I whined about cracker being a slur and those mean ol Hexbears just called me a cracker more instead of debating me
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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It doesn't have the connotation of a slur, but it's undeniably "a derogatory race-based term." I don't see how an in-person organization in the U.S. could be successful while allowing that, so it's always struck me as extremely online that we do.
This is a case of "page of reactionary screed that includes one decent point made poorly," and us being reflexively contrarian, which is 90% right when dealing with reactionaries but still leaves some considerable blind spots.
Nah. This guy already knows the counter argument and is itching to debatebro. Calling him a cracker and banning him is objectively correct
we should ban all crackers
So much for the tolerant left
I'm all for unceremoniously banning obvious reactionaries who are here in bad faith, but that's not what I'm getting at.
Anyone who is not joining because of the word Cracker was never gonna join
There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they'll leave. It's an insult.
We're talking about politics and organizing people, right? To succeed at those you have to get people to like you, or at least not insult them, no matter how right you are. "Anyone who takes issue when I insult them is unreachable" is extremely online.
This also applies to pigpoopballs and you can pry my ppb from my cold dead hands.
What is the in-person equivalent to ppb?
Pooping on your own balls
The same; you need to have a hexbear equivalent of pocket sand;
pocket ppb!
pulls out creased photo
I suppose the question might be more: when wouldn't you use PPB? If you're familiar with Huey P. Newton, in an interview he gave the same year he was assassinated (RIP; Rest In Power) he spoke against what he referred to (and what I am suggesting is quite similar) as the dirty word movement. Is it really so difficult to accept one of the consequences of using some language, whatever it is, can be deleterious or on the whole considered by comrades to be less than helpful in specific circumstances?
With language, and what appear to be brainworms with most folk (the reasons why are justified, I'd never argue against or attempt to invalidate that; if I have I apologize, please let me know and I'll offer a proper apology and ideally would like to listen & learn to prevent it) including comrades, stating a reasonable unwanted consequence is tantamount to "silencing expression". Which it is of course, and if dialectics were employed, it is also harmful in ways which are considered by other comrades. What's the major issue with what seems like invalidation of comrades' concerns when it pertains to the material affects of specific kinds of communication?
I have some ideas, they don't seem particularly respectful and are accusatory, which is why I'd rather hear what others have to say. I want to stay in that uncomfortable space of cognitive dissonance before reaching a dialect on the subject of interest.
I have a carrot and stick philosophy to brainworms, if I see a person as genuinely potentially possible to talk to and turn then I engage with them in as friendly a way as I can possibly muster - earnestly demonstrating that I'm educated and worth listening to and a potential source of learning.
If however they are clearly not going to allow that to happen I use the stick.
My interaction with this person is not the last ever interaction this person will have with a communist. They will have others in future, and I prefer to give them the stick to deter behaviour they demonstrated in this conversation so that there is a greater chance of them engaging in a better way for a future comrade. I don't view interactions in a vacuum, I view things hollistically. The general intent being that having an incredibly negative experience as a result of the way they engaged me results in them engaging with someone else in a different way.
also; i do think the carrot and stick is a good heuristic, it really makes a clear distinction i think to like, how to frame one's responses & engagements
That's a great strategy, and way to think about interacting with people.
The idea that we have to only use the carrot in all situations because that is the sole interaction that will determine whether the other person becomes a comrade or a fascist, is, besides being silly, a lot of pressure to place on an individual.
It's also entirely unrealistic. Like, do people only meet nice liberals? Nice fascists? Is each interaction people have with them something you only view in a vacuum?
The decision to join a political camp is not determined by how nice your interactions with the people in that camp are, but by how significant their political positions resonate with your lived experiences. The biggest barrier, for communists, is that anticommunism and mccarthyism closes people off to even considering our political points. The biggest and most important thing then is to develop a strategy for the destruction of that barrier. Once you destroy that barrier you gain access to a person's mind. Without the destruction of that barrier you are literally wasting your time.
And this is generally what informs my somewhat rough behaviour with people when I recognise they have that barrier up and are not doing anything to try and break it. I can't break it for them, they have to want to break it themselves. The only way I have to encourage them to break that barrier down is to give them a god awful experience because of its existence, and to make it very clear that it's because they have that barrier up that they're getting this awful experience. This, I then hope, results in them taking a different approach to the next comrade they come across. Or it might even be me next time, and my completely different attitude and behaviour with them because they don't have the barrier up results in reinforcing that they lower it.
ah that's fair and it makes sense. you'd say something like my confusion would be a consequence of not knowing or being familiar with your engagement philosophy and history, right? it feels like it would be difficult for others maybe to know that as well which may also explain some reticence on others' part.
i also don't see things in rather short slices, and don't think my internal presumptions–i.e. inherently containing a tendency towards non-scientific positivist thinking; it lacks peer-review or the broader phenomena of explicit social critique of which all have the reference materials available which in this case are categorically excluded from such folks, for good reason of course and, holistically, it would be amiss i think to ignore its lack of presence.
i think i honestly got super excited and really did not read the room well vis-à-vis the original poster. after rereading your prior comment and other comrades i think i severely misunderstood and misconstrued what the OP was saying... it honestly kinda reminds me of dronerights a bit and my interactions at that time.
i dont think its a slur, but he's kinda right.
I don't think that's a real scenario that's worth worrying about. Where are these socialist orgs that these people are going to show up at and be called crackers right away? Its silly. That's why I'm making light of it, because this is just an unserious concern
There are some pretty weird Maoist groups out there...
that's absolutely true, but im pretty sure the commenter was talking about the site
Let’s be real, we do no organising here. And that’s fine, this place is mostly a place to unwind and feel sane in a world of darkest reaction.
It doesn't happen in real life because in person everyone understands that you don't insult people you're trying to work with.
"I can't imagine people saying this face-to-face" is a sign that we should ask why we're saying it at all.
It's not that i can't imagine it. Its that it just doesn't doesn't happen. Its a made up concern
I don't understand what you're actually concerned about
Allowing casual race-based insults is bad, even if they're directed at white people. We know this is bad because no significant in-person org allows it. Allowing it here is the definition of extremely online behavior.
People aren't getting called cracker in real life, not because its such a terrible insult, but because that has just never been a thing that happens, because white people are not oppressed in any kind of racialized way. I think its an extremely silly thing to be concerned about.
I don't think people are getting called cracker in real life. I don't think it's a terrible insult, but it is an insult. Of course white people aren't oppressed. None of my comments have said anything like any of this.
I don't think I can state what I'm talking about more clearly, and I don't think you've been trying to understand what I'm saying, so I'm going to disengage.
Fair. Disengage
I'm not sure the trolley problem nor Russel's Teapot are legitimate either; I think the value is in the very clear and specificity of the thought experiment.
(unless thought experiments are bourgeois decadence, if so I will show myself out...)
I got some bad news for you there lol
oh gosh oh crud;
We aren't a fucking org. No one is joining an org to come in and start swinging minute 1 about how akshually Stalin was Hitler unless they are joining an org that holds that stance to begin with. If someone does join an ML org and do that, they get what they fucking deserve.
But we are not an org, and them coming into some thread to take shots does not represent remotely the same opportunity to us that a new member does to an organizer.
That's too much of a determined take. Why not make a more appropriate (i.e. seems more likely) kinda claim:
* without an amount of effort which could likely be better used elsewhere, towards materially marginalized groups, fomenting solidarity, organizing, etc.
NOTE: I try to give others a chance at least. Thankfully comrades such as yourself and others can operate more pragmatically rather than with naïvety and so can cover my blind spots
I dont think i got your last paragraph
Kwame Ture was calling crackers for what they are every other day.