I have no idea what the video is trying to say. It starts with Fanon:
Wretched of the Earth is a capitulation to Black Nationalism, Third Worldism. He's acknowledging the further degeneration of the global situation. Fanon was the eminent dialectical critic, or the negative dialectical critic, of the Third World Revolution.
Anti-Imperialism, the affirmation of decolonization, was one-sided. It became a way for the Western Left to avoid the task of rebooting mass working class movement for socialism in the core of capitalism.
That question was posed circa. 1956, that's what we mean by the New Left. The task of creating a New Left was glimpsed, and it was bound up with race. The single biggest trigger of the global New Left was not Khrushchev's 20th Party Congress Speech, it's Civil Rights in the United States.
By the end of the 1970s, it's clear that there's no New Left, the New Left failed to create the New Left, and it's uncritical affirmation of decolonization results in the complete degeneration of decolonization. What does the anti-colonial movement look like? It looks like the Iranian Revolution. It's openly right-wing.
What Stalinism means, it's not like an authoritarian movement, or Russian domination or whatever, what it means is liquidation of historical consciousness. And the way that you do that is by calling defeat, victory. You can't learn anything from a defeat if you call it victory. The most relevant form of that is the Stalinists claming that they defeating Fascism in 1945 as part of the upward and onward global development of communism. That's a lie. That is calling a defeat, victory. That is a liquidation of historical consciousness of what had happened since the crisis of the Revolution of 1917.
I really don't understand what he's trying to say.
Why'd you bother writing this comment then?
As far as quickly resorting to calling him a "historically illiterate ideologically confused liberal" you're just showing that you're jumping to a conclusion quickly. Leonard is a historian of India and is currently writing a book on the history of Indian Marxism.
He's a guest on a podcast having a discussion. Not exactly an easy setting for inserting footnotes. If you want to look at his sources you could probably find his argument more elaborated in writings he's published.
I wouldn't say that I agree with him per se, but this is a situation where I think a more thoughtful refutation is warranted.
BTW, Spencer A. Leonard is in the comments of the video, calling Stalin "a hero of the right", that "Stalinism led to the victory of fascism in Europe" and that Stalinism "ensured the subordination of the working class to nationalism".
So I got off the train and actually subjected myself to this dogshit Leonard calls a "lecture".
I fully stick to my assertion he is an historically illiterate ideologically confused liberal, and would advise him that as a professor on Indian history he should stick to his own lane of expertise and wield his academic title as a bludgeon to declare himself an authoritative speaker on a subject outside of his field of study in a similar manner that charlatans like Jordan Peterson parade themselves as.
His assertion that the "new left" has it roots in the American Civil rights movement is American chauvinism that ignores the titanic impacts of Khrushchev's lies, the Sino-Soviet split, and Mao's ultra-left pivot had on the international communist movement. To try and assert that The New Left was a completely independently formed and separate movement that has no historical ties to the Socialist and Communist movement is a clear demonstration of Leonard's historical illiteracy.
On the point where he smears the legacy of the Soviet Union during the Stalin Era, I would have thought he was going to perform an ultra-Left pivot and assert that "stalinism sold you defeat and called it victory" by doing the usual hairbrained dipshit claim that Stalin subverted the world revolution by declaring that he was going to build Socialism in One country and call it communism.
But to my surprise Leonard comes completely out of left field by asserting, and the podcast people did him a disservice by not letting him expand on his shit take and cutting him off as he asserts that Stalin failed to kill Fascism and by claiming otherwise Stalin liquidated the historical consciousness of, whom he doesn't say but let's assume, the Soviet peoples on everything that occurred between the October Revolution to Victory Day. Which is an extremely bold claim.
In the time between the last paragraph to this one, I spent more time reading through the transcript of the full interview, researching who Leonard is and what media group he's with, and oh boy I had a field day. He never expands of why he said anything on Stalinism or how it sold defeat as victory, and he calls for the overthrowing of the PRC as one of the key pieces for victory of world socialism.
The only fucking losers that use "victory of world socialism" and "Stalinism" in the same sentence while avoiding any mention of communism at all are fucking ultra-Left Trotskyites, which led me to look more into him and confirming that he's associated with Trotskyite paperboy clubs on the ultra-Left and with the Rights Breadtube's most annoying and pedantic ivory tower "marxists" of the ZeroBooks infamy Lain and Burgess. I take back calling him a historically illiterate ideologically confused liberal because that's an insult to liberals who don't know any better, he's just another annoying fucking Trot who's eternally mad his boy didn't get a chance to lead the Soviet Union into ruin and got justice at the end of a :pika-pickaxe:
Examining this was a complete waste of my time and energy.