https://twitter.com/ThoughtSlime/status/1627029198245359618
Twitter thread continued:
Sometimes people will say "You made me an anarchist" and like... buddy, I don't even think it matters that I myself am an anarchist.
And I regret that that sort of "we're fighting the good fight" mentality has allowed some of the worst grifters on the platform to flourish by manipulating people's passions for their own weird petty reasons.
I think what I do has a lot of value, I'm just saying that what I perceive that value to BE is a lot different than what I thought a few years ago.
I would challenge your sense of how a "movement" looks in all honesty. The west is missing anybody who wants to partake in communist/working class parties, and recruitment is a part of that. I agree with your point that it's not praxis, of course, but recruitment/ideological work among masses is absolutely still a necessity to have movements gain any sort of trust. I think we likely have enough of it, and we don't need 20 more Hakims (just as an example, insert whatever name you want), but if someone ends up doing the ideological work on the internet better than him, they should do it. We live in a period of time where the accesibility of an ideological work decides its impact, meaning that youtubers and other such people are necessary links to connect people to the world generally. Pipelines exist now and have to be worked with.
Dont read this as a full-throated support of youtubers as leaders or something, I dont think most of them consider themselves even close to that, but it being necessarily liberal is wrong.
That's fine for you to challenge that sense, but I remember what movements, even flash-in-the-pan ones, 'actually' look like. And I can see what they look like in other countries. What we have is a big wet fart that doesn't even disturb the water.
My point is that if the propoganda and ideological work is not attached to an actual, real, existing and operating political movement or apparatus, it does little to actually advance revolution.
To paraphrase Disco Elysium, all the education does outside of a party context is make you sad. And sad people don't stick with political work, they primarily seek escape.
:doomjak:
i'm in this picture and don't like it.
there's no party for me to join and i don't have the rizz to start one or the money to escape.
It's almost as if I say things sometimes because I see them occuring or something.
What party though? In most of the west, especially the big imperial core states, there are absolutely no leftist parties or even orgs with a single iota of political power. As an individual working-class person who also has to work and survive within capitalism I genuinely feel like the best thing I can really do is plant seeds in other people to change their opinions, so maybe in 100 years if we aren't all dead maybe we'll reach a critical mass of leftists and something revolutionary might spark that I had one one-millionth of a hand in causing. Feels unfair to ask even e-celeb lefties to somehow create a political power where one isn't.
Correct! That is exactly my point. It is THE major problem and contradiction that must be solved prior to any 'actual' political work getting done in the west.
It's a very classic chicken-egg problem. Most YouTubers or podcasters don't even bother trying to address it as it removes the unintentional obfuscation of what their efforts actually are. Some have tried, such as Haz, but his was a project of ego rather than a connection to any real political movement (and that is besides the ideological idiocy and incoherency of his movement).
Perhaps that is the 'best' thing you can do. But it is important not to mistake what the 'best' ideological thing is for 'praxis'. I'd argue there is more 'praxis' in becoming a part of a church than in posting online, no matter how correct your theory of change is.
I am not asking leftist e-celebs to create political power where there is none. In fact, I am asking for the opposite! I am asking them to acknowledge and be aware that what they are doing does not generate political power.
Ah I was replying to your previous comment to me, but then I glanced here. I think you are right here. It's not praxis, but I guess I think they can be doing something parallel to praxis if they are also calling to join specific goods orgs. idk if they do that tho. I do know people who joined orgs after having watched similar youtube vids that got them out of liberal ideas. If they will be effective in revolution, i have no idea
It remains to be seen. Imo watching YouTube videos can be a good start, but without a follow-up community organization that also has some level of labor or volunteer organizing (i.e. not just a book club), it just doesn't add up to much. We can complain and be right, but those actions a theory of organization and change does not make.
It is so interesting to me how people seem to imagine a working-class party with considerable power and influence appearing out of thin air and without any work. … Like, yeah, that would be great, but it isn’t the world we live in yet. But the reality is that building a meaningful “left” means being highly committed to doing the work of actually building it. That is the whole point of a vanguard (if that is your thing) anyway, that people who reach a certain level of ideological advancement begin to do the work, and apply it to the real work, collectively, and begin the arduous task of winning over the masses of people. They treat it something like a second job, and do everything they can to build a real institution of working class power that has integrated, or build ties, into whatever organic efforts the working class has made to self-organize.
If you read the guidelines and expectations from the Black Panther Party, for instance, it sounds incredibly intense. They were expected to do work every day organizing, to report their work daily as well, to read theory for an hour a day, as well as the news. The BPP started off with just two college friends who read a lot of theory, they only had any meaningful impact, and could punch way a ove their weight because thousands of people joined and made a commitment to build it. If you are discouraged because it doesn’t exist yet, or seems anemic, maybe the problem is that too many people have a liberal attitude, that they see that the work needs to be done but expect others to do it for them.
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Yup, you have to look at other countries and how they do things. Zero American Excellence.
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Leaders are people like Chris Smalls, any media personality is just a freelance propagandist until they join a party
Yes, this exactly. Chris Smalls is attached to a political labor organization that has a voting constituency, terms and a concrete political aim. When he goes and talks to people and does propoganda, it constitutes praxis on his part not 'because' of the action in-of-itself, but because of the context of his actions.
The gray area is what to consider his actions 'prior' to the union actually forming. I think they can be considered 'activism' or 'approaching praxis', certainly more effective than any single podcast or YouTube channel, but he became someone 'doing praxis' when he had a labor organization the he was affiliated with outside of himself.
This wasn't meant to deride propagandists really. With the way our labor party system works in America, your only real options are DSA, IWW, or PSL. And many of these people are involved in at least one of those orgs. They also help spread the message of organization like ALU and even if they aren't directly members, which can definitely help you grow and strengthen those movements.
"Freelance" propagandists aren't totally useless, they just serve a role that's very different from leader. They are not elected, they are not appointed or even qualified to lead in most cases. What they can do though is help disseminate messages and amplify the voices of those who do serve as elected leaders of actual working class organizations.
You aren't Lenin, you aren't Stalin, you're just someone who works at the film studio. At best like a Sergei Einstein, not someone who leads political movements, but someone who supports them.
I guess that all kinda goes out the window with
:kim-il-young:
Of course! My irritation isn't with the fact that these people are doing 'freelance' propaganda.
My irritation is with the fact that they so very often refuse to take a step back, do some meta-analysis, read some actual theory, and because of that, do whiplash turns against their supposed online communities. They post and post and post and get burned out and then post more to complain about being burned out. It's like, 'Oh, you feel alienated from a revolutionary movement? Damn, if only there wasn't volumes of literature written about that by people who actually ended up doing revolutions' But they don't want to read, they want to post. Reading is for nerds. Nevermind that you can do both.
Agreed, is basically just a failure on their part to see their role. A symptom of not reading enough theory or not being in close enough proximity to real movements
Sure, freelance propagandists arent bad though if they are working to get people into socialist orgs. Chris Smalls isn't trying to do ideological work, he's being a leader. So of course they're different
As they should be, you just need to understand your role and position when you're the unaffiliated propagandist. It can feel like you're doing nothing if you are off the mind that you're some revolutionary leader and not just there as backup.