Socialist boy/girl scouts would be incredible. Building solidarity, learning useful skills, having book and debate clubs, being educated about consent and deconstruction… The dream. Rn I only know for the West but it’s linked to churches and armies so meh
Socialist boy/girl scouts are called ‘Young Pioneers’ - e.g. Young Pioneers of Cuba or Young Pioneers of China. They look like scouts except for the red neckerchiefs. idk if any organisations exist outside socialist countries or if they’re allowed to - Hong Kong still has scouts because of the ‘no imposing socialist values’ part of the joint declaration.
Soviet pioneers too.
Although I’m told they have different underlying philosophies from scouts.
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Yeah, that dream… I wish my childhood was that colorful. Too bad, here in the Philippines, its just either Scouting as a subject or the Catholic youth orgs and the sacristy… I wish I experienced wearing the red scarf.
Similar take, it was and still is prepping boys for war, problem is they are just super dorky now lol.
Also, were the youth communist leagues similar to the Scouts?
As one who was in it. I hate it. They partner with the religious right to basically train kids to have toxic masculinity issues and further bring them into the church. I hate them.
Socialist scouts would be very cool tho
I wonder if this depends on location? There must have been some religious element to my scouts – the hall was attached to a church – but I can’t remember that part of it at all.
it definitely does, and how much influence the parents have. i was in two troops as a kid, one was clearly secular, the other was dominated by bougie christian quasi fash (prob full fash by now). the parents absolutely ruined the youth’s experiences in the latter, and propped up their own kids with special status and privileges.
I’m lucky that my community doesn’t have a church connection or any real political affiliation besides a vague patriotism(🤮)
Socialist scouts would be very cool tho
They were cool, afaik most of socialist countries in Europe did had such organizations, which were openly based on US boy scouts, like polish ZHP (still existing but being put into cathonational whirl and severly diminishing because capitalist taking over of childhood for the last 30 years).
There’s also ZHR in Poland, which are just as you said catholic conservative boy scouts, but i did not seen any of them for a long time so idk maybe they dwindled already.
And then, unfortunately, there was Hitlerjugend, which was based on the US boy scouts too, which shows how those organizations are generally successful in formatting the young generation, thankfully there aren’t much profits in this so they aren’t big in capitalism.
Idea itself is a good one, and in itself politically neutral. The Soviet Union and other socialist countries have all had their version of the scouts – as have most capitalist and even fascist states. Naturally, braindead liberals use this as an argument for the Soviet Union being “fascist,” because muh Hitler Youth, Junior Anti-Sex League, etc. But really, it’s just a great way to get kids out in nature, having fun and learning useful life skills.
In the US, unfortunately, the implementation has always tended towards a kind of militant and reactionary nationalism. My father wouldn’t let me and my brothers join for that reason. Also, because Americans and liberals all seem to be horny bastards who would actually benefit from an irl Junior Anti-Sex League, there’s been a recognized phenomena of sexually abusive scoutmasters. Everything I know about the US scouts is from the outside looking in, but I wouldn’t particularly recommend them to anybody.
The boy scouts have an associated honor society called “the order of the arrow” which has a bunch of ceremonies where settlers larp as turtle island indigenous people.
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ya this was creepy. my first tell was there were no native folks in these ceremonies and an old white dude wearing a full on Sioux head dress (land recognition wasn’t practiced with the liberal flagellations of today and i was young but I def knew this wasn’t at all tied to the land we stood on)
All my grandparents and parents experienced the scouts in the Soviet union and I am very envious.
Scouts in Belgium is huge, because it’s 1) fun apparently (I’m not Belgian myself) and 2) it’s cheap daycare lol.
It creates a huge amount of community feeling among their members and the kids often stay member for well into their adult life. There are some issues like alcohol abuse and I’m sure not everything will be done correctly but it’s a good way to build a sense of community at a young age.
I remember being offered warm wine at about 5am one morning, aged 10. We were all up with the ‘sunrise’ because the rain was so heavy that (a) nobody could sleep through the noise and (b) the river burst its bank, the field flooded, and half our tents were floating. Can’t remember how old I was when I realised we’d been given warm blackcurrent juice.
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Same here, I had a lot of good times in my troop. The main things I didn’t like that are currently still required for Eagle is all of the “God in …” badges. Even before I realized I was an atheist, it felt super bad that religion was so baked into it. It bothered me that it wasn’t at least more agnostic as to the specific religions being focused on. Being “reverent” doesn’t mean only Christianity (or Jewish or Muslim), being a member of the community means that you are supposed to respect the religious beliefs of others. Even as a non-believer I try to make sure to be “reverent” in respecting religious folks of all kinds (I have even taken time to go to multiple services of a branch of Buddhist org a friend’s family goes to). It also kept me more in the closet with regards to my belief in no god when I heard that it could block me from getting Eagle (which I did get). Though a co-worker did tell me that they were allowing girls to join (as she had a son and daughter in the scouts). So depending on how badly they need to get more people signing up. They could eventually take a more broad acceptance of what it means to be “reverent”. But I imagine they would openly support folks of the LGBTQIA+ community long before they accept that atheists can be “reverent” of and understand the importance of all religions to those that believe in them.
A socialist org would be cool, and really could use much of the current BSA material. Since so much is based on stuff that isn’t specific to any political system. And the stuff that is could be re-worked pretty easy, as it is important to understand different systems in the world. Though an openly socialist version of scouts would be super attacked as “indoctrination”. But it really already is “indoctrination” in its current form, as it is instructing kids into being certain kinds of persons.
It also kept me more in the closet with regards to my belief in no god when I heard that it could block me from getting Eagle (which I did get).
I had similar reservations in my troop. But during my Eagle Scout Master Conference, I told him flatly that I was an atheist and also talked about my philosophy – such as it can be for a teenager – around ethics and morals and community. I still got my Eagle Scout rank. This was back in 2007 and, if I recall correctly, there was already some rumbling about how the BSA might start loosening its rigid religiosity. So perhaps at that point it wasn’t a big deal anymore. Or perhaps he just stayed mum on the matter and/or filed whatever paperwork he needed to with the “right” boxes checked.
Nice to see that your Scout Master was understanding of the “spirit” of the whole thing and not just a “by the book” kind of person. I think that the fact that you came with thought-out reasons and everything showed that you weren’t just being an angsty teen rebelling. They also may have still done the whole “this may be a phase and shouldn’t block the one shot at getting this” in their head. Which even if that were the case, would still be a much better situation than forcing shit on you. I got mine in 2002 which was a very different time from any version of “loosening up”. Just thinking of some of the open homophobia that was just “normal” makes me ashamed of just going along with it (I am a cis white male, but I really never hated the LGBTQIA+ community and just did the kid/teenager thing of not wanting to be the one being picked on). The worst people about it were the uber religious kids or otherwise ones that made fun of things they never interact with (like how lots of former racists talk about when they learned everyone is people regardless of skin).
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Tbh I may be wrong but the concept isn’t totally bad for the US. I mean the whole patriotic element of it is garbage, but in a potential Socialist USA(idek what that would look like but I hope for it someday) a lot of the concepts they teach are kinda admirable(obviously I don’t fuck with the cisgender normative approach of it, acceptance of trans boys would be best) like teaching gun safety(there’s no shot that the US will get rid of our guns anytime soon so being pragmatic and living safely with guns is a good way to deal with guns) respect for Native Americans and their values and cultures. I was never a scout but a few friends and family members were scouts and they knew a lot about native traditions and practices that I never knew about. They also teach survival skills which I think objectively come in handy for anybody who wants to be in nature and enjoys hiking/kayaking/etc.
Keep them far from the priests and other conservatists.
youth scouting/pioneer programs are absolutely life changing and amazing for those involved. obviously BSA had all sorts of problems, from it’s christian-nationalistic transference to it’s full on SA abuses of minors. far too late, branches of the program became more progressive, such as the co-ed explorer scouts.
what it taught me is that every youth should have this opportunity yet reactionary parents undermined the whole program. BSA has a structure, but scout leaders and parents took it upon themselves to project their individualistic goals and determine the overall orientation of a troop and the council, including issues of accessibility with degrees of classism, ableism and prejudices involved.
seeing the hypocrisy of the leaders in face of the program, the readings and stories I learned in scouts, for me was perhaps one of the earlier radicalization experiences I had. I was in a situation to be able to understand and assess these contradictions. it was one of the earliest time that I began understanding structural issues, that no matter how good the youth could make their program, it was always controlled and manipulated by a disconnected and self-serving leadership.
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TIL everyone on Lemmygrad is a boy scout. I would’ve never guessed lol
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Didn’t fit in very well with mine. I switched to cello lessons.
