Seem alright? lot of CIA front chatter?
Their greatest weakness is they publish anything, which is can be their strengh. Also many people are moving past them as they are getting more radical. I actually still enjoy them even if they have published dumb shit. They are great starting points for my normie friends. Also I like their graphic design.
It feels like all the criticisms we have of the Chapo podcast roughly correlate to the same criticism of Jacobin. The common denominator seems to be "white socialists out of touch with POC issues and frankly don't have much interest in learning"?
To add on, it also depends on who's writing the article since they change a lot. I don't think it's bad like people say but probably meant for liberals. I still sub to it cause it's cheap
Yeh, I’d say it’s the demsoc paper of record basically. So your opinion of jacobin depends on your opinion of democratic socialism lol. Like most rags it has better or worse articles, better or worse writers.
What morons did that, that's totally out of step with the majority of chapters.
That's so weird to me. I've never gotten a message like that and I've been in DSA for years and the people I know in national do not believe social democracy is democratic socialism. They also don't think Venezuela is (and I agree with that), but they have more nuanced take than just hurr durr Maduro dictator.
The PSUV is a democratic socialist party assuredly but the executive branch of the government is still too unaccountable, and the judicial branch has now been suppressing some of the other left parties and some PSUV members. It's the same way even if the US had an active democratic socialist party in power, the US would not be democratically socialist due to how screwed up the executive and judicial system is. The good the PSUV has done for the country is great, but the institutions of the Venezuelan government are not democratic socialist. I'm not at all questioning the elections or legislative system, but the nature of the state institutions which I think they did have the power change democratically (though this is debatable) but for whatever reason they did not. Similarly the US will not be able to transition through democratic socialism (if such a transition is possible) without huge changes, made by the legislature and the people, to the executive and judicial branches, and to the legislature itself.
Yeah, my chapter has a few elextoralists, but for the most part we're all big on gun ownership and the science of Marxism Leninism. DSA is basically just a vector for organizing and coordinating.
Broke: Venezuela is a dictatorship
Woke: Venezuela is socialist
Bespoke: Venezuela’s economy is only 20% state owned, less than France
But seriously I can’t believe that’s what they’re touting, jfc
They are great for normies. I've had numerous friends who finally called themselves socialists because of their articles and have gone further since.
From a journalism perspective they're very light on actual journalism, it's mainly op-eds and occasional interviews or book reviews.
At least The Intercept has investigative journalism and reporting, although they too are not immune to op-ed brainworms.
The Intercept is a Pierre Omidyar joint. Has fingerprints all over Maidan coup as well as Modi's first presidential win in India. Best read with caution.
They push the line that socialism is just social democracy, that anti-imperialism is bad actually, that US-backed regime change is good actually, that every actually socialist state was bad except Cuba for some reason, and that if you want Socialism you just need to vote harder.
I don't think Jacobin is pro-Imperialism... they published a bad take about Syria, but besides that am I missing something specifically?
They support the neoliberal US-backed color revolution in Belarus, they recently wrote a piece praising the Polish Solidarity movement which overthrew socialism and installed a western puppet government, they think that China are evil gommies to be struggled against, the list goes on honestly. They're extremely awful on anything to do with foreign countries and basically fall in line with the US State Department on everything. They're the kind of "leftists" that think Imperialism is just when you invade foreign countries and maybe when the IMF forces structural adjustments. But at the same time they think IMF domination is the "lesser evil" between that and anything other than liberal democracy.
I wonder if they take Sorosbucks. Democracy Now does and I remember their Syria coverage being horrible.
DN! was cheer leading the overthrow of Gaddafi , that was the moment I turned off DN!, they repeated the same State Department line on Syria. Horrible on China, even having State Department Uyghur activist on as an expert guest. Had Liberal HK politicians on begging Trump to intervene. DN! and Goodman are radlibs with shitlib takes, this is Goodman's absolute cringe article when Kamala was chosen as VP:
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/8/13/kamala_harris_stands_on_the_shoulders
The polish solidarity movement is weird because poland was trying to do neoliberalism and austerity, so the workers striked, then the US, Polish gov, and Moscow did more austerity, sanctions, and strike-breaking. I think its more complex than saying it overthrew socialism, because the solidarity movement did a strike because they were having the fruits of their labor exported and rationed at home, basically to pay off western debts the government incurred.
Opportunists, social chauvinists, typical “we the people of the global petit-boug want to fight for a more equal share of the spoils of empire” stuff (e.g. free healthcare for Americans built on the backs of extractive imperial projects). Also they love electoralism and the DSA.
They are Neo Kautskyites, like, unironically.
Meaning they either earnestly believe Capital will just let you take the reins if you get voted in, or they are actual opportunists looking to siphon off treats without actually changing the system.
More importantly, they are left gatekeepers, an increasingly lucrative grift.
It's their job to establish credibility by posting uncontroversial left takes, so that when an actual critical moment comes, they can come out against it, and make it seem like it went "too far."
They'll go the way of Spiked, eventually ("uhh Marx was akshually capitalist sweaty.") But for now, they will be mostly readable and superior to most other Western press, so long as you keep this trajectory in the back of your head. Although they rarely provide anything besides takes.
Are they left gamekeepers or left gateways? I agree that social democrats and their media is popular right now, but it seems to me that it's an increase caused by a "left shift". Most of the people here saying "Jacobin is imperialist apologia!" would probably have read it rabidly at one point and later realized it was too conservative later on.
They may be gateways so long as people understand that you have to radicalize past them. That's entirely possible. Maybe most people get into them and do exactly that.
But in terms of what they are? I doubt it's their intent to radicalize people further.
I'm not hating on people for reading Jacobin. I don't think it has too many bad takes compared to, say, parts of breadtube, which legitimately are acting as left gatekeepers (despite them being a gateway for myself and presumably many others.)
It's good that it exists, but print media of that kind tends to follow one trajectory. We should encourage the left curious to read it without internalizing it as a left cornerstone.
https://historicly.substack.com/p/beware-of-the-respectable-left
This is an article I just read that turned out to be basically a "Jacobin sucks" article that hinges off a specific example.
To be honest I'm not going to be enthusiastic about any leftist news outlet until I see one that's worker-owned.
I think that's Young Turks , Jacobin is unionized afaik, but to what extent workers are protected vs the union just making deals to minorly benefit employer and marginally keep wages from dropping I don't know
For those wondering, Jacobin purchased Tribune magazine, an old left British publication that was going under back in 2018. Workers at Tribune said that Sunkara promised that if workers took a settlement of only 70% of the back wages that they were owed that he would give them future work after taking over the publication. However, Sunkara in a statement to Payday confirmed that he would not bring the staffers back. Supposedly Sunkara over promised then fucked up and had to reneg as they didn't have the money. Then it came out that the former Tribune owner and editor was doing part of the over promising and Sunkara had never said some of the stuff he was accused of at all, and most of the accusations were between the former Tribune owner and Sunkara behind closed doors and he's denied some of the stuff and there's no evidence whether he said most of it to the staff or the former owner did. IMO the whole thing was somewhat overblown.
Beyond that, there's general controversy on how much they pay contributing writers, but to me that's more of a how much money does jacobin have on hand and the number of articles it publishes per week question.
https://paydayreport.com/jacobin-publisher-accused-of-reneging-on-wage-deal-in-takeover-of-british-magazine-the-tribune/
I find it cringe. I think it’s very ublikely a literal cia front though lmao. Just dsa strategic “‘mass politics” radlibs who I happen to dislike, also I really dislike the sankara guy for being the embodiment of the cringe strategic dsa lord
*sunkara lmao
Thomas sankara is here to tell you 10 reasons why the great British bake off is an epic socialist win
There's a lot of cis het white dudes who hate on idpol and talk about how trans issues are a distraction on Twitter, and just in general that kind of brocialist bullshit. They have some nuclear bad takes at times. I think if they had any editorial standards and an editorial board made up of MLs it would be much better.
Because they host a lot of writers that have historically been opposed to a lot of the orgs and governments that some people on here are super into, and they have a fundamentally different view of socialism and how to organize for socialism than those orgs and groups. Like it's a who's who of people absolutely hated by the more anti DSA left groups. IMO they have a mix of good and bad articles, and offer extremely important criticism from a lot of good writers. If you like grayzone Ben Norton articles, which I don't, you will absolutely hate jacobin. And some of the comments in this thread are wildly out of touch too lol.
