Thank you for this. I needed some hope today.
AngeryProle
joined 6 days ago
I could be wrong, but the fact that he's confessed makes it so that the news sources don't have the usual liability issues that require the use of "alleged".
Many criticize them
Well, "many" are liberals.
I know I should feel sorry for the farmers - the epitome of working class indispensables - but the fact that they voted Trump makes me see red so deep it almost turns to black. Of course I know voting blue would have been no improvement of note, but Trump is the ultimate signifier of Fascist cruelty. I know they're rubes, that they were conned by the Republican machine. But I can't look away from the fact that the very reason they have been conned, the reason the Republican party appealed to them in the first place, is that they are the most abominable, abject kind of racist fascist verminous filth possible.
I know I'm wrong, comrades. But I cannot help it. I do not celebrate the takeover of worker-owned land by a mega corporation. I abhor it. But I do celebrate the suffering of the farmers. The destruction of their entire way of life, the losses imposed on them, the destitution and penury they're being cast into. I cherish it, in the same way I cherish the things that were done by the Soviets to Nazi collaborators, because that is what they are. And if I were to say what I think they deserve, what I genuinely and wholeheartedly wish upon them, I'd probably get banned from here.
Here's a question to those comrades who know better than I do. How do I reconcile that? How do I reframe my observation of them and what's happening to them, in order to better sympathize with the plight of a fellow worker?
Exactly… how does a socialist, communist or anarchist think revolution will happen?
"Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution?" etc. etc. It's all intellectual entertainment, and pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, and lifestyle identitarianism with those types. They might as well be playing SimCity.
Lenin's insight tells us, the revolutionary society is a direct child of the revolution process. Thinking about a socialist future without focusing on an actual process that takes us there is utopianism. That is what makes "leftists" unserious.
Respectfully...
In the case that you describe with your father, and in the case of many compatible-left folks who fizzle out in the imperial core, the truth is so simple it's kind of pedestrian.
Many are pushed left due to having a basic capacity to see and hear the world around them. The injustice and oppression of the system are extremely patent, and when they're young and haven't been exposed to as much propaganda simply by virtue of not being around it long enough, they gravitate towards whatever flavor of "left" is seen as acceptable.
Then, some time goes by. They don't know a lot, but they see what they see. The left failing to gain headway. The discourse being what it is. The propaganda framing everything for them in a way that makes superficial sense. And they drift.
Parliamentary politics are especially attractive to those who have the "politics as a lifestyle" approach, because "all ideas can be heard". Plus, their material interests are more likely to align with the system, the more wealth they have.
Very simply put: it seems to me that your father was unprincipled. Don't get me wrong. He sounds like a genuine, good person. But it really seems that his understanding of the positions he claims to hold were, and are, paper thin. And thus, so is his commitment.
Based on what you're saying, he never learned enough to truly understand the position he claimed to hold. He was an anarchist because he saw the injustice of the system, and the cool kids who had something to say on the topic called themselves anarchists. He didn't learn enough to either move beyond that, or to really entrench himself. He "joined anarchism" based on vibes, and when the vibes changed, he followed them where the machine guided him.
Among a ton of other reasons, this is why we bang on about reading theory so much. For all that our hearts burn with the injustice and cruelty of it all, for all that we are committed to the cause of the working class... If we don't understand what's going on, if we don't keep learning until we have a real grasp on how the system does what it does and why it is what it is, at some point we'll be led astray.