Every now and then someone will try to inject anti-communism into this anti-fascist subreddit. This comment and especially this comment are good places to start pushing back on that.
Man, sometimes I feel like people fellate the USSR a little hard here, but daaaamn, I'd forgotten how hostile a lot of lefties are to actually-existing-socialism.
A lot of us lean into China/SU defence a little harder than we otherwise might because of views like this. Would love to do fully critical support, but the libs take the critical side as an excuse to drop the support bit.
We all stan Vietnam and Cuba as hard as possible because they are legit awesome though.
I’d forgotten how hostile a lot of
leftiesliberals are to actually-existing-socialism.
People really just throw around "authoritarian" like it means something, huh?
People on that sub are not anti-american though. I don't see how they'd think this was bad.
You see some shades of it. They're not on the "god damn America" train (unfortunately), but they definitely aren't in the hopeless "my country, right or wrong" camp either.
I see a lot of potential to pull people left. Going from "America's done some fucked up things" to "America's done so many fucked up things that we're definitely the bad guys" is a common journey. Similarly, going from "the USSR has a lot of flaws, but they weren't some Nazi-equivalent demon state" to "oh shit actually the USSR did a whole lot of good and the bad is often propaganda or at least defensible" is common.
From that linked comment chain:
My point is, there are lots of countries where the stars and Stripes don't represent liberty and democracy as much as they represent coked up death squads, napalming rice farmers, deposing democratically elected governments, propping up fascist dictatorships and, more recently, a fleet of mechanised Predator drones knocking off targets on the presidential kill-list. If you opposite the authoritarianism of the hammer and sickle, then surely you'd also oppose the imperialism and brutality of the stars and Stripes?
That's someone prime for radicalization, and a place where that opinion gets upvoted has a lot of other people who can be moved left.
I'm not sure if there is an American identity that can be recovered politically, but every successful socialist project has also been a nation building project. The CPUSA in the popular front era tried to embrace a leftist American nationalism based on what they saw as the radical potential of the war for independence and the union cause in the civil war but they probably aren't people you'd want to emulate considering what happened to them.
Absolutely. Post it in the linked reddit thread, not just here where many people already agree with it.
Ditching r*ddit is good, but there's no denying that it's a much larger platform and we can reach many more people on it. A small group of ardent leftists will get nothing done -- one of the most important things we can do right now is pull more people to our side.
Okay but
tankie-excluded socialist family
what a bunch of losers
Edit:
even the Iron Front symbol can be used by both leftist and rightist libertarians. The Hammer and Sycle is associated with tyrannical movements such as the Stalinist and the Maoist ones
:agony-turbo:
"Should we use the symbol that represents peasants and proletarians? No, let's go with something more in line with the bourgeois property relation so our capitalist friends can use it too."
I'm pretty critical of the USSR but there are few things I hate more than trying to equate it with fascism
edit: Its literally Iron Front USA dude, its a pro US subreddit what did you expect?
Obviously there are tons of shit takes in that thread. The point is to boost some of the better ones and tug the folks who aren't lost causes to the left.
I don't think these are the types of people we should be focusing on. These people derive their anti-fascism through American patriotism (however delusional that is), not through communism or leftism. Good luck trying to convince these people of the need to end US imperialism or settler colonialism.
My point is, there are lots of countries where the stars and Stripes don’t represent liberty and democracy as much as they represent coked up death squads, napalming rice farmers, deposing democratically elected governments, propping up fascist dictatorships and, more recently, a fleet of mechanised Predator drones knocking off targets on the presidential kill-list. If you opposite the authoritarianism of the hammer and sickle, then surely you’d also oppose the imperialism and brutality of the stars and Stripes?
This comment is at around +15. I think there are some reachable people there.
I find it so weird that american Antifa use the three arrows as a symbol when Iron Front and Antifaschistische Aktion were in opposition to each other.
I would be most people don't know about the symbolism of the three arrows, much less the history of the group.
Yeah I get that but considering all the lesser known Nazi symbology that's out there to recognize I'd think that people wanting to be involved in action against it would do a bit of research of their own.
What a fucking trash fire of collective political illiteracy. Liberals are fascists larping as antifascists, as always.
Every now and then someone will try to inject anti-communism into this anti-fascist subreddit.
that's because the iron front was explicitly a socdem organization and it is socdems who are bringing it / the three arrows symbol back
funnel these liberals into actual radical pipelines and otherwise leave them alone
The soviet union was a communist society in the same way that North Korea is a democratic republic. In name only.
but the ussr didn't have communist in its name :thonk: and the dprk actually has elections:thonk: , term limits:thonk: , and the spa has a far greater amount of political parties represented in it compared to the us house of reps :thonk:
still not convinced r/IronFrontUSA isn't an op to radicalize libs ngl. the mod team are all anarchocomms who are way more radical than the sub
