- cross-posted to:
- the_dunk_tank
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Ended up blocking them and their guys' personal accounts on the ProleWiki twitter, I got tired of seeing them in our mentions lol. They don't like that we criticize them on their respective pages, I told them MWM is free to say stuff about ProleWiki if they want to. It's like they're scared of criticism and consider it unmarxist -- that's a huge red flag.
Midwestern Marx is being cringe here, what does being "non-woke" even mean? I don't think that communists should adopt the language of the reactionary right which is obsessed with labeling all their ideological opponents as "woke".
On the other hand, i also think that sometimes this community uses "patsoc" in the same way, as a label that allows us to put someone in a box, associate them with positions they may not even hold and then entirely dismiss them. It reminds me of the way that liberals throw around "tankie".
We should be careful not to fall into that same trap ourselves of overusing a poorly defined derogatory term that just generalizes and dismisses everyone on the left we don't agree with. I think we should engage with and criticise ideas not personalities and this does the exact opposite of that.
Normally I'd agree but patriotism for a genocidal settler colonial state is inherently reactionary, and that's what these people are. These people are trying to appeal to reactionaries and "patriots" by engaging in tailism, and that's why they're dangerous to any real revolutionary movement.
This is why I never could get behind Midwestern Marx, or for that matter anyone on RBN who sounded the same way (think it was CJ who was complaining about how his linking up with brownshirts that way was being seen bout a year back or so; and that channel was how I even learned MM was a thing). There is nothing Here for community to be proud of. This is a nation of slavemasters who won't give us what they've owed since antiquity; why the black-and-red-fuck would we ever uplift the stars and bars? Tailism is correct.
Facts, and I've been asking it since I became conscious: what exactly do we have to be proud of? Every time someone tries to explain it, it's always the same vague platitudes of freedom and being the great country in the world...like freedom from what? Best in the world in what? This whole joint was built on the backs of our ancestors and paid for with their blood, and we are the subjects of the empire.
I've never considered myself to be Amerikan and I never will, and it's why I consider anyone patriotic to be an opp.
If you'd prefer, we could just call these people national socialists instead. Because that's what they are. They're usurping socialist language as a means of pushing people towards fascism. Should be we giving fascists the "benefit of the doubt?"
Exactly right. They push a cynical and loveless socialism that has disunity baked into it.
The people they are pandering to aren't being won over. Their beliefs are being reinforced when they see that even the lefties can be bigots.
It would be silly to call anyone who claims to be ML but has reactionary social position a patsoc, but these guys are "patriotic socialists" and are associated with other pazis. It's an objectively terrible position with historic Ls.
The problem is they chose to include "non-woke". They could have said "the emergent anti-imperialist left"
edit: we may be agreeing and the rest of your comment past the first paragraph was talking about something else! On patsocs, one of the traits they share is that they are quite good at downplaying their "power level", only slowly testing the waters here and there and seeing if it's safe enough to drop the mask.
I have some experience with dealing with online fascists (not like patsocs are doing anything IRL either lol), and I see the same methods being used there. For example the Pamphlets account, which recently got a huge boost on Twitter, seems to be at that stage. If 3-6 months from now they become openly patsoc, my theory will be vindicated lol.
At this point I am personally not giving anyone who displays patsoc tendencies the benefit of the doubt, when they start with the dogwhistles it means they are far deeper into it than they let on and it's only a matter of time until they drop the mask and start getting a piece of the streamer pie for themselves.
Indeed and that is a weird and cringe thing to do. I don't see the point of it and it's not like "woke" or "non-woke" are even serious terms anyway. There is an educated discussion that could be had about liberal identity politics and the way that progressive struggles (or rather the language thereof) have been co-opted by capitalists and imperialists, defanged of their revolutionary and radical character and made compatible with the status quo. But rather than doing that they chose to stoop down to this rather boorish level of using the language of the reactionary right. So the accusation of opportunism is accurate in this particular case, but i think the real crime committed here is that this is an ineffectual strategy. By using the right's language we would be ceding ideological ground to them and at the end of the day it won't work anyway. The kinds of people who have this obsession with the "woke" boogieman are never going to be a solid base for the kind of revolutionary movement that we are interested in building.
On the other hand, i also think that sometimes this community uses “patsoc” in the same way, as a label that allows us to put someone in a box, associate them with positions they may not even hold and then entirely dismiss them. It reminds me of the way that liberals throw around “tankie”.
Is there an example of someone prominent being called a patsoc erroneously? Because I think MidwesternMarx is certainly deserving of that title. Their main spokesperson, Eddie Smith, consistently defends and aligns with other patsocs like Jackson Hinkle.
We should be careful not to fall into that same trap ourselves of overusing a poorly defined derogatory term that just generalizes and dismisses everyone on the left we don’t agree with
I don't think it is poorly defined. It indicates a right-deviationist strain of political thought that exhibits one or more of (a) revisionism (see Jackson Hinkle claiming that communists don't want to abolish private property), (b) opportunism (in the form of accommodating rather than correcting reactionary view points amongst the proletariat), or (c) chauvinism (the rejection of self-determination for the United States' marginalized communities, such as the indigenous population or the Black Belt).
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Patriotic_socialism
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Jackson_Hinkle
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Midwestern_Marx
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Eddie_Liger_Smith
Why must you always defend these guys? I don’t know if it’s weirder because you’re not from here (iirc) or maybe if you were you would understand our bdelygmia.*
*fun word I just learned
