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  • jwsmrz [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    can't even walk to the grocery store without seeing a stupid fucking trot poster for a useless org

    even my dive bar washrooms arent safe from trot bullshit these days

    ARE YOU A COMMUNIST? GET ORGANIZED*

    /* do entryism into the NDP, do useless things

    edit: that being said, gotta give credit where it's due, it's a pretty widespread postering / stickering effort. I commute 1.5 hrs north of my city and still see stickers and posters on bus stops, mailboxes etc

    • hollowmines [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      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

  • mechwarrior2 [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    The other week I saw a communist party of Canada poster wheatpasted right over top of some those fightback posters lol

    • Maoo [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • bubbalu [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Is this what you meant by the 30 theses?

        https://www.fifthinternational.org/content/30-theses-defence-trotskyism

        • Maoo [none/use name]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Nah I was just hand-waving a number because they have a number of dogmatisms, often they're named and nobody else knows what they're talking about. Example: transitional program. But actually that article basically lists all of them so it's very funny that my dumb joke about 30 theses ended up being a literal reference.

          • bubbalu [they/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            lol! Actually, I did find an actual writing by Trotsky titled "Theses on Revolution" which has 27 theses. I was googling "Trotsky's n Theses* to see if you could put in any number and find a position paper from a different micro-sect.

            https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1926/xx/revo.htm

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Yurt_Owl
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • LeninWeave [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      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).

    • MF_COOM [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      We don't hate Trotsky per se, just trots

    • hollowmines [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

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

  • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    My eyes roll deep into the back of my head every time one of my friends points out one of these posters, "did you do this? lolol!".

    Has anyone attended the conference that they run in Montreal? I was thinking about going next year. There's not a whole lot of options when it comes to organizing in this country so I'm thinking it might still be a good place to meet like-minded people who aren't trots.

    I would also love some recommendations for orgs to join if anyone has any. So far, I've heard nothing but bad things about the active ones in this country 😞

  • RNAi [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I really hate how Trot orgs are the only thing daring to call theirself "socialist", in my whole fucking country