https://hexbear.net/post/50208/comment/467241
"There is zero internationalism in this movement"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_George_Floyd_protests_outside_the_United_States
Protests have taken place in over 60 countries and on every continent except Antarctica.
Where i live a BLM protest was organized at the same time there was a memorial for the Romani victims of the Holocaust.
Ironically, those protests are in international solidarity with the US BLM movement - not with the US black lives matter movement in international solidarity with Yemen/Libya/China/Nigeria or any other of the many nations under the yoke of US imperialism etc
Well done on proving my point
I was giving a class exposition on the BLM protests because OP was upset I said USA should be balkanised
I wasn't saying to focus on one or the other (though I would say anti-imperialism is more important)
You're literally arguing that a spontaneous mass movement against racism and police violence is reactionary, because people on the streets did not spontaneously learn Marxism and generate internationalist, class-conscious demands.
Your balkanization point was also wrong, there's nothing to be gained for the working class by dividing the US along lines that track the voter base of bourgeois parties , but that's sort of secondary to the worst "Marxist" analysis of race, racism, and social movements I've ever seen in my life.
though I would say anti-imperialism is more important
Might racism play some sort of role in maintaining US capitalism and its super-exploitation of workers abroad?
Your balkanization point was also wrong,
:sicko-yes: :amerikkka:
:party-parrot: :100-com: :anarkitty: :CommiePOGGERS: :back-to-me-shining: :match: :amerikkka:
there’s nothing to be gained for the working class by dividing the US along lines that track the voter base of bourgeois parties
Try actually responding to the argument.
I'm not interested in discussion with you.
We already discussed and you had to deliberately chop my comment at 1/4 the way through to shoehorn your disingenuous twisting of my words.
So have a nice day I hope civil war happens in US soon k bye
I deliberately cropped it to include the part where you said "The BLM movement represents social fascism as outlined by Stalin," but don't worry, I also linked to your comment so everyone can get the full context for your reactionary take.
idk, mate. the BLM protests in my city have unambiguously spent time on the international context -- especially Latin America. you're painting with a rather broad brush here.
Depends. Police Brutality is an issue that effects many people in different countries. In my country it was about a person that was assaulted by the police/army outside their house that eventually died of "blunt force trauma to the head" (Collins Khosa), as well as solidarity with the US protestors. Nigeria has recently had the end SARS protests about their police force. While there are definitely libs trying to co opt and conform the BLM movement to their own interests, there are some radical elements still present. I'm not trying to dunk on anyone, I just don't want to write off the entire BLM movement as social fascism because libs are trying to co opt it
The wiki list you posted is people in international solidarity with the US BLM movement - marching to the US embassy/lighting candles for George Floyd etc.
OP started to cry when I said USA should be balkanised and then posts a badly cropped picture of 1/4 of my comment
I just don’t want to write off the entire BLM movement as social fascism because libs are trying to co opt it
Actually it is the best movement to work in in US (cos US is so anticommunist) and I'm not saying dont work in it. Doesn't change the class character of the movement as it currently stands
Tbh, that entire thread was a dumpster fire. Also trots are still a thing outside of the UK and Seattle? (refering to the person calling themselves a trot here). That is the most surprising thing I've learned from this post
Trots are everywhere in the 1st world in my experience
They are the predominant trend in opportunism because under their ridiculous Permanent Revolution they end up holding contradictory views on imperialism that allows them to support NATO air strikes against Gadaffi , war in Syria and fascists in Belarus under the guise of fighting Stalinist Beaucracy.
If you go back to the Vietnam war American trots were supporting "Self determination for South Vietnam" - you couldn't make it up
under their ridiculous Permanent Revolution they end up holding contradictory views on imperialism
Unlike the serious and sober perspective that “The BLM movement represents social fascism as outlined by Stalin"
Even if I were 100 percent wrong in that take: that BLM is not a predominantly liberal movement that has been increasingly, as time has gone on, been coopted by liberals (not less so)
Even if tomorrow we get 100 percent proof that I was wrong and I am humbled into self-criticism...
That's still nowhere near as bad as supporting Self determination for a US puppet state or supporting every US war since the 1970s like all the trot parties have done.
I went through your post history to see if you had any theoretical or historical clouth and could only find a thread where you shit on China (reddit moment!)
I don't agree that BLM represents social fascism considering how extremely fragmented the movement is (often times economics doesn't even figure into the conversation, especially at the street level), but I do agree that it is filled with opportunists at the higher levels. Just yesterday one of the founders wrote an open letter to the Biden/Harris admin that seemed very much like an attempt at getting some sort of employment within the administration.
But again, people seriously need to understand just how decentralized the movement is. There are BLM subsets that don't even get down with LGBT, and the founders themselves are all LGBT
Up until Reagan and Thatcher US and UK were Social Democratic. Under these Social-Democracies they (this is just off top of my head I am too lazy to research for this thread) :
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3 million Bengalis by starvation (Churchill deliberately stopped US and Australian ships from docking with famine relief)
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Dropped 2 nuclear bombs on Civilian cities
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Setup death camps in the 1960s in Kenya to suppress Kenyans who opposed British rule. While the Soviet Union had shut down the labour camps in the 50s the British were building death camps in Kenya and whining about Iron curtains
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killed 20 percent of the North Korean population and dropped chemical and biological warfare on them
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Dropped more bombs on Laos than any country in the second world war (so literally blitzkreiged a country more than Nazis)
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Invaded and killed millions in Vietnam
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Supported a genocide in INdonesia which saw 5 million trade unionists, socialists and communists murdered to destroy the largest Communist Party in the world outside of China
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Starved Iraq in the 1990s and when the secretary of State was asked about it on TV about 500,000 children starving to death responded it was "worth it"
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Destroyed Yugoslavia and turned Serbia into the cancer capital of europe with depleted uranium
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Killed 2.5 million people in Iraq and turned Fallujah into a place with more birth defects than Hiroshima
I could go on if I began to google. Off the sheer misery Social Democrats spread around the world I am of the firm belief that Social Democracy is a twin pillar to fascism. That it is moderate fascism pushed to the forefront with the class warfare spread "over there" not at home (to bring home imperialist exploits for the working class of imperalist nations). Social-Democatic economies (capitalism) are based on war economies and the export of fascist-imperialism manifests itself under the context of social-democrats routinely supporting war "over there".
This is why Bernie Sanders voted to destroy Yugoslavia and turn Serbia into the cancer capital of Europe. I would characterise this as social-fascism
Some people think that the bourgeoisie adopted “pacifism” and “democracy” not because it was compelled to do so, but voluntarily, of its own free choice, so to speak. And it is assumed that, having defeated the working class in decisive battles (Italy, Germany), the bourgeoisie felt that it was the victor and could now afford to adopt “democracy.” In other words, while the decisive battles were in progress, the bourgeoisie needed a fighting organisation, needed fascism; but now that the proletariat is defeated, the bourgeoisie no longer needs fascism and can afford to use “democracy” instead, as a better method of consolidating its victory. Hence, the conclusion is drawn that, the rule of the bourgeoisie has become consolidated, that the “era of pacifism” will be a prolonged one, and that the revolution in Europe has been pigeonholed.
This assumption is absolutely wrong.
Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc. It would therefore be a mistake to think that “pacifism” signifies the liquidation of fascism. In the present situation, “pacifism” is the strengthening of fascism with its moderate, Social-Democratic wing pushed into the forefront
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/09/20.htm
You know, this is certainly some kind of fallacy, but after you described the United States and the United Kingdom as social democracies before Reagan and Thatcher, ignoring a few hundred years of imperialism and market liberalism slash parliamentary monarchy and attribute shit fucking Bush, Clinton, and Bush did to social Democracy, I’m just going to stop trying to debate you from here on out
What mode of economy would you describe them comrade?
Though i come off as a prick a lot i am always eager to learn
Almost every politician after Reagan was a neoliberal/neoconservative. I’m not entirely sure what I’d call the UK, I’m only 16 and I haven’t read as much theory as I would like to, but it more resembles modern neoliberalism than social democracy, considering that unlike social democrats, they didn’t pretend to care for the working class, and also had very little regulations for Corporate entities
Surprised you didn’t bring up the Freikorps
Neoliberals came to power in the 80s however it took them 30-40 years to rollback social democratic gains and they did so with the complicity of social democratic parties
Even today UK still has some social democracy (full healthcare) so i guess its how much you want to split hairs over whether they're neoliberal states with some remaining succdem policies or a social-democracy that has been heavily eroded
Whatever they are...they are where they are with the full complicity of social democrats after actually existing socialism in Eastern europe fell and the capitalist class no longer felt threatened by an alternative
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That’s not really how it works. Social Democracy is integrated with Capitalism, not Fascism. Fascism isn’t just capitalism.
I agree overall. My main point is that I don’t believe that social democracy is fascism.
I’m not fully sure either way right now. You make good points. Is there any theory on this you’d recommend?
Social Democrats view class compromise in the same way fascists do. They consider workers to be another special interest in comparison to the interests of capital, so they invariably govern how fascists would govern when they try to preserve capitalism without empowering workers beyond handouts.
He was popular, yes. What I meant by the social part of fascism is the reactionary nationalism
I’m not “just” asking questions I’m asking questions because I want to learn
This quote frequently gets misattributed to Lenin, and it’s also just not accurate.
Fascism is a reactionary social movement that arises under certain conditions, namely when capitalism is in such an acute crisis that the ruling class basically is forced to hand over the reins to this movement in order to keep the system going.
While capitalism is decaying, and spiraling into crisis after crisis, the conditions for mass fascist movements aren’t constant or more available now than they were in the 1930s.
The base of mass fascist movements is in the petite bourgeoisie, which as a class is actually much less influential than in the 1930s, as the process of proletarianization squeezes their ranks down into the working class.
i seen trots here in Mexico, but pro stalin mls are still the majority
I don't think there's a single trot in my country at the moment lol, though Trotsky apparently was in communication with South African communists 90 years ago.
https://www.leftvoice.org/letters-from-leon-trotsky-on-south-africa
i know trots were in latin america with the posadists being the most famous, i think argentina has a trot party, but here in Mexico trots arent organized as much as the MLs
Your point is based on the USA being a Labour Aristocracy, but Stalin's point is that Social Fascism is explicitly a Petit Bourgeois phenomenon. A Labour Aristocracy has the same overall objectives as the international working class but is being suppressed in consciousness by having less surplus labour extracted from them.
You might counter that the US working class earns enough from the exploitation of the empire that they're extracting more than their labour value, but a simple look at wages vs cost of living shows this not to be true.
The US should be balkanised, but not for that reason.
Directing the term "social fascist" at anyone even broadly on the left is wrecker shit and needs to be shouted down as soon as it crops up.
It's not some insightful observation, and it's not the type of semi-hyperbolic insult that's simply a petty way to get under someone's skin: fascists should be shot. They are the worst people imaginable. Imagine being one of the few people in this country to take some initial steps left of the political mainstream only to have some One True Leftist pisspig call you a fascist, i.e., say you're someone who should be shot. It's either cop shit or might as well be.
hot take: the revolution will start in black and hispanic communities and white leftists will be a minority in comparison to those communities combined, thus putting idiots like this in the dunce corner
Why do people continue to talk about a theory that the Comintern literally dropped and fucking memory holed like it never happened?
I do actually think that 'social fascist' applies to the democratic party really well
The Democratic Party is a party that functions primarily in the service of capital. Fascists parties usually demand the subservience of the bourgeoisie in return for a sort of patronage system that keeps capitalism in place. I wouldn't really call them fascist on that basis. Beyond the fact that the theory proved to be pretty much a disaster for the KPD and led them to make huge errors in evaluating the conditions in Germany, I find it to be a generally lazy analysis along the lines of equating Communism and Fascism because they both oppose liberals. To be clear, neither social democracy nor fascism are good, and they are both political approaches to try and save capitalism. However, they undertake that in fundamentally different ways, and trying to equate them as one in the same will not lead you to useful strategy on how to combat them. I would argue that the Democrats and GOP are basically both liberal capitalist parties, offering only cultural issues as their dividing line.
Social fascism's legitimate. It's why the left in the imperial core keeps getting bogged down by SocDems and opportunists/careerists. Remember that person in a Indie game "union" organization who didn't want workers to form unions? Or that No Evil Foods vegan company busted their union. Or Extinction Rebellion? Or every single person who supported Biden in the last election?
Edit: I'm just gunna' leave. This site has shown itself to be incapable of any actual discussion, it's just endless Reddit-tier dunkings. There's a reason no one bothers making posts with effort here, you just get a bunch of rad-libs who try to poke holes in it rather than really interface with it or do any research or learning. Complete waste of time that could be better spent doing anything else.
Vegan food company busts union
Almost as if veganism isn't a fucking substitute for left politics? There are goddamn vegan fascists, dude.
No Evil Foods markets itself as a left-wing, “revolutionary” food company. This is what I'm referring to, you fucking morons. Literally refuse to learn from history.
If you are sick of the shitlibs on here plz checkout https://lemmygrad.ml comrade
Genzedong and informedtankie on reddit too as sadly lemmy isn't doing so hot at the moment due to this site cannibalizing a large chunk of what might have been its userbase.
Fuck the meme liberals who are an epidemic over here. They've taken the worst of the ironic detachment and unwillingness to seriously or intellectually engage with ideas that was endemic on the sub and without reddit liberals to dunk on and distract them have turned it on well meaning, theory-read communists trying to engage with in good faith and educate them and correct their liberalism. It's like shouting at a fucking wall with so many of these liberals, you can make point after well made logical point and they just reply with "but muh feels" or other subjective bullshit that cannot be directly attacked because it isn't a fucking point or even attempted rebuttal of yours and you know what? It means I'm less inclined to do it. This whole thread. OP is a fucking tool. Ignorantly and uncharitably cherry picking and distorting things you said with precise meaning into cheap, shrill liberal click bait sensationalism with an attempt to harass and intimidate people with nuanced takes and real criticism of America instead of the increasingly popular "America gud, just need socialism" takes I'm seeing here.
Nuanced takes? Saying BLM is representative of "social fascism," as laid out in theory that was subject to contemporary criticism in the 1930's and seems 100% incorrect in retrospect, is not a nuanced take. It's shoehorning a spontaneous antiracist movement, with no clear leadership (much less social democratic leadership), into a bullshit theory that analyzed organized social democratic politics, which is not even the same phenomenon as the spontaneous mass BLM protests.
How seriously do you want me to engage with these ideas? They're truly awful, reactionary garbage in my sincere opinion. It has nothing to do with feels beyond that I don't like to see people pretend to do marxist analysis to prop up hack, reactionary takes on US class politics.
There is zero actual analysis of the conditions that the movement came from, zero analysis of the role racism plays in US capitalism, zero analysis of the multiple and competing forces at play, zero analysis of the course of development, zero analysis of perspectives for intervention by marxists, zero Marxist analysis in any sense. Purely mechanical, categorical thinking, and no semblance of dialectical analysis. Just plug and play with the "theory" of social fascism.
If you think that is serious Marxism, I don't know what to tell you, besides you need to go back and start from the basics.
Genzedong and informedtankie on reddit too as sadly lemmy isn’t doing so hot at the moment due to this site cannibalizing a large chunk of what might have been its userbase.
As a note: the Lemmy devs explicitly expressed a preference for this site to be spun off instead of a Chapo instance being made on the Lemmy.
They wanted to keep the Lemmy an explicitly ML space, and Chapo’s userbase wasn’t that.
We have a lot of MLs, and more and more since learning a few hard lessons of electoralism, but it’s different enough to warrant separate spaces. Ours is more conducive to reforming liberals.
Hopefully the Lemmy gets more activity after federation. Dessa has put in a lot of work into both the code base and resource compiling. Even if we aren’t on the same site, there’s a lot of respect for them here.
well meaning, theory-read communists trying to engage with in good faith
Ah yes, calling someone on the left a fascist is a sure sign you're engaging in good faith
I think the general point is that socdems are not the left, they are next to the true center and support capitalism. Over here in the UK we regard socdem as the center at least that's how I hear most people in the labour party speak. The true center being the dividing line between capitalism and socialism. More of a chasm than a line though.
they are next to the true center and support capitalism. Over here in the UK we regard socdem as the center
In the U.S., the people you're describing are at the leftmost edge of mainstream politics. Can you see how absurd it would seem to start out as a standard lib, then start moving left, then get as far left as any mainstream politician in the country, then get called a fascist by some ML? It's impossible to say that helps grow the left. Practically speaking, it's a loser of a strategy. Even from a purely theoretical standpoint it's silly -- it's just saying capitalism = fascism, which destroys all meaning of the term fascism.
Understanding that you've started within fascism and just moved to friendlier fascism is the appropriate way to look at it. America is a horredously right wing country. Liberals are not left. They are not centre. They are centre right given a charitable reading.
Judging left vs right based on what currently exists in a country rather than based on the academic interpretation is silly and just another method the bourgeousie hoodwink the population into believing things absurd to follow.
which destroys all meaning of the term fascism.
No it doesn't. There's a dozen different interpretations of fascism. The marxist interpretation of what people traditionally view as fascism is that it is just the bourgeoisie's reactionary attempt under capitalism to keep its grip on power in the face of threats from communists. "Fascism" in its form under Mussolini or Hitler or Pinochet or any of the other well known fascists is simply capitalism preventing the emergence of socialism through ruthless force. Marxists thus interpret this to not be a separate thing to capitalism, it IS capitalism. It is all fascism to the varying degrees necessary based on the present threat of the left to its power. When you understand this you can then see where the logic follows -- social democracy is not something that comes about because the bourgeoisie earnestly want a friendlier capitalism. Social democracy is, much like the ruthless fascisms above, an emergent reaction to communists by the bourgeoisie intended to be used to prevent the threat of their power being taken, in this sense, it is social-fascism.
The problem is viewing fascism with the liberal interpretation that it is an independent ideology from capitalism. It is not. Liberal Democracy is its standard state where the rich are in comfort with no threats and can rob the working class as they see fit, the two reactions to this are fascism -- fascism is a reaction intended to prevent the bourgeoisie from losing their grip on power. With this understanding of the marxist interpretation of fascism both reactions, the ruthless and the social, are fascist.
Apologies if this is poorly worded or I repeat myself, it's very late and I'm very tired.
The marxist interpretation of what people traditionally view as fascism is that it is just the bourgeoisie’s reactionary attempt under capitalism to keep its grip on power in the face of threats from communists. “Fascism” in its form under Mussolini or Hitler or Pinochet or any of the other well known fascists is simply capitalism preventing the emergence of socialism through ruthless force.
This is a better way of phrasing what I was trying to get at. Fascism isn't just regular-old capitalism. It's capitalism in crisis, or a reactionary social movement to maintain capitalism in the face of socialist opposition. It's a particular strain of capitalism or a particular type of political justification for capitalism, but the entirety of capitalism is much broader. There are also legal differences (e.g., the strength of the rule of law, how much dissent is permitted), differences in the scale and audacity of state violence, and differences in how easy it is to remove political leaders. It's just sloppy to say "it's all fascism," especially when you already have a word for all the similarities: capitalism.
And again, the immediate, practical cost of calling people a step away from abandoning capitalism "fascists" is enormous, and the practical benefits of the theoretical discussion we've having are near zero.
I wasn't trying to say it's all fascism. What I mean to say is that capitalist reaction is fascism. Whether it is reaction leftwards (social fascism) or reaction rightwards (boots on neck fascism). That is the argument Stalin makes. Part of this concept is important because it gives us a question -- Does the next fascism have to look like either of them? No.
Fascism in this concept is simply put "bourgeoise reaction to communists to prevent their power from being taken" and becomes an exceptionally simple way to label the most dangerous tactics to prevent socialism that we must resist.
Fascists are reaction to communists to uphold capitalism, in all formats.
The thing is, social democrats weren't a step away from abandoning capitalism to Stalin. In fact, before they took hold in Europe socialism was spreading like fire across the continent. Then social democracy rose up to prevent its spread, did they take the one step needed? No. It must be resisted at all costs because it will literally stop what we want, the outcome will be the same. They will not cross the line and have to be opposed relentlessly in order to get that to happen.
I appreciate the discussion. I still don't think "social fascism" is a worthwhile term, but you've made it sound as plausible as anything I've heard on the subject.
Whether it is reaction leftwards (social fascism) or reaction rightwards (boots on neck fascism). That is the argument Stalin makes.
That makes a little bit of sense, but it quickly becomes "anything capitalists do is fascism," because they're always trying to pacify popular pressures in some way. What capitalist activities wouldn't be fascism under this definition? So we're back to capitalism = fascism, which makes fascism and empty, redundant term. I don't think it's theoretically sound, and that's before you consider the differences in the law, state violence, how easy it is to remove political leaders, etc.
And I still see no practical argument whatsoever for calling social democrats "social fascists." That's poison to any attempt to bring them to our side, and they very well may be the most likely people to come to our side. Most people here used to be libs.
It must be resisted at all costs because it will literally stop what we want
Also on the practical side of things, I don't see any way this is workable. I don't see any way to build a working class movement by telling the working class: "You get zero immediate relief. No Medicare for All, no job guarantee, no student debt forgiveness -- nothing. But despite giving you nothing, you need to support us in the gargantuan struggle to end capitalism, something that's never been done in the imperial core."
Didn't we just criticize Democrats for months over not offering voters anything? We have to deliver something to get support in return. We have to show proof of concept before people fully commit (especially if we're talking about anything more involved than electoralism). We have to take the boot off the neck of the working class if we're asking them to give time and energy to a long-term struggle. I don't see people rejecting something like a jobs guarantee because they're holding out for the end of capitalism, and I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the path to socialism in the imperial core doesn't run through something like a jobs guarantee. No one knows how to build socialism here, and observations from a century ago in vastly different material conditions don't necessarily have predictive power.
I think you do as much as you can for workers and then use the strengthened working class to push for even more. The reason PMC libs run so much of the Global North is that they're financially secure enough to dedicate serious attention to politics. It's a hobby to them, like golf. If you have one job that's not too taxing and it takes care of all of your material needs, you have the time and energy to organize and figure out how the levers of power work. If you have multiple jobs and are still just scraping by, that's much harder.
I think you're being too nice to socdems.
Socdems are just liberals that have moved left a bit. They are reformists and they uphold the status quo. Don't confuse socdems with socialists who are compromising with liberalism for the sake of the working class. The socdems want capitalism and will do whatever they can to uphold it including murdering Rosa.
The left must not fall into the same trap of thinking we can ally with them and pull them left like we did with liberals. Their intention is to uphold capitalism and suck the energy out of our movement.
Their intention is to deradicalise the left move US right and they have succeeded every single time in the past.
including murdering Rosa.
Throwing this stuff at anyone living today is beyond counterproductive.
It is absolutely but it MUST be discussed among leftists.
When we move into the phases that involve us actually being a real threat all the liberals will become socdems. They will not be more convertable as socdems than they were as liberals. They will be just as untrustworthy, snakey and dangerous as they are as liberals. Remember how much they hate us, that will not change when they shift leftwards in the reaction.
Calling people the murderers of someone who lived a century ago and a continent away is laughable. Ascribing murderous intentions to modern-day people over that event (instead of, you know, talking to those people) is laughable. It's just wrecker shit.
I'm not calling people murderers. I'm calling an ideology very likely to do it again if it has to in order to prevent communism. It is a reaction to us, its goal is to prevent communism, they advocate for friendly capitalism but they will if they have to. It's not wrecker shit because we are anti-capitalists and they absolutely are not.
It's wrecker shit because the people who today think "man, capitalism has so many big failings that we need enormous public programs to fix them all" will be anti-capitalists tomorrow. Laying a century-old murder at their feet poisons that well.
I don't really see them as actual socdems and they rarely ever label themselves as such in my opinion. They're baby leftists. The actual socdems are all liberal slime.
"No one in the US can want a better life for themselves, because that's social fascism sweaty!"
He outflanked settlers lol, im pretty sure even sakai had a somewhat positive view of the black liberation movement
It seems like everyone who read Settlers turns out like this. It makes me afraid of reading it.
I've read Settlers, I can see why people say shit like this after reading it, (it is basically a history of the "white labor" movements from the perspective of non wh*toids) it is easy to see how Euro-American "socialist" movements in the past were anything but, and extrapolate that to literally everything else, but that isn't what the book is suggesting. It is a good read, and I still recommend it, but I just caution you to remember that it was written almost 40 years ago, and to not forget to do your own analysis of modern day leftist movements, where Settlers could not.
Yeah I'm still going to try and get to it at some point. I know it has good stuff. I'm just more making fun about how it seems like Settlers makes people develop hot takes if they don't remember it being written 40 years ago.
Read Settlers but keep this in mind when you do.
https://newmultitude.org/review-is-settlers-by-j-sakai-reactionary/
JoeySteel having terrible edgelord takes, what's new? I don't think they care enough if what they're saying has any effect or applicability on anything so it's basically better treated as background noise.
For sure. I think believing what they believe and being a white person in the imperial core is just enough of a contradiction that it makes you crazy enough to leave pig heads at your local DSA meeting.
For a moment there I thought @JoeySteel was a trot and I was scared and confused.
Re-read and am so glad the world makes sense again. 😌
Say what you want about Trotskyists, but I'm generally okay with not falling into the “The BLM movement represents social fascism as outlined by Stalin” camp.
I mean, Joey's not wrong in saying the BLM movement isn't about confronting US imperialism.
That doesn't mean that the BLM movement isn't cool, good and worthy of out support. It doesn't mean that the people who organise and show up to BLM protests aren't also about confronting US imperialism, it doesn't mean the BLM not being about US imperialism necesarily supports whatever argument Joey was trying to make, but confronting US imperialism is not what BLM's about.
I mean, JoeySteel's point was that the BLM protest movement represents "social fascism," or in other words, BLM complements fascism. That's not just saying the movement had some shortcomings in its anti-imperialist perspective, that's literally calling the entire protest movement reactionary.
From JS's perspective, we should oppose BLM. It's beyond just a bad take, it is itself a reactionary position.
I mean, JoeySteel’s point was that the BLM protest movement represents “social fascism,” or in other words, BLM complements fascism.
This is true when you understand that Stalin's "social fascism" is what everyone else calls social democracy.
I think Joey's argument here is that if the movement only succeeds in achieving concessions for the proletariat then its outcome is not actually good. It will do what happened in Europe to oppose the rise of communism -- give concessions to the proletariat and deradicalise the masses.
Stalin argues that social democracy is fascism because it prevents the revolution from happening by pursuing these concessions instead of the ultimate goal of full revolution. It upholds the existing fascism by deradicalising the people through social democratic gains.
So, I read the thread you linked.
I couldn't find anywhere that Joey said we shouldn't support BLM
The thread's an escalating rhetorical shitshow of
"SO YOU BELIEVE A THING I DON'T LIKE??? I BET YOU ALSO BELIEVE THIS OTHER THING I DON'T LIKE!"
YES :yes-chad:
Which, isn't great but from what I gathered Joey's position wasn't so much that we shouldn't support BLM. I think he probably does support them, albeit critically. If there's one thing I know about Joey it's that he loves critical support like Elton John loves cocaine. I think his actual position was that whether or not the BLM movement achieves their goals is immaterial to his wishing death on ever US citizen who has ever voted for a capitalist party. Which 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 is maybe not his best take.
I think Joey's actual position, presented slightly less edgily, is that for the sake of the 7 billion people not living in the imperial core, as there isn't any real chance of a communist revolution in the US in the near future, we should cheer on anything, up to and including the complete destabilization of the US state so long as it impedes their ability to terrorise the rest of the world.
You seemed to be saying that sort of rhetoric is incredibly unhelpful if you're trying to get people in the US on your side, which is a good point and a very healthy first response to have if you're an activist in the US. It's not bad rhetoric if you're trying to radicalise people who are victims of US imperialism though.
I think the clash is coming from the two of you coming from very different activist cultures with very different audiences for your rhetoric and views of the US state. Trying to synthesise them into something that won't alienate each other or each other's audience is probably a good idea and struggle sessions like these could be where that starts happening but I'm not holding my breath for it to get done in the comments of either of these posts 😂
Yeah but that’s not the point. We already know that BLM is not about confronting US Imperialism. The whole dunk here is that Joey thinks that Social Democracy is Fascism and needs to log off and get real life perspective
Social democracy is fascism. Let's just ignore all of the exploited countries that the Scandinavian social fascists are exploiting to create their "paradise"
You seem to be coming into this argument expecting me to defend Social Democracy in general. Social Democracy is still capitalism, and thus still imperialist, exploitative, and morally wrong. I still don’t define Fascism in the same way you do, and there are distinctions between social Democracy and fascism.
Is this a bit?
The black liberation struggle has been very much tied to internationalism. The issue is that every leader which builds international relationships gets murdered or is force to flee the country. Assata Shakur, Kwame Ture, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Robert F. Williams, etc.
In spite of the countless murders, Black America has been at the vanguard of international solidarity efforts such as anti-Zionism and anti-Apartheid.
And again you could only mention other Americans
Yes? That is who we are talking about lol
These are leaders who recognized, say, Fanon & Fidel as international heroes. They worked to spread that consciousness to the masses. And they were murdered or forced into exile because they were successful.
Harlem had several days of celebration when Fidel first visited. Fidel has been hosted countless times in black churches as a liberation hero [1] [2]
There is so much mass support for Cuba in America's black communities that it has forced their bourgeois representatives in power, the Congressional Black Caucus, to push for normalized relations with Cuba for decades.
Palestinian Liberation Organization. But what about Isaeli victims??? Why don't the Palestinians march for Israel?
head completely empty, no thoughts
You have gone full CHUD. These are exactly the types of arguments that right wingers make. Why do you care so much about a slogan? Its just a slogan. And Black lives matter was picked because it highlights the fact that American society treats black lives like they dont matter. All Lives matter just invokes the liberal colourblindness that results in the erasure of black oppression.
Also what the BLM movement is pushing for, the aboltion of the police, would benefit everyone, so you clearly haven't thought about this very much.
almost like a person talking about the 'blacks' has nothing but shitty takes
screams of either (a) wrecker shit or (b) some wannabe vanguardist who showed up at their local BLM march and got mad that the predominately lib crowd wouldn't chant eat the rich with them
is more selfless Narcissistic
Irrelevant to the matter of success or not and moralizing, and actively harmful to the solidarity along the lines of the "fellow man" you mention. BLM does fight for white victims of police violence too, the goal of abolishing or defunding the police is also something that reduces police violence for white victims. BLM will continue to get coopted by white and black bourgeois liberals, but the movement was not nearly as selfish as you initially presented.
is this that "everything i dont like is fascism - internet debates for kids" pic that weirdo libs love to post but like, actually?
weird
