I wanted to share a few thoughts on a comment I saw earlier about drama occurring on a leftist site outside of Lemmygrad.
man why are leftist spaces online like this? feels like they’re too busy shooting themselves on the foot constantly to get their shit together while fascism and reich-wingers are taking over everything.
First, every human space is bound to conflict and contradictions, this is expected. But the characterization of that existing only on leftist spaces is misleading.
If you subject yourself to torture and visit extreme right-wing communities, you’ll notice they are extremely toxic and very violent to each other, and usually there is a big turnover of users. The violent and abusive language is part of their socialization, and those who endure the longest become normalized to this type of language, so much so, it transpires outside the right-wing communities themselves.
The idea that right-wingers are in unity I think is also incorrect, what happens is that the right-wing worldview is being more and more normalized by “social” media, “Christian” churches, and even formal education. So, the right-wingers appear in unity because they parrot the same talking points and ideas, but it’s just a reflection of bourgeois ideology among the people.
What is particular to leftist spaces is the struggle for a coherent political philosophy. Since right-wing thinking is the “standard” thinking in a bourgeois dictatorship, a right-wing space wouldn’t bring anything new, just a reaction against leftist discourse, worldview and philosophy.
Besides, leftists are much more sensitive towards the reproduction of social issues, like male chauvinism, racism, transphobia, and since these are the building blocks of Western political thinking, it’s expected that even leftists will eventually present those views, but they are more keen to be criticized and to generate a bigger polemic.
When a right-wing leadership presents a racist view, most of their supporters will simply be silent about it to “protect” the image of their leader. Some of them openly agree to the racist views, but understand this is not to be exposed. One example is the Trump rape and sexual assault cases, his trips to the pedophile island of Epstein, this is all overlooked, even if the right-wingers are most vocal about “the children” and pedophiles.
When it happens that a leftist leader presents a troubling view, they tend to be criticized to the bone (depending on how “radical” is that leftist). A leftist or communist leader has to be sinless and incapable of mistakes in the eyes of leftists, otherwise they are not a good representative. Left-wingers tend to be more critical of certain expressions of authority, whereas sometimes this in excess can be destructive.
Leftists have to constantly fight against bourgeois ideology in all fronts, our work is much more extensive and difficult, while right-wing communities simply allow bourgeois ideology to flow to its maximum extent. They have to fight the influence of those who care about facts and reason, but it’s not as tiring as having to fight against bourgeois ideology, which is hegemonic.
I’m sure you know this, but the only reason we get the impression that right-wingers are somehow more united is because we don’t usually torture ourselves by going to these places often enough to be privy to the drama. /r/the_donald had multiple controversies and splits over the years, as an example.
Left-wingers tend to be more critical of certain expressions of authority, whereas sometimes this in excess can be destructive.
Side note on this.
Many leaders and progressive thinkers were awful in their personal lives, especially with relatives or spouses, like comrade Stalin, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, etc. This is because humans make grave mistakes all the time, irrespective of how correct they are. Except Lenin, perhaps, he was both an impeccable human being and very often correct. Look at your own lives, have you not hurt someone? Were you never selfish, arrogant, insensible? People make those mistakes all the time, to a greater or lesser extent. Why should our leaderships be different? Should we disregard historical figures in the past because of their personal mistakes? Should we disregard current leaderships for that?
I think this is a case by case thing, but sometimes we simply cannot afford to be too much critical. Think of an actual communist, politically isolated, representing a small city in the bourgeois state, or something. If the opposition found out bad stuff about that guy’s past, of course the bourgeois media would create a campaign to hunt them down. In such cases should we join the hunt? This is the challenge of having the correct historical understanding of your time and place, so these choices become clearer. Over the time you start acting based on the political outcome, instead of an abstract moral value which you do not adopt yourself in your life. Then you criticize any mistake in private if possible, outside the eyes of the opposition.
I think this is a case by case thing, but sometimes we simply cannot afford to be too much critical. Think of an actual communist, politically isolated, representing a small city in the bourgeois state, or something. If the opposition found out bad stuff about that guy’s past, of course the bourgeois media would create a campaign to hunt them down. In such cases should we join the hunt? This is the challenge of having the correct historical understanding of your time and place, so these choices become clearer. Over the time you start acting based on the political outcome, instead of an abstract moral value which you do not adopt yourself in your life. Then you criticize any mistake in private if possible, outside the eyes of the opposition.
Something that comes to mind here is the importance of applying this thinking to non-leaders, not just figures who have a significant reputation. That part of opposing the current system means recognizing the humanity of each person; they are never “just a number” but a whole human being with a history to them. And when the time does come that we must act against such a person, it needs to be done, as you put it, “based on the political outcome.” Better known figures tend to get more of the attention in discussions like this, but I think the “abstract moral value” thinking can definitely come for the “little individual” as well—and they tend to have little power to oppose it, which increases any sense of a “leftist” leader acting more like the existing system than something different.
To try to put it in example form, not allowing obvious liberals to run rampant in lemmygrad is easily recognized as a political outcome focus; by keeping them from doing so, it becomes a more pointed and focused anti-imperialist and communist space. On the other hand, if lemmygrad were to wage a campaign against “still lingering liberalism in its communist users”, that could very quickly get into abstractions and grandstanding that are difficult to concretize into something to act upon. Which brings me to a point of existing system vs. otherwise, that such an approach would likely get lost in individualist thinking. “It’s not our failure that this person is still too liberal, it’s their moral failing and so they must be cast out.” In other words, is what “we” want being cultivated/encouraged/rewarded or only watched for violations of from a tower. (To be clear, I’m not saying this as a vagueposting reference to something that happened on lemmygrad. Just using the site as a basis for example to try to be more clear in what I mean.)
The tough moralistic thinking mindset might have us thinking that the harder it is to be moral and still be it, the better the person is or some such thing. When in practicality, we get the best outcomes when it is as easy as possible for people to be aligned and act ethically, and when it is made systemically difficult for them to do otherwise. And that is an area where working amid the existing larger system presents a challenge, since people are constantly being pushed at from the pressures of a system that often normalizes or even rewards selfish or predatory behavior of one kind or another. Hope that makes sense.
vagueposting
Hahaha never heard that before. I loved it
not allowing obvious liberals to run rampant in lemmygrad is easily recognized as a political outcome focus
I don’t know what you mean by this paragraph comrade, and I have trouble following your reasoning. But I’ll comment about this. The liberal propagandists should definitely be extracted from our community, but the honest liberals should definitely be heard and honestly debated. On our part, trying as much as possible to ignore provocations and try our best to dismantle their arguments in few words. I see a few reasons why:
- liberals have common misunderstandings which are useful to debunk. Some of us are well read (most of us aren’t), so the thinking you had when you were a conservative, liberal or “apolitical” has been lost. You cannot empathize to how liberals think now. Alas, comes a liberal, with doubts, silly mistakes, but they are prevalent in political discourse and thinking. A lurker on the website may be presented with arguments dismantling the same silly mistakes they may have. So in terms of political education this is useful;
- we learn to deal with those who think differently. We need to learn to treat a right-winger well and learn how to defuse a tense situation IRL. Not always we manage to do this, often we manage to hurt others from our own camp, but we aspire to do it. We need to learn how to deal with Nazi provocations both online and personally, physically. We need to learn how to deal emotionally with the situation, train ourselves to not be affected by this interaction. You do this by understanding how your opponents think, and respecting as much as possible their identity. So you do not focus on their religion, their political affiliations, their moral stances on subjects, etc. These are divisive points which separates us from these politically alienated people. We cannot change a person’s identity through force or imposition, it only changes socially and historically.
We need to learn to treat a right-winger well and learn how to defuse a tense situation IRL.
A comment on this, about treating well right-wing colleagues, etc. (unless they are awful people of course, besides their shitty foolish worldview). Of course a Nazi provocateur should be harassed or physically assaulted until they stop their provocation, because it is ethical to do so. It is ethical to repress genocidal ideologies because you’re saving lives by punishing some. But notice a liberal surely would equate us with genociders! They are indoctrinated by bourgeois ideology. Bourgeois ideology needs to accuse communists of what they do so that they feel at least “equal” in comparison, and thus, shielded from criticism. At least you’re doing genocide for a just cause! Not the communists, they genocide for evil!
Bourgeois ideology is hegemonic. You should already expect people to be right-wing. You need to learn to accept this fact so that you’re able to be friendly with right-wingers and not be affected by their provocations. Because you understand their worldview is not their fault, they are too distracted to realize the facts, and we need to reach them somehow. How would you achieve this person to eventually learn the facts if you’re provoking the person, teasing them, insulting them, questioning their sanity, their ability to think, mocking them, etc. Practice shows us that these behaviors tend to alienate these people even further, and even worse, alienate yourself from others.
Good points and I think we are more or less in agreement.
I don’t know what you mean by this paragraph comrade, and I have trouble following your reasoning. But I’ll comment about this. The liberal propagandists should definitely be extracted from our community, but the honest liberals should definitely be heard and honestly debated. On our part, trying as much as possible to ignore provocations and try our best to dismantle their arguments in few words. I see a few reasons why:
So yeah, I meant like how membership here goes through a process and liberals who come from other instances aren’t necessarily tolerated posting whatever they want. But I do think I got lost in the weeds a little bit on that paragraph of mine. General idea I was going for is maybe along the lines of how you broke it down, that we have a certain need to reach these kind of people, or even problems in our own thinking. As opposed to a mentality where we view others as people who have to go in a corner and “fix themselves” and then we can engage with them. I guess the distinction I’m talking about is kind of like what some have termed “call in” vs. “call out”; the difference being something like (call out) “you are bad, I’m going to put you down because it makes me feel superior” vs. (call in) “if at all possible, we’re going to figure out how to improve this situation together; and if we can’t and I move against you, it’s not because ‘you’re bad and I’m inherently superior’, it’s because you refuse to be humane and/or negotiate with other human beings”.
Hopefully that is more clear. Brain is a bit fuzzy today.
Edit: Also, I appreciate you telling me you weren’t clear on it. In trying to clarify, I feel like I made it clearer to myself what I meant lol. Sometimes I write out thoughts intended more as a piece of the puzzle than anything else, so talking them through further can help crystallize.
We aren’t listening to material power, we have ideals about democracy and fairness, and we value discussion and conflict. Honestly I think that all of those are good and admirable things. I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who didn’t genuinely want those.
I should point out that the closer you get to someone, the more you’re gonna argue with them. It’s just the rule of being social in the world. I go to work and my boss gets 1% of my personality. You guys, my partner, my IRL comrades, and my close mates get nearly 100%. Ya I’m not willing to call my boss a fascist to his face, but I wouldn’t spend an uncompensated moment of time with him. With people I love, I do occasionally call them out on shit because I want them to grow, and I expect the same from them.
I think a big part of it that right wingers tend to focus more on emotions. They don’t try to develop a deep understanding of problems, and what real tangible solutions might look like. They largely unite over perceived issues and general dislike of other people. This makes it easy to create big tent groups where a lot of people hate different things and they see that as complimentary.
On the other hand, people typically move to the left because they’ve developed a more nuanced understanding of the world. And since they genuinely want to improve things they become more particular about the details and the shape of the proposed solutions. This results in a lot more debates and friction between leftists since people can become very passionate about the validity of their ideas.
Incidentally, politics is just one manifestation of this phenomenon. This is a common thing in software development where people will argue over the merits of different approaches to solving problems. Different programming languages, and technology stacks. You see a very similar kind of passion expressed there. And the common thread is that it’s experts debating tangible solutions to real problems they have deep understanding of.
i think dessalines made an audiobookabout this?
if you want to read about it.
but something about how christianity really subtly influences us, i guess that it doesn’t really have an influence in right wing structures explicitly because the cultural hegemon is all submissive under the big man like a preacher or something who uses social punishment into silence.
i haven’t read the stuff linked yet, only skimmed - but i would gamble because you come into left leaning spaces without building rapport(spending irl time with them face to face), it is easy to drop people and argue pointlessly with them
I know this classic text, Jones Manoel is a Brazilian Marxist-Leninist, we’re from the same country 😁
I even met Jones personally. He’s really, really tall, like 190cm+, very muscular and loves to smoke tobacco. Carries with him a tobacco pouch everywhere lol. Great guy, very fun to talk with.
In reflecting on the points made in it, I think I understand better where western anarchists can derive from (western ultras as well, but I will focus on anarchists for the moment). I think I’ve read parts of it before, but maybe not the whole thing. Anyway, something that stands out to me is the martyrdom david/goliath dynamic and how it ties into both AES and just anti-imperialist states in general. China is big, it is more like a goliath in size and scope than a david, it would be hard to call it an underdog next to many other countries, so by the christian-mindset influence of things, “China is a ‘dangerous’ country and countries it interacts with are more and likely to be victims.” This I think is part of where you get the “anti-authority” mindset that is associated with western anarchists. “They are big and we are small, which means we are the underdog, the david, the morally pure striving for better against terrible odds.” For a person or organization stuck in this mindset, it seems likely they will unwittingly (or perhaps in some cases even will full awareness) sabotage their own efforts to gain power. And if they do gain power, they will refuse to take it seriously as a position of power, instead trying to act still as if they are an outsider who has had power thrust upon them. For them to exercise that power seriously means they can make mistakes the way others in power do and then they join the ranks of the goliaths and lose their sense of self as a member of the underdog, which eats away at them.
Then there is the point of size and scope alone. To expand on what I touched on with regards to a state like China’s, they now have a lot of global influence, but they exercise this largely in a cooperative and mutually beneficial way. They are making themselves interdependent, rather than making others dependent on them; a sharp contrast to the modes of imperialist exploitation. This itself may be a point that is hard for some of us with a christian or catholic upbringing to fully understand. Using myself as an example, even though I’m now atheist, I can tell I still have strains of catholic thinking internalized in me. And it is hard sometimes to understand the notion of large scale interdependence and collective organization as something more than a fantasy. Some part of my thought leads in the individualist morality direction that steers things toward the importance of individual behavior and individual salvation and so on, which is viewed as wholly separate from everything else. What I’m trying to get at here is, for example, if I were to go do something that most people view as a morally reprehensible thing to do, the instinct would not be to ask how society failed, the instinct would be to ask how I failed to hold back the inner demons in me (whether one views that as more literal or figurative). Just as the christian mindset creates martyrs, it also creates demons; figures in a holy battle between the morally strong and the morally weak. In the christian mindset, these are not figures who are portrayed a certain way for morale, or strategy, or increasing odds of victory, but as a true believer in the idea that the battle is an individual one for souls and not a battle that can be won on a large scale to the collective benefit of all peoples.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
One thing that everyone can do to help right now is to stop talking shit about anarchists/communists. There is puh-lenty of space (speaking of the US here) for orgs belonging to either of these tendencies. Don’t like a particular org? Don’t join it! Save your criticism for more productive uses and deserving targets. May we all be so lucky as to live to see a time when the other is the most pressing enemy.
In the meantime, please please try to support each other in good will and comradeship. If you see an org calling for support, offer it respectfully. Don’t try to coopt it or recruit. Just do the work. Then when you want support for a project, reach out again. Be patient, and don’t be drawn into petty arguments-- withdraw your offer/request politely, and try again later.
But also I think it just comes down to the how the two groups respond to hierarchy. On a very simplified level leftists see the current hierarchy as negative and are looking to overturn it. Whether peacefully or through force we seek to create a better more just hierarchy. On the other hand conservatives not only like the current hierarchy but are willing to submit to their place in it.
So when a conservative leader says something a conservative doesn’t agree with they keep their head and voice down. Whereas when a leftist leader says something leftists don’t like they are far more willing to rebel against that potential system too.
My thoughts at least. 🤷
Are they stealing tactics from looney tunes?
Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda tllm by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows.
“To disrupt enemy road traffic, paint a tunnel in the side of a wall and they will drive their trucks right into it.”
This seems like a western left space criticism. I don’t know if left spaces outside of the west suffer from the same issues, and I’m going to lean toward “no” with that in mind.
Left spaces in the global south have less room to be “picky” about their leaders and members. They have standards, but aren’t too focused on being sinless like you said.
Palestinian communists probably support Hamas, despite their religious nature and (expected) reactionary beliefs. Who else do they have to fight against genocide and colonialism, after all?
Thank you, comrade, for your thoughts and insights into this. I am someone who did think that left spaces are infighting too much and right spaces are unified. As I’m sure is common.
But between your post and a couple of comments, I think that is something I should reconsider.
The public shaming of politicians does seem to be different, however. And that does put out an aura of unity. But of course, looks are deceiving. And I can’t stand hanging out in right-wing spaces, so I’ve never witnessed the internal turmoil myself.
Certain subreddits do the same. But we must unite and help everyone stop infighting each other. Infighting only ruins the objectives of communism as a whole.
Trans commies have a good reputation within the whole communist community, since Cuba and Vietnam are good models of building reputation and tolerance towards LGBTQ people. LESLIE FEINBERG HERSELF IS IMMORTAL! URA!
I believed it was because right wing groups are more authoritarian, and thus more likely to simply fall in behind the leader. Like all the Republicans that said bad things about trump, but when it came to votes they went along with him. Personal beliefs are less important than group cohesion.
I believed left wing people are more likely to value things like truth, accuracy, fairness, over group cohesion. Thus when there’s a disagreement or problematic leader, the group fractures instead of the majority going along with whoever’s perceived to be the leader. Personal values are primary.
Also I guess the surface area for problems in left wing spaces is bigger. If a right wing guy makes a racist joke, the right wing probably won’t care. Nor if they do something sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or whatever. They just have to swim with the current of all that bad stuff conservatives believe/accept. But a left wing person, who is just as steeped in the shitty dominant culture, will be held to a standard if they fuck up. They have to go against the current of the dominant culture. And if they fuck up and some internalized racism bubbles up, that’s a whole problem in a way right wing folks don’t have. They don’t have internalized communism or feminism to grapple with.
I don’t know if this is actually true, though.
Sorry for the kind of stream of consciousness post, heh. Think I’m mostly following what you’re saying
Leftists are supposed to self select their commune that best represents thier values. We have different values, but we cannot self select the community we desire.
Always? No, if course not always. But people like you claim it, which is sad.
Yes, always. Not just leftist spaces. Every political, social, w/e space has conflict.
