leftists” have had with Ben Norton recently and that is what compeled me to write this rant.
In my opinion Ben is the best journalist out there. Both with the ideological conviction and the actual ability to do the job of journalism with integrity and courage to denounce the capitalist rulers, and his work clearly shows it. Similar to the people at The Grayzone but actually a communist. And by the way, it is clear that that is the line along which he “broke” with Blumenthal.
Ben, having seen with his own eyes the hell brought to Latin America by the United States (living in Nicaragua), naturally empathizes with the struggle and the outlook of the people towards the US. But people on twitter still attacks him or disagree with him on completely delusional matters.
One example: Noah from Midwestern Marx. I love Modwestern Marx. Carlos and Eddy are some of the best propagandists you americans have right now. But twitter really damages any possibility of reaching the masses significantly. his disagreement with Ben is about the US flag. Ben is on the opinion (rightly so), thay the US flag represents terror, war, imperialism, death, to the people’s of the world. And that US communists should NOT use a symbol like that to rally the people. Noah disagrees and says that using that symbol has been democratically elected by the people (?). Not only that, he states (without a grain of evidency and clearly not even listening or reading what Ben actually says) that Ben is “reading too much Sakai and not enough Lenin”… WHAT THE FUCK?! And then he doubles down and defends the use of that flag by some indigenous people in the US. Needless to say, but I’m saying it anyways, colonized people holding their colonizer’s flag doesn’t make it a good flag.
Some others, like Xiangyu of all people, post stupid shit like “Oppose the Nortons” (mf you are not Mao) or call Ben a radlib, and being rude in general. Straight up infantile shit. And oh, while also self righteously calling people that disagree with him “degenerates” all while saying he laments Dugin’s daughter assassination (a whole other can of worms).
I hate that that is the state of the left in the US and adjacent. And I hate that I saw that shit willingly. If you american communists don’t get to work and do a revolution soon, the rest of the world will, with or without your support, and things will get ugly, like, really ugly. For us, but specially for you.
I post this all not because I think the details matter, they don’t. But to illustrate the point that as long as you keep falling to the trap of social media like twitter (it makes you angry by design), you won’t achieve anything. And the people that will do something will be the worst elements of the western society, either on the right or pretending to be left (coff coff Maupin). The west, and specially the US, have a way of shaping your mind that I have seen too many times, both online and offline. Shake that shit out of you. It is making you inhumane and ineffective, and the bourgeoisie is winning thanks to that.
There are certain formats like discord and twitter, that bring out the worst in people. Those platforms bank on angry, non-stop-repyling and “engagement”, because they know it drives up the amount of time people spend on the site. People will stay angry for days replying on certain threads and it wrecks their brains, and makes them combative, irritable people.
W/ regard to the patsocs, we are seeing a resurgence of them that’s very similar to the kautsky vs Lenin debate on patriotism and social chauvinism (which makes it doubly hilarious that the person is trying to pit Lenin against Sakai). Its almost become a litmus test that anyone who hates refusese to read Settlers, considers themselves a “patriot”, or wants to preserve the US in any way, is a social chauvinist who should shut their damn mouths and learn about the history of US empire.
Ben is doing great work, it’s really unfortunate to see him get flak for what should be a bare-minimum communist position: advocating for the downfall of the US empire, capitalism’s worldwide military enforcer.
There are some good US orgs, PSL, CPUSA, PCUSA, that are mostly staying out of these shitfights by enforcing social media discipline, which is good to see. The party I’m in, PSL, hates patsocs, and in the recent months CPUSA publicly distanced themselves from patsocs too.
There are certain formats like discord and twitter, that bring out the worst in people. Those platforms bank on angry, non-stop-repyling and “engagement”, because they know it drives up the amount of time people spend on the site.
I’ve raised something like this several times on several platforms. I was a particular proponent of killing the downvote on Hexbear, which had very split opinions on the site when it was implemented but the community now prefers it massively.
One of the issues of social media is that the systems design in a competitive win/loss mindset in people’s engagement(winning getting upvotes and losing getting ratio’d or downvoted or whatever). The person you’re talking to isn’t the person that matters when you’re having an interaction, what matters is the audience reading.
This creates a scenario in where people don’t actually have honest interactions with each other, they are having an interaction to sway the hundreds or perhaps thousands of people reading instead. They are seeking the Likes, Hearts, Upvotes, whatever. And not only that but they are also seeking that the person they disagree with get downvotes or ratio’d, etc.
The systems of social media depersonalise the interaction between 2 people and make it about writing for an audience of people who decide the “winner” and the “loser” instead. This is the driving force of some of the shittiest behaviour out there. We desperately need a different style of gameification that does not produce this outcome and shifts the focus of people’s behaviour to a different mindset.
Related to your last paragraph, I think PCUSA is doing an absolute banger of a public service with their People’s School series and the person who narrates the readings has such an incredible reading voice that the dryest shit becomes incredibly engaging. Although I know from members CPUSA is abandoning a lot of the liberalism that has defined them in the past and regrouping as more staunchly Marxist-Leninist, I still feel as if PCUSA’s platform is much much better and free from electoral obsession. I wish they’d distance themselves from this patsoc garbage but they seem to be embracing it, or at least were. It’s my only hang-up about the party.
There are 100 opportunists for every comrade, and hardly anyone seems interested in discipline or education. Our individualism is so bad our arms and legs would leave our torsos and strike out on their own if they could.
It’s all just a way for libs to cultivate their identity. They’re not communists or anarchists in any meaningful sense. Like you say, they don’t do anything. It’s all about social credit and the unmet need to be seen as distinct and valuable individuals in a system that has alienated them. It’s cope.
That’s what I think anyway.
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Yeah its been this way for so long. There are other theaters that this occurs as well, such as sex trade conversations. There are many people that have a lot of liberal baggage that they accept as their intuition. I routinely hear coworkers drag libertarians into the dirt as absolute morons only to hear then say “you just gotta pay for your porn bro” 10 min later.
The whole thing makes me reflect on myself and what the hell im doing with my life. Like how the hell did I get here from where I was??? Its part of why I took a long break from online discourse but I cant escape it in my day to day life now regardless of if im online or not and people are just not receptive. Im always trying to refine my rhetoric but imo there are greater forces at play than my abilities to communicate or my understanding of the world.
Some Lemmygrad users are sex trade apologists who get very mad when you criticize it
Not supporting sex trafficking gets you hounded in western “leftist” circles
It’s a weird trap in the Western left that I’ve fallen into as well. But I got exposed to other sentiments on Lemmygrad which clearified some things up for me, which I’m thankful for.
That’s why I like this site and its seemingly diverse userbase. It’s good to see what people outside of the Western bubble are up to.
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“Dumb dumbs should read more theory” isn’t winning any ideological battles, comrade.
Not attempting to put words in your mouth but the sort of line that I feel is related – the ‘telling people to read is ableist’ take – is laughable, reactionary and services no one but the bourgeois state and I wouldn’t be surprised if their think tanks are behind the scenes pushing this narrative hard to prevent people from understanding even the most basic of concepts. Reading is hard but understanding is paramount. Practice without theory is petty-bourgeois, no masters no bedtimes radicalism. I used to believe more strongly that the ‘advanced masses’, that is proletarian eclectic leftists, had mostly good ideas and that a focus on pushing further Marxist education was not necessary, that it was more pragmatic to tail them basically. But we see with the most widely successful revolts in the U.S. like CHAZ, Occupy and the pseudo-corporate Black Lives Matter groups, these movements are/were led by hilariously inept opportunists who have absolutely no idea what they’re or why they’re doing it, and they were co-opted almost instantaneously. They utterly refuse to learn from historical and contemporary revolutions for fear of being labeled authoritarian and glom onto anarchist “theory” and focus on individualist, non-systematic approaches to revolution like mutual aid, property destruction, and consumer activism. You only have to look so far into how so many of these “revolutionaries” view the very basic question of authority and class – all authority is bad and class is relatively unimportant. Childish! This shitty line has been destroyed over a thousand times over a hundred years. The most advanced and passionate sections of the proletariat are going to need to study, even if it’s hard, otherwise they’ll keep making the same idiotic mistakes over and over and over. This is not to say that they’re stupid, or “dumb dumbs”, just that actively dissuading people from reading theory because they can ‘learn it in the struggle’ or gleam a general gist from synthetic leftists online is a very bad idea.
Mao’s little red book was required reading for BPP iirc. Reading, even just basic stuff, is how you prevent people from becoming ultras, pat-socs and anarchists, and how orgs prevent the aforementioned from infiltrating the party. It’s also a means to foment revolutionary thinking and deprogramming peoples deeply propagandized and anti-communist impulses bred into them by bourgeois ideology. Remember, “mass literacy programs are a key component to ebil communist regimes!!!” Libs say this stuff unsarcastically. Read it in Braille, or fuk!n listen to an audiobook, the point is to become familiar with the literature and theory, not to be a bookshelf.
Obviously the idea of encouraging a genuine engagement with theory is too much for some. My comment has been deleted.
the west is a lost cause. the only actual leftist progress occurs in actual socialist states, especially china. as i’ve said before, western leftists are often just imperialists who want healthcare.
“in on the heist, they just don’t like their cut”
“Temporarily embarrassed billionaires.”
I think calling it a lost cause is way too pessimistic but its going to take a LOT more work than it will in other countries
i agree… it certainly can feel hopeless, but it’s not and yes it will require immense work because it’s the absolute core
Not only that, he states (without a grain of evidency and clearly not even listening or reading what Ben actually says) that Ben is “reading too much Sakai and not enough Lenin”…
I’mma keep it a buck with you if I hear somebody really fix their face to say that, they getting cut the fuck off. That kneejerk response in anyone anglo-adjacent is exactly why I take a third worldist position-- I no longer believe the ‘American left’ is capable of anything but being the lapdogs for empire.
If you american communists don’t get to work and do a revolution soon, the rest of the world will, with or without your support, and things will get ugly, like, really ugly. For us, but specially for you.
It isn’t going to happen, specifically because Anglos(and those who gleefully tapdance for them) will relinquish nothing that revolution requires one relinquish. I hope the outside world bulldozes us; I hope for my ashes to be mixed with the soil of the land my ancestors were stolen to build. Because y’know what, that’s the closest that Any of my people will ever get-- or anyone else the Anglos have ever exploited, for that matter-- to owning the land we cultivated for the crackers.
I hope for my ashes to be mixed with the soil of the land my ancestors were stolen to build.
I would hope that socialists would at least be aware enough of the culture to be open to reparations.
You’d hope so! You’d also be very, very wrong. The vast majority of American ‘leftists’ I’ve spoken to are the type to “there’s no race problem, just a class problem” on some 1920s IWW shit.
An interesting take I’ve seen from some marxists is the idea that “race is class”. It more or less functions as its own class system. Gender is also a kind of class. It gets close to the idea of intersectionality but hasn’t been co-opted to be toothless yet.
See, I like this a lot; because it acknowledges what I’ve been coming to think of as axes of class. It was never just one class-based aspect we were supposed to be looking to, I genuinely think there’s a ‘gap’ in the theory there that’s never really been investigated-- at least, not by those who are more dogmatic than they’d like to believe.
Much to the chagrin of white communists; intersectionality has a bulletproof point that class has several dimensions.
Capital is ultimately a system of who works and who doesnt have to work and live passively.
Zoom out and there are other systems of “captial” such as systems of racialization and gender conditioning. Those exchanges are as immutable as having to pay rent.
Whites just want the easy solution without having a reckoning of what revolution genuinely asks of them to do.
Sakai was not wrong. But it is up to white workers tonprove Sakai wrong. It can be done; but they actually have to do it.
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Yes
This is exactly why I changed my profile picture to Ai-Chadified Ben Norton
