:LIB:
This is the story of every leftist party/project ever and is arguably one of the biggest reasons the American left in particular can't get off the ground, period. Even if you achieve the impossible and start doing in-person activity with other leftists under the umbrella of an organization, its only a matter of time before this small circle starts sleeping with each other and gossiping on who to vote off the island like an episode of Survivor.
Like I'm serious when I say if you're intending to get involved in a leadership or public role in a leftist organization, you need to prepare one of two approaches:
- Come to terms with having to do some ruthless, awful shit that betrays friends and/or your own principles at some point
- Be a volcel, unironically
Need to be like Trotsky and fall in love with a person who lives halfway across the country that you dump all your sexual energy onto by writing astoundingly horny letters.
I'm imagining a secret ghostwriting/phishing scheme to keep today's crop of leftist organizers on task.
Maybe I'm totally wrong, but maybe organisations need to have kinda conservative rules like "people need to date outside the org". Obviously I don't want to persecute those who develop feelings and such, but it seems to lead to lots of problems.
I read about these bizarre petty vendettas people in these orgs have and I feel like a space alien. Like I'm something of an outlier in that it takes quite a lot for me to take anything personally or hold a grudge these days, but I'm still shocked how half of these people can even maintain functional interpersonal relationships, much less a functional organization.
Theres a very real problem on the modern left with mental illness and being incapable of keeping a lid on such problems in any setting. I don't mean that to be prejudiced against the neurodivergent (I have my own problems), I'm just being blunt. Social media certainly makes these problems a million times worse. But people in their 20s apparently being completely incapable of having adult conversations with each other without plotting revenge the moment they're out of earshot, or organizing whisper campaigns and literal struggle sessions over someone who had a bad take, is a whole different level of bewildering to me.
Kinda different perspective, but I've always noticed that people (not necessarily the left) lack the emotional maturity to openly disagree, argue, and admit mistakes. Like I kinda wish people have themselves the space to argue one on one once in a while. I'm sure that social media doesn't help this.
I had a lib vegan group die recently, and your small circle, Survivor analogy fits perfectly. I opened up one on one to another member who I didn't like the way they treated me, and the next week like half the group didn't talk to me. :shrug-outta-hecks:
lack the emotional maturity to openly disagree, argue, and admit mistakes.
I don't want to be the "against cancel culture" guy, because rapists and sexpests deserve to be [REDACTED]. But the twitter brain has made people way to quick to cancel people for having a take they disagree with. I'm talking about the people who say "You're not a real leftist if..." then talk about some niche rant.
people in their 20s apparently being completely incapable of having adult conversations
I wish this was limited to people in their 20s. If you want to see completely deranged X'ers and Boomers, incapable of normal human conversation, they're a dime a dozen at a typical municipal council meeting.
I’m still shocked how half of these people can even maintain functional interpersonal relationships, much less a functional organization.
They can't, that's the problem.
Interesting comments on your article.
cw:terf shit
spoiler
Excellent. At the risk of derailing this conversation but you can see this writ large in the reification and transformation of sex dysphoria not merely from a delusional state of mind that causes extreme suffering in some instances – to an outright celebration of its inversion of biological fact and normality. ‘Trans’ is now the most ‘special’ of ‘special’ states of existence on the planet. Stick that special label on yourself and you are excused and feted for limitless self indulgence and extreme selfishness towards others in equal measure.
Last edited 11 days ago by Miriam Cotton 69 REPLY Ruth Conlock Ruth Conlock 9 days ago Reply to Miriam Cotton And are given a free pass to viciously abuse women who dare to state that sex matters. A men’s rights movement that the left have embraced as progressive. Also a movement causing untold, irreversible harm to vulnerable young people particularly those with autistic traits.
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Maybe you shouldn't link directly to transphobic news sources with no cw. Im reconsidering taking DeBoer seriously if he's willing to post next to this shit cw: vile transphobia
spoiler
https://unherd.com/2022/05/you-cant-be-born-in-the-wrong-body/
it isn't even the dating, it's that a chunk of people in these spaces have the emotional maturity of a fucking toddler
Maybe the answer is training. We already do sexual harassment and stuff, but now we need to add "how not to split the party over petty shit". If that fails, purges.
Even lower. We need Kindergarten Social interaction for all US adults.
The most awkward part is that sometimes those people are way older than everyone else, too. It sucks having to have a convo with someone 20-30 years older than you about why jumping into recruiting meetings to passive-aggressively harass a group of people that they're annoyed at isn't cool.
So someone proposed this on a DSA forum once and someone else pointed out “our org is mostly young people with sexually libertine values and half our events are like cocktail mixers and adult laser tag. I don’t really think you can reasonably expect people not to get horny in these circumstances.”
Hexbears: "how do I get gf, plz?" :powercry-1:
NomadicWarMachine: "join an org, bro" :cool-bean:
I mean, if you’re capable of having sexual relations with people without being a fucking immature creep yeah I think an org isn’t a terrible place to meet like minded people. Shouldn’t be WHY you’re getting organized but it may be a happy side effect.
But as this thread indicates that not very many people.
Sorry, was just poking fun at the idea. Sometimes I forget that I'm not as funny as I think I am. 😅
Idk about other branches but I remember when I was getting out of college all the DSA events were shit like going to bowling alleys or like karaoke night. Yah know shit were hot young people like to hit on each other.
Old people: "How do we stop the kids from bangin'?"
And thus abstinence was invented for yet another generation to flaunt.
Be a volcel, unironically
Side-eyes all those pedophilia charges against the Catholic church's 'celibate' clergy. :scared:
I think the issue is that people join groups expecting the group to give them something. This is pretty typical of the "exchange" basis of relationships under capitalism that colonizes even the way we perform basic emotions. Like if you go to the group expecting it to actualize you, fulfill you, and provide something for you (like sex) in exchange for your labor and time availability, then the whole thing becomes transactional and transaction violations (like @ButtBidet addressing friction and the necessity of non-transactional effort to rectify an issue) become frustrating distractions instead of instances for the group to perform self-maintenance.
Most of the research I've done on indigenous societies points to a different method of community where the individual, instead of expecting the world to help them transcend in a metaphorical Hero's Journey, gains the maturity through life experience to help the community transcend itself. In this way, the community as an entity should be nurtured like a child, and raised by a village.
IMO, this difference in perspective is why indigenous organizers tend to express distaste for most western leftists. They see leftists as copycats who somehow lose the essence of what makes indigenous movements function, that being a love of their community.
Adding to this, I think the transactional mindset colonizes the way we date and view romantic love too. Westerners hold the idealistic crystalization of their nuclear family as their primary life goal, at the expense of their surroundings and their new family members. Dating isn't a method of participating in a community as much as it is acquiring a renewable "happiness" resource.
I think a change in mindset would rectify both problems to the degree that you can simultaneously organize and have family, polycules, whatever in the org. Otherwise historical revolutionaries wouldn't have had the families and children that we know exist.
I feel called out. What can a honky such as myself do to practice healthier social bonds than the ones we were taught?
Honestly, based on the work I've done in my own relationships, you have to open yourself up to the idea that you are fundamentally wrong about everything you know. My partner and I basically broke each other down and built each other up from scratch, not to suit some selfish needs mind you (like it's not a hentai manga style competition to see who can dom the other person into being the best sex slave or whatever), but it was mostly picking apart dysfunctional habits that came from selfish mindsets or could be connected to patriarchy/white supremacy (and it's surprising how much of that is built in to the things people perceive as "normal").
The subsequent rebuilding came from establishing rules for communicating effectively and ensuring everyone feels heard and that problems are to be solved together. There are a lot of tiny complaints throughout the day and some sit down discussions critiquing unhealthy behavior, but they're offset by compassion when things get real. And we're secure enough with each other that saying out loud these things that we need doesn't poison the well. Because the desire to act and be helpful to see the other person happy/thriving is far more powerful than the little prickles that we know are just maintenance behaviors.
Of course, not everyone is the same. But I've been with them for years and the limerence and empathy has only increased over time where most people in the west report a decrease over time (usually 2-5 years is when people stop feeling intense passionate feelings and everything else goes with it).
I'd also recommend downloading The Communism of Love by Richard Gilman-Opalsky. It's basically given me the tools to put the things I've learned irl into words and materialist analysis.
I think I'm on the middle on this one. I've dropped out of several leftist orgs because it felt like nothing was being done. If I couldn't even get satisfaction from helping people or learning things, or help from others when I needed it, what was the org even doing? I already work 50 hours per week and I'm regularly exhausted, but most orgs I've been in didn't do much other than hold reading groups or desperately flail around confused, but would still hold a ton of meetings, hand out newspapers, assign reading, that kind of stuff.
Main exception being Food not Bombs. I adore them. They're the real thing. They're completely scatterbrained ideologically, but they're good people doing real work with the homeless and hungry.
Also I have no community attachment and I'm basically asocial. No friends or anything. Don't know how to rectify this if I'm gonna work with people.
You haven't really said anything I disagree with tbh. My point wasn't that you shouldn't expect orgs to do things it's that the nature of the doing shouldn't be transactional. More or less: if you're working as part of a transactional relationship then you're still operating with capitalist brainworms. If that makes sense?
Yeah I understand. I was in situations where I was putting in work that got wasted, so at some level I did feel like I wasn't getting anything in return. An org should at the very least take your work and apply it somehow, and if they aren't, why work with them?
You're conflating the long-term benefit of social cooperation with evolutionary-psych level machiavellianism. If your reasons for joining a social movement are calculated like you're an investor buying stock options, then when it comes down to doing things that don't directly benefit you like community work or challenging your own racism, or internationalist activity then you become a liability to the community. This isn't new shit. A lot of western leftists are just too inward focused and navel gazey to notice when they exclude minorities within their ranks or build what basically amounts to a book club where a bunch of middle class people circlejerk without any thought toward direct action.
People keep asking "why can't movements get off the ground?" And when minorities point out what they don't like about leftists they get shat on and find out that socialism isn't for them. The benefits of organizing need to come from being in a community and the positive effects that naturally confers. Mao-Zedong-style being concerned with the well being of the masses will come when the resources are there and the group decides how to handle that. But setting up an org for immediate satiation is just making a cult.
I think you and the above poster are not in contradiction. You are both talking about distinct phenomena.
- Time economy
- Non-transactional community
These things both need to be accommodated. If an organization doesn't respect people's time then it will fizzle out due to sheer attrition. Humans can only spread themselves so thin and revolutionary zeal even has its limits (the limit here being that the org is deemed ineffective, so the zeal isn't being meaningfully channeled by the org). While capitalism has a variety of motives to inundate and physically/mentally/emotionally exhaust its subjects, a very prominent reason is so that the working class is simply too tired to organize politically. This can't be ignored by leftist orgs - leftist orgs that want to last a meaningful amount of time need to find a way to decrease the burdens/stresses of living within capitalism for their members lest the members abandon the org - not due to any disagreement in ideology but simply because they cannot sustain what the org requires of them in tandem with what capitalism requires of them. Leftists love to harness economics for their critiques of capitalism but then they fail to employ economics as a sound basis for their organizations - dooming them to deterioration.
When I work with an org I don't expect them to only focus on my personal struggles - I do expect them to be realistic; the more energy they use from their members, the more the org needs to reimburse those people in some manner - not because the people are selfish, but because their energy is finite. Every victory in terms of freezing rents, raising wages, securing benefits, etc is a rejuvenating property which will allow the org to continually renew the participation of their members.
I like this comment. I think I'm just still kinda butthurt about how ego-centric libs can be. But you're right that there's a difference between an org spinning its wheels vs being effective/actualizing. I just think like the idea of selling actualization as a product is a bit counter-intuitive/closer to being a weird yoga class. It's especially prevalent when talking to people with utopian ideologies.
No you're absolutely right that organizations should not be actualization projects for radlibs/nascent leftists and they often are treated that way. That's a definite problem.
Cadres must be polycules for the good of the revolution. Read some theory next time doll.
I dont think the volcel approach would solve the root of the problem, breaking up is not the only way to create a personal animosity
This whole thing is kind of bizarre because the candidate literally admitted to sexually harassing her employee who basically lost their job because of her actions. Weird that people are making this into something about DSA.
Nah the author specifically mentioned that in the linked article:
(Defenders of this drumhead against Brooks insist that she has admitted to harassment, when in fact what she admitted to was the behavior that they are calling harassment; whether it constitutes harassment in fact is precisely the controversy)
idk i think that repeatedly messaging your employee about your sexual attraction to them even as they turn you down and eventually causing this behavior to have them lose their job definitely constitutes sexual harassment.
The former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy, alleged that Brooks harassed them over a period of six months, sending personal text messages late at night and after work hours, expressing romantic and sexual interest on multiple occasions, and pressuring them to have an intimate relationship. On March 14, they filed a complaint to Brooks’s campaign manager, Michelle Whittaker — who is also her sister — and the two parties entered into a formal mediation that concluded last month.
The allegations, supported with documents and text messages reviewed by The Post, have caused a painful rift among Montgomery’s progressive activists and leaders, many of whom have known Brooks, an Afro-Latina activist, and supported her political ambitions for years. Several of her closest advisers and supporters recently resigned from her campaign and some have urged her to withdraw from running.
One of the requirements of the mediation agreement, which was moderated by a neutral third party, was that Brooks had to explain why the employee had left the campaign. At a closed-door meeting with staff and advisers on March 26, Brooks read from an “accountability statement” that had been approved from the employee and admitted that she had sexually harassed them on Jan. 24. Those at the meeting responded in a mix of anger, disappointment and disbelief; some of her closest supporters cried, said three people affiliated with the campaign.
we need a crop of vocel Stalins to institute some discipline and unity into these DSA chapters. purge the polycules from your org until you manage to accomplish something actually useful :volcel-vanguard:
I’ve meet leftists who have a rule about not dating anyone within any org their in, they often end up dating totally non-political people cuz dating other leftists would fuck things up.
I was involved in a pretty large and successful chapter that hasn't fallen to rancor because of libshit. They're 100% focused on local issues. When the chapter narrowly agreed to put together an organ to promote Bernie's primary campaign in late 2019 there was a collective eye roll from the rank and file. Bernie was simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to the DSA. He was a great figure to coalesce around after 2016, but it should have ended there. If the DSA is to survive it must abandon electoral politics everywhere but local elections.
Man I'm in a rough place today and reading this thread is not helping my doomer brain
