They've done a lot of postering (as in I've seen them along the entirety of several major roads on every available surface) and the posters are effective, to the extent I had a friend who didn't know I used to be involved ask me about it. Which only made me more mad of course....wish there was a reasonable local alternative but I don't see one on the horizon

Hey they were the ones saying "Fightback". We obliged

Historically after he got exiled he didn't really matter. Before that he was a useful, vacillating weirdo that led the red army and was generally influential.

Trotskyists are people that got way too into him and his ideas, particularly his post-exile ideas which were basically just, "how the USSR (that kicked me out) is dumb and not socialist so here's 30 theses on how to do everything right and I hope you die Stalin". One of those 30 theses causes them all to publish papers that nobody reads. Because their primary defining feature was to be against the first and largest socialist state, they are anticommunist communists and walk a strange line that, in my experience, is massively stunted because they rule out the majority of practical revolutionary methods and developments in theory lest they themselves become Stalinists or tankies.

None of this really matters in isolation and we can all criticize the dumb things different tendencies do. The main issue arises when it is no longer in isolation and they're trying to infiltrate your org (entryism is one of the theses) or co-opt a rally (coopting shit is one of the theses) or pick fights of no consequence except alienating people (most of the theses). If you're in a coalition, they'll be the folks trying to adjust statements dogmatically and to weaken them because apparently one of the theses is "thou shalt hide your true motivations and appeal to liberals as if you're one of them".

Anyways despite this criticism I've worked with many successfully. But it can get very tiring.

Trotsky himself ranged from ok to very bad, but individually he really lost any particular relevance nearly a century ago.

Trots (at least in the imperial core), on the other hand, were the people who decided going along with western anticommunism was a good strategy to ingratiate themselves to liberals (it didn't work, because of course it didn't) and some of those became disillusioned and transformed into imperialist reactionary neocons, taking Trotsky's most problematic ideas with them and turning them to the cause of capitalist imperial projects.

Now trots (at least the ones who arrive at it on their own) are pretty much just people who sit down and say "I am very interested in relitigating century old interpersonal drama and would like to make it my personality," and it's extremely annoying when someone makes being a pedantic sectarian their whole thing. There are maybe some trot orgs left that are ok, and I understand in the periphery (particularly Latin America) that there are trot orgs that are really only trot for historic reasons and aren't self-defeatingly obsessed with being sectarian, but it's one of those things that's just sort of immediately sus otherwise because you generally don't become a trot if you're not looking to start shit with other leftists.

Sort of like first world Maoist Third Worldists who aren't necessarily wrong and whose theory is definitely based on some valid critiques, but they have a reputation for being violently sectarian and trying to wage protracted people's wars against leftist orgs over pedantic shit.

I dont hate them. Tbh i don't really know where to stand with them. We have a lot of trots in the UK and they do largely nothing. They're like terminally online posters but old.

It's less about Trotsky and more about Trotskyists, especially in western countries. They tend to spend most of their time (when they're not trying to sell you newspapers) complaining about other people's revolutions not being pure enough. They also tend towards some absolutely bizarre political analyses (you can search for "WSWS Weinstein" if you'd like to see an example).

We don't hate Trotsky per se, just trots

for the record I have nothing specific against Trotsky and everything against N American Trot orgs

hate trotsky

Like Jesus, he's ok, but his fans are the most insufferable

In addition to what everyone else said, this is a good, very short article (made of excerpts from this book) that briefly explains Trotskyism as a tendency that goes beyond the man himself.