Though socialist groups in the West tend to be secular, Christianity remains culturally hegemonic to such a degree that figures are appreciated in proportion to how well they fit a narrative template of martyrdom.
Imagine being so Eurocentric that you think all martyrdom narratives are necessarily Christian.
"Christianity revolves around a martyrdom narrative. Many Western socialists have martyrdom narratives. The West is historically Christian. Therefore, there is a direct influential link of Christianity on Western socialist martyr narratives."
Okay I left out a word, so sue me.
The bad-faith argument is making the extraordinary claim that "a background of a certain religion in a region means that even countercultures in that region will act under its cultural hegemony".
It's literally pointing at all of the West and saying "I can use Christianity to explain this". It's a giant leap across a chasm in logic.
https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/
Another factor that is very common in the western left is to treat suffering and extreme poverty as elements of superiority. It is very common in Western leftist culture to support martyrs and suffering. Everyone today likes Salvador Allende. Why? Salvador Allende is a victim, a martyr. He was assassinated in Pinochet’s coup d’ etat. When Hugo Chávez was alive, many sectors of the left turned their nose up at him. If he had been killed, for example, in the 2002 Coup attempt, he would be adored by the immense majority of the western left today, as a symbol of suffering and martyrdom. Since he continued exercising power as leader of a political process which, by necessity, had various contradictions, he was increasingly abandoned, as time passed
The Western Left absolutely has a losing fetish. It's one of the things our enemies point out the most often!
That excerpt is spot-on. It's even more noticeable when you talk to people who might be edging towards leftist ideas, but who aren't leftists yet. Bring up that Allende was couped by the U.S. and you get immediate sympathy, but you'll get "well that's different" if you bring up Venezuela.
the western left absolutely has a losing fetish.
Oh wow a supossed ML failing to do historical material analysis... Maybe US leftists laude Allende because doing so points out the imperialist crimes the US has done. Meanwhile, openly supporting "official state enemies" like Chavez or Maduro will get you censored, persecuted, and harassed by the state and capital. Maybe those material conditions have more to do with why western leftists fail to support Maduro and Castro than some idealist nonesense about a christian martyrdom. Its as absurd as saying Castro and Chavez weren't western and weren't influenced by Christianity.
How about Vietnam? We fought an actual war against their state, they WON, and now you almost never hear a peep from the Western Left about Vietnam... Compare that to the Ls we celebrate all the time.
now you almost never hear a peep from the Western Left about Vietnam
What the flying fuck are you talking about? We never shut the fuck up about the Vietnam war. Have you missed the weekly prayers for Kissinger's death?
Please elaborate.
That's my point - lots of talk about the war, very little about the actually existing Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
A losing fetish? Sure. But not a heavily Christian-influenced nature.
You're getting the relationship the text is stating backwards.
Here's their thinking:
The west was historically Christian and Christianity has a martyr narrative. Many people in the west, despite being secular, are still influenced by Christianity. Because of this, these people often associate a martyr narrative with being good.
atheism in america, is a false mind paradigm that actually sucks you into the SAME good/pure evil/corrupt puritanical mindset.
in reality, atheism should be "secular buddhism" imo. just talk to someone from eastern countries v western.
yall are still being mind controlled by christianity if you dont understand the dualistic nature of our world.
I heard this very useful parable: the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
what im trying to say is stop letting others tell you what to think WHICH MANIFESTS as GOOD vs EVIL. you will miss a lot if you think you are a "good" guy, and think you are supposed to avoid "bad" things. You cannot be good if you do not know what bad is. you cannot understand others, until you understand yourself. letting others put ideas in your head (like the idea that communism is bad, or that stalin was pure evil) is the actual BAD. Like YOOU KNOW that your intuition ALWAYS told you that communism, and the attempts were a progression of humanity, but for so long you denied yourself that information because stalin bad.
If A, then B.
Observation: B. Therefore, A.
That's what the logic of the text is saying.
It's saying that Christianity has a prominent martyrdom narrative, Christianity is hegemonic in the west, so therefore western leftists view martyrdom positively. It's not saying that all martyrdom narratives are Christian.
It's like saying that English uses pronouns, English is hegemonic in the U.S., so therefore U.S. leftists use pronouns. That doesn't imply the author thinks pronouns are an exclusive feature of the English language.
A vast majority of US leftists use English.
Does a vast majority of western leftists adhere to Christianity? No. So your metaphor really breaks down there.
The ones who hate China for having billionaires but laud Vietnam despite having billionaires always give me pause.
The difference between a country that's a competitor to the U.S. and a country that isn't.
Some are genuinely misinformed or just don't have coherent views.
Others are libs who want Healthcare masquerading as leftists.
GOOD post
U.S. leftists have a serious problem with dumping on anyone who achieves even modest levels of political notoriety or success. Someone with no audience and no pull is a pure, True Leftist. But as soon as they attract a following, or get in office, or have a chance at taking their ideas mainstream, they become a sellout, or a sheepdog, or otherwise too compromised to even critically support. Calling it a martyrdom template hits the nail on the head.
Faced with the intellectually challenging task of defending projects that didn’t always live up to our a priori ideals, with the task of understanding why they didn’t live up to those ideals, many opt for the doctrine of betrayal... Enthusiasm is proof of credulity, cynicism is proof of enlightenment — a hipster credo as much in politics as it is in art.
Posting about perfect leftist ideas is easy; going out there and trying to bend the real world towards those ideas is hard. And if you shit on people who are at least out there trying, well, you're smarter and edgier than everyone else, because having any hope of even modestly improving things is for suckers.
We'll never get anything done if we keep doing this. I'd rather have people who at least seem to be moving in the right direction than people who criticize while not moving anywhere.
Posting about perfect leftist ideas is easy; going out there and trying to bend the real world towards those ideas is hard. And if you shit on people who are at least out there trying, well, you’re smarter and edgier than everyone else, because having any hope of even modestly improving things is for suckers.
Yeah, and I think this is at least as important an influence as any Christian martyrdom complex.
It's embarrassing to admit that Western leftism is essentially politically irrelevant in the West, so it's much easier to say that AES don't deserve support. Then, they don't have to address the fact that there's nothing western leftists can do to materially aid AES even if they wanted.
We legitimately have not had a single political party or individual that hasn’t had their main goal be adventurism or personal profit.
This strikes me as overly-pessimistic speculation. We can't really know the personal goals of politicians (and those goals aren't as relevant as what said politicians do, anyway), and there's a bunch of evidence to the contrary (e.g., candidates not taking corporate donations).
There are local politicians who aren't reactionary and aren't imperialistic in any meaningful sense (they have about as much influence over U.S. foreign policy as you or me). Among national politicians, it turns into a conversation about what's "imperialistic" vs. a bad foreign policy opinion here or there, but you can certainly find politicians who are far better on foreign policy than the vast majority of Democrats.
My overall point is that we can either dismiss these people (who are at least trying something to make things better) over policy differences that rarely have any material impact, or we can push them on those policy differences while otherwise supporting the things they do that we all agree are good. I don't see the left accomplishing much with the first approach.
I think we have to keep shooting our shots, with the understanding that every opportunity we have to change things for the better isn't going to pan out. But some will, and if we keep moving people left and making gains here and there we can increase the odds of any given opportunity being successful.
It's far from ideal (especially given how pressing climate change and a dozen other enormous problems are), but it has a chance to work long term. And we have to try something.
I was thinking more of U.S. leftists who don't support other U.S. leftists who start to gain mainstream influence or power. After all, that's a place where U.S. leftists might reasonably have some impact. One thing this article doesn't touch on, that should be part of any discussion about U.S. leftists and China, is that our opinions have zero effect on reality (whatever those opinions may be). If every single U.S. leftist was united in opposition to China or in support of China, it would make no difference to China.
With respect to "not trying," I think a valid criticism of small-scale political activity (mutual aid networks, stopping sweeps of homeless camps) is that it's hard to see how that will translate into the type of mainstream influence/power leftists need to address big problems like climate change, imperialism, or mass incarceration. I wouldn't (and didn't) say that type of small-scale activity is useless, but I do think it's often over-praised because it's "pure," while mainstream efforts are often snubbed because they fail to live up to some idealistic standard. Ideally, leftists would do both -- they'd organize those mutual aid networks, but also support larger, more mainstream efforts to take steps in the right direction. We should see these as complementary strategies.
No country is perfect but if you don't live in China (or have done extensive research), you really can't make any meaningful critique of their systems and constantly repeating all of the common talking points against China is going to help the western imperialists more than it is at improving the Chinese government.
The “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” dream, embraced more by pundits with cushy lives than working people, also reveals a dark truth: western “socialists” have some awareness that a more equal world will mean losing first-world privileges. They cannot conceive of things getting better steadily and slowly, with hard work.
the DSA eco-modernist caucus opposes degrowth because these Plantation Americans hate hard work and want to avoid getting suntans by using agriculture apartheid slave labor
If history is any indication, after a successful revolution we'll still be pulling 12 hour shifts in the tank factory, lest the forces of reaction crush the revolution entirely.
Western leftists gotta read this article written by a western leftist.
Also this is all bullshit. Every iteration of socialism vs. capitalism by definition aligns with the David vs. Goliath narrative, ask an ML why authority is absolutely necessary in a revolution and they will go on about how capitalism and imperialism is such a huge enemy in volume (which is true) that you can't defeat it by libertarian measures (which is not true, but it's a popular thing to paint longstanding anarchist projects around here for example as ML's since they couldn't be longstanding if they were anarchists, which in itself is sectarian bullshit). And while we're at it, the USSR isn't around anymore, who's worshipping a martyr now?
Stalin, the Kims, Xi and to an extent Maduro are criticized because they are repressing people who are/were in no way a threat to their rule and could/can be even helpful to the cause. They're criticised because they count even the smallest difference in opinion dangerous dissent. Everything beyond that is made up nonsense.
Hmm yes the Kims count "even the smallest difference in opinion dangerous dissent", thats why the DPRK has a social democratic party and a religious party in the supreme peoples assembly.
I never said they're right about it. I said that there are far more obvious reasons why western leftists attack them apart from them not being martyrs.
I think kims and maduro occupy some sort of nether space, as for one information is distorted beyond belief (and I think rather than political repression much bigger concern should be some worker repression in dodgy china/russia things near border). For maduro, i seem to remember they have some local councils run extremely democratically, but state wise they don’t seem very committed to changing bourgeoisie order, and repression is somewhat questionable. Guaido and opposition run around, calling for insurrection rather willy-nilly
"which is not true, but it’s a popular thing to paint longstanding anarchist projects around here for example as ML’s since they couldn’t be longstanding if they were anarchists, which in itself is sectarian bullshit"
Can you clarify? My first instinct is that you're talking about the Zapatistas, who I know aren't ML, but who have explicitly stated they aren't anarchists either.
Are you talking about something else? I'm just at a loss because most ML orgs are pretty explicit about their ideology?
Most of the time with the Zapatistas and Rojava, which are the two generally "libcom" projects that are pointed to, the criticisms I see is less "Oh they are actually ML" and more just pointing to either the relatively small scale and less hostility the Zapatistas have faced(not that they have faced no hostility mind you) or pointing to the collaboration between Rojava and the US as an argument for why these are unique cases and not inherently "proof" that Anarchism is as/more effective than ML(not trying to start this argument or being sectarian, just explaining what people argue).
Well I think that that's a totally different argument.
The OP didn't say that MLs made arguments that non-ML projects like the Zapatistas and Rojava weren't sustainable, they said that MLs regularly claim that "anarchist" (not just non ML) projects were ML projects.
I'm new to Hexbear, and mostly just went over to genzedong after MTC got banned, so maybe this behavior has been common here specifically, but on MTC or genzedong, they'd probably call you a lib if you started calling Rojava a ML project.
Yeah I have pretty much never heard an ML claim that Rojava is actually ML, I have no idea where that comes from but I have definitely not seen it here.
I've read multiple times about Rojava on this site that they're "ML in all but name"
I've literally never seen an ML claim that about Rojava. Most don't even support Rojava due to their ties with the US military.
Brace Belden from Trueanon (and is a ML) who toured with YPG for 6 months said in his Chapo interview that they basically run like a Stalinist state.
EDIT: There were also mentions of crit and self crit sessions and what not. Plus I am not sure how useful these discussions are based on labels. Cuba certainly doesn't run exactly like the Soviet Union (neither did China). For instance did you know Che looked at US corporations for inspiration on how to structure the economy? These countries look at what everything everyone tried and figure out what works for them. To me that is the true commie way (it is 'scientific socialism' and not the 'religion of socialism' after all). Not blind adherence to ideas but an honest attempt at trying and finding better models.
That is something he has been saying in recent episodes afaik (in very early ones there is a question on some True and A epsiode on why Brace and Liz are MLs). Plus Mao builds on ML stuff so there is no contradiction here.
I've definitely seen arguments basically saying there's not as much difference between ML and what Rojava is doing as its more vocal adherents claim, but yeah most of the time the close bond between Rojava and US imperialism means MLs dont usually care much for it in my experience.
The only part I disagree with is that the primary cause of this is christianity. Because the western left doesn't have mass labor or really mass politics at all as its support base and is instead more a market leftism there is a huge incentive towards smearing anyone threatening the revenue streams society's misery generates. It is the problem Bernie and Corbyn ran into where the possibility that long standing issues may change immediately sent orgs and "allies" into collaboration with the ruling class. The structure itself demands failure.
Foreign models like China's are a threat for the same reason. Not only because they aren't based on NGOs, but because of the contrast they provide to a left structure where people are taught that raising the minimum wage is a political project with a longer timeline than the entire October revolution.
It is the problem Bernie and Corbyn ran into where the possibility that long standing issues may change immediately sent orgs and “allies” into collaboration with the ruling class. The structure itself demands failure.
Wait, did this actually happen? Which orgs and allies did this?
Think of unions and trade associations that oppose m4a and other bullshit.
Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, But Not Real Revolution
Every movement that appears to stray a bit from these “pure” models that were created a priori is explained through the concept of betrayal, or is explained as “state capitalism.” Therefore, nothing is socialism and everything is state capitalism. Nothing is socialist transition and everything is state capitalism. The revolution is only a revolution during that glorious moment of taking political power. Starting from the moment of building a new social order, its over. Revolution is always a political process which has two moments: a moment of destruction of the old capitalist order and taking power, and a moment of building a new order. The contradictions, the problems, the failures, the mistakes, sometimes even the crimes, mainly happen during this moment of building the new order. So when the time comes to evaluate the building of a new social order -- which is where, apparently, the practice always appears to stray from the purity of theory -- the specific appears corrupted in the face of the universal. It is at this point that the idea of betrayal is evoked, that the idea of counter revolution is evoked, and that the idea of State Capitalism appears in order to preserve the purity of theory.
Socialism by 2050 is a :LIB: meme
Xi please start censoring this cringe market socialism
Lol yeah I agree with most of the articles but this is just sticking parenti quotes together yeah. It's not some groundbreaking dunk or anythinh
