Everyone's always talking about PSL, SRA, DSA, RR, CPUSA, and I'm just over here like "I just wanna grill for god sake!"

There's a million little random leftist organizations with slightly different goals and ideologies, but which one should someone looking to, in the words of Father Matt, 'log the fuck off' go to? Which ones are crank warehouses? Which are honeypots? Which are full of libs?

Bitch and complain about your least favorite orgs and shill for your favorites here. Reply to others telling them that their org is full of libs and FBI agents. Etc.

EDIT: also anyone with a specific recommendation in the Quad Cities area in Iowa/Illinois definitely drop me a line

  • hauntingspectre [he/him]
    1·
    4 years ago

    I was involved with DSA for a couple years, til 2017 "officially" (I'd moved away a few months before my dues ran out). It was a weird group: a clique of succdems, a clique of idpol obsessed Maoists, and like 4 folks who wanted to engage in "normal" direct action. It got better as the Bernie obsessives left, the Maoists tried to launch their own group and split from DSA, and more folks interested in direct action joined.

    Eventually (surprise!) the Maoist group fell apart and narced to the cops on each other, the direct action types took over the DSA, and I occasionally join their actions, and the succdems ran for positions within the Democratic party. I've not renewed my membership, though, and don't plan on it.

    And I'm still wary of self proclaimed Maoists since then. Just hearing the toughest talk from them for two years, to then find out they ratted each other out after some pretty mild police pressure.

        • LangdonAlger [any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          i feel a bit bad for posting it cuz i have met the cosplayer in person and, well, i don't know of a nice way to end this sentence.

      • LesbianLiberty [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        There was a self- proclaimed maoist in my local IWW chapter and he owned a house he rented out to his friends that they all lived in together and when Coronavirus happened he evicted them all and he got kicked from the org 🙃

      • hauntingspectre [he/him]
        1·
        4 years ago

        I'm not so sure that they are, but in the American left, historically they've been the cause of a lot of splits. Like, we make fun of Trots for splitting, but recently, since the 60s on, white Maoists seem to have been the real driver of splits.

        Still, the only Maoists I've dealt with IRL were the local ones, so it's entirely plausible I'm painting with an overly broad brush. I tend to discount most online tendency talk as just keyboard commando stuff. If you're busy typing out screeds about how the People's Front of Judea screwed you over by reserving the library meeting rooms for two straight months, so that your group couldn't book them, ya probably ain't gonna be leading a revolution anytime soon.