I’m done with my schtick that AOC is good or bad depending on the day.
She’s taking money from young progressives who want her to primary conservative dems and giving it directly to conservative dems like Conor Lamb... lmao.
She also gave money to CIA spook Abigail spanbergler who has publicly and privately talked shit about her repeatedly... lol
I didn’t realize her descent into being awful would be this quick. Wonder what her associated orgs are doing? Will justice dems just fizzle out or be wrapped into the establishment?
Yikes all around.
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I’m just giving people an outlet to do i-told-you-so so it doesn’t show up every time AOC is mentioned henceforth
Hot take: AOC is actually a really good representative of the American "left" because it's mostly college students who know they're overqualified for all the work that's available to them and once they reach an "appropriate" job or position in society they will immidiately cast down any radicalism.
cough DSA cough
the majority of these new Bernie leftists are temporarily embarrassed middle class consumer drones. If you're in the heart of Empire and your leftism is dominated by domestic policies you're probably not in it for long run. Fighting against US imperialism should be at least equal to domestic issues if you're a leftist in the Imperial core, otherwise at best you're creating a new generation of socdem imperialists. If your foreign policy takes are mostly the same as those of the State Department then you're hopeless.
Makes this feel even more contrived because even though that hire was awful, there weren’t any clear changed until late 2020. Just some very subtle things. But then boom. In a few months she’s done what I expected her to take a year or two or three in terms of becoming a ghoul
Probably because like any Dem, she wanted to look good in contrast with Trump and the Republic majority Senate. Now that the Dems have power she decided to go full mask off and show that she's just an establishment Dem, who might still have some slightly better positions than her colleagues.
Idk there seems to be more to the story. Even 🐍 isn’t like this in terms of doing an about face because dems are in charge
Considering the entire purpose of the democratic party for decades has been a release valve for working class greivances designed to disarm and co opt legitimate movements, yes.
If you see concessions from them, please thank, BLM, water defenders, labour organizers and the ccp for forming a legitimate opposition to the white supremacist bourgeois world order.
No shitting on anyone, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before people from various leftist forums started hating AoC she’s too mainstream at this point and too man to people who would be perceived as a ‘lib’ here like her. Not into her much myself, but that’s because she says things that aren’t really compelling to me and that I’ve heard before from the books I’ve read. I don’t have like a hate boner for her
Don’t pay much attention as of late to US politics because even the left is just a bitter shit show.
Also, fuck chapotraphouse revleft is much better and not quasi class reductionist.
How is it so difficult to understand that racism and sexism play a major role in discourse because we live in a racist and sexist society?
If you wanna talk about generalities, sure. But we're not talking generalities, we're talking about why a specific subset of people has a specific opinion on a specific person. The same exact arguments were made by Hillary stans to handwave any criticism as "it is just because of sexism, there is no other conceivable reason to dislike her".
Generals never play themselves out in specifics.
They do, but often it is exactly the opposite.
Just seems like you want to ignore blatant racism and sexism
What blatant racism and sexism? Where is it? You just decided that the backlash against her from the left is just because of racism and sexism, even though it is largely coming from the same demographic that propelled her to stardom in the first place and who stanned her a few months ago.
Yeah, whatever, it is definitely "blatant sexism and racism", it just can't be that her stances are increasingly and surprisingly more disappointing.
They may be able to tell you he marched with MLK and voted against the Iraq war.
Soooo don't you see how this maybe matters for how they evaluate him?
I do wonder how much of the constant hate she gets is because of the color of her skin. People criticize Bernie and get upset with decisions he makes, but still show some support
It could have some effect but AOC is a more prominent figure in twitter and twitch sphere in terms of appearance. So terminally online people will prefer to go after the terminally online more often lol. Also yeah Bernie sucks too but now I tend to think this (AOC, Bernie, Nitya Raman, etc) is all a result of a lack of a mass party which could impose some party discipline and principles as opposed to depending on the quixotic quest of a rag tag bunch of politicians to save the world (where these people make compromises for their careers or minor gains). With the backing of a growing movement/party they would feel more comfortable being belligerent for longer.
don’t buy that it’s some cult of personality that she’s online, they’re online, so they condemn her more. It’s just racism and sexism.
I am not as online so I will accept it for now. In conversations with people I tend to criticize her more because she is brought up more often.
Hmmm the way you phrase it is interesting. Germany had both a strong labour movement and a party. They failed miserably. I am not sure how a labor movement can work in America. Where is the space to organize all uber drivers? What kind of organization can bring in people from students and in atomised fields into the process to seize state power? Also why completely tie our hands behind our backs and say no to only politics, yes to labor organizing. Why can't we have a party of labor which has people in amazon warehouses forming unions and people also helping people elected if nothing else to give them a pulpit to get more people to join the party? (This is all pie in the sky but anyway).
I do agree that labor needs to be combative, if we are being idealistic I would say that instead of demanding for what they want they should seize state power.
We don’t have the organizing currently to have a new party and a new party doesn’t just create organizing, in fact one could argue it take valuable resources and people away from it.
I see lemme see if I understand you correctly: You think it is easier to get socialists elected as democrats (the DSA or our revolution strat) as opposed to get organizing groups together to form an electoral party. I can see your reservations about doing it nationally but I would think that new york state in a year or so could basically try to make all its DSA candidates switch into a new party. Maybe Nevada too. I have 0 idea if that is the goal because from what I understand even at the local level there is no fealty to the organization. No voting in blocks. Just find good people which are good. Which is nice but why not try to get them to form a fist?
Anyway re forming a new party, I imagine the idea would be to get enough local orgs together to form a coalition. I am also fine for this 'party/coalition' to run people as democrats while keeping these people rooted to this now org so they can be thrown out and loose the support of grassroots organizers who share a vision with the org and not just this person's campaign. DSA could do this, I have no idea why it doesn't (well ok I kinda do they have no mechanisms in place to enforce that kind of discipline).
In my DSA there’s not even a labor organizing caucus and the people who helped elect one of the local socialists want to start a new party without even thinking to include BIPOC in the discussion.
Lol I see. Yeah that sounds very amateurish. To me forming a new party was more like bringing in a lot of DSA chapters, unions, mutual aid groups, etc together in a conference to form points of unity in a state and then maybe try to have a congress to sell them the idea of forming a coalition.
Learn to organize labor first. We ain’t going to start a revolution through voting in enough socialists. Although that will help, elected officials are not organizers and frankly they don’t have the time or capacity to fight the daily struggles of labor.
How can uber drivers help with this? Students? Software engineers? Immigrants? People which are in 20 odd time jobs? The reason I said this is because I am not in a position to organize labour. That may be a very important task, thankfully amazon workers can do it themselves. Maybe we can try to form support networks and funds but is that all? I know Russia is not America but Lenin was confronted with similar questions and had come down with the opinion that organizing the movement under the banner of a single political party is the most important task at hand (this is around 1901 I think). Not saying we dogmatically copy him. The conditions in the two countries are very different but he had very compelling arguments for this imo and of why just labour organizing (while supremely important) is not enough to draw more people and bring more tactics into the movement.
You could read 'where to begin?' and 'what is to be done?', they are pretty nice. I have just been thinking a lot about it in context of the work that I have been doing so far.
Edit: Fair warning Lenin writes too much like a poster which can make him entertaining to read but a lot of his stuff is just dunks. I found a lot of actionable things to think about in them tho so I would still recommend giving it a read :)
I’m not saying labor organizing on it’s own is enough. We’ve seen time and time again, having only strong unions leads to almost all of them getting knocked off by capitalists and it happens quickly. But at this moment we have next to no unions. I think union organizers, the people leading these chargers need to be in direct contact with other sharing what’s working and what’s failing. One of the biggest problems is people hate their job so they’re always trying to find a new one because at least it’s different. If Bessemer loses this will be a big reason why. It was a 59 day vote. A lot of people left the company in that time.
I see so there is no effective place for any work to be done by students, immigrants ,uber drivers, etc? Anyway I still think these processes can feed into each other (I really thought that was the impetus for a lot of left wingers to put energy in the Bernie campaign because his rule changes would make a lot of labor organizing which would be very cool like solidarity strikes - legal). Because to me it seems the answer is then that any other group has nothing useful to do while we wait for unions to catch up (which is still up in the air). Oh well I guess that means I have some free time now lol.
Thanks for your answer btw. This is one of the more interesting convos I have had on here lol.
I think immigrants, Uber drivers, and students can also help in organizing. 22 passed in CA. We need to stop it from passing in other states and countries which is what they’re trying now and is actually a good way to push for unionization of those workers. We should be fighting for unionization for immigrants. We should be fighting for all colleges to be free.
Ok that sounds good. What will be the vehicle of these things? We organize around an issue then slink back into the shadows? Why can't a political party be the vehicle and we stop forming new networks, phone lists, leaders, etc whenever a new issue approaches? This 'party' can even decide to not run candidates for a while but just act as a coalition to mobilize the members of their local orgs on these issues.
You are right that these people can phone bank and door knock for these specific issues (like if there is a prop 22 on their doorstep then find a campaign which is trying to stop it). Now I suppose I am just wondering if we can channel that sphere of organizing into a more effective vehicle.
A bunch of white guys screetching at black folks about Lenin is shitty and removes the solidarity we need to build. Especially when we need to focus on reaching out to BIPOC and making them feel welcomed and invaluable in these spaces.
Overall, there’s a lot of work to be done & and it’s about building positive relationships with people in order to build a larger coalition strong enough to take down the most capitalist/imperialist country of all time.
Hmm I see so my org has a dirth of white guys in it and I assure you where I live doesn't so my experience hasn't been like yours at all. I just see all of us working on fragmented projects, realizing the problems we want to solve have insane structural barriers like this federal law or this state provision and then all we are reduced to is doing bandaid stuff. That is why I feel that at the very least organization over the entire state is necessary.
Also I am curious many states would have BIPOC people as an incredible hyper minority right? I mean your local DSA preaches to BIPOC people about Lenin? Like I would imagine the more common thing happening would be that you tell some random unhoused person to read lenin. Which I am also inclined to thing is stupid and premature. But the idea behind reading Lenin is to learn from the people who were active in the past, had to answer a no of strategic questions and tried to give an answer to that. Reading them sounds like a decent idea to me for at least organizers who are deeply involved in their orgs and trying to figure out the best way of distributing resources and deciding on strategies? Also not just saying you only read Lenin. I am just starting out on trying to read books on organizational questions. The books I suggested just gave answers and pointed to problems which I often feel confronted with in my organizing time :)
Edit: Also I kinda feel there is some inherent mismatch between the ideas that the stuff to do outside of labor organizing is 'stop prop 22' and 'make colleges free' while the problem is 'we don't listen to BIPOC people' and 'people screeching at others to read Lenin'. Or maybe the latter is an answer to some different problem. I will be honest I dunno anyone around me reading Lenin but definitely a lot more reading Dean Spade, Mariam Kaba, etc (not saying that is bad but just stating that there is a lot of emphasis on reading ideas from LGBT and BIPOC people. I hardly tell anyone about Lenin because that just sounds like a terrible way to communicate his ideas in this country - there is just too much anti-communist and USSR bias so I just try to talk in terms of strats.)
Lol. The dude has been on string of toldsyou so wins lately and there is always, his still a grifter dumdass out there.
AOC is Pelosi 2.0, only this time she's riding mild demsoc language instead of anti-war, anti-big business
Always hoped Bernie or Gloria La Riva would win but outside of that I've been checked out of electoralism since like I get burnt out on Ron Paul back in my reactionary libertarian days.
Well, check into local electoralism because the left won’t even get a glimpse of any real power without it. But you’re right about National electoralism
Yeah I should have added the caveat that local elections matter. Of course they do, what's happening in your neighborhood I'd say is often more important than the national level. And beyond that, electoralism at that level has all but made sure nothing will fundamentally change.
As someone who helped a local politician get elected, I'm not even sure local elections can escape the grip of special interests, especially in bigger cities. Took 6 months before our guy started to go the way of the rest of them. That alone completely blackpilled me in regards to anything related to electoralism in this current system. Maybe that's just a one off, but I just don't know.
I dunno either. The whole thing feels hopeless, that you just want to throw your hands up in the air and give up and just hold on for a revolution. I think ultimately electoralism needs to be just another tool in an arsenal of weapons.
Yeah idk dawg. I'll fully admit that I'm a bit more on the doomer side. I think even if you could get some type of electoral movement going, the way congress is designed, any drastic changes would take a hella long time. I still don't think many people understand the gravity of the climate situation at this point. We just don't have that much time.
Chomsky was getting stick from the left earlier when he said something to the effect that capitalism will basically have to solve the issue of climate change. I don't think his point was that capitalism was the right ideology for this or anything - more that the upheaval of capitalism would take far longer than it would take to just come up with some cookie cutter solutions to at least make sure the market lives. There's a vested interest for these ghouls to keep people alive, IN THEORY. However, I'm not sure Chomsky understands how insatiable these greedy fucks are and that's always been his blind spot.
the secret for my success on this is i never trust any american under any circumstance
Chapos need to read Blood In My Eyes! All these beloved politicians around here are just trying to fucking do reform!! Do we even need to discuss this :huey-wut:
