this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
40 points (87.0% liked)

The Deprogram

1961 readers
54 users here now

"As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say that we're tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We also know that when the people understand, they cannot but follow us. In any case, we, the people, have no enemies when it comes to peoples. Our only enemies are the imperialist regimes and organizations." Thomas Sankara, 1985


International Anti-Capitalist podcast run by an American, a Slav and an Arab.


Rules:

  1. No capitalist apologia / anti-communism.
  2. No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
  3. Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades should feel welcome; this includes a warning against uncritical sectarianism.
  4. No porn or sexually explicit content (even if marked NSFW).
  5. No right-deviationists (patsocs, nazbols, Strasserists, Duginists, etc).
  6. Use c/mutual_aid for mutual aid requests.

Resources:

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I decided to not be bitter and i followed a liberal influencer for like a week (they dont make political content usually) but today they posted that BULLSHIT about how trump is causing wars as a cover for the files and i had to unfollow. nobody is starting wars over that, theyre starting wars for capital and resources.

what the fuck is a ”eipstein class”? just those guys on the files? are the billionaires who refused or were not invited alright with you?

and of course the religious zealots doing the bit about how eipstein was satan incarnate while churning out money for their pastor to buy a new mansion.

the prolecattleiat is not being elevated to sapience by this situation alone. people have to read theory which is why i encourage them to do so. libs, anarchists and conservatives have the balls to talk about how mao, stalin and other leaders were also pedophiles or ray peests so communism is not worth it either so we just need a matriarchy as if a capitalist system would be fine if women were in charge.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I would recommend H. W. Edward's Labor Aristocracy, Mass Base of Social Democracy. And then (re) read Day's essay on brainwashing (masses, elites and rebels) from Redsails thereafter.

You're part of a class on the global stage. Truly understand its material conditions and learn how you are going to betray it.

Best of luck

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You are not preaching about labor aristocracy in this thread. You are taking it to some other level where billionaires are revolutionary because they're Chinese and people living in a trailer park in the US are villains because they voted for a US president. This is not an understanding of class on the global stage. It is a reductionist view of material conditions and contradictions that collapses the worldview into oversimplified nodes instead of broadening in order to be able to work through specific contradictions.

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml -3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Consider reading it, and you may develop a different view.

Chareterisations of villains and heroes are besides the point. It is about understanding the science of who may be revolutionary domestically so we can spend most of our limited resources on them. This means carefully, and maybe painfully for some, understanding what it means to be a settler and bourgoisie proleteriat. It is step away from a simplistic dynamism of rich vs poor otherwise end up resulting in the same mistakes of those who Marx and Lenin criticised (eg Proudhon).

I found Cesaire snd Losurdo's works useful too. Eg https://redsails.org/discours-sur-le-colonialisme/

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You literally asked this before like it was a serious question:

Who is more revolutionary: the Chinese billionaire defending the CPC or the white trailer parker family who supported Trump/Biden?

And have not addressed the problems with it at all. Going beyond "simple dynamism of rich and poor" does not mean defending the rich and characterizing them as more revolutionary than somebody living in a trailer park because they live in a non-settler country.

It is about understanding the science of who may be revolutionary domestically so we can spend most of our limited resources on them.

But that's not what you've been talking about.

You didn't say, "Here is where you should focus your energies domestically." You compared Chinese billionaire and white Yankee in a trailer park.

Don't say one thing, act like you're saying another, and then throw reading material at me when I don't agree, as if this will clarify.

BTW, I have read the redsails article on brainwashing before, probably multiple times by now. And it is incredibly overrated as an analysis. Here's a part that stands out to me:

In short: Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits.

As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.

But am I not just worsening the problem, aggravating our hopelessness, by criticizing the critics in a way that suggests that no one escapes ideological self-flattery? I don’t think so. Paradoxically, it brings us all back to a more even and possibility-rich playing field.

The author almost realizes their own mistake, but then skips on by it and says nah, I'm not making that mistake. But they are. They are being incredibly reductionist in relation to hundreds of millions of people. They go on to double down on the reductionist rhetoric even more:

Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda — organs of coercion and consent. [6] We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.

This is a nonsense argument. First, via no evidenced investigation, the author supposes that hundreds of millions of people, some of which are non-white peoples with a much more complicated history than this kind of rhetoric gives them any recognition of, share essentially the same point of view. This point of view is something they implicitly know, yet hide from. So now we have shifted from "they are brainwashed and this explains their lack of movement" to implying "they are a hyper intelligent hive mind who knows exactly what's going on and pretends not to because it feels good to pretend."

It's the kind of article that reeks of academic marxism. Of trying to "cudgel one's brains and develop an idea" without going out and investigating. The author encountered a problem, that sometimes people will reject the evidence you give them that challenges their existing worldview, and extrapolated a massive honker of a speculative generalization out of trying to answer why.

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml -1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

So rather than consider that westerners are acting in their self interests as beneficiaries of imperialism, and that material conditions affects what self-filtering occurs, we should instead double down on the idealistic notion that we should appeal to those who would benefit more from what the imperialist state than anything an actual anti-imperialist movement can offer them.

So for example in the US, instead of working with say original nation movements and the New Afrikan movements to better the US ML line we should focus on the settler nation folks by appealing to their empathetic sensibilities, which has so far failed for the past few centuries and no analysis about how to go about it differently that isn't much more than trade unionism and protest marches.

Fuck that White Noise. Being a westerner is a fucking disease.

[–] pyromaiden@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Everything you've said so far has been a mix of campism and race reductionism with no actual class analysis and makes you sound more like the black American liberals that cry about white Leftists being racist and treat us as if we're one goose step away from joining the Klan.

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Westerners exist as a class against the Global South and there are nations of folks that within the imperial cores that are more fruitful in targetting for whom destruction of imperialism is in their benefit.

Having a material basis for the organisation of movements means having an honest analysis on the nature of labour aristocracy and settlerism. Any succesful movement will offer more than the imperialist state can offer but that requires targetting sections of the popularion outside of typical voting blocks.

I'm not saying there isn't a creative way of getting a sizable amount of settlers to join the cause but history shows the track record has not been great.

Accusations of campism and race reductionism is why the CPUSA has devolved into what it is today. Want more CPUSAs, fucking have at it. Westerners cosplaying with sickle and hammer refusing to actually move the needle forward ain't my fucking problem. It offends your white sensibilities? Good.

The immortal science of marxism-leninism is despite Marx and Engels being white. It's that good. White is a social relation, it can be dismantled.

[–] pyromaiden@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 days ago

"Westerners" are not a class. You are bastardizing the word to the point of uselessness. May as well be calling humans a class that oppresses other primates.

My "white sensibilities" are not offended; what is offending me is your Vulgar Marxism that conflates CPUSA's pro-settler ideology with the entirety of the American Left. I didn't even mention the CPUSA and I don't care for them. I accused you of being a campist and race reductionist because that's what you're doing: making excuses for Chinese billionaires and placing race over class in a hierarchy of analysis instead of treating them as equal forces.

You say white is a social relation, you say it can be dismantled, yet you categorically dismiss the idea multiple times previously and assert that socialism in the West is pointless in what is very clearly Third Worldist drivel. Your analysis isn't productive; it is divisive. No one is going to deny that workers in the Core have it better than workers in the Periphery. No one is going to deny that this privilege makes it harder to persuade Core workers to socialism since they are used to better conditions. But to treat it like its a hopeless cause is defeatism.

What exactly do you expect comrades in the West to do? You seem convinced that we can't actually do anything useful to contribute to the international movement so should we just give up or runaway to AES states or what? Like, what is the point of saying all this stuff? What practical purpose does this kind of analysis serve?

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Me: repeatedly points out that the situation in the US is more complicated than just white people

You: so you're saying we should work exclusively with white people?

I don't have any patience for this any more. I don't even know who you are arguing with.

[–] ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Didn't you hear? Intersectionality is when you work only with white people. They're already so diverse as is! Who needs any other group?

Also all Westerners are white, and there is absolutely no nuance to that statement. Now, let me get back to planning my revolution with my vanguard party consisting of three guys and a dog we adopted.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, this whole thing has been baffling. Like you explicitly pointed out diversity in your experiences organizing with PSL, IIRC? In this very thread in response to darkernations? Isn't that a point of evidence toward the idea that not all western organizing is languishing in targeting white people?

I mean, I honestly don't know what some people want. Do they want white westerners to go hit up indigenous nations and the black prison population exclusively for revolutionary organizing? Or are the white westerners supposed to sit on the sidelines because they're too tainted to organize in the first place? (In which case, they'd then get criticized for letting non-white people do the sacrifice to change the world.) I never understand quite what the goal is. I get the settler issue matters, as does race, but I can remember two distinct times on here, this thread and another user/thread a while back, where in both cases the position was very strong about who to organize with and in both cases, I never got a clear answer on the logistics of actually doing it.

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You have to analyse what went wrong before you to be able to move forward.

Do they want white westerners to go hit up indigenous nations and the black prison population exclusively for revolutionary organizing?

So you have reached the levels of ACP. Great. What do you have to offer materially that bests the imperialist state? Wouldn't that involve an analysis of the labour aristocracy and pitfalls of failed movements before?

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago

WHAT. How is questioning the logistics of what you're saying make me like the ACP. Noteworthy that you didn't actually address my confusion/concerns in your response. All you did is imply I'm in favor of settlerism / want to defend it (a gross implication) and ask unrelated rhetorical questions.

You have not explained what exactly you want people to be doing or how. It's not clever to vaguely tell me to look to the past to learn for the future. This isn't a movie where I'm a young person on a hero's journey and go to an old person for advice. This is a discussion forum of equals. Act like it.

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 3 days ago

Intersectionalism is not diversity in a group. It is way of explanining oppression without cosnidering class analysis. Marxism supercedes it. Critical theories in the US eveolved as way to dance around marxism, class analysis and the imperialist characteritics of the western nation ie to remove internafionalism. It is why the CIA funded partly the Frankfurt School. For example, queer rights aren't an "add-on" to oppression, it is in intrisnic to understanding capital and the patriarchy needed to uphold it.

Also all Westerners are white

The white settler nation isn't just white people in the similar way zionists collaborated with nazis. Consider a nation as peoples rather than the bourgoisie borders enclosing them. Westerners are a class of which white supremacism has been the ideological vehicle suprastructure of which people of colour can join to uphold it. It's the similar thing with how for example patriarchy isn't the same as misogony.

Having an honest analysis of labour aristocracy would likely mean class betrayal, and that is a good thing.