I'm honestly disheartened with many leftists that do not mask. I have had otherwise great people just completely fail the covid protection litmus test, and it's harrowing. I'm tired of being socially ostracized for masking and treated like I have the plague by the greater capitalist hellscape, to see other comrades not even take into account masking is truly ugh.

I get it that's hard to accept, idk, giving up your (unprotected, so most) of your social life because you wear a respirator and that you will have to do it forever, but for me it ties in with the otherwise completely scientific ML analysis I have of the world.

I just wish it didn't feel that isolating, even among communists, regarding such a basic fact about bodily consent and empathy and overall survival in capitalism. As proletarians, we don't have expensive private healthcare, so it's even more important to not get sick, yet I see people promoting the vax-and-forget rhetoric..

It's so dissapointing, how am I supposed to organize with people, when everyone else treats you like the plague for engaging in prevention mechanisms with Covid? I go outside and if not harassed I get treated like a weird outcast, which I am used to because of my politics, but I really do not see how to enagage with such people.

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[–] Chana@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago

Liberalism is hegemonic and this is unironically a way that people reveal their unconscious continued subscription to it. Biden gave permission to the liberals and therefore the "leftists" largely fell in line. The permission was not given with public health reasons or basic medical reasons, but for the literal thing that "leftists" are motivated against: capitalist profits. This was a golden opportunity to agitate and differentiate, but instead we have seen more opportunism, even some communist organizations claiming that you shouldn't wear masks because it will alienate your proletarian audience.

It is a helpful reminder that the context in which we organize is full of contradiction as well, that internal organizing and basic media criticism are paramount, and that one always needs a check on being "clever" with stratagems and how to "trick" proles into agreeing with you. The pandemic is in no way the only way in which this is the case, where internalized liberalism hampers the project and its membership, and so the evergreen question is which form we should focus on purging next, and then after that, and so on, in order for us to succeed in our overarching project of moving past capitalism.