Agreed. They are nothing like the "CPGB-ML" which already had a highly chauvinist streak but I've had discussions with a comrade in that party (CPB) and they have problems when it comes to the national question but also their support for the Labour Party, although I would hope that they have gotten rid of that now.
BTW by Worker's Party did you mean George Galloway's party? If so, that wouldn't surprise me at all. He's always been an opportunist hack. Had some brief moments of glory when calling out the Iraq War and facing down a load of zionists on Question Time once, but he is the archetypal opportunist politician.
The former. I made my first post here asking about potential real world implications of the "MAGA communist" movement after I saw it being given credence by the CPGB-ML. Before coming here I wrote a post condemning it for what it is/warning comrades new to communism/Marxist theory, quoting the prolewiki page on "MAGA communism" and shared it around (this was how I ended up on Lemmygrad - it was a relief to see that this has long been called out by MLs).
Anyway they banned me from various channels they run on Telegram proclaiming to be "communist". This "party" is led by spiders with webs designed to catch naive comrades and render them impotent as potential agitators and organisers within the labour movement etc. by leading them down the path of reactionary, bigoted thought and now this patsoc stuff, which I hadn't seen much of in Britain at least within the political circles I am in*. As I said, "MAGA communism" didn't seem to have much credence and was described as a weird little cult by a comrade on Twitter before I left the platform, I didn't give it much thought until suddenly seeing the CPGB-ML promoting/encouraging it just a few days ago (I hadn't been on Telegram long either and mainly use it for news on the ground from Palestine and news relating to other struggles).
It was shocking and angering and it worries me given that these patsoc crypto-fascists are obviously trying to invade spaces in a manner akin to Trotkyist entryism. A major issue is that Marxism-Leninism is not adequately represented in the confused and fragmented "revolutionary left" in Britain and the parties seem to be run by the intelligence apparatus (their ideological positioning obviously serves the bourgeoisie, especially these off-shoots from the "official" CPB).
The latter party I know less about but they seem to be on the same page when it comes to being reactionaries from memory. If they are supporting this bullshit, they are opportunists of the worst kind as well as the former "party".
(*For what its worth, many older comrades who have been around for many decades have told me that the CPGB-ML have ties to the intelligence agencies in Britain so it all makes sense if that is the case. Same with the other party mentioned, or at least an older manifestation of the same core group. But this patsoc stuff doesn't seem to be represented in Britain in the way that it has been in the US. Perhaps I just haven't seen examples of it because of it being "terminally online". The closest I have seen is largely uncritical support of Putin by groups such as these but no one really pays attention to them as I'm sure you know).
Sorry for the lengthy reply, I am new to Lemmygrad and essentially came to vent frustration over seeing this happen within circles of the British "left" which I highly doubt to be coincidental. It serves a highly useful purpose for one class and it isn't the proletariat.
I know that I am replying to a 2 year old comment but I think that these patsoc types have made more significant moves into spaces outside of their cultish beginnings (i.e., not being from the USA, "MAGA communism" only became apparent to me recently and I joined Lemmygrad because I was so frustrated with seeing "communist" channels on Telegram, for example, allowing this kind of shit and seeing one supposedly "ML" party from the UK (which as an aside I believe to be run by spooks) embrace the "ideology" and to essentially jump on the bandwagon in a truly grotesque, opportunistic move in a desire to be relevant and perhaps gain some new members. I can't see any other justification for their actions. They make the excuse that the "MAGA" movement contains proletarian elements, which is true, but this is territory similar to suggesting that the "national socialists" contained proletarian elements, or the Union of Fascists of Britain and we saw how that played out. I reminded them that Stalin saw the "national socialists" for what they were before WW2 started, as did most communists I am sure, and also that one of the most significant moments in the history of the proletariat in 20th century England was the Battle of Cable Street, in which antifascists and ordinary members of the public came together to beat the shit out of Oswald Mosley's thugs. Antifascism has been a longstanding current in Britain generally, and to see what is essentially a fascist movement being supported by "Marxist-Leninists" is a disgrace and should not be allowed.
But my main point is that they seemed to have spread. I was fooled into entering spaces before I realised that these movements were so significant. I have seen people discuss them as terminally online but the attempted "synthesis" (again, grotesque: apologies to Marx, Lenin and of course Hegel) of the Cult of Maga with "communism" is a potential danger which cannot be slept on. MAGA fascists were highly visible and helped to bring fascists out of the woodworks. It could well be that the "MAGA communists" do the same.
It seems to me that the whole thing is a psyop designed to discredit communist theory and "communists", given the significant emergence of proletarians in the USA discovering Marxist/Marxist-Leninist theory over the last ten years or so. But I do believe that it has the potential to become a more significant threat to being a mere online cult of wackos that are likely being manipulated by some kind of COINTELPRO style psyop into accepting distorted ideas about communism.
It should be noted that I haven't seen these people defend Israel but they do focus much energy on the proxy war in Ukraine and this was in part why I started to pay attention to some of the articles they put out, coming from places like The Grayzone, but they hardly seem to talk about Palestine at all, which is of course an international emergency requiring the attention of communists around the world as I write this. Also, my only exposure to this is via channels which proclaim to be "communist" but are indeed "patsocs" and who, in these channels, "defend" and promote "MAGA communism", as I said, to the point that a self-proclaimed "Marxist-Leninist" party in my country jumping on this bandwagon (they are a very small party and are highly reactionary, especially on issues such as trans issues, but they claim to uphold an anti-revisionist line, yet are apparently funded by the state apparatus and I hear this from an old comrade who is approaching 90 and has heard and seen it all before. This party split from the original ML party of the Comintern due to revisionism in the main body of the party, which does have serious problems in itself. Anyway I am rambling).
This is the second old thread I've bumped but I searched r/communism to see what people's thoughts and experiences were here on Lemmygrad. Not long ago I had some free time and added some new books to my collection, mainly some of Stalin's writings that I hadn't read and I went along with my partner who was working to stay in the middle of nowhere - perfect for study. But I wanted a platform for asking questions/aiding my study and checked out reddit for the first time. Was banned in r/communism fairly quickly for a couple of days for helping a newbie with some suggestions for reading on a certain topic which was basically some ML theory supplemented with a couple of texts that were from bourgeois media sources and a book in which Chomsky had written a fairly decent account of the basic history of the topic, but these sources were relevant and helpful in understanding the topic in question (I can't remember what the topic was).
Later I was banned for quite a well-thought out ML analyses/comment in a thread that was "upvoted" many times but the mods didn't like it and banned me without giving a reason. I saw other subreddits and found the "you're not a real communist until you've been banned from r/communism" thing being said and found decent comrades but initially I felt really sh*tty about it. It started to make sense to me in that they embody the worst stereotypes about "communists": disagreeable, hostile and all the rest of it which obviously isn't true at all given how much of our work consists of education - education never ends. I saw other people suggest that it was a fed-run operation to turn people - especially newbies - away from understanding communism/communist theory and to put them off entirely. If it could even make me momentarily second guess myself then I can't imagine what kind of effect this would have on someone just starting out.
But yes, fed-run and they have an unreasonably dogmatic rule which is something like: "mandatory: read Settlers" as in you must read what is a disputed work or you are not welcome.
For such a hostile environment supposedly run by and for communists, I can only understand it as being designed to put people off of engaging with communist theory/praxis etc. and this makes me think that its a psyop/fed run or whatever. The J. Sakai thing being "mandatory" was a major sign that something was wrong IMO, regardless of what comrades think of that text.
Sorry to bump this thread - I am new here. Have been listening to 1Dime have a very long discussion with The Marxist Project (the latter of which has some useful introductory videos on aspects of Marxism and Leninism). Some of the takes in this video are quite negative and seem to at times sound fatalist and "Trotskyist" also. The intention of the discussion is to chart the course of the collapse of the USSR without adhering to one tendency, which I think is a highly difficult, essentially "academic" task in itself.
This is the video - History of the USSR: What Went Wrong? ([1Dime radio] Ft.@themarxistproject) - part 1 anyway - the whole discussion is 5 hours long and I'm unsure if its worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nEZuVMjug
That guy's a fuckin clown.