UlyssesT is slipping and so is Prager

They’ve gone woke!!

Hey, I’m a goose - I deleted the post you commented on and then I found out that I couldn’t reply to your comment so I’ll just reply here.

This is such a mood. I live in the city where I was born and have spent most of my life here. Unless I’m going to like 3 places I know my way to I legit have my gps out and if I’m not careful I’ll walk the wrong direction anyway.

Thanks for being a part of the drop-in. I can’t believe so many people were interested and the support I got from you and everyone else was really touching. I hope to see you at one of the next ones soon!

I’m very partial to drawing upon Pedagogy of the Oppressed (audiobook link, can track down an ebook link if you can’t find one) as the basis for how I approach agitation when it’s face to face/not some internet slapfight.

Personally I’m of the opinion that talking points are good but if you approach people with the wrong sort of attitude or you are holding onto certain beliefs about others then even the most perfect talking points will fall flat.

It’s not really the most practical in the sense that it’s not the field guide on how to win over libs and influence people but I think it gives the reader really important things to reflect upon when they assume an educational role.

I had a bad time with escitalopram and the prescribing doctor was doing a terrible job of supervising how I was responding to meds.

He kept incresing the dose to ever-worsening side effects to the point that I suspect I had a mixed manic state or that something really screwy was going on.

Got to the point where I couldn’t bear the thought of another day on it so I stopped cold turkey because the doctor wasn’t listening to my issues with it.

It was a long time ago but I had about a week of the most intense brain zaps and then a very, very long time of them gradually reducing. Even the slightest movement of my eyes would bring on another attack. I imagine that’s what torture must feel like.

Don’t do what I did.

This next suggestion is not like something from the darkest, forgotten corners of YouTube kinda obscure but for a film that had a mainstream release I don’t think it’s very well known. It did receive a lot of critical acclaim:

The Wolf House

It’s a foreign language adult’s stop-motion animation film that draws directly from the story of Colonia Dignidad in Chile.

If you haven’t heard about Colonia Dignidad and you’re interested, I can bring you up to speed on the backstory (there’s benefits to watching it both with that foreknowledge and without it though.)

Caring For Mothers and Children, an obscure 2-part documentary looking at the GDR and how they set about towards achieving gender equality:

https://tankie.tube/w/dJHRFjS3yYjy3T8EXwPUhn

https://tankie.tube/w/u6XkjrMYW5yjqemf4b5ZtQ

It’s less than 25 minutes altogether.

You know, I actually don’t know anything about Jesse Jackson. I’m not American so I managed to completely dodge his backstory somehow.

You know, I actually don’t know anything about Jesse Jackson. I’m not American so I managed to completely dodge his backstory somehow.

Very valuable contributions.

One thing that your comment reminds me of is this question - what’s the difference between a wrecker and someone who is messy? The only difference is intention. And what use are intentions to we who are materialists anyway? A wrecker is as a wrecker does,

Just a word of caution. It’s also poor form to just go accusing people of being a fed or a wrecker without solid evidence because that can cause a lot of damage too. If you have suspicions, observe and be patient. Keep track. Keep a journal if you need to. You have been wrong before and you will be wrong again, so don’t go cashing in all your credibility on an overblown hunch and don’t go causing unnecessary disruption in an org just because you started seeing things that weren’t really there.

Raise your concerns with a trusted member of leadership. Make sure that you make a time to talk privately. Give them clear, concise feedback and observations from what you have seen or heard and not from how you have interpreted things. The unfortunate reality is that if you get rid of one infiltrator/infiltrator ring then they’ll probably send the next one in soon after, especially if we’re talking feds and an org that has attracted their attention. Sometimes it’s better to see where the knife will come from than it is to allow yourself to be stabbed in the back. Don’t gossip. Don’t spread rumours. Trust in your org’s leadership and if you have serious concerns about them failing to act appropriately, raise these concerns directly with your leadership. They may have something in the works. Don’t go fucking up their long-term strategy all because you decided to play detective one day and you wanted to blow the lid off the whole thing.

I hate that it makes me look like yet another all-talk-no-substance fair-weather Marxist but it’s the only way I know to keep everyone involved safe.

Nah, you’re making a decision that’s in the best interests of the movement despite the personal costs of doing so. That’s very different because you are making a difficult compromise to do what’s right for organisations whereas fair-weather Marxists do what makes them feel good regardless of the consequences. In fact, in my opinion that’s effectively the direct opposite.

I can sympathise with your frustrations though. My health is pretty trash. I’m not capable of doing much organising besides helping out with the local FNB-adjacent org here and there while providing some input to assist the back-of-house stuff like procedures and all that. I’d like to do a lot more. I’d like to be on the frontlines. But my circumstances do not allow it, so I contribute locally and to more international stuff like this site because that’s what I am capable of, so that’s what I try my best to do.

There’s a place for everyone, even you. It sucks that the place that best suits you might not be the place that you most desire to be in. But contributing to reading groups and participating in the discussions is still very important - you have no way of knowing what you might inspire in someone else, someone who might go on to become leader of the vanguard in your region one day. You can still be a role-model and you can still have valuable input, it’s just a pity that you probably won’t get that direct feedback where you get to see your actions reap results directly. You know, Allende was instructed in Marxism by an old Italian anarchist bootmaker (anarchist comrades, I kid you not - on the matter of boots, Allende deferred to the expertise of the bootmaker [!!]) Allende would then go on to lead the only successful parliamentary revolution directly because of this anarchist bootmaker’s guidance and, despite the coup, there is so much to learn from Chile under Allende. Even if it all went to shit afterwards. He dared to struggle. He didn’t win but he gave it his best shot. Could this bootmaker have ever known how close Allende would get to succeeding? Could he have ever known what achievements he would inspire by his conversations with Allende?

So I guess what I’m saying here is that you have a similar sort of opportunity here. Treat every comrade you encounter as being the next Allende because you never know exactly what will grow from the seeds that you plant.

Hmm. I don’t want to hand my opposition a free guidebook of exactly what to avoid so they can do a better job of being a fed however, in general terms:

Feds basically try to “groom” people by convincing them of things - you deserved that position on the central committee, you should be the leader of your own party, you can trust me and we can plan out an adventure time, you are right to feel vengeful towards other party members. That sort of thing.

They seek to isolate people, generally the more psychologically vulnerable people (e.g. the ones who are too trusting or who are easily led by someone who sounds convincing and authoritative). A lot of what they do cannot be done in broad daylight, they need to be away from prying eyes to avoid being called out.

They encourage poor behaviour. They discourage people from reading, they discourage accountability and integrity, they discourage unity, they discourage good OpSec (“It’s okay, it’s just you and me - you can trust me. Now that I’ve gotten you all riled up about Donald Trump’s reelection, tell me what you’d really do to stop him if you had access to the right resources.”)

Always beware the adventurist. Not all adventurists are feds, and every radical experiences wistful thoughts about adventurism from time to time but the genuine adventurists are either prime targets for feds or they themselves are feds. Either way, hard pass.

They demonstrate a lack of fluency in theory and in the correct use of terminology. You know how a liberal fundamentally fails to grasp the Marxist concept of class? Yeah, that’s what a fed is like, They’ll try and they’ll fail but they’ll attempt to cover their tracks by gaslighting you and making excuses and doing shit like pretending to get stuck with the word on the tip of their tongue while they hem and haw and click so you’ll feel compelled to finish their sentence for them.

They tend to be a liberal caricature of radicalism, of whichever flavour you happen to prefer. “How do you do, fellow leftists? You know I was thinking the other day about how Stalin did nothing wrong, amirite?”

They encourage hastiness (what a clunky word!) If you are slow and deliberate, you can be observant and you can notice when things aren’t quite adding up. If everything feels pressured and you are being pushed to make rash decisions, then it is easier to steer you towards making a bad decision that can be very harmful in a variety of ways. Patience and being measured is anathema to feds and to wreckers.

They don’t tend to offer up recent insights voluntarily from their studies. “Did you know that there were basically competing police forces in the Spanish Republic and they battled it out on the streets for primacy? Kinda wild to think, especially when the fascists were breathing down their neck at the time…” because they aren’t learning theory and history on the same level as we are/should be, and also their understandings and conclusions often betray a liberal bias. So they generally avoid doing this, whereas comrades will be excited to share interesting things they have learned from their studies.

They don’t like being pressed for more info. They tend to have a superficial understanding of things. They’ll have their front constructed but as soon as you start probing their knowledge, they will desperately try to distract or avoid or do anything to salvage their cover. The best thing a comrade can do around a suspected fed or infiltrator of any kind is to conceal the depth of their own knowledge and pretend to be much more naive of theory and history than they are. This gives a likelihood of disarming the infiltrator and they will feel more complacent about talking themselves to the point that they have overextended themselves. The ones who flaunt their knowledge and who are very forthright with their positions and understandings are the ones an infiltrator will be very guarded around. There’s roles for both types of comrades in an organisation but if you start getting suspicious about somebody then you have little to lose by hiding your power and biding your time while carefully observing to see if everything fits together more or less as expected or if things are incongruent. Apologies for being vague in what I’m saying here but I hope you get what I’m driving at without me being more explicit.

They can be cult-y. Trying to make splinter factions, trying to create a “family” out of a select group of people within the org, using drugs as a means for in-group bonding and loosening lips and for social control, fostering addiction with members who are prone to it. That sort of thing.

Comrades want the best for you and to see the best in you. They will guide you to be your better self, they will caution you against making errors, and they will try to build you up and encourage you to do the right things. Infiltrators will do the opposite. They will encourage the worst behaviours, they will guide you towards misconduct and malfeasance, they will try to break down your protections and find any gap in your armour to exploit. If they can’t find one, they will try to make one. A comrade is one who you can count on to be the angel on your shoulder, guiding you towards the right things, while an infiltrator will the be devil on your shoulder, guiding you towards the wrong things. Didn’t want to get all religious-overtonesy with you but I’m relying on metaphor to stay a bit vague here so that’s what I’ve got.

Feds often start off good and then gradually dial up their shenanigans over time. You are the frog in the pot of water. Remember to check the temperature from time to time and don’t rely on the fact that it was nice and cool when you first hopped in because all things change over time and that especially applies to feds.

Beware of the person who wants to get too close to you too quickly, who is too familiar too readily, and who tries to get more information out of you than they should.

We are probably all guilty of at least some of this stuff some of the time but look especially for patterns and trends. Everyone slips up sometimes but a moment of indiscretion or acting rashly is very different to a gradual trend in escalation of these things or a pattern of repeating certain behaviours or strategies over and over again.

Those are some of my thoughts.

You must be good at sticking it out through the tough times because here you are, doing this very thing right now as we speak.

Who needs citations when you’ve got sightations?

=
Poop

My question us why are all those meteors constantly screaming and how come nobody has ever thought to investigate what’s going on with them?
Are we just letting them suffer so we can generate random numbers out of it, like some sort of sacrifice to RNGesus?

It says insert disc. DISC.

Why do they call them consoles if this image offers me no consolation??

This is crushing

This is what your goddamn cult of lesser evilism voting gets you, libs.

Are you so arrogant and self-absorbed to think that your concept of lesser evil is going to be universal and that other voters couldn’t possibly have a different understanding of lesser evils or that the way they prioritise these evils might not be the same way you prioritise them?

Of course not. Yet here we are, with the consequences of the messaging that you yourself have been pushing staring you in the face and you aren’t going to spend one moment considering the implications of one of your key messages. Wonderful!