https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1338919516802322438
Entryism changes the enterer more than it changes the entered looks like
This is why it’s a failed strategy. Entryism usually just ends up getting dispelled and the entering group being scattered to the winds or absorbed
Like Mussolini, grifters are not unique to Trots.
I wish people would get angry that someone would tarnish the name of being a trot (like they would if this was an 'ml' person) instead of being "this is why I hate trots"
Everytime I see it I'm like oh cool thanks
Yes I am, in terms of org and praxis I do, don't know if I'm ideologically a trot as I have ml and anarchist sympathies as well but we do good work and I've yet to have a huge problem with anything I've come across so far from my comrades
Mostly dialectical materialism, direct action to raise class consciousness, labor organizing, and reading lenin and trotsky so far. lots of political education since I'm a newer leftist, but it seems to be standard chapo ml takes in terms of our current era, aside from china which is the big point of friction.
But see there's my trick: it doesn't matter a damn bit to me if china is or isn't a socialist or capitalist country, I like that it hates the US and the answer to that question will never be relevant to whether or not I can get my coworkers mad about being exploited and their lives endangered for the sake of their bosses profit, y'know?
Yeah I feel you. Often seems like the things people fight about the most seem to matter the least in the grand scheme. Even if you're not someone who believes in left unity, I hope you at least believe in the united front. Pick your battles strategically, stop shooting yourself in the foot
Oh sorry, that last part was directed at the general 'you' not you specifically, I'm high and didn't make it clear what I meant 😅
I very much agree. Well, mostly, I do think it's critical that topics like that are discussed, but the keyword is discuss, not 2 groups of people armed with their certainties and their quotes bashing into each other over and over like a boring superhero movie, but an actual attempt to understand why the other person believes what they do, to borrow their perspective and see if you learn anything new
After all, if I didn't do the latter I never would have listened to what folks had to tell me on chapo, I never would have radicalized, I never would have grown as a person
you can make them happen if you try really hard and get lucky, people here generally do care about the community and their comrades and like to help and support one another, I've even gotten people to stop fighting and apologize to each other a couple times. It's not beyond us as a community to improve how we communicate with each other, in fact it's our duty to try to do just that imo
I really believe this is something this community can handle if it wants to
All anti-Stalinist forces had been wiped out … Trotskyism, Zinovievism, and Bukharinism, all drowned in blood, had, like some Atlantis, vanished from all political horizons … and he himself was now the sole survivor of Atlantis.
Why the fuck is everyone on TERF island a trot of some sort?
Because england was in competition with the SU post WWII and so they villanized stalin, so leftists turned to the largest left opposition which at the time was the 4th international. If it had been anarchists we'd be talking about the anarchist to neocon pipeline.
It's why the newly radicalizing US left is largely demsoc and anarchist. They're the strongest left opposition.
I think it's a result of "What You See Is All There Is" bias. Behavioral economics is pretty lib, but Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow" is certainly an interesting exploration of cognitive biases in our thought process. I think the Trot hate stems from a series of these biases working together.
The explanation above (and the similar comment in the most recent Trot struggle session) are super obvious in retrospect. Once that narrative is established it makes perfect sense. But before then people will jump to faulty conclusion based on heuristics and run with it more or less uncritically until corrected. Just the way we seem to be wired. They see a bunch of former Trots sell out- they identify the common factor- they assume it must be causal. End of process. Sampling errors/biases don't tend to immediately (if ever) jump to mind naturally. People have to train to look for it.
Anglos in the core will become every conceivable flavor of leftoid before they become communists. They just can’t bring themselves to be directly oppose the power, it always has to be a glancing blow
One thing that does distinguish Trots from other Leninist branch tendencies is that they are outspokenly and emphatically internationalist and interventionist even when it's not feasible to engage in such adventurism. So when leftists who were quite radical in their youth get cynical and eventually sell out to join the establishment, they nevertheless retain this conviction of evangelizing, internationalist interventionism, except now under a ruthless liberal paradigm. This is essentially the seedbed of the neoconservative project in America, which after the Reagan Revolution corrupted the Democrats after their Clintonite turn and simultaneously bled over to the UK with the Blairite turn of the Labour Party.
AHAHAHAHAHA RAPTIS holly shit my dad actually interviewed that guy, he was actually kind of a funny and interesting person, apparently he challenged some guy who insulted him to a duel when he was fucking 80 years old or something and I guess everyone just laughed and ignored him. I don't think he was terrible though, but I don't know too much about him. He aided Algerian liberation movements and went to jail for it, so that's cool at least.
BTW I know some family friends who were like, OG pabloists from 50 years ago who were actually very involved (and still are to a very small extent), I have some stories about them, they're pretty funny people. They have mostly good views but then they just start arguing about the dumbest and weirdest shit and take a sharp turn to very weird and confused politics which is what you would expect form trots. Dude spent like 15 minutes arguing with his wife about whether alcohol free beer is a postmodern deviation.
it is. the beer still has alcohol in it, but fills a niche market of penitent consumerized neopuritan perverts
Doesn't have as much alcohol in it tho, you can't really get drunk on alcohol free beer whereas you can get drunk on normal beer (which he very much was at that moment lol)
Chapos: NO SECTARIANISM TOLERATED
Also Chapos: ahah trots bad
bambi_moms_death_leftists_lefists_lefists.png
Everyone talks about going back and killing baby Hitler, but no one talks about going back and killing baby Trotsky.
I mean he was pretty instrumental in the revolution, he just sucked ass afterwards
If Trotsky died in 1920s, he would be considered revolutionary hero everywhere and would be hated by libs just as much as Lenin and Stalin.
He would be much lesser known. He would be similar to Molotov or Bukharin
Can’t believe labour had two antisemites in charge in a row smh
Someone link this to the thread about why trots are hated
People always say some very sectarian things about trots, I can't exactly remember them
Someone reported this for sectarianism lol
We don't respect trots here lol
Is there one goddamn subchapo on here that I'm allowed to be a sectarian jerk? lol
Like, he was imprisoned for smuggling guns to Algerian rebels, that instantly gives you some cool points.
Let's not arbitrarly call people rapist. It is actually bad to call people rapists because you don't like their tendency.
Nah, afaik Raptis wasn't any worse than just any other trot. Which means dumb and sectarian but not, like, a rapist or whatever.
