chat

Anyone who is "into" Socialist politics has a 90% chance of being too far gone into sectarianism and book worship. It's just how the world works. People with a highly developed ideology almost always have at least some parts that are wrong and will consider the most marginal culture-war issues to be complete dealbreakers for cooperation.

Stop caring about Leftists, they're more trouble than they're worth. Join the PSL. Work with real working-class movements in your city, and don't get dragged into the struggle sessions of your local DSA and Food Not Bombs chapter. Work with Arab groups, Jewish Voice for Peace, work with the libs who are opposing pollution and police violence. If you find an issue that speaks to people and organize around it, the people will come. Recruit from the people, not terminally online Leftists.

I'm not trying to say that they're bad people. I believe they're trying their best. But speaking from personal experience with our local organizing (of which I am just a very small part), other "Leftists" basically do not do anything that has any real effect. The DSA is a thinly veiled dating club, the CPUSA has terminal security culture brain, the Anarchists don't really do anything of their own volition because they have zero organization outside of polycules and rock bands. The only local group with anything close to the level of organization and professionalism as the PSL is the Palestinian Youth Movement.

when will the left drop the sectarian BS and work together?

the premise of the question is flawed. there is no "left" in the united states in any meaningful sense of the word. there are individual people with left wing ideas, but at present they do not constitute a political movement. there can be no sectarianism because there are no sects to fight about, because there is no movement with sects to begin with

I don't really see MLs shitting on other tendencies unprompted, only calling out the things they see that are false or dunking on people after the other tendency goes on an "anti-authoritarian" rant which takes the offensive against MLs and AES states. If you and the Pentagon agree about pretty much anything geopolitical (China is committing a genocide, Cuba/ Venezuela/ DPRK need democracy, Israel has a right to defend itself Slava ukrani, etc) then you have truly taken the side of the enemy and your pseudo leftist persona doesn't absolve you. Being a liberal who likes leftist aesthetics doesn't make a comrade, and the idea that someone saying "I am a leftist" is enough to say you are on the same side is exactly why so many movements have been infiltrated and destroyed from the inside.

Either way, focus more on organizing with people in your community and less on anything online

I mean, many successful leftists were very sectarian.

The sectarian BS is symptomatic of a deeper problem - no modern western left wing movement has a viable theory of victory. If some group puts together a set of tactics that advance a strategy that repeatably provides material victories, then everyone will fall in line because that movement keeps winning. Until then, we'll all argue over which idealistic horseshit is a more palatable excuse for why we're not winning but some day we will be.

yeah the best reaction to unhinged "anti-tankie-aktion" types IMO is to just be normal and put in the work, IMO. Be willing to work in good faith with basically anyone who isn't actively sabotaging and undermining you (at least in public-facing work, obviously opsec becomes a concern at some point). The majority of regular-ass people, anarchist or otherwise, will see that you put in the work and that the committed "anti-authoritarians" are more interested in screeds against you than finding common ground or achieving anything.

I guess that's the belden method basically lol

I don't care what people say I care what people do. If they show up when they say they will, if they bring good ideas and move discussions forward rather than derail, if they put in the work, then we can work together. If they don't, we can't, regardless of tendency. I'm not going to work with an ML that only talks about half-understood theory and wont apply it to reality or feels they are above the dirty work/busy work, but same goes for anarchists or anyone else.

This is all in the context of nascent imperial core organizing of course, not like, russia 1915 or whatever.

when the situation is bad enough for white men that they set aside their bullshit.

obviously not all men and not just whites but lets be real its mostly white men.

The left is such a fringe minority in the US the idea that if we all stopped be sectarian and united together we'd be some force to to reckon with is delusional. We'd just be a slightly bigger fringe minority with tons of infighting whenever we came to an sort of ideological impasse, like anti-Zionism.

Sectarianism isn't always a bad thing, sometimes have a strict party line and sticking to it and telling others to fuck off is a benefit to leftist groups. The Bolsheviks rise to power was in part to them sticking to their opposition to the war and not collaborating with parties who were weaker on that position. It's not about having the most leftists it's about having the leftist line that motivates the masses the most.

Sectarianism is a psyop that worked. We have pretty conclusive evidence of this. Comunist orgs were infiltrated and hot takes and infighting because priorities. Anarchist organizing was infiltrated and anti-authoritarianism was prioritize. I am sure like the progressive liberals were infiltrated to for some reason.

So, when a tendency forms that cannot be infiltrated people will accept it gladly. We saw this in the 70s. Unfortunately they just went mask of and shot everyone involved. So there are two barriers to entry there. So when china opens a WPA for the American leg of the belt and road program is when we can see it work.

You're right! Now what actions need to be implemented, how should they be implemented and organized? The schism happens at literally the first important step anything less is basically just radical charity, which is fine and good and cool and necessary but left unity can't exist after any step to take power is made. We can put out fires together but to stop the arsonists a specific direction is necessary.

my ex was like one of these terminally online anarchists that bitched about tankies and never actually did anything to help anyone irl. as part of unpacking the trauma i got from them abusing me, i had to think about this a lot

for them, it seemed like they needed to feel ideologically superior to everyone else, or else they would start having to question themselves and their cruelties, which was more introspection than they were capable of. i imagine this is the case with a lot of them.

there's probably also an echo chamber effect where u start to feel like shitting on tankies is genuinely a good thing to do and one of the only good things you can do.

idk tbh im not terminally online enough to interact with many of these sorts of people

Online Marxists beefing with online anarchists isn't going to move the needle one way or the other. In real life there are cross-tendency groups showing up with rifles to guard drag events and keep cops from arresting Food Not Bombs people. The PSL works with local organizers to run Palestine marches which provide incidental cover for saboteurs to slash cop tires. Environmental groups publish flyers calling for action against logging legislation while radical elements in those groups go out and spike trees.

there is no western left

There is no leftist project in the west, until there is a focal point to rally around we will all be wolves lashing out in the forest.

And whatever this rally point is its not going to emerge out of the internet

well for one you should remember that Marxist/Anarchist online beef doesnt matter in real life, specially on 2 lemmy instances

The contradictions are sharpening no doubt, but so few people have internalized the reality of the current situation.

Denial - most people are still here
Bargaining - marginally aware people are here
Anger - a lot of libs are stuck here
Depression - many baby leftists
Acceptance - leftists that actually might organize and do something

Take for instance "the erosion of due process" that is animating libs very effectively. The problem is that this framing feeds into a Blue MAGA mind palace perspective. If they weren't against Kamala et al due to the US prison industrial complex, they still are a long way from Acceptance of the reality. There are a lot of radlibs that are currently comparing the unfolding process to "USSR", "Chinese Authoritarianism", North Korea and so on.

We have to filter out chauvinism while organizing for the current situation, then some real progress can be made.

Someone link the thread

On a slightly more serious note, there is no collective Western left. There is a myriad of small splinter groups, each of which claims to have the only true reading of Das Kapital.

Leftists are like Orks we fight each other as much as we fight our enemies.

I'll admit that I was in that thread and did spend some time just trying to dunk for the sake of dunking —I gotta admit that it feels good but it's not productive when the target isn't even someone who wants to oppress anyone, just someone who might be misguided about some internet slapfight.

I think it's true that we have to be a lot more united. No ifs, ands or buts there. This website is a place to post memes and news, though, so maybe part of the problem is that for a lot of us it becomes a proxy for political action, especially for those of us who might not be in the correct circumstances to do more things on the ground.

In America, the hipsters of the 2000s and 2010s grew into becoming what is now known as the left in this country

Those old white people who go to Republican party meetings

Coprolites

I've found that the only line I'm willing to draw in terms of who is and isn't socially-minded for progress is between those of us who want to build an end of the political spectrum to make things better, and those who want to revert to some earlier form that led us to where we are now, or just enforce the status quo because the burning room they're sitting in seems fine compared to the uncertainty of change.