Probably worth sharing the top comment from the lemmygrad thread:
The article was written by John Bechtel, who was chair of the CPUSA up until 2019.
This is their official take on the Oct 7 attack.
https://www.cpusa.org/article/stop-the-war-end-the-occupation-free-palestine/
Someone else mentioned that Bechtel is still president of the organization that published People’s World. Are they not under direct control of the CPUSA?
Good question, I couldn’t find anything definitive. When People’s World first went online in 2009, CPUSA was involved, though.
Peoples world is a “privately held company” operated by members of CPUSA’s central committee. Anyone saying that People’s world isn’t run by CPUSA because of a tissue paper’s thickness worth of “plausible deniability” would be akin to denying that Washington Post is the mouthpiece of Jeff Bezos and his cohort because WAPO is owned by “Nash Holdings LLC”
Removed
Some things are bad there, but its not “just as bad”.
Honestly in think condemning a statement that calls for an end of the occupation for not flaunting pointless bloodthirst and using a little disgression/moderation is fine. I know we’re supposed to be dirtbags that dont care about tone here, but i think a national org is a different situation.
Who says “Israel/Palestine”?? Zionist language
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I’m not American so things could be different but I do think that a solution to having a reactionary Communist Party is to JOIN THAT PARTY and participate in party democracy, there’s more than enough of us to bring about internal change instead of going full splitter mode. If the current party core is too dug in for this to work then they are no longer a communist party and that’s when you split off. If you’re an ML you should be a member of a communist party. It’s part of the deal.
“Do your part, join an org”
The org:
Honestly, I don’t know of a single org that is not a cringe ass cesspool filled with useless pseudo-academics with terrible takes that ultimately don’t want to do anything remotely revolutionary besides political education classes or reading groups.
It’s no wonder the US is in the political state it is in currently.
The IWW has unionized several workplaces, which is honestly more than most other orgs can claim.
I hear that. I might try again later but I’ve given up on communist/socialist organizations in the US for the reasons I’ve mentioned above and more, but I’m very active and effective in my own workplace union. I figure that is far more impactful than a couple of awkwardly ignored rallies a year, at most.
That’s understandable. Wish you luck with your union!
organizing several workplaces
Honestly is there even a point to this in the imperial core? Oh yes let’s organize the labor aristocracy so they can get a slightly larger cut of the treat horde!
Do you seriously buy into the Infrared-tier meme that Starbucks workers are the labor aristocracy?
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I think there was a point to it when manufacturing and dirty industries were the primary base of the left pre-globalisation. The IWW were a real force back in the day.
It is very hard to look at things since and attempt to justify it as a method that will somehow lead to revolution some day. They reorganised society and eliminated this tactic by exporting a lot of the jobs that were creating truly revolutionary people.
That’s not to say that some of those jobs don’t exist anymore. We see it in the trains, we see it in the dockworkers, and we see it a small amount in the remaining manufacturing. We’ve seen a sort of revival in the growth of Amazon warehouses too, which I think have conditions that are so bad that they are producing electrified workers susceptible to revolutionary rhetoric again.
But is it enough people for a revolution? I don’t think it is. More are needed.
Proletarianization is coming for service workers just like everyone else. There is nothing more agitating about running a forklift vs. making coffee. The key is for workers to see that management doesn’t think of them as people, is fucking them over personally, and that unified direct action can win against management.
We’re seeing trends that increase all of this. The myth of the American Dream is laid bare, infinite land speculation for the majority is gone. Real wages deflating, workforce shrinking, no sense that hard work or following “the plan” will ensure healthcare, housing, and retirement. Vague anti-capitalism is trendy among younger people and as they age - and stall out - they start to take organizing seriously if you show them the blueprint.
If anything, I would say that the population, particularly people under 40, is ripe for radicalization but socialists are far too quiet and incompetent, unable to grow because they are not strategic or serious in their work. What we really need is people that seriously build socialist programs that can grow orgs without sacrificing quality of theory. Be among the people, agitate by identifying community needs and building to meet them, build lists, raise funds, recruit members into a training program, build connections with other orgs by being present at events and talking to them, etc etc. I am in awe of how many people in so many orgs just kinda fumble around without identifying goals or a strategy or even having a half-decent reading group. Luckily I think some of this is sorting itself out as the people who know how to organize get frustrated and join better orgs.
Having worked both environments I find it very difficult to say they are both the same. It might be possible to equally radicalise the store worker (we’re certainly seeing success and growth in this where I am) but in terms of which one is easier? From experience it is massively easier to radicalise the workers on the manufacturing line or the workers doing heavier labour.
Understanding that one is easier than the other and acknowledging it plays a material role in what has happened in the material core as a result of exporting those jobs to the periphery is still important and valid.
Luckily I think some of this is sorting itself out as the people who know how to organize get frustrated and join better orgs.
My experience is not that people do not know how to organise but that it is a lot of work, and the reason so many of them are marxists is that they do too much work for capitalism and are so so tired as a result. The problem is that we need many more full-time organisers, or full-time revolutionaries as Lenin would have said. It takes a very unique kind of person to both work for capitalists and also entirely sacrifice the remainder of their time and energy for organising on top of their work for capitalists. In many cases this is a person that enjoys organising as well, which is a rare gem of a trait that exists in a very small number of people.
Gotta disagree on the differences in how easy it is to unionize or radicalize these different workplaces. It’s not about a job simply being harder or easier, but about the forces that combat collective action, often intimidation but also mobility and power of capital vs. workers.
Example: organizing a restaurant can be difficult not because it’s inherently harder for workers (front or back of house) to see class conflict, but because of the efficacy of the union busting playbook, intimidation of back of house that is often undocumented immigrants, and being forced to work directly alongside management 24/7. If that restaurant is a centrally-owned chain, even worse, as they’ll just shut the whole thing down using some flimsy excuse. This can be harder to do for other industries that are less mobile and have fewer of these countervailing forces, e.g. longshoremen.
Example: unionizing Amazon is actually going very poorly. They have all of the hard labor things you might be thinking of and ALU sucks so they aren’t getting anywhere. Amazon is, of course, in a very powerful monopoly position and gladly cycles through staff and does an effective job at union busting, but the issue here is poor organizing skills and a poor approach to the union overall. The Chris Smalls Show is fun to watch but terrible at actually doing the work.
In both cases, we need both things: a good understanding of workers’ social relations to production (and therefore management) and competent and knowledgeable organizers that will run militant campaigns based on that understanding.
In my experience the vast majority of self-proclaimed socialists, including those interested in labor, don’t have even basic organizing skills, let alone realistic strategy meetings or campaigns that are in any way serious. They have some enthusiasm and they like labor aesthetics. Some don’t commit the effort or time, yes, but many actually throw themselves into it and get nothing done because they don’t amplify their impact by doing the basics of organizing, choosing to take on activities that can be supported by 2 or 3 individuals that don’t know what they’re doing rather than 10 people ready to fight and distribute work. Or worse, just spend their time talking about what’s happening and what take to publish about it in a newsletter.
I do see and know many folks like you’re talking about. Borderline or actually burned out because when they try to organize, it ends up being a ton of work on them. While it’s true that organizing does take a significant time commitment, it is also my experience that these are folks that failed to train anyone to be their comrades-in-arms, and thus still have some skills to learn. Or, very commonly, they’re in an org that has a toxic culture where people don’t really want to do organizing, they just want to play at it and pretend, so it feels like you’ve got no support.
When folks find an org where it’s 100% experienced organizers, it’s like a breath of fresh air where things happen rapidly and competently because they know the patterns and distribute the work. What I’m describing is basically the cadre model, though I usually avoid that term because it feels larpy.
omg i made the wrong reply again ignore this
Where is the integration of the changes in the global financial system and the labor market of the USA over the past several decades into the conversation here?
The portion of Americans I’d call the labor aristocracy can’t be that difficult to define. Finance, insurance, military, law enforcement, military contractors, real estate, management, tech workers, hi-end journalists, designers & entertainment workers. They can’t live entirely off financial assets but they’re weren’t drowning in debt to the same extent as the US poor until they really got hooked on the jetskis and 24/7 treats, and they put their retirement savings into funds which blackmail entire nations along with the IMF.
The people who have a high position in these industries like the Washington Post workers lmao striking are a clear example of who not to give a shit about.
Unions don’t necessarily do that.
Many have no worker participation to speak of that would breed class consciousness. If anything those unions make workers anti-union. They go on strike when the leadership says so, but usually they don’t because leadership is friendly with management.
Even in unions with good participation, there’s a limit. They learn the class consciousness against their own upper management but not against the class. Or they think of themselves as PMC-ascendant and not really in need of a union in the first place. I’ve had so many conversations with people who have a union and then look down on janitors.
Unions can be a vehicle for class consciousness but only through militancy, political education, and an org willing to push those things.
Yeah sure my point is just that what they’re organizing isn’t a labor force consisting entirely of bourgeois workers who make their money off third world labor and finance.
There are lots of shit unions and unions which are only organizing bourgeois workers though, or worse, fucking cops
The idea of labor aristocracy goes back to pre-Marx, where it was used to explain why the English trade unions failed to radicalize and could in fact be pretty reactionary and imperialist. The idea was that while they are proletarian in their relationship to production (the labor part), they receive so much gain from imperialism (along with social status) that they fail to become globally class conscious. Instead, they support their country’s imperialist wars that bring home the loot they split with their bourgeoisie.
This is reminiscent of US labor that was “bought off” by similar means a century ago and many of the remaining industrial unions in the US. Those for military contractors are the most obvious, but a lack of global class consciousness can be found in almost every union here. Knee-jerk support for other unions kicks in, so you’ll see Teamsters and SEIU and UAW supporting Boeing workers next year despite the latter making the tech that eventually spies on Gazans and bombs kids. And in only one of the above is there a subculture that I’d call class consciousness (UAW via UAWD). Try having conversations about socialism in these unions and you’ll have to scrounge for even basic class consciousness and might get hounded out by staff. The classism I mentioned earlier is rife in two of those big unions.
This is something we have to recognize if we want to rely on a labor strategy as socialists in the imperial core. I’ve seen a lot of socialists with very little labor experience but rose-tinted glasses about labor militancy from the late 1800s run head-first into union organizing and then becoming dismayed at what they find when they stop looking for the “corrupt union bosses” as the only ill. And those socialists that are anti-imperialist will quickly find that labor-focused socialists tend to be imperialist, as their efforts do tend to be in support of the conditions of a better-off subset of the imperialist working class. Try telling them to have a slightly critical approach to the Teamsters, who are both militant and reactionary. They’ll start to get scared they’ll lose what little labor connections they have (not a false fear).
Anyways, that’s the old-school concept of labor aristocracy and also more or less the same concept used by MLs and Maoists when they want to look at this problem. It’s an attempt to provide a material interest rationale for why the imperial core trade unionists almost always suck at class consciousness, especially anti-imperialism.
I understand you don’t mean it this way, but “labor aristocracy” is also a term used by wobs to critique business unions. Besides that, even Settlers posits that some people have proletarian spirit in the imperial core, even if those people are only the colonized. Even besides that, what else are left-leaning people supposed to do in the imperial core? Just give up?
Of course there’s a point. Workers en masse will only increase their class consciousness by acting in their class interests. It’s dialectical. When people fight for their class interests in a union, they realize they’re the working class. With the right political influences (this is where orgs like communist parties and the IWW come in) they will hopefully realize “oh shit those guys over there are also the working class”. With no class consciousness, what you call the labor aristocracy can’t do anything at all, domestic or international.
Yes if you marry it to a socialist org or the right demo because you can use them as a vehicle to fight for your other things.
The Starbucks union is full of younger folks that made frequent contact with socialists and they put out a better pro-Palestine statement than most socialist orgs lol. Their parent union has shit takes but the SB kids are killing it.
Gotta take a critical view but still try to find an angle for power and expansion. Any opportunity to recruit and to structure test and to accomplish tasks.
This will almost certainly lead you into a difficult but interesting category of worker organizing, which is in industries of the precariat, small businesses that no big union will help unionize, gig workers, and undocumented immigrants.
I’ve heard good things about the PSL, but I’m not American so I’ve not had any actual experience with them.
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Of all the things to criticize PSL for this is probably the worst one I’ve heard
“what do we want?”
“incremental change!”
“when do we want it?”
“whenever it’s convenient for the ruling class!”
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It’s not going to happen first. But you can’t wait until the global south rises up to do your part lol. These things need to occur simultaneously. Who do you think will be more influential when the global south’s actions start affecting the west and only fascists are out there in the streets saying they care?
I assumed 99% of the people on this site involved in organizations are already aware their socialist group isn’t going to become bolsheviks from just talking about books and chants, and that the goal was to simply exhaust the so called civil options and build a network before things get seriously. And maybe suggest to your group that they should be focusing on outreach with protests on the side.
The US is definitely hopeless if you Unironically thought a revolution would happen and became disillusioned. You should remember that communism became a threat in the west because non western countries were starting to challenge them. Then the class-and-theory revolutionaries - who served their communities in addition to protesting - were murdered and replaced with hippies, electoralists, and black supremacists
People who commit violence for you without even knowing what you stand for are untrustworthy. People who commit violence for you without being aware of the the people’s conditions are also untrustworthy.
Yup.
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Have you read Lenin’s Left-Wing Comminism? He makes a pretty good argument for why communists should run in bourgeois elections.
That video slaps. Criticisms aside, good luck to them in reaching some more people.
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Seems to be from location to location. I got some hope for the one in my town, but they’re generally actually doing some praxis under that banner.
My towns PSL does some good work, but they’re extremely gatekeepy with regards to taking on new members. 9 months of working with them and I got ghosted by the person “screening” me, or whatever you wanna call it. Hell, I did more myself than that person did. I’ve also had a comrade, who is a member on this site and one I see frequently IRL, tell me they wouldn’t offer him membership because they felt they need more minority members. My take on that is, “isn’t a comrade a comrade?”
Maybe you could get more minority members if you had more members organizing…
Exactly.
Sounds like they’re just plain incompetent.
The most basic aspect of organizing is to get other people to do things for your project. If you don’t have time to recruit and onboard people, you’ll have nobody to do things for you!
I feel like making friends is ultimately an important part of being a socialist or whatever, just like it is with any organization. Plenty of people in orgs are normal people who have a good worldview. Even if the org isn’t doing much, you can always still make connections (unless they do a bad job of that I guess).
That’s actually very true. I am still very close, or feel very close, to friends I made through organizing a decade ago.
It’s really the biggest reason I’d consider joining an org these days.
Join, and have all your friends join and vote em out. These are small small parties, this is where doing small bits of normal participatory government stuff needs to be done. We have enough people to overwhelm the old guard if they just swallow their pride, join and reform the party around modern needs and ideas
That’s just not the kind of political work I’d like to be doing in my spare time and it’s doubtful how effective it is if the end result is just a club of my friends.
“ORGANIZE!”
“With who?”
“Oh yeah.”
GENERAL STRIKE! imperial core leftist energy
form affinity groups with trusted friends and make purchases in cash
I initially read this as “fur affinity groups” and am now imagining a bunch of Zapatistas in fursuits
this is also an option
And don’t post about it
If that org got a massive influx of young communists who disagree with these reactionary takes and policies then that’s what the party becomes. Take the reigns for yourself, if it’s an ML party and working off of those principles that should be very possible.
I’ve seen people tilt at that windmill before. It would take a very concerted effort.
It’s definitely a better use of time to just join a better org and help build it to the point that CPUSA either wants to merge with it or just becomes obviously irrelevant in comparison (it’s unlikely to grow much on its current course).
Not American, Cpusa is op to the core based on other replies. So uh…don’t apply this to them.
Ah I don’t think it’s an OP so much as deeply and structurally incompetent. Those things can be hard to distinguish because an infiltrated org is one where feds advocate for terrible ideas and ensure nothing gets done.
“Yes, organizing in the imperial core is pointless. You’re better off staying home and posting memes on Hexbear instead.” -
You know how I finally got involved in an org? I had a vision of the rest of my life. Spend my free time reading theory for the next 50 years or so. I could probably get pretty smart at this Marxism thing. Then I die. That big Marxist brain shuts off and I will have left the world not making even the slightest impact on it. Well, some people online knew I was a commie and some family members, but that’s it. I developed all this knowledge - devoted my life to it - and in the end it didn’t mean a thing. I couldn’t handle that, I had to do something.
You know why people like Zizek have such shit takes? I think it’s largely because he (and frankly, most Marxist academics) aren’t involved in even the slightest bit of real praxis. He would rather jerk off other Marxist philosophers with his pettifoggery bullshit than help some homeless folks down the street. Being a commie isn’t about having the right takes. It’s about changing the world (with the right takes). Being right on the internet, now THAT is pointless.
Faith without works is dead, comrades.
Yeah, of course, those of us in the imperial core have our work cut out for us. The conditions aren’t there right now. The conditions aren’t close to being there right now. But you know what, things can change on you fast. Maybe it’s all pointless but if you’re not involved and doing something, then you’ve already given up and we may as well just wait while this whole planet just cooks. And even if it is pointless, do it for yourself. Do it so you can feel that you’re at least trying and doing what you can.
People here whine and moan about DSA and PSL. I promise you, their chapters in your city aren’t anywhere near as bad as you’re probably afraid of. Yeah, sure, maybe some folks there will say things like “China is state capitalist”. But if that’s enough to keep you from organizing then I’m sorry, you’re definitely showing me you have never engaged with other leftists outside of this website. There’s a lot of opinions out there, and a lot of leftist IRL who have a lot of potential are gonna have some shitty takes when you meet them. WHY NOT BE THE ONE WHO HELPS THEM NOT BE SO SHIT?
Both orgs I mentioned are desperate for good, knowledgeable, passionate comrades. A lot of you here are more than capable of doing great things in an org. You would be shocked, if you put the work in, how willing people will be to follow your lead.
It’s important to find good orgs and not just put up with shitty libs ruining your opportunities for praxis. You can go from being a stay-at-home big brain to an infighting-and-pointless-electoralism lib if you’re not cognizant of your org and its weaknesses.
Step 1 is to join an org and begin doing work, including gaining organizing skills.
Step 2 is to either begin launching new campaigns yourself because you got lucky with your first choice of org or to instead join a better org so you can do better work.
Don’t underestimate just how toxic or useless some orgs can get! You might be surprised at how little headway you will make in some spaces where you do the leadership things (organizing, planning, logistics, socializing, chairing, hooking people up, teaching, etc) and can’t get anyone to move on key things like, “maybe don’t put all of your effort into failing to get some random person elected that is already 6 months late into declaring their candidacy” or “maybe you don’t need to put out a message condemning Hamas and both sides” or “maybe don’t be pro-cop”. I’ve seen or heard of all these things from very good organizers who moved on to better organizations. The issues above occurring in self-proclaimed socialist spaces, including some communist ones.
Consider also that step 1 may be hampered by a toxic or incompetent org. You may pick up bad habits or become complacent with failure or simply not be around anyone that can teach you good methods. You might even be in an org that actively quashes attempts to practice good methods because the folks around you think very highly of their own methods that never get results and believe it’s their goal in life to tell you what to do, lol. I’ve also seen this.
So my rec is to try the two steps I listed but know when to bail on a step 1 org that you’re not growing in.
This is great advice, I don’t actually disagree at all. You have to be smart, and there is a balance. Don’t walk away the first time someone doesn’t agree with you, but also know when to walk away if it’s gonna be hopeless.
on the other hand, there are a lot of orgs whose “praxis” is an utter dead end and squanders the potential of those passionate activists and end up burning them out after years of bashing their head against a wall with nothing to show for it. Their leadership of these orgs are often old heads who never got over the fact the cold war ended and love hearing themselves talk about “the good old days” when SDS “took over the campus” or just whoever had the most time on their hands and ran unopposed (usually the most online in the whole party too). If you do find an effective and active leader, more likely than not they’re an actual federal undercover who is so active because their ass is literally getting paid to be there and take notes on you. So you will spend your valuable time doing useless shit like trying to sell newspapers on the street corner (what fucking century is it?) or knocking on doors for your local “progressive” democrat who will immediately sell you all out anyway. Maybe you can co-opt a few protests somebody else organized, good work Lenin. And party discipline? yeah right. good luck getting people to show up to meetings with them also trying to manage their lives in hellworld, half the time the only thing keeping the org running consistently is because the leadership is all in some ridiculous clique/polycule that inevitably collapses in a shower of bitterness and maybe SA allegations that takes the whole org with them on the way out. Not every org deserves your respect, and moreover your energy, time, and money just because they call themselves communists.
Now not to be entirely cynical, there are definitely some notable exceptions. Ethnic identity orgs are some real disciplined heavy hitters in the American activist scene who know how to get shit done. Black Panthers, Brown Berets, AIM, hell look at groups like SJP causing congressional hearings right now. They’ve all learned valuable hard-won lessons from the white nationalist police state trying to roll them over, though if you’re a complete cumskin you’re probably going to stick out a little (a lot) trying to join one. DSA and PSL aren’t bad, it does really depend on the chapter it seems- it’s a good sign if they have more than 6 people in it and they aren’t all fucking eachother. Do not get into extremely online arguments about soviet agricultural policy, its annoying to everyone else and more importantly irrelevant to the current political struggle. Ironically anarchist groups tend to have their shit together more often because they don’t take themselves so fucking seriously like some trot or ML orgs do (who are nearly all completely irrelevant cranks and losers). FNB does real easy and good praxis and they have all been chill as hell. In reality if you are getting out to demonstrations in your locale you are probably going to eventually be meeting with other like minded orgs in your community, and you could and should be judging who has the most juice and invest your effort in them accordingly. rarely do they care about your “personal ideology” as long as you aren’t annoying about it and you are putting in work, everyone is desperate for more people like OP said.
So respect yourself and join orgs that respect you, its the people in them that matter and not whatever is on their pamphlet, we’re all just trying to fight against this rotting genocidal empire in our own ways. And until we get an honest to god revolutionary vanguard forming in this country I don’t think you should be afraid to walk away and stay away from an org that you feel is wasting your time or draining your fucking lifeforce. Left wing political organization is still very nascent and many of them will go the way of the Trudoviks (abandoned or absorbed into a more powerful party) once a legitimate class conscious proletarian force starts politically coalescing around whatever party (or whatever it will be called) in the future. You’ll know when you find some real comrades- they’ll earn your loyalty and you will earn theirs, and it will be beautiful. And that’s what will change the world.
(keep shitposting on hexbear in the meantime tho I need my slop)
A good sign is when the orgs have members who are also union reps etc etc, not because of entryism but because the party decided boosting local non party worker and activist orgs was the right thing to do.
There’s a reason a lot of organisations say you cant be member of a socialist org and that’s not because of entryism but because if you’re a committed and effective member of that org, people will start discussing your politics and where they can get them.
Zizek is by his own admission not a Marxist, he just talks about Marxism a lot. I think he says stupid shit because his existence is based on getting money from neoliberal media institutions, which means he can’t be radical in any useful sense. What he really believes is immaterial to that question.
GOOD post
People here whine and moan about DSA and PSL. I promise you, their chapters in your city aren’t anywhere near as bad as you’re probably afraid of.
They totally are sometimes tho
You know how I finally got involved in an org? I had a vision of the rest of my life.
“me, me, me” typical millennial smh
I promise you, their chapters in your city aren’t anywhere near as bad as you’re probably afraid of.
“I live in [insert city]” oh yeah that chapter is infamously bad haha
How do y’all balance the importance and need to get involved and join an org with how cringy and critically flawed many of them are? I feel at a loss with this
Stuff like this also reminds me how spoiled I am with hexbear though, lol, because I’ve rarely ever seen something super cringy or lib without it getting informative and/or entertaining pushback. “Leftist” spaces on Reddit feel really confused, poorly read on theory, and infested with libs and ruiners. This place is kinda built different like that
CPUSA has been deeply infiltrated by feds for decades. I have no idea why anyone would waste their time and energy with them in 2023 when it’s obviously a honeypot
Didn’t they jump on the Maupin wagon just minutes after his sex crimes were revealed?
That was Party for Communists. CPUSA is against patsocs at least.
You find one marginally less cringe and hope for the best. The day to day work is generally less online.
The other option is to work via non party orgs. Food banks, unions, protest groups, and attempt to inject revolutionary theory into them. This is sometimes hard for more party centric tendencies to cope with though.
This statement is probably risking a rank and file split in CPUSA.
Ehhh, take out the food bank and all other charity groups from that list. The inherent structure of it makes it useless to radicalize
Do entryism in a mutual aid group instead that’s not anarchists (not sectarianism, just better to radicalize libs than trying to change other ideologies you don’t like)
Obviously the answer is to never touch grass and keep posting
you become a doomer and pray every day that the West is just completely destroyed
Inshallah
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Depends on who’s the writer. Theoretically they could have that actor clown general secretary write up an article saying if you don’t vote for Biden in 2024 you’re a fascist, and CPUSA could theoretically say the article is his own opinion and not the official line of the party
But that unto itself, the very face of their party writing that shit speaks volumes to the makeup of their party leadership from their local clubs all the way to the the central committee and the standing secretaries - if they even have those positions
CPUSA is kind of a special case in terms of “Real and once-productive org that has been 100% coopted”. That said, individual chapters of any org are often way more radical than the head, so what you should do is research what is active in your area (PCUSA, PSL, DSA, FNB, etc.) and just pick whatever seems the best or most viable for you. Waiting for something perfect to emerge to hitch your wagon to is an exercise in futility. Very few of us like the central authority of any of these orgs, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t individuals doing good work in their community.
I’m torn between be a splitter and join the pre established party and really encourage other young leftists to do so as well cause the old guard is old and few and I do think reactionary elements like this need to be pruned from the party rather than constantly starting over from zero. In a case like this I don’t really know if there would be any difference
If you’re in no orgs and don’t know your local landscape very well, join the largest org in your area that you can stomach and use it to gain practical organizing skills and a network of people that know other organizers. Prepare to see people have terrible takes. Become comfortable with not reacting to them.
Use this opportunity to feel out whether there are other people in the org that are cool like you and what other orgs are out there. Once you have da skills, either start doing work primarily with the cool people or join a better org. In the former case, do your best to politically educate all of your comrades about your work - you don’t need to make a clique, but you’ll have a much better time with the org if people have your back during strategy meetings. If your org doesn’t have strategy meetings that’s a sign that it sucks and you’ll either have to take it over for it to be useful or just bail to an org that does have them.
There’s really no point to organizing in the imperial core, either try and leave or go grill pill and stop guilt tripping yourself
Time to pay your dues as a captured org sweetie.Feds. 100% feds. No other time has it been more true than to call them feds than this exact moment.
I disagree, there’s been plenty of points in the past to say it. Folks just don’t listen when it’s said. Every leader since the death of comrade Hall has been a Democrat tailing sheepdog
Yeah but supporting Israel is the most blatant I’ve ever seen. It’s such a clear cut one not to do. Literally the only people that believe this are the state department.
The key issue I take with Bachtell’s article is his usually mealy-mouth libshit both-sidesing while cherry-picking quotes and sources from ceasefire groups in Israel to paint a more rosy distorted picture of reality where there’s a significant anti-genocide movement in the fascist state of Israel, which unfortunately for our comrades among Maki that would like to see an end to their fascist regime doesn’t exist in particular significance - in addition to his words condemning the genocide speaks from the other side of his mouth justifying the massacre with saying it’s basically Israel’s 9/11 in how it awakens deep within them the memories of being pogromed or genocided as sympathetic explanation for their unjustified fascist actions. All the while spending words in the article on the Palestine side exclusively attacking Hamas, ignoring the united front against Israeli fascism, and exclusively wording support for the captured Palestinian Authority IN ADDITION TO IGNORING THE DESIRES OF THE PALESTINIAN COMMUNISTS! We see in the beginning he namedrops Maki as the group trying to spearhead a ceasefire within fascist Israel, but former leader of CPUSA and now president and lead editor of CPUSA’s paper ‘Peoples World’ gives only lip service to the Palestinian people.
Right. I think a good summary of the approach is that he intends to mislead people who don’t have wider knowledge of other groups.
It’s a statement that relies on its reader being uninformed, guising itself as informing them when in fact it is actively trying to use their lack of information against them.
Deeply suspicious behaviour for a “marxist”.
Deeply suspicious behaviour for a “marxist”.
lol I would never utter the word Marxist or any derivative from it and any of that party’s leadership’s names in the same sentence - unless it’s in one of the once-in-a-while posts where someone rediscovers they really fucking suck.
Right. I think a good summary of the approach is that he intends to mislead people who don’t have wider knowledge of other groups.
It’s a statement that relies on its reader being uninformed, guising itself as informing them when in fact it is actively trying to use their lack of information against them.
liberal_media.jpg lol
Yeah the quotations are an irony use.
liberal_media.jpg lol
Mmm exactly.
A proper approach here is to make a statement of position, and then also a clarifying statement detailing all of the information producing that position as a form of informing people fully and wholly. Much like the very large amount of effort we put into researching donbas and reaching a point where we could fully explain and justify our position on it, russia, ukraine, etc. Same goes for uighurs and so on. All these international crises events.
If your position relies on the other person being uninformed to believe it, the position is shit.
well said. With that in mind, the shit article does make me more curious about the work of the scant ceasefire factions in the belly of the Israeli beast in addition to how the united front of the palestinian liberation factions came together, how they work together, and what their separate and collective goals are. Sounds like an educational opportunity.
They endorsed Hillary, so are you really surprised?
Edit: fake news.
Did they? It looks like this was a debunked story.
I thought there was a story about them endorsing her, but seems like that definitely didn’t exist. I have to concede that they didn’t really endorse her.
lol that Snopes is a lib site, so you know their angle for publishing that was ”The GOP is trying to smear her, we swear Hillary’s no filthy commie!”
They didn’t “endorse” her, but they definitely played the lesser of two evils game.
Oh yeah Snopes is as bad or worse than NATOpedia.
Not the only time they post cringe last time I gave enough of a shit to bludgeon my brain through reading their writing, their leader all but directly wrote that any “serious”
communist must vote for Biden to stop trump, citing Cornel West and other campaigns as spoilers ( of course PSL is left out by name but we can easily inferr his thoughts on their campaign as well.)I’m an anarchist and have no great love for the organization in general, but I think this little screenshot might be a but misleading, and that’s a shit thing to do to other leftists.
Here appears to be recent, relevant posts on CPUSA’s actual website: https://www.cpusa.org/?ssearch=palestine&fq=any&sort=date&order=desc
Some of the titles alone:
- “Gaza: The second wave of genocide”
- “A ceasefire is the first step toward peace and liberation”
- “The cost of silencing voices for peace”
- “CP and YCL take it to the streets: Ceasefire now!”
- “Stop the war! End the occupation! Free Palestine!” (Note: published Oct 8, 2023)
And here’s the first paragraph of that first article:
After several days of ceasefire, Israel again embarked upon its campaign of wanton killing and destruction. This followed yet the latest visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, underlining for anyone somehow still under doubt that the U.S. is most certainly an accomplice to this genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces against the wholly innocent people of Gaza, undertaken of course with an arsenal of U.S. state-of-the-art weaponry, military technology, and intelligence.
I haven’t gone into the details of their writing, but this really doesn’t sound like an organization of zionists who are condemning Hamas or other Palestinians, or supporting the apartheid regime and its genocide.
“Stop the war! End the occupation! Free Palestine!” (Note: published Oct 8, 2023)
They don’t use the word genocide in the entire article and even say “Apartheid-like” They cant even all it an apartheid state.
White people: Not even once
As much as I don’t support CPUSA because they’re Democrats and CPGB because I hear their stance on trans peoples is problematic, it’s very common to see posts like this where the quote itself and the meaning inferred from the quote by the person tweeting it don’t seem to align. Do you really think they’re aligning with the settlers? The screenshot literally has them calling Israel’s response “horrific” and a “humanitarian catastrophe”. Where are you getting your take from???
Where are you getting your take from???
The FBI
Libs: Do you condemn Hamas?!
I’ve seen this video a lot of times. One thing that I noticed this time however is that their drones used in this production are 100% white. Completely and totally.
This is quite an interesting choice. I assume because it’s cloud coloured.
if its not a false color highlight, it probably is for camouflage. in fact, right before radar dominated aerial detection, they considered putting bright white lights on the front of airplanes to reduce detection. its counterintuitive, but in the daytime, the sky behind a plane is brighter than most colors that can be made with paint.
I assume because it’s cloud coloured.
Looks like a DJI, and that’s the colour they are out the box.
Hmm, but even the lenses on this are white? The lenses on the DJI drones are all black even if the body is white. In fact the whole camera units are black as far as I can tell.
op moment
