I got in on reddit super early. Every few weeks I get a message from someone referencing a comment a decade old, now either featured in some youtube video or coming up in their google search. It's unnerving shit and I check my politics there a lot more than I do here. Just as a matter of user safety it's good that our posts disappear after a month or whatever. Maybe it's eventually a few months or a year, but if we ever return to the normal model of forums preserving everything forever it's a big infosec risk.
Turning people into leftist via the internet is perhaps the worst method of recruitment. Even when successful, it creates leftists that are geographically separated and uncoordinated. This undermines the one structural advantage the working class has; namely that there's more of us and nothing functions without our collective say-so. We are left with the task of building communities - real world communities - out of people floundering in a world of market relations. As such, the ability to convince people should come from an understanding and familiarity with Marxist analysis and ideas, not from links to a server.
This website has its use, but that use is mainly as a place to vent frustrations and refine rhetoric. The news bulletins are exceptionally useful and appreciated, too.
Bollocks. This is just objectively false. I have created more actually educated marxists via work online by myself than the offline work of my local vanguard party branch, the local unions, and the local labour party, etc etc, few of which are really trying to create new marxists tbh. The speed with which people can be transitioned from liberal to marxist is absolutely fucking unreal in this space compared to offline. When the pipelines are right they work and they happen fast as fuck. I've watched weird liberals go from liberal arguing with me to "tankies bad" to joining their local ML party in I am not shitting you 3 weeks. One single dedicated marxist with a few platforms and the willingness to roll around in the muck without getting deterred/discouraged by the bombardment of hate from neoliberals and anticommunists trying to deter you can educate thousands of people per month.
Yes. It does. This will become less of a problem over time. Much like it did for the fascists.
:kim-salute: This com right here. People who claim internet organising is pointless have no idea how the info-war works and how ideology and culture spreads like a meme.
A marxist with an internet connection can create absolute fucking havok if they're dedicated enough. The movement rises and recedes like the crash of a wave
I agree that online spaces are good at convincing people who are already primed for a Marxist analysis, such as well-meaning liberals. I'm not saying we should abandon 'The Net' as a recruitment tool, just that we must be realistic to its potential. There are only so many well-meaning liberals online, it cannot be our primary means of growth. Certainly, it could be our primary means of growing. But if there's one thing I've learned growing up alongside the internet, it's that groups that grow quickly online are just as quick to fall apart. Any successful project needs people with common material circumstances who can coordinate amongst themselves. We have to give the fresh faced, well-meaning Marxist an honest appraisal of the work ahead of them.
Better, I agree. But I think fear of growth is unhealthier than pursuing it and simply seeing what happens. The best we can do is try. Forge onwards and keep moving forwards or some shit I don't know that's what the old socialist propaganda would say.
The internet is the sole means by which I got information and turned leftist. The means by which I got involved with local groups, :vote: d slightly better, went to protests, argued for fair pay in my workplaces, made more effort to stand up for people who get fucked over, and came to convince a couple meat-space friends to genuinely support communism. My turning point was hearing how it's all great, learning how easily I could get the commie manifesto for a quick read, I read it and went "well shit that seems all kinds of reasonable" and that did it for me.
Anecdotal evidence, I'm but one person, but online spaces with genuine talk and information helped teach me how to make the world better, I fail to see why that wouldn't be the case for many more people.
this is a good thing imo. a thousand small wildfires are harder to put out. if even a small percentage of those leftists go on to do real-world work then it's an important step in building a diverse net of leftist projects.
:this:
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