I'm yet to decide on a topic, but having spent a little time on RedSails, it's quite clear that the levels of writing that get posted there vary a lot. I'm not really engrained into any leftist circles outside of an IRL party I'm being vetted for. Has anyone else here contributed essays to any place?
Once I get something written, what is a good way to shop it around to get posted somewhere cool? Anyone have any general experience like this?
Edit: been talking with a comrade and I think I have my topic! The rise of "christian nationalism" as a consequence of alienation/anticommunist ideology, and the parallels between the current movement and its targeting of trans people/leftists and the witch hunts of the 16/1700s in America.
Edit 2: Hot damn I just cranked out a thousand words and feel good about this so far! If anyone wants to take a peek, DM me!
My experience has been that it’s almost impossible to get an essay published anywhere, and that if you self-publish, no one will read it—UNLESS you attack some kind of very sacred cow. I did this recently (can’t go into details for fear of doxxing) and got hundreds of views—pathetic I know—rather than the few dozen at most that I usually get. The thing is, if you actually succeed in getting attention, you find rather quickly that you are placing yourself in physical danger.
I’ve actually had more luck getting novels published than essays so it doesn’t really get me down. The vast majority of leftist sites are CIA ops that no one seems to read. I got close to having something accepted by Roar Magazine, but after I followed their editorial suggestions (as I recall) they ultimately turned me down. I had never seen anyone mention them but still thought it would be cool to be published there. Later they ended up shutting down, obviously because they didn’t accept my brilliant essay (I can’t even remember what it was about so maybe it did actually suck).
Red Sails, though, is one of the good ones.
What makes the sites a CIA op? How would a leftist essay hosting site avoid being co-opted?
I think the op part happens moreso on the social media side of things. Which sites get regularly posted and promoted on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Anybody can set up a Wordpress blog on a $5/mo VPS. Publishing isn't the problem. It has never been more abundant or affordable. The problem is what survives and makes it out the other side of the "attention economy." What people actually end up reading.
I just assume that if they have lib takes (i.e. focusing only on China bad / republicans bad) they might as well be CIA.
I plan on self-publishing an essay on a third rail topic. I'm doing it mainly to get obsessive ideas off of my chest for therapeutic reasons, so I happen not to care much if other people read it. If anyone gains something from it that's a bonus. I'll be using this pseudonym so hopefully that will protect me from most deranged chuds.
Roderic Day is enthusiastic about online propaganda to the point that he'll publish stuff from people who aren't "vetted" or "organizing irl." I know he just takes work he's interested in or has been submitted to him, and then does the work of an editor/publisher. The main criteria is usually that 1) it's explicitly communist/anti-imperialist in its critique and 2) it's interesting. His guest articles are usually kinda lengthy, but can also be pretty short
I've never tried to submit anything, this is just from observation.
https://redsails.org/artifacts-and-blockbusters/
https://redsails.org/on-jargon/
I also remembered, he has published liberals before! It just has to be good and relevant to the communist cause, eg https://redsails.org/creating-the-innocent-killer/
I know that ideologically, the stuff I am working on is straight up marxism - im mostly just openly musing here about my quality of writing. There's that essay on the word "tankies" on RedSails that someone linked me to - I thought it was great content, but the writing came off like it was a Facebook post. That isn't really my style for stuff like this, I'm a little more academic than that author (who has a number of works on RedSails, iirc)
It definitely varies. Nia feels like a poster at heart, but if you're more academic there's absolutely room. The Negation of Abnegation piece and the Economic War on Asia are rather lengthy and full of citations, and to my knowledge, not from """established authors"""
Hell yeah, thanks comrade!
Also, if you have some general suggestions on the better of RedSails' content, feel free to drop some links! I'm still pretty new to the site, and there's a TON of shit on there!
Sure, some personal favs have been this mini-biography of a Republican Spanish Civil War veteran https://redsails.org/bayo-quixote/ , Really Existing Fascism (cw: sectarianism at the end) https://redsails.org/really-existing-fascism , and the interview with Fidel in Guadalajara https://redsails.org/fidel-in-guadalajara/
Banger quote
"Interviewer: Comandante, I ask all this because “capitalism”, “imperialism”, this kind of discourse is practically unheard of these days.
It seems to be out of fashion, because what’s at work in the world is something else.
Fidel Castro: The old, the old system, is what’s in fashion, but it can only be in fashion momentarily for all the reasons I’ve given."
Foundational texts would also be this Rodney except https://redsails.org/fascism-at-home-and-colonialism-abroad/ and any Deng https://redsails.org/marxism-is-a-science/ https://redsails.org/a-poisonous-weed/ and Domenico Losurdo https://redsails.org/losurdo-on-china/
Sorry for the barrage! There are a lot of texts to work through for sure
Ive thought about this too and basically I think your best best is to self publish somewhere, hard to know which places are actually good in the long term. Plenty of interesting people and publications but hard to know which might have some unaddressed reactionary thoughts, some problems or some sort of coopting. I guess a thing like a substack or medium can be a nice start. I have a few really good publications I follow on substack, a lot about China.
Maybe something could be organised on hexbear, but it would have to be like red sails in that basically everything in every style is allowed as long as it is communism-related and interesting, BUT it would also need some kind of vetting or editorial oversight or you re going to have bad shit posted there really quickly.
If you do figure something out let me know! I wrote a bit on communism-adjacent stuff the past couple years and have had trouble finding motivation recently. I like to write about reimagining a communist ideology in media, in fantasy especially, because my outlet for creativity and writing has always been tabletop stuff. I've been having fun transforming a fantasy setting into something with dialectical materialism at its core, I need to find the energy to put more of it on my substack because most of it is still just notes on my computer.
Thanks! If you'd like to peek what i have so far, DM me!
