MarxMadness @ MarxMadness @lemmygrad.ml

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2 yr. ago

shout down opposition

This is a text forum, you can post or comment as much as you like. People chiming in with similar opinions =/= "shouting down opposition."

Yes, it's in response to an action taken by the CPUSA. I'm asking if the CPUSA put out a statement when they announced their action. There's no link to one on the page.

This seems damning at first blush, but most stories do when you only get one side. Hearing from both sides before reaching a conclusion is fair.

Is there a statement from CPUSA on the matter?

Libs: Violence is never acceptable, even if Trump is an immediate threat to harm countless people.

Also libs: Let's all thank the Secret Service for immediately killing the shooter.

Then factor in the hours you have to spend at a second job because your main job doesn't pay a living wage.

I was surprised (somehow I am also surprised I can still be surprised at maoists) that many of them upheld the GPCR but didn’t really know much about it. How can you claim to support something you haven’t investigated yourself?

Huh, wonder if Mao himself ever said anything about speaking on subjects one has not investigated.

they have violence fantasies and being communists allows them to live these out

A huge problem to guard against. Frothing at the mouth about revenge fantasies is purely an aesthetic choice, and not a good one. Righteous anger is understandable, as are occasional jokes, but too many people go well beyond that. And they'll double and triple down when you try to have a more sober discussion about the role of violence in society.

You compare a country to what it came from, with all it’s imperfections. And those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms? The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and civil liberties of those fascists who are dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has gotta be perfect, it’s gotta be flawless. Well that isn’t my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those people who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies that couldn’t eat, that died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.

Michael Parenti, On the Cuban Revolution

During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative... What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds

There is a much broader mass of people out there who are not liberal, most of them are just apolitical or only very superficially political in one direction or the other

Reaching out to these people is good, too, but I'm not sold that they're easier/more worthwhile to bring around than more committed libs (let's define that as regular Democratic Party voters):

1. As @GarbageShoot@hexbear.net pointed out, a lot of "apolitical" people are still pretty dug in on their priors, they just... aren't that interested in politics. Maybe that changes with exposure to leftist politics, but maybe the effort we put in just gets us (more) armchair revolutionaries. A lot of more committed libs have done real-world stuff like phonebanking, canvassing, staffing events, maybe even some protesting.
2. A lasting change to your worldview usually requires significant learning, which takes time and attention. Committed libs already set aside time and attention for politics; it's a matter of getting them to read/watch something different in the time they already spend on politics, not carve out new time to read/watch something they might not be interested in at all.
3. As long as you're somewhat honest with yourself -- which is a prerequisite for being persuadable -- being dug in on a position can backfire if it's a bad one. If I'm a lib who's genuinely horrified at how the U.S. handles its southern border, leftists pointing out how Obama and Biden have worsened the situation is not something I'll dismiss out of hand. It'll stick with me. If I'm used to occasionally hearing about bad stuff but resigned to being apolitical, how is hearing about one more bad thing going to change that?
4. Bernie based his campaigns around turning out apolitical people and the left wing of committed Dems; there was some success there, but not enough. And the task there was only getting apolitical folks to do the easiest form of political participation: voting for a popular candidate.

Some people complained about hexbear and i thought let me check out what they’re complaining about. I went through a few posts and i was honestly thunderstruck. Here are people that feel exactly the way i feel and can actually explain to me why I’m feeling that way and exactly what’s wrong with everything around us.

Exactly my experience with the old Chapo Trap House subreddit

Everyone has a plan until they get PPB'd in the mouth

I don't know. You can waste a lot of effort on convincing people of the need for security, establishing significant security, not weirding people out in the process, and actually sticking to it, only to find out that it's not as good as you think/it's yet another program with some sketchy back door built in. Or you do everything right and there's a fed in your group in person, a tactic they've used for at least a century. Or there isn't, but a serious adversary can piece together who's in the group and when you're meeting based on public posts and phone data.

This isn't saying orgs should take zero steps on information security, more that you're never going to be able to hide a domestic political group from the U.S. government. Expect leaks and wreckers from the start and you can set up ways to minimize their harm.

Everyone who does persuasion for a living (salespeople, marketers, lawyers, political writers, think tanks, etc.) puts tons of effort into carefully refining their approach. The details are enormously important, especially when you're talking about communism and anti-inperialism in the imperial core, where a century of propaganda and hostility has primed most people to immediately dismiss those ideas.

You're worried about watering down your point. Compare "Israeli soldiers are indiscriminately killing Palestinians" with "IOF terrorists are indiscriminately killing Palestinians." The first one doesn't water down the point at all, but you don't sound like a crank and you don't give people the opportunity to quibble over an academic question like how "terrorist" should be defined.

it doesn’t matter how right you are, what matters is what gets people to change their minds.

Imagine talking to someone who says "Barack Hussein Obama" every time they talk about Obama. You'd recognize them as a crank and write them off. If you listen to anything they say, you're immediately going to view it through a hostile lens.

That's the type of reflexive dismissiveness we want to avoid. "IOF" reads like "Amerikan" reads; people who do not already agree with us will either think "oh I can ignore this" or read it just to look for places to disagree.

the only people left defending isreal are literal genocide apologists

I think there are lots of persuadable people out there who very deeply want to believe the U.S. does not do these sorts of horrible things (or at least doesn't do them anymore). They don't see a genocide and think to apologize for it, or deny the reality of what they see -- they start from the premise that of course we aren't doing genocide, and reject anything that challenges that too directly as biased or misleading. It's a set of mental reflexes designed to avoid uncomfortable contradictions like "if the U.S. is right now doing a fast-motion genocide under a president I voted for, how do I respond?"

There's another large group of people who aren't really genocide apologists: people who don't follow politics of any kind very closely, and who have a similar reflexive rejection of anything they see as too radical of a political stance. These are the folks who nod along to all of our critiques of capitalism and the U.S., but punch out when you label those critiques socialism or communism.

This isn't the strategy you think it is. If someone who isn't already on board with what you're saying sees/hears "IOF terrorist," they're going to either not grasp what you mean and be confused/think you made a mistake, or get what you mean and see it as petty, edgy, and reaching. It's like calling U.S. troops terrorists: it's not actually going to land with anyone besides those who already agree with you.

Remember, it doesn't matter how right you are, what matters is what gets people to change their minds.

"Israeli soldier" pushes back on the "defense force" euphemism but isn't going to confuse anyone and won't be written off as too hot of a take.

"RAMIREZ! Milk that dead soldier's prostate!"

Hold X to insert

This seems futile, but it's a decent point to hammer on. Libs who believe international law means something get put in the uncomfortable position of rethinking that, it's more grounded than "I disagree with this as a matter of policy," and you'll smoke out plenty of people who will show their asses with "that shit doesn't apply to us" takes.

Class is not an immutable characteristic. It's determined by material conditions, and consciousness of one's class is a function of that and the ideas they're exposed to.

The settler class is no different. If the proletariat class can grow and proletarian consciousness can be developed, the settler class can shrink and settler consciousness can be destroyed.

First things first we will destroy the American and later the Canadian, and Mexican states

With what numbers? With what resources? Why is now different than the last 500 years, when indigenous movements in better situations lost? The lack of answers to these questions is why writing off the majority of the U.S. population is interpreted as defeatist.

We have yet to see one come out of the settler (or Imperialist European) working class for its 300 year existence.

You're right, we are in uncharted territory here with no clear historical precedent. Whatever you propose is just as theoretical as whatever I propose.

To me, it would be easier to destroy the imperial machine with more people on our side, not less. As material conditions continue to deteriorate the long-entrenched mass defenses of the machine (the settler ideology in white Americans) matter less and less.