Why am I not surprised. I remember one time Eddie Smith (One of the folks of the MWM team) had the idea to “criticise” Prolewiki on twitter because we called him out for supporting the Great Russian Black Hundreds (and therefore fascists).
MWM is a patsoc shithole which aims to be the “middle ground” between the extremist patriotic “socialists” (Hazites) and the “Ultra-leftists” (Marxist-Leninists in this case), which at the end of the day proves nothing because he sides with patsocs to begin with.
Also funny that he pulls the patsoc trope of using AI art. Long paragraph full of word salad combined with the AI art picture in the end basically shows what an average patsoc is, an overglorified gish galloper.
Okay I wrote a lot here because I’ve been thinking about this MAGA communism phenomenon lately after getting introduced to it for the first time recently. If anyone wants to engage with me about this and help me work out an analysis of the movement, I would appreciate it, because there is something about it to me that I can’t quite put my finger on but makes me feel like it shouldn’t be flippantly rejected and ignored by people like us as is usually the case.
Did you read what he wrote in the linked thread? He actually mentions the Black Hundreds, calls them fascists, and notes that Lenin sent cadre into their meetings to teach them about Marxism and sway them left. I don’t know anything about that but I find it interesting.
Especially because down the line the party had to do several waves of purges to remove all the right wing people who had joined the party but retained their fascist consciousness, the most notorious of course being under Stalin who had an actual 5th column of Nazi collaborators within every level of government.
So on one hand, I see his point about trying to appease to those types of workers because they are workers too but on the other hand we see the result is that they do not voluntarily rid themselves of their rightist views even after they allege to adopt Marxism. By uncritically getting right wingers to agree to your premises, join your organizations, but never over come their bigotry and chauvinism, you are really just diluting your movement with closeted and subconscious reactionaries who may eventually revert back to their underlying ideological base.
I just heard about these MAGA communists recently and it has been very intriguing to me, not as a follower myself because I am a “death to amerikkka” type and don’t believe you can reform a settler colonial nation without completely replacing it from the bottom up, but because I do know that most americans are not on the same page about that and in some way or another see america as a flawed but otherwise legitimate entity - including the most marginalized people. This is likely because most americans no matter how marginalized are a part of the global labor aristocracy and benefit from imperialism, capitalism, etc more than they would benefit from ending those things.
Therefore, would it be more practical to steer these american labor aristocracy workers towards a movement like MAGA communism? If the platform they espouse was really on the agenda, it would certainly be better than what we will have otherwise - the same thing we’ve always had. If most Americans don’t want to destroy america and return the land to Indigenous people and New Afrikans, the things I personally would advocate for, then it seems like what I want is a pipe dream that is far too politically advanced for the average american, and therefore not nearly as possible as what the MAGA communists are espousing - a movement which fits inside the current political understanding of the US masses while advocating for removing US military bases, joining China’s BRI, ending all sanctions on other nations, etc etc.
Aside from MAGA communists generally seeming like transphobes, misogynists, and potentially racists, (something all the other electoral groups in the US also are), the rest of their platform is lightyears ahead of any US political group that has any traction with a lot of Americans (Hinkle has gained 2 million followers since 2019, PSL has almost 100k since 2009). When it comes to anti-imperialist nations, we tend to accept their social conservatism under critical support because we understand that they are the product of their conditions, but when we see anti-imperialist Americans who have similar social conservative views, we reject them entirely for it and call them fascists and feds.
If the option is between status quo and MAGA communism, because americans are not willing or interested in a full bolshevik style revolution, isn’t MAGA communism better for the rest of the world? If the settler crackkkertariat in the US have to choose between the republican party, liberatarian party, or an ostensibly anti-imperialist, anti-war group that praises China as a model to follow and collaborate with, wouldn’t that be a better option to provide those folks? I’m not saying that this movement is worth us personally putting time into, and it likely wouldn’t be relevant to non-white people who have national interests of their own to organize around, but are the MAGA communists existing and gaining traction in the white worker base really a bad thing or worse than them not existing at all? Is there potential that, like DSA and Bernie, this group could be a wide funnel into the left that could result in some sincere right wing conversions? Is it possible that MAGA communists could be inoculating the settler working class with marxist ideas that could bear fruit down the line one day when the contradictions come to a head and the benefits of imperialism are taken away?
Beyond that, wouldn’t it be better for folks like us to be engaging and disagreeing openly with MAGA communists to provide the people attracted to their ideas (which are likely unpoliticized people who see the issues in society and are looking for answers) another option of development beyond the MAGA phase? Through rejecting and insulting them, aren’t we just further alienating the impressionable workers who might be able to be pulled farther left if someone engaged them in way that was critical of the clear issues with MAGA communism but not vitriolic or troll-like?
You’re giving patsocs a lot of credit when their ‘current’ has not produced anything in the 5-6 years it’s been tried beyond making a few streamers rich and putting themselves against all actual Marxists (never a good sign). They have no actual plans to make America socialist, like they claim, because any formulated plan would expose that this is a dead-end that’s only good for grifting.
They had the “CPUSA 2036” slogan for a while, which was about infiltrating the CPUSA and winning the 2036 election, and they tried that, got found out and blacklisted, and now they pretend it was never about that and they’ve stopped talking about it.
You’re assuming they are trying novel techniques, but they’re just tailists. It’s been tried before, and it always ends with a Hitler in power.
The people they are trying to tail are not interested in being friends with China, stopping the genocide in Palestine, or being pro-labor. What they are is by and large the petite bourgeoisie, and to teach that segment ‘Marxism’, they need to water it down and purposely limit it. “MAGAcommunists”, who changed their name after they started hating the label ‘patriotic socialist’ which they picked for themselves (they also tried “Mecha tankies” for a while lol), are starting to say socialism is conservative (they don’t expand on what that means) and that marxism is “pro small business”.
If I “introduced” you to math by saying 2+2 can be equal to 5, and you didn’t have the knowledge to disprove it, and I then continued teaching you bad math, nobody would be saying “well at least he’s introducing people to math!”. No. I would be teaching bad math, and I would be a terrible teacher that should be stopped before I do more damage. So why, when people teach bad theory, do we let them do it because “at least they’re teaching people”? I’m not a monkey that reacts to the buzzwords, much to the dismay of patsocs. You have to actually give me a sound argument, and not just write “Based!” in the margin of a Lenin book for the instagram picture.
They’ve tried “reaching out” a couple times, their big plan was to send Haz to interview some MAGA protestors once or twice. He gave them softball questions like “do you think the establishment is working against the common worker?” and got ecstatic when they said yes. He might have been thinking about socialism, but I can guarantee you they were thinking about Trump. They were also small business owners and considered themselves workers, obviously. Obviously he couldn’t namedrop socialism to them or he would have got his ass beat, because for all their posturing and spitting, they have not yet reached out to any MAGA. They claim they did, but they did not. All they got is 14 year olds edgelords who will grow out of it, I assume, in a few years.
They are enemies of Marxism and Marxists and it’s time to proclaim it. Communists like to pass around Anarchism or Socialism from Stalin, where he says “Anarchists are the real enemies of marxists” (back in 1905 so before fascism), but then when it comes to patsocs we contort ourselves into shapes trying to justify their existence. We don’t have to work with them. They have to prove they have something of value to bring, and I don’t see that because they spend most of their time trying to convince real marxists that magacommunism totally works, and if you disagree, they start insulting and dogpiling you. You’re either with them or against them.
Like who else is actually saying we need to “win over” the maga? If there is civil war it’s gonna be communists and maybe a few others against the magas. The first thing the magas are gonna do is organize lynch mobs as soon as they get the go ahead. There was civil war in Russia, there was civil war in China, there was civil war in Vietnam, there was civil war in Korea, but these clowns think that in the heart of empire, in the number one imperial power in the world, they can avoid civil war if they wish for it hard enough.
I got bad news then, you’re gonna have to pick up a rifle and shoot the magas you want to win over if there is ever a revolution. Because I can assure you magacoms would sooner join them and abandon any pretense of being marxists than raise a rifle against them lol.
Who cares about their follower count, when they are simply unable to build anything – because that’s not the point of patsocism. The point is to get a few feds into positions of legitimacy. How do you think Hinkle got to 2 million followers in less than 5 years (actually less than 1 because he was boosted up there after October 7)? The official account of the state of ‘Israel’ quote tweeted him. Why would the glorified US military base in West Asia do that not once but twice, garnering him tons of new followers each time? Like when any real marxist starts getting too popular, it should raise red flags, not garner amazement. He has fed written all over him and has completely stopped talking about marxism, instead now stealing tweets and reposting them on his account. That’s his amount of praxis.
Midwestern Marx has always been patsoc, they’re just now dropping the mask because Laroucheism is finally paying off for them. First, Edward Ligger is wrong about Lenin on the Black Hundreds. Lenin was not saying to disrupt their meetings to recruit workers there, he was saying to fucking kill them. Yes, that’s what Lenin wrote black on white. Our guy was leading the revolution and civil war just a few years later and they’re trying to lionize him into a peace-loving, “reaching across the aisle” type of figure. What Lenin wrote at the beginning of The state and the revolution has come full circle and against him now.
Every time this brain-damaged wrestler opens his mouth he gets clowned on and I’m not sure how you can have been following what he’s been saying and start defending his position, while at the same time not having seen any of the criticism he gets, including right in the top comments of the linked tweet.
and it likely wouldn’t be relevant to non-white people who have national interests of their own to organize around
What do you think they’re gonna do to non-white people if they ever get into power?
Aside from MAGA communists generally seeming like transphobes, misogynists, and potentially racists, (something all the other electoral groups in the US also are),
Yes, which is why the answer to the US Question is decolonization. There will always remain transphobia, misogyny and racism in a settler-colonial state. But patsocs are not advocating for decolonization, they don’t even dare use the word. And the reason communism is such a shitshow in the US is exactly because communist parties did not want to grapple with this fact, that all communist parties will decolonize, that their prime directive is to put the Indigenous nations in power and not lead in their stead, and this goes all the way back to all the “working class stories” we’ve been told about the US, all the “good communist parties” there, all the “grassroots” movements, none of them advocated for decolonization because it would jeopardize their power and even livelihood. This is their contradiction, to admit to decol being necessary would be admitting to your party dissolving eventually. But regardless of the history of communism in the US, patsocs are not doing anything new. You look far enough into the CPUSA’s history (which is not that far, it’s around 100 years old) and you see proto-patsocs there as well.
You’re correct that we shouldn’t ignore patsocism. We should fight against it. I expect their movement will slowly dwindle though, but never fully go away. Laroucheism is not new (I mean, Larouche himself was active not that long ago) and Laroucheism is a fed op, so it’s not going away any time soon.
I replied to the other person with my main points if you’d be interested in replying there to those points!
Some things from this thread:
The people they are trying to tail are not interested in being friends with China, stopping the genocide in Palestine, or being pro-labor.
Why would they use these positions which most of the people they are targeting would immediately hate if they didn’t believe them? Why wouldn’t they just become like the Shapiros and Carlsons and Jones type grifters if they were really trying to just grift? Wouldn’t they make way more money and get way more clout if they didn’t actually inject these talking points into their rhetoric?
Is your premise that the feds are uplifting these guys so that people who would be radicalized towards communism get led astray? They seem to only appeal to people who would never be interested in communism so I don’t really know how that adds up. The only self identified leftists I see who are swayed by them seem to be people who agree that the left is further alienating a large portion of the US working class from socialism by using rhetoric, jargon, and aesthetics which they are pre-programmed to reject. So they couch their positions in US iconography to bypass that. Its not the strategy I would spend time organizing, or the group I would target in my organizing, but if they want to try, whats the problem? If we get a Hitler as you said, it won’t be because these people are the way it happened, it will be because it was an election year and we live in the US.
I’ve never had twitter and basically just heard about these people but have watched a couple YT videos featuring them and talking about them and then seen a couple threads here on lemmygrad about them in the last week or two. So I don’t have a lot of info or cemented biases on the matter. I did watch a recent video from just a few days ago with Hinkle giving a speech to a crowd using Lenin quotes and talking about Marxism so saying he has completely stopped talking about it doesn’t track.
As far as civil wars and decolonization go - you don’t really think if a civil war happens there will be any leftist group or de-colonial group that will stand a chance to take any power do you? Its gonna be the MAGA vs the Lib technocrats, there won’t be any decolonization going on, just a redrawing of colonial borders, like a (hopefully) less cartoonish Fallout: New Vegas landscape. The majority of Americans do not consider decolonization a viable option and while I am 100% behind the idea as someone who has been organizing in groups promoting it for many years, it doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction among the average Americans because it means they lose their luxuries and power gained by settler colonialism.
I appreciate your tone and style in response it makes dialogue feel accessible and not so polarizing as these spaces often do.
I’m trying to understand why people think these guys are both insignificant but also “the enemy” worth vehemently opposing. I admit I don’t know a lot about them, but with what I’ve seen I don’t see how they are going to cause any more harm or damage while I am also intrigued about if they might succeed in spreading an anti-imperialist sentiment within the Trump base that could influence his policy when he becomes president again. If so, I think that is a good thing and would be better than Trump on his own without that or any Democrat, and if they fail or just fully grift then nothing is different about the world.
Yeah tbh I think you’re sealioning. I sincerely can’t believe you’ve been organizing for 10 years but have only now heard of MWM, Hinkle, Infrared etc. while at the same time being familiar enough that you can quote from their latest videos. You also say you support decol but then show you don’t actually support decol because “it’s not popular” which is the textbook definition of tailism, and ultimately says you don’t actually support decol regardless of what you may think on the matter.
I’ve had my eye on you from your first comment in this thread but we always give people a chance to explain themselves first. The only reason it took this long to ban you is because I wanted to get more opinions, which I eventually did. So, you get a rule 5 ban: no patsocs.
Yes. Prolewiki has too. What Eddie Liger Smith is arguing is that we don’t convince them of their reactionary ways but rather adopt them. That is what ‘reaching out’ means. We do not ‘reach out’. We convince them of their reactionary views. Smith doesn’t seem to agree with this proposition.
Therefore, would it be more practical to steer these american labor aristocracy workers towards a movement like MAGA communism?
Somehow you gotten everything correct and then you decide to say this. No. MAGA Communism is a reactionary movement. By bringing people towards MAGA Communism, you’re introducing reactionary sentiment. MAGA Communists are not progressive in any sense. By stating it is the case that we should convince people of a backward, reactionary sentiment, of which imposing “patriotism” to the reactionary masses, means that you are advocating for reactionary sentiment. Please read up Prolewiki’s article on Patriotic Socialism.
Aside from MAGA communists generally seeming like transphobes, misogynists, and potentially racists
Then why support them to begin with? Do you not care for trans people (as I am), or feminists (as I am), or black people? All of whom are oppressed because Conservatives don’t want us to have rights?
When it comes to anti-imperialist nations, we tend to accept their social conservatism under critical support because we understand that they are the product of their conditions, but when we see anti-imperialist Americans who have similar social conservative views, we reject them entirely for it and call them fascists and feds.
Their social-conservatism is a result of domestic action. We should still, 8and rightfully*, criticise those nations for being anti-LGBT. Critical support does not mean ignorance. It means criticising the nation (for being capitalist, anti-LGBT) and supporting its international actions for anti-imperialism. This does not apply to Conservatives because the US imposed cultural imperialism onto the third world, thus making the third world less likely to adopt LGBT ideas because it is seen as a “western” thing. You’re comparing two different things. In either case, we should combat the anti-LGBT sentiment.
(Hinkle has gained 2 million followers since 2019, PSL has almost 100k since 2009).
Follower counts mean nothing. Just because more people follow it doesn’t mean it’s good. PSL has actually been doing stuff, what has Hinkle been doing? Pretty much nothing. He tried to communicate with the third world but it results in failure because no one cares about him.
If the option is between status quo and MAGA communism, because americans are not willing or interested in a full bolshevik style revolution, isn’t MAGA communism better for the rest of the world?
No. This is no different from lesser-evilism. MAGA Communists don’t even have their own party. They just tell you to vote Donald Trump because he is supposedly “anti-imperialist”.
Is there potential that, like DSA and Bernie, this group could be a wide funnel into the left that could result in some sincere right wing conversions?
I’ve seen this argument before and it can be debunked by stating it can have the opposite reaction. Sure it may bring new “leftists”, but it would also dissuade people from “leftism”. Hence why I don’t support the DSA or Bernie, especially given both of them support imperialism.
Beyond that, wouldn’t it be better for folks like us to be engaging and disagreeing openly with MAGA communists to provide the people attracted to their ideas
Yes. We should. And we did. And we will continue to do so. Patsocism isn’t a dying trend, but it isn’t necessarily one that gains traction with conservatives. You can literally think the same way. Conservatives don’t like Communism. Therefore Conservatives won’t support MAGA Communism. Therefore this movement, as big as it sounds, it’s a fringe and extremist group, one which requires further analysis than looking at the surface.
Again, as a person just hearing about this guy, I am reading his quote and reading what you say he means and it seems to be the opposite of what he says,“It was Vladimir Lenin who would send party members to the meetings of the fascist and anti-semetic Black Hundreds peasant groups in order to disrupt them and win people away from their reactionary worldview by teaching them Marxism.”
I don’t understand how you could read that and say ,“what he REALLY is saying is that we should integrate into fascist groups and adopt their perspectives.” He is blatantly calling them fascists and saying we should be convincing them to steer from reaction and become Marxists, not at all what you are claiming. You seem to already have a pretty cemented perspective on this topic but as someone just getting introduced to it I can’t help but feel like it is weird to read that quote and get what seems to be the exact opposite from it.
As far as the social conservatism goes, they are appealing to people who already have those sentiments but bringing them into a frame of reference that is anti-imperialist. The other option is that they just remain where they are at, but more reactionary through the already existing status quo in the US. If this group of white cis chronically online people wants to try and convince rednecks in the US to not beat the war drums against China and Russia, I don’t really see that as a bad thing. They aren’t promoting anything worse than what is being promoted by the people who already influence this demographic, but the majority of the things they are introducing in a digestible way to this group are things we all agree with. If they didn’t somewhat appeal to the “US identity” and all the chauvinism that comes with it, the messages wouldn’t get through the gates, but could they be inoculating progressive ideas into the white working class by not presenting in a way which totally alienates them from even beginning the conversation?
I’m not so quick to say that isn’t possible, and as someone who is an ML that has been actively organizing in the US for a decade, I don’t feel so quick to write it off because honestly I don’t see anything else really working very well in this country yet. I see some union gains here and there but unions aren’t inherently progressive either, and in our country have a long history of being reactionary as well. I’m not suggesting that we leave the orgs we currently work with to promote MAGA communism, but what I’m thinking is:
If Trump is going to be president anyway, is it bad to have a group already interacting with his base in a way they are open to listening to, but potentially driving them away from imperialism? It’s not like we are actually going to organize revolution in the next few years, nor will we organize any real leftist taking institutional power from within, so whats the problem with these guys trying to convince settlers to back off on China and Russia and place the blame with billionaires? What harm does it do that isn’t already being done, and does it have the potential to actually sway any of these people away from supporting the US to continue being imperialist?
Speaking of Trump, I haven’t seen anything of these guys saying to vote for Trump, can you show me that?
In regards to follower count and some of your last statements, I don’t think we can honestly look at the state of the US psyche right now and say that influencers don’t have an impact on the perspectives and beliefs of the average person and that having a larger platform doesn’t increase that impact. They seem to have just launched some sort of org recently, I watched Hinkle’s speech from it and he had the crowd of white people cheering Hamas and listening to quotes from Lenin. We’ll see what they do with that org but I don’t think it is safe to say these people won’t be able to influence the Trump base in the same way the Tea Party and other groups influenced the Republicans and decided their policies in the past. If they sincere about even half their positions, particularly the anti-imperialist ones, this would certainly be better than having on anti-imperialist positions within the Trump base, no?
I consider DSA and Bernie to be reactionaries at this point but I can’t say I don’t know many good comrades who went from apolitical -> DSA/Bernie -> MLs and I see the value of that.
Again, as a person just hearing about this guy, I am reading his quote and reading what you say he means and it seems to be the opposite of what he says…
I don’t disagree with the quote. What I disagree with is this statement: “If Modern day Western communists lived in Russia they would have tweeted pictures of the Bolsheviks reaching out to the black hundreds and demanded that people cancel them for it.”. Source This is what Smith was advocating for. It is not a question of having a “pretty cemented perspective on this topic” but how words are used. This is not semantics. This is just what reaching out means. What Eddie Smith argues is what I said earlier, so I won’t repeat it again.
As far as the social conservatism goes, they are appealing to people who already have those sentiments but bringing them into a frame of reference that is anti-imperialist.
Not all anti-imperialists should be supported, quote Lenin;
Imperialism is as much our “mortal” enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence, it is not every struggle against imperialism that we should support. We will not support a struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will not support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism.Source
Supporting conservatives for “anti-imperialism” is not anti-imperialism but rather the opposite. You are directly siding with conservatives rather than the general masses (or in this case the proletariat). You completely ignored my statement which was this:
Then why support them to begin with? Do you not care for trans people (as I am), or feminists (as I am), or black people? All of whom are oppressed because Conservatives don’t want us to have rights?
I ask again, do you not want us to have rights?
If they didn’t somewhat appeal to the “US identity” and all the chauvinism that comes with it, the messages wouldn’t get through the gates, but could they be inoculating progressive ideas into the white working class by not presenting in a way which totally alienates them from even beginning the conversation?
What identity should communists appeal to? The US identity is born out of a white settler identity. That is a fact which most settlers refuse to understand. Just making white settlers support Russia or China isn’t enough to rid themselves of their reactionary nature. Conservatives (and Liberals too) need to understand that they live on Stolen land and thus they need to support decolonisation in full. For a US communist working for a decade, this is shocking to hear. Instead of paralleling communist ideas, convincing the masses that socialism is superior to them, you instead compromise your position with conservatives. There shouldn’t be any compromises when your own ideology is at risk with such compromise.
Next I see you wallow in your defeatism with: “It’s not like we are actually going to organize revolution in the next few years”, “honestly I don’t see anything else really working very well in this country yet”. What is it are you doing then? You see the troubles within your very country yet you don’t fight back? What have you been doing for a whole decade to let yourself wallow in this?
so whats the problem with these guys trying to convince settlers to back off on China and Russia and place the blame with billionaires?
Are they truly going to blame the billionaires? No they will blame the so-called woke left which is what we are. They argue that ideas like transgenderism are bourgeois, and yet you seem totally quiet about this. With anti-LGBT and racist sentiment, you don’t care as long as it is “progressive”.
Speaking of Trump, I haven’t seen anything of these guys saying to vote for Trump, can you show me that?
Many patriotic socialists call Trump “anti-imperialist”. He isn’t. The strategy of Patsocs is that they vote for the Republicans as they are also “anti-imperialist” and back MAGA. However some patriotic socialists argue there are RINOs! So even if I haven’t shown that they will vote Trump, they still argue that Trump is “anti-imperialist” and so is MAGA “Communism” in general.
They seem to have just launched some sort of org recently, I watched Hinkle’s speech from it and he had the crowd of white people cheering Hamas and listening to quotes from Lenin.
“They quote Lenin so they must be anti-imperialist!” I’ve seen many revisionist organisations quote Lenin in part or not at all or leave parts out. This doesn’t mean they are anti-imperialist in any way.
I consider DSA and Bernie to be reactionaries at this point but I can’t say I don’t know many good comrades who went from apolitical -> DSA/Bernie -> MLs and I see the value of that.
I have also seen conservatives scream against Bernie as he is a socialist. Good for you that comrades seen Bernie and became MLs. What I care for is the opposite reaction which can also be caused. Conservatives are against Bernie and thus they won’t be MLs, or at best Patriotic “Socialists” or there will be MLs who are sympathetic to the Democrats or Bernie just because he has some “socialist values”. You may not be well in-touch with Patriotic Socialism, but if you are a US communist, please, please understand it is a backwards ideology that must not be supported.
I don’t have it in front of me but I remember a Stalin quote saying something quite different in the case of supporting anti-imperialism in West Asia despite the social conservatism. I haven’t suggested supporting conservatives as you claim, just that the MAGA communists trying to appeal to conservatives to bring them to the left (their stated goals) doesn’t seem like the building of a reactionary army or adding momentum to fascism. It is at worse changing nothing about the current political landscape and at best introducing otherwise politically undeveloped workers who default into an inherited ideology to some new ideas which aren’t all bad on their surface.
Then why support them to begin with? Do you not care for trans people (as I am), or feminists (as I am), or black people? All of whom are oppressed because Conservatives don’t want us to have rights? I ask again, do you not want us to have rights?
I’ve never suggested supporting these groups, but you respond as if I have and then question my character which has nothing to do with an analysis of the topic at hand. Surely you aren’t suggesting that marginalized people don’t have rights because MAGA communists are trying to appeal to settler workers, and I haven’t in my cursory overview of them seen anyone calling for such things. Accusing other people of wanting to deny marginalized people rights for trying to have a discussion around the characteristics of a fringe political movement is inflammatory at best and unhinged at worst. The other person in this thread communicates without all the hubris while still having the exact same positions you have, I’d recommend looking to their writing for some examples of how to communicate in a way that is actually effective at getting your points across.
What identity should communists appeal to? The US identity is born out of a white settler identity. That is a fact which most settlers refuse to understand. Just making white settlers support Russia or China isn’t enough to rid themselves of their reactionary nature. Conservatives (and Liberals too) need to understand that they live on Stolen land and thus they need to support decolonisation in full. For a US communist working for a decade, this is shocking to hear. Instead of paralleling communist ideas, convincing the masses that socialism is superior to them, you instead compromise your position with conservatives. There shouldn’t be any compromises when your own ideology is at risk with such compromise.
You are editorializing what I said in order to fit in into your already predesignated conceptions of what this topic contains and what people who are participating in it without unquestionably adopting your view points must believe. I didn’t claim that conservatives will suddenly be cleansed of their reactionary nature by adopting stances that don’t promote war against China or Russia. I’m asking why some MLs here are so scared of what they claim is an irrelevant fringe group for trying to appeal to people that have the same identities as they do to take anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist positions. Wouldn’t that be better than them having imperialist and capitalist positions? Would it be any worse for the US political landscape for them to try?
I’ve made it clear that I don’t believe anyone at our stage of political development should spend time organizing with or for those positions, groups or people, I’m just confused about why you all seem to be so afraid of them to the point that you say they are nobodies but also put a lot of energy into making sure everyone knows how much you hate them. In a country full of actual volunteer feds in every workplace and community regardless of demographic, I don’t see why these guys are getting you all riled up. It’s not MAGA communists spreading anti-China propaganda from the left, its Anarchists and Maoists and DemSocs. It’s not MAGA communists calling to kill “tankies,” and bar them from organizing spaces it’s Anarchists and Maoists and DemSocs. I’ve never met a MAGA communist but I’ve seen a lot of Anarchist and Maoist and DemSoc wreckers co-opt movements and struggles and turn them into popularity contests, social clubs and cults of personality. I don’t think MAGA communists are the most correct group in the US left, but as far as incorrect left groups go, they are certainly not doing nearly the amount of harm I see Anarchists, Maoists, and DemSocs doing to the political landscape and conversations in the US. They barely seem to be relevant to the left or organizing spaces at all, and instead are just spreading positions that mostly align with our positions to people who we would never take the time to try and educate or political develop.
Conservatives and Liberals already understand that they live on stolen land, and they also know that the people they stole it from make up less than 3% of the population, so they already have accepted that it makes no sense to turn over control of the state to such a minority of people, even if they are the victims of settler colonialism. You are saying that you think a bunch of settler labor aristocracy must be convinced by communists to become supporters of decolonialism which really shows an idealist take, “the people MUST be convinced to believe what I believe because it is correct,” which flatly ignores the material conditions of those very people. Just because it is the right position doesn’t mean it will ever take hold in this country, and while I still organize in groups that promote it, I don’t see any clear way that these groups are going to gain traction amongst a population of people who already think the concept is totally illogical nonsense. I personally promote the sovereignty of Indigenous people and New Afrikans but that doesn’t mean I see any way we will ever get there at this point, nor have I seen anyone suggest doing anything except what we’ve already been doing which hasn’t really proven to be effective. The best avenue I can imagine is that if Indgenous and New Afrikan groups are incredibly organized and well armed when the inevitable collapse in the US happens, they might be able to carve out some small enclaves to wage a protracted war from, but that has nothing to do with convincing settlers to get behind decolonialism at all.
Next I see you wallow in your defeatism with: “It’s not like we are actually going to organize revolution in the next few years”, “honestly I don’t see anything else really working very well in this country yet”. What is it are you doing then? You see the troubles within your very country yet you don’t fight back? What have you been doing for a whole decade to let yourself wallow in this?
there is a LARPy privilege in your tone which I see some online leftists do and I just don’t get it. feels like they are trying to channel Lenin or something, real weird to me.
purporting that a sincere communist who has spent thousands of hours organizing in streets and workplaces with the masses is somehow wrong for having a sober analysis of the conditions of this nation, and that instead we must blindly commit ourselves to the idea that somehow the non-existent left in the settler-colonial labor aristocracy of the imperial core is going to manufacture a revolution before the process of dedollarization and shift towards a multi-polar world forces a collapse of the US economy which results in some sort of fascist take over and/or civil war scenario can only come from a place of privilege that I have never had and can not relate to. I am a materialist, and if you think acknowledging in the reality of the conditions I live in is somehow wrong, I would say that is a form of liberalism that needs to be thoroughly investigated.
It seems as if you are suggesting that somehow me and others like me not “fighting back” hard enough is the reason why the left is failing in the US as if there are any examples of capitalist or colonial nations having a successful workers revolution. I think it is really foolish to assert that fighting back in and of itself means success is assured. If the conditions are not ripe for these ideas to spread, there needs to be another phase of development first. The CPC did not have a socialist revolution before they led a New Democratic revolution, for example. Meeting people where they are at and guiding them towards socialism is different than standing at the end of the road screaming “THIS IS WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE” to a bunch of people so far away that they don’t even recognize your existence.
Are they truly going to blame the billionaires? No they will blame the so-called woke left which is what we are. They argue that ideas like transgenderism are bourgeois, and yet you seem totally quiet about this. With anti-LGBT and racist sentiment, you don’t care as long as it is “progressive”.
they do blame the billionaires from what I have seen. I haven’t seen any of the other things you’ve claimed here and have acknowledged this is new content to me but again will point out that your consistent editorializing and knee-jerk presumptions about my positions “you don’t care about this, you want that, etc” just undermine your entire argument and present as anti-social. No one wants to be spoken to like that and if you are actually a sincere communist I don’t know why your default stance is to be inflammatory and vitriolic instead of being amicable and pleasant to interact with. Saying “you, you, you,” especially when making up really outlandish positions that you are projecting onto the other person is just not it.
I don’t have it in front of me but I remember a Stalin quote saying something quite different in the case of supporting anti-imperialism in West Asia despite the social conservatism.
And that somehow applies to the United States as well? Two different regions with two different material conditions. Why do you insist on downplaying MAGA Communism and its potential effects? It does bring people toward Fascism by introducing a “Socialist” mask, not unlike the Nazis or more close in representation the Strasserists. Also it’s interesting you didn’t address the Lenin quote. You just said there exists a quote which Stalin said it debunks that. Both quotes can be true simultaneously as they are not mutually exclusive. You still haven’t considered that quote. Again, just because they claim to be “anti-imperialist” does not mean we should support them.
I’ve never suggested supporting these groups, but you respond as if I have and then question my character which has nothing to do with an analysis of the topic at hand.
I accuse you because you seem to downplay these groups rather than uphold them. You forgot the “critical” part of “Critical Support”. Also I never said that marginalised peoples don’t have rights. I said this: “I ask again, do you not want us to have rights?” I address you directly because you seem to want to downplay marginalised groups in the name of “Anti-imperialism”. You claim it to be a “discussion” around the characteristics of fringe political movements, which is incorrect. What you are advocating for is downplaying the fascistic nature of Patsocism even if that is not your very intention.
The other person in this thread communicates without all the hubris while still having the exact same positions you have, I’d recommend looking to their writing for some examples of how to communicate in a way that is actually effective at getting your points across.
I write in a different way from him. That’s perfectly fine. I do tend to accuse you a lot but that’s because I tend to read between the lines more often and tell you what is wrong. I don’t want to become him. Nor will I ever. I don’t understand how that is relevant to our discussion.
I didn’t claim that conservatives will suddenly be cleansed of their reactionary nature by adopting stances that don’t promote war against China or Russia.
Maybe you didn’t, but you did claim that introducing Conservatives to supporting China and Russia would suddenly make them more “anti-imperialist”: “As far as the social conservatism goes, they are appealing to people who already have those sentiments but bringing them into a frame of reference that is anti-imperialist.” Why did I call this removing reactionary sentiment? Because anti-imperialism is inherently progressive (i.e. progresses towards socialism). Yet their reactionary nature still remains.
I’m asking why some MLs here are so scared of what they claim is an irrelevant fringe group for trying to appeal to people that have the same identities as they do to take anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist positions. Wouldn’t that be better than them having imperialist and capitalist positions? Would it be any worse for the US political landscape for them to try?
Let’s just say Conservatives (for some unknown reason) are willing to support China and Russia. Why do they do this? Because they do it for their own benefit. They support China and Russia only, and only because it’s contrarian to the Democrat position of opposing China and Russia. Is it truly anti-imperialist if they do not actually care for the support of a nation? Furthermore, would these positions further cement their conservative positions? It most likely will. Conservatives rarely change their stance, if ever, because they benefit the most from the capitalist system, or they believe in fundamental ideas because they are usually petit-bourgeois or live in rural regions. Of course this is all hypothetical. Most Conservatives don’t even support Communism, and MAGA Communism isn’t a popular trend with Conservatives.
I’m just confused about why you all seem to be so afraid of them to the point that you say they are nobodies but also put a lot of energy into making sure everyone knows how much you hate them.
I’m willing to concede that, yes, the Patsocs (at least in this discussion) are an extremist group. But just because they do little damage doesn’t mean they don’t do damage at all. Overall in the grand scheme of things, they are just a rehash of what Lenin called ‘social-chauvinists’ in Russia. If Lenin needed to tackle the social-chauvinists of the Great Russians, then we must tackle the fascistic nature of the White Settlers. Both are similar (in fact they are the same, with only the difference being location), so we must tackle the latter.
I’ve never met a MAGA communist but I’ve seen a lot of Anarchist and Maoist and DemSoc wreckers co-opt movements and struggles and turn them into popularity contests, social clubs and cults of personality.
Yes. We can tackle both. We must put efforts on both sides as they are left and right deviations (of the extreme kind). Unfortunately you fall into the right deviationist bracket by assuming that Patsocs don’t do as much damage. They can, and often do. Again, struggle against both sides. You forget to understand that MAGA Communists tail behind the masses, following their every word even if it is not right. That is not what marxists do. Marxists must convince the masses of socialism. Tailing behind them won’t work.
Conservatives and Liberals already understand that they live on stolen land
You’d be surprised how even ‘socialists’ make mistakes of people not apparently being settlers just because they were born it. Many Americans think they are not settlers. In fact, they deserve to live on the land they have because they were born in it. For the minority that do think they live on stolen land, they think Settler Colonialism is long gone or something along those lines.
“the people MUST be convinced to believe what I believe because it is correct,” which flatly ignores the material conditions of those very people.
I never said that. I said we must convince the masses that socialism would be more advantageous for them and thus they would be able to support socialism. However with those very people, we must convince them of their settler mindset, and make them understand that they live on stolen land. It is a fact that they live on Stolen Land, yet if they ever feel that their safety is threatened, they are settlers which do not want to support socialism. It is not only I who believe it is correct, but Lenin too. Indigenous people have a right to self-determination.
Just because it is the right position doesn’t mean it will ever take hold in this country
If it won’t ever take hold in this country then the United States would remain a settler nation even under “socialism”. There is no socialism where the oppressor nation continues to exist and oppress the oppressed nations. You’re being defeatist again. In fact you are supporting settlers with this argument. Decolonialism must be supported by all settlers, full stop. If that cannot be achieved, then we will not have socialism. It is not optional to skip Decolonialism. By skipping it, we do not have socialism.
feels like they are trying to channel Lenin
I am just asking you questions regarding your defeatist mindset. Is that a fair question to ask? If not, why?
Whatever is channeling within your post is doomerism. Do you not have a sense of revolutionary optimism? I am not saying we will manufacture a revolution quickly, rather that we need revolutionary optimism such that we can see work being done. Just because you claim to be a materialist, does that mean you must channel your doomerist attitude?
I think it is really foolish to assert that fighting back in and of itself means success is assured.
I never said this. I also never said anything in that paragraph.
I haven’t seen any of the other things you’ve claimed here and have acknowledged this is new content to me
Patsocs tend to poke fun at “wokeists” i.e. LGBT people because they think transgenderism is bourgeois. It has plagued the patsoc movement which we must consider. Again you seem to downplay this. Is it because you do not know? Or is it because you have underlying intentions? I don’t know either way but you are downplaying. I address you directly because that is the purpose of your argument. You seem to downplay marginalised people and downplay Patsocs as well for the name of “anti-imperialism”. If you don’t know anything about Patsocs, read this Prolewiki article as a first basis.
Why am I not surprised. I remember one time Eddie Smith (One of the folks of the MWM team) had the idea to “criticise” Prolewiki on twitter because we called him out for supporting the Great Russian Black Hundreds (and therefore fascists).
MWM is a patsoc shithole which aims to be the “middle ground” between the extremist patriotic “socialists” (Hazites) and the “Ultra-leftists” (Marxist-Leninists in this case), which at the end of the day proves nothing because he sides with patsocs to begin with.
Also funny that he pulls the patsoc trope of using AI art. Long paragraph full of word salad combined with the AI art picture in the end basically shows what an average patsoc is, an overglorified gish galloper.
Okay I wrote a lot here because I’ve been thinking about this MAGA communism phenomenon lately after getting introduced to it for the first time recently. If anyone wants to engage with me about this and help me work out an analysis of the movement, I would appreciate it, because there is something about it to me that I can’t quite put my finger on but makes me feel like it shouldn’t be flippantly rejected and ignored by people like us as is usually the case.
Did you read what he wrote in the linked thread? He actually mentions the Black Hundreds, calls them fascists, and notes that Lenin sent cadre into their meetings to teach them about Marxism and sway them left. I don’t know anything about that but I find it interesting.
Especially because down the line the party had to do several waves of purges to remove all the right wing people who had joined the party but retained their fascist consciousness, the most notorious of course being under Stalin who had an actual 5th column of Nazi collaborators within every level of government.
So on one hand, I see his point about trying to appease to those types of workers because they are workers too but on the other hand we see the result is that they do not voluntarily rid themselves of their rightist views even after they allege to adopt Marxism. By uncritically getting right wingers to agree to your premises, join your organizations, but never over come their bigotry and chauvinism, you are really just diluting your movement with closeted and subconscious reactionaries who may eventually revert back to their underlying ideological base.
I just heard about these MAGA communists recently and it has been very intriguing to me, not as a follower myself because I am a “death to amerikkka” type and don’t believe you can reform a settler colonial nation without completely replacing it from the bottom up, but because I do know that most americans are not on the same page about that and in some way or another see america as a flawed but otherwise legitimate entity - including the most marginalized people. This is likely because most americans no matter how marginalized are a part of the global labor aristocracy and benefit from imperialism, capitalism, etc more than they would benefit from ending those things.
Therefore, would it be more practical to steer these american labor aristocracy workers towards a movement like MAGA communism? If the platform they espouse was really on the agenda, it would certainly be better than what we will have otherwise - the same thing we’ve always had. If most Americans don’t want to destroy america and return the land to Indigenous people and New Afrikans, the things I personally would advocate for, then it seems like what I want is a pipe dream that is far too politically advanced for the average american, and therefore not nearly as possible as what the MAGA communists are espousing - a movement which fits inside the current political understanding of the US masses while advocating for removing US military bases, joining China’s BRI, ending all sanctions on other nations, etc etc.
Aside from MAGA communists generally seeming like transphobes, misogynists, and potentially racists, (something all the other electoral groups in the US also are), the rest of their platform is lightyears ahead of any US political group that has any traction with a lot of Americans (Hinkle has gained 2 million followers since 2019, PSL has almost 100k since 2009). When it comes to anti-imperialist nations, we tend to accept their social conservatism under critical support because we understand that they are the product of their conditions, but when we see anti-imperialist Americans who have similar social conservative views, we reject them entirely for it and call them fascists and feds.
If the option is between status quo and MAGA communism, because americans are not willing or interested in a full bolshevik style revolution, isn’t MAGA communism better for the rest of the world? If the settler crackkkertariat in the US have to choose between the republican party, liberatarian party, or an ostensibly anti-imperialist, anti-war group that praises China as a model to follow and collaborate with, wouldn’t that be a better option to provide those folks? I’m not saying that this movement is worth us personally putting time into, and it likely wouldn’t be relevant to non-white people who have national interests of their own to organize around, but are the MAGA communists existing and gaining traction in the white worker base really a bad thing or worse than them not existing at all? Is there potential that, like DSA and Bernie, this group could be a wide funnel into the left that could result in some sincere right wing conversions? Is it possible that MAGA communists could be inoculating the settler working class with marxist ideas that could bear fruit down the line one day when the contradictions come to a head and the benefits of imperialism are taken away?
Beyond that, wouldn’t it be better for folks like us to be engaging and disagreeing openly with MAGA communists to provide the people attracted to their ideas (which are likely unpoliticized people who see the issues in society and are looking for answers) another option of development beyond the MAGA phase? Through rejecting and insulting them, aren’t we just further alienating the impressionable workers who might be able to be pulled farther left if someone engaged them in way that was critical of the clear issues with MAGA communism but not vitriolic or troll-like?
You’re giving patsocs a lot of credit when their ‘current’ has not produced anything in the 5-6 years it’s been tried beyond making a few streamers rich and putting themselves against all actual Marxists (never a good sign). They have no actual plans to make America socialist, like they claim, because any formulated plan would expose that this is a dead-end that’s only good for grifting.
They had the “CPUSA 2036” slogan for a while, which was about infiltrating the CPUSA and winning the 2036 election, and they tried that, got found out and blacklisted, and now they pretend it was never about that and they’ve stopped talking about it.
You’re assuming they are trying novel techniques, but they’re just tailists. It’s been tried before, and it always ends with a Hitler in power.
The people they are trying to tail are not interested in being friends with China, stopping the genocide in Palestine, or being pro-labor. What they are is by and large the petite bourgeoisie, and to teach that segment ‘Marxism’, they need to water it down and purposely limit it. “MAGAcommunists”, who changed their name after they started hating the label ‘patriotic socialist’ which they picked for themselves (they also tried “Mecha tankies” for a while lol), are starting to say socialism is conservative (they don’t expand on what that means) and that marxism is “pro small business”.
If I “introduced” you to math by saying 2+2 can be equal to 5, and you didn’t have the knowledge to disprove it, and I then continued teaching you bad math, nobody would be saying “well at least he’s introducing people to math!”. No. I would be teaching bad math, and I would be a terrible teacher that should be stopped before I do more damage. So why, when people teach bad theory, do we let them do it because “at least they’re teaching people”? I’m not a monkey that reacts to the buzzwords, much to the dismay of patsocs. You have to actually give me a sound argument, and not just write “Based!” in the margin of a Lenin book for the instagram picture.
They’ve tried “reaching out” a couple times, their big plan was to send Haz to interview some MAGA protestors once or twice. He gave them softball questions like “do you think the establishment is working against the common worker?” and got ecstatic when they said yes. He might have been thinking about socialism, but I can guarantee you they were thinking about Trump. They were also small business owners and considered themselves workers, obviously. Obviously he couldn’t namedrop socialism to them or he would have got his ass beat, because for all their posturing and spitting, they have not yet reached out to any MAGA. They claim they did, but they did not. All they got is 14 year olds edgelords who will grow out of it, I assume, in a few years.
They are enemies of Marxism and Marxists and it’s time to proclaim it. Communists like to pass around Anarchism or Socialism from Stalin, where he says “Anarchists are the real enemies of marxists” (back in 1905 so before fascism), but then when it comes to patsocs we contort ourselves into shapes trying to justify their existence. We don’t have to work with them. They have to prove they have something of value to bring, and I don’t see that because they spend most of their time trying to convince real marxists that magacommunism totally works, and if you disagree, they start insulting and dogpiling you. You’re either with them or against them.
Like who else is actually saying we need to “win over” the maga? If there is civil war it’s gonna be communists and maybe a few others against the magas. The first thing the magas are gonna do is organize lynch mobs as soon as they get the go ahead. There was civil war in Russia, there was civil war in China, there was civil war in Vietnam, there was civil war in Korea, but these clowns think that in the heart of empire, in the number one imperial power in the world, they can avoid civil war if they wish for it hard enough.
I got bad news then, you’re gonna have to pick up a rifle and shoot the magas you want to win over if there is ever a revolution. Because I can assure you magacoms would sooner join them and abandon any pretense of being marxists than raise a rifle against them lol.
Who cares about their follower count, when they are simply unable to build anything – because that’s not the point of patsocism. The point is to get a few feds into positions of legitimacy. How do you think Hinkle got to 2 million followers in less than 5 years (actually less than 1 because he was boosted up there after October 7)? The official account of the state of ‘Israel’ quote tweeted him. Why would the glorified US military base in West Asia do that not once but twice, garnering him tons of new followers each time? Like when any real marxist starts getting too popular, it should raise red flags, not garner amazement. He has fed written all over him and has completely stopped talking about marxism, instead now stealing tweets and reposting them on his account. That’s his amount of praxis.
Midwestern Marx has always been patsoc, they’re just now dropping the mask because Laroucheism is finally paying off for them. First, Edward Ligger is wrong about Lenin on the Black Hundreds. Lenin was not saying to disrupt their meetings to recruit workers there, he was saying to fucking kill them. Yes, that’s what Lenin wrote black on white. Our guy was leading the revolution and civil war just a few years later and they’re trying to lionize him into a peace-loving, “reaching across the aisle” type of figure. What Lenin wrote at the beginning of The state and the revolution has come full circle and against him now.
Every time this brain-damaged wrestler opens his mouth he gets clowned on and I’m not sure how you can have been following what he’s been saying and start defending his position, while at the same time not having seen any of the criticism he gets, including right in the top comments of the linked tweet.
What do you think they’re gonna do to non-white people if they ever get into power?
Yes, which is why the answer to the US Question is decolonization. There will always remain transphobia, misogyny and racism in a settler-colonial state. But patsocs are not advocating for decolonization, they don’t even dare use the word. And the reason communism is such a shitshow in the US is exactly because communist parties did not want to grapple with this fact, that all communist parties will decolonize, that their prime directive is to put the Indigenous nations in power and not lead in their stead, and this goes all the way back to all the “working class stories” we’ve been told about the US, all the “good communist parties” there, all the “grassroots” movements, none of them advocated for decolonization because it would jeopardize their power and even livelihood. This is their contradiction, to admit to decol being necessary would be admitting to your party dissolving eventually. But regardless of the history of communism in the US, patsocs are not doing anything new. You look far enough into the CPUSA’s history (which is not that far, it’s around 100 years old) and you see proto-patsocs there as well.
You’re correct that we shouldn’t ignore patsocism. We should fight against it. I expect their movement will slowly dwindle though, but never fully go away. Laroucheism is not new (I mean, Larouche himself was active not that long ago) and Laroucheism is a fed op, so it’s not going away any time soon.
I replied to the other person with my main points if you’d be interested in replying there to those points!
Some things from this thread:
Why would they use these positions which most of the people they are targeting would immediately hate if they didn’t believe them? Why wouldn’t they just become like the Shapiros and Carlsons and Jones type grifters if they were really trying to just grift? Wouldn’t they make way more money and get way more clout if they didn’t actually inject these talking points into their rhetoric?
Is your premise that the feds are uplifting these guys so that people who would be radicalized towards communism get led astray? They seem to only appeal to people who would never be interested in communism so I don’t really know how that adds up. The only self identified leftists I see who are swayed by them seem to be people who agree that the left is further alienating a large portion of the US working class from socialism by using rhetoric, jargon, and aesthetics which they are pre-programmed to reject. So they couch their positions in US iconography to bypass that. Its not the strategy I would spend time organizing, or the group I would target in my organizing, but if they want to try, whats the problem? If we get a Hitler as you said, it won’t be because these people are the way it happened, it will be because it was an election year and we live in the US.
I’ve never had twitter and basically just heard about these people but have watched a couple YT videos featuring them and talking about them and then seen a couple threads here on lemmygrad about them in the last week or two. So I don’t have a lot of info or cemented biases on the matter. I did watch a recent video from just a few days ago with Hinkle giving a speech to a crowd using Lenin quotes and talking about Marxism so saying he has completely stopped talking about it doesn’t track.
As far as civil wars and decolonization go - you don’t really think if a civil war happens there will be any leftist group or de-colonial group that will stand a chance to take any power do you? Its gonna be the MAGA vs the Lib technocrats, there won’t be any decolonization going on, just a redrawing of colonial borders, like a (hopefully) less cartoonish Fallout: New Vegas landscape. The majority of Americans do not consider decolonization a viable option and while I am 100% behind the idea as someone who has been organizing in groups promoting it for many years, it doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction among the average Americans because it means they lose their luxuries and power gained by settler colonialism.
I appreciate your tone and style in response it makes dialogue feel accessible and not so polarizing as these spaces often do. I’m trying to understand why people think these guys are both insignificant but also “the enemy” worth vehemently opposing. I admit I don’t know a lot about them, but with what I’ve seen I don’t see how they are going to cause any more harm or damage while I am also intrigued about if they might succeed in spreading an anti-imperialist sentiment within the Trump base that could influence his policy when he becomes president again. If so, I think that is a good thing and would be better than Trump on his own without that or any Democrat, and if they fail or just fully grift then nothing is different about the world.
Yeah tbh I think you’re sealioning. I sincerely can’t believe you’ve been organizing for 10 years but have only now heard of MWM, Hinkle, Infrared etc. while at the same time being familiar enough that you can quote from their latest videos. You also say you support decol but then show you don’t actually support decol because “it’s not popular” which is the textbook definition of tailism, and ultimately says you don’t actually support decol regardless of what you may think on the matter.
I’ve had my eye on you from your first comment in this thread but we always give people a chance to explain themselves first. The only reason it took this long to ban you is because I wanted to get more opinions, which I eventually did. So, you get a rule 5 ban: no patsocs.
Yes. Prolewiki has too. What Eddie Liger Smith is arguing is that we don’t convince them of their reactionary ways but rather adopt them. That is what ‘reaching out’ means. We do not ‘reach out’. We convince them of their reactionary views. Smith doesn’t seem to agree with this proposition.
Somehow you gotten everything correct and then you decide to say this. No. MAGA Communism is a reactionary movement. By bringing people towards MAGA Communism, you’re introducing reactionary sentiment. MAGA Communists are not progressive in any sense. By stating it is the case that we should convince people of a backward, reactionary sentiment, of which imposing “patriotism” to the reactionary masses, means that you are advocating for reactionary sentiment. Please read up Prolewiki’s article on Patriotic Socialism.
Then why support them to begin with? Do you not care for trans people (as I am), or feminists (as I am), or black people? All of whom are oppressed because Conservatives don’t want us to have rights?
Their social-conservatism is a result of domestic action. We should still, 8and rightfully*, criticise those nations for being anti-LGBT. Critical support does not mean ignorance. It means criticising the nation (for being capitalist, anti-LGBT) and supporting its international actions for anti-imperialism. This does not apply to Conservatives because the US imposed cultural imperialism onto the third world, thus making the third world less likely to adopt LGBT ideas because it is seen as a “western” thing. You’re comparing two different things. In either case, we should combat the anti-LGBT sentiment.
Follower counts mean nothing. Just because more people follow it doesn’t mean it’s good. PSL has actually been doing stuff, what has Hinkle been doing? Pretty much nothing. He tried to communicate with the third world but it results in failure because no one cares about him.
No. This is no different from lesser-evilism. MAGA Communists don’t even have their own party. They just tell you to vote Donald Trump because he is supposedly “anti-imperialist”.
I’ve seen this argument before and it can be debunked by stating it can have the opposite reaction. Sure it may bring new “leftists”, but it would also dissuade people from “leftism”. Hence why I don’t support the DSA or Bernie, especially given both of them support imperialism.
Yes. We should. And we did. And we will continue to do so. Patsocism isn’t a dying trend, but it isn’t necessarily one that gains traction with conservatives. You can literally think the same way. Conservatives don’t like Communism. Therefore Conservatives won’t support MAGA Communism. Therefore this movement, as big as it sounds, it’s a fringe and extremist group, one which requires further analysis than looking at the surface.
Again, as a person just hearing about this guy, I am reading his quote and reading what you say he means and it seems to be the opposite of what he says,“It was Vladimir Lenin who would send party members to the meetings of the fascist and anti-semetic Black Hundreds peasant groups in order to disrupt them and win people away from their reactionary worldview by teaching them Marxism.”
I don’t understand how you could read that and say ,“what he REALLY is saying is that we should integrate into fascist groups and adopt their perspectives.” He is blatantly calling them fascists and saying we should be convincing them to steer from reaction and become Marxists, not at all what you are claiming. You seem to already have a pretty cemented perspective on this topic but as someone just getting introduced to it I can’t help but feel like it is weird to read that quote and get what seems to be the exact opposite from it.
As far as the social conservatism goes, they are appealing to people who already have those sentiments but bringing them into a frame of reference that is anti-imperialist. The other option is that they just remain where they are at, but more reactionary through the already existing status quo in the US. If this group of white cis chronically online people wants to try and convince rednecks in the US to not beat the war drums against China and Russia, I don’t really see that as a bad thing. They aren’t promoting anything worse than what is being promoted by the people who already influence this demographic, but the majority of the things they are introducing in a digestible way to this group are things we all agree with. If they didn’t somewhat appeal to the “US identity” and all the chauvinism that comes with it, the messages wouldn’t get through the gates, but could they be inoculating progressive ideas into the white working class by not presenting in a way which totally alienates them from even beginning the conversation?
I’m not so quick to say that isn’t possible, and as someone who is an ML that has been actively organizing in the US for a decade, I don’t feel so quick to write it off because honestly I don’t see anything else really working very well in this country yet. I see some union gains here and there but unions aren’t inherently progressive either, and in our country have a long history of being reactionary as well. I’m not suggesting that we leave the orgs we currently work with to promote MAGA communism, but what I’m thinking is:
If Trump is going to be president anyway, is it bad to have a group already interacting with his base in a way they are open to listening to, but potentially driving them away from imperialism? It’s not like we are actually going to organize revolution in the next few years, nor will we organize any real leftist taking institutional power from within, so whats the problem with these guys trying to convince settlers to back off on China and Russia and place the blame with billionaires? What harm does it do that isn’t already being done, and does it have the potential to actually sway any of these people away from supporting the US to continue being imperialist?
Speaking of Trump, I haven’t seen anything of these guys saying to vote for Trump, can you show me that?
In regards to follower count and some of your last statements, I don’t think we can honestly look at the state of the US psyche right now and say that influencers don’t have an impact on the perspectives and beliefs of the average person and that having a larger platform doesn’t increase that impact. They seem to have just launched some sort of org recently, I watched Hinkle’s speech from it and he had the crowd of white people cheering Hamas and listening to quotes from Lenin. We’ll see what they do with that org but I don’t think it is safe to say these people won’t be able to influence the Trump base in the same way the Tea Party and other groups influenced the Republicans and decided their policies in the past. If they sincere about even half their positions, particularly the anti-imperialist ones, this would certainly be better than having on anti-imperialist positions within the Trump base, no?
I consider DSA and Bernie to be reactionaries at this point but I can’t say I don’t know many good comrades who went from apolitical -> DSA/Bernie -> MLs and I see the value of that.
I don’t disagree with the quote. What I disagree with is this statement: “If Modern day Western communists lived in Russia they would have tweeted pictures of the Bolsheviks reaching out to the black hundreds and demanded that people cancel them for it.”. Source This is what Smith was advocating for. It is not a question of having a “pretty cemented perspective on this topic” but how words are used. This is not semantics. This is just what reaching out means. What Eddie Smith argues is what I said earlier, so I won’t repeat it again.
Not all anti-imperialists should be supported, quote Lenin;
Supporting conservatives for “anti-imperialism” is not anti-imperialism but rather the opposite. You are directly siding with conservatives rather than the general masses (or in this case the proletariat). You completely ignored my statement which was this:
I ask again, do you not want us to have rights?
What identity should communists appeal to? The US identity is born out of a white settler identity. That is a fact which most settlers refuse to understand. Just making white settlers support Russia or China isn’t enough to rid themselves of their reactionary nature. Conservatives (and Liberals too) need to understand that they live on Stolen land and thus they need to support decolonisation in full. For a US communist working for a decade, this is shocking to hear. Instead of paralleling communist ideas, convincing the masses that socialism is superior to them, you instead compromise your position with conservatives. There shouldn’t be any compromises when your own ideology is at risk with such compromise.
Next I see you wallow in your defeatism with: “It’s not like we are actually going to organize revolution in the next few years”, “honestly I don’t see anything else really working very well in this country yet”. What is it are you doing then? You see the troubles within your very country yet you don’t fight back? What have you been doing for a whole decade to let yourself wallow in this?
Are they truly going to blame the billionaires? No they will blame the so-called woke left which is what we are. They argue that ideas like transgenderism are bourgeois, and yet you seem totally quiet about this. With anti-LGBT and racist sentiment, you don’t care as long as it is “progressive”.
Many patriotic socialists call Trump “anti-imperialist”. He isn’t. The strategy of Patsocs is that they vote for the Republicans as they are also “anti-imperialist” and back MAGA. However some patriotic socialists argue there are RINOs! So even if I haven’t shown that they will vote Trump, they still argue that Trump is “anti-imperialist” and so is MAGA “Communism” in general.
“They quote Lenin so they must be anti-imperialist!” I’ve seen many revisionist organisations quote Lenin in part or not at all or leave parts out. This doesn’t mean they are anti-imperialist in any way.
I have also seen conservatives scream against Bernie as he is a socialist. Good for you that comrades seen Bernie and became MLs. What I care for is the opposite reaction which can also be caused. Conservatives are against Bernie and thus they won’t be MLs, or at best Patriotic “Socialists” or there will be MLs who are sympathetic to the Democrats or Bernie just because he has some “socialist values”. You may not be well in-touch with Patriotic Socialism, but if you are a US communist, please, please understand it is a backwards ideology that must not be supported.
I don’t have it in front of me but I remember a Stalin quote saying something quite different in the case of supporting anti-imperialism in West Asia despite the social conservatism. I haven’t suggested supporting conservatives as you claim, just that the MAGA communists trying to appeal to conservatives to bring them to the left (their stated goals) doesn’t seem like the building of a reactionary army or adding momentum to fascism. It is at worse changing nothing about the current political landscape and at best introducing otherwise politically undeveloped workers who default into an inherited ideology to some new ideas which aren’t all bad on their surface.
I’ve never suggested supporting these groups, but you respond as if I have and then question my character which has nothing to do with an analysis of the topic at hand. Surely you aren’t suggesting that marginalized people don’t have rights because MAGA communists are trying to appeal to settler workers, and I haven’t in my cursory overview of them seen anyone calling for such things. Accusing other people of wanting to deny marginalized people rights for trying to have a discussion around the characteristics of a fringe political movement is inflammatory at best and unhinged at worst. The other person in this thread communicates without all the hubris while still having the exact same positions you have, I’d recommend looking to their writing for some examples of how to communicate in a way that is actually effective at getting your points across.
You are editorializing what I said in order to fit in into your already predesignated conceptions of what this topic contains and what people who are participating in it without unquestionably adopting your view points must believe. I didn’t claim that conservatives will suddenly be cleansed of their reactionary nature by adopting stances that don’t promote war against China or Russia. I’m asking why some MLs here are so scared of what they claim is an irrelevant fringe group for trying to appeal to people that have the same identities as they do to take anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist positions. Wouldn’t that be better than them having imperialist and capitalist positions? Would it be any worse for the US political landscape for them to try?
I’ve made it clear that I don’t believe anyone at our stage of political development should spend time organizing with or for those positions, groups or people, I’m just confused about why you all seem to be so afraid of them to the point that you say they are nobodies but also put a lot of energy into making sure everyone knows how much you hate them. In a country full of actual volunteer feds in every workplace and community regardless of demographic, I don’t see why these guys are getting you all riled up. It’s not MAGA communists spreading anti-China propaganda from the left, its Anarchists and Maoists and DemSocs. It’s not MAGA communists calling to kill “tankies,” and bar them from organizing spaces it’s Anarchists and Maoists and DemSocs. I’ve never met a MAGA communist but I’ve seen a lot of Anarchist and Maoist and DemSoc wreckers co-opt movements and struggles and turn them into popularity contests, social clubs and cults of personality. I don’t think MAGA communists are the most correct group in the US left, but as far as incorrect left groups go, they are certainly not doing nearly the amount of harm I see Anarchists, Maoists, and DemSocs doing to the political landscape and conversations in the US. They barely seem to be relevant to the left or organizing spaces at all, and instead are just spreading positions that mostly align with our positions to people who we would never take the time to try and educate or political develop.
Conservatives and Liberals already understand that they live on stolen land, and they also know that the people they stole it from make up less than 3% of the population, so they already have accepted that it makes no sense to turn over control of the state to such a minority of people, even if they are the victims of settler colonialism. You are saying that you think a bunch of settler labor aristocracy must be convinced by communists to become supporters of decolonialism which really shows an idealist take, “the people MUST be convinced to believe what I believe because it is correct,” which flatly ignores the material conditions of those very people. Just because it is the right position doesn’t mean it will ever take hold in this country, and while I still organize in groups that promote it, I don’t see any clear way that these groups are going to gain traction amongst a population of people who already think the concept is totally illogical nonsense. I personally promote the sovereignty of Indigenous people and New Afrikans but that doesn’t mean I see any way we will ever get there at this point, nor have I seen anyone suggest doing anything except what we’ve already been doing which hasn’t really proven to be effective. The best avenue I can imagine is that if Indgenous and New Afrikan groups are incredibly organized and well armed when the inevitable collapse in the US happens, they might be able to carve out some small enclaves to wage a protracted war from, but that has nothing to do with convincing settlers to get behind decolonialism at all.
there is a LARPy privilege in your tone which I see some online leftists do and I just don’t get it. feels like they are trying to channel Lenin or something, real weird to me.
purporting that a sincere communist who has spent thousands of hours organizing in streets and workplaces with the masses is somehow wrong for having a sober analysis of the conditions of this nation, and that instead we must blindly commit ourselves to the idea that somehow the non-existent left in the settler-colonial labor aristocracy of the imperial core is going to manufacture a revolution before the process of dedollarization and shift towards a multi-polar world forces a collapse of the US economy which results in some sort of fascist take over and/or civil war scenario can only come from a place of privilege that I have never had and can not relate to. I am a materialist, and if you think acknowledging in the reality of the conditions I live in is somehow wrong, I would say that is a form of liberalism that needs to be thoroughly investigated.
It seems as if you are suggesting that somehow me and others like me not “fighting back” hard enough is the reason why the left is failing in the US as if there are any examples of capitalist or colonial nations having a successful workers revolution. I think it is really foolish to assert that fighting back in and of itself means success is assured. If the conditions are not ripe for these ideas to spread, there needs to be another phase of development first. The CPC did not have a socialist revolution before they led a New Democratic revolution, for example. Meeting people where they are at and guiding them towards socialism is different than standing at the end of the road screaming “THIS IS WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE” to a bunch of people so far away that they don’t even recognize your existence.
they do blame the billionaires from what I have seen. I haven’t seen any of the other things you’ve claimed here and have acknowledged this is new content to me but again will point out that your consistent editorializing and knee-jerk presumptions about my positions “you don’t care about this, you want that, etc” just undermine your entire argument and present as anti-social. No one wants to be spoken to like that and if you are actually a sincere communist I don’t know why your default stance is to be inflammatory and vitriolic instead of being amicable and pleasant to interact with. Saying “you, you, you,” especially when making up really outlandish positions that you are projecting onto the other person is just not it.
And that somehow applies to the United States as well? Two different regions with two different material conditions. Why do you insist on downplaying MAGA Communism and its potential effects? It does bring people toward Fascism by introducing a “Socialist” mask, not unlike the Nazis or more close in representation the Strasserists. Also it’s interesting you didn’t address the Lenin quote. You just said there exists a quote which Stalin said it debunks that. Both quotes can be true simultaneously as they are not mutually exclusive. You still haven’t considered that quote. Again, just because they claim to be “anti-imperialist” does not mean we should support them.
I accuse you because you seem to downplay these groups rather than uphold them. You forgot the “critical” part of “Critical Support”. Also I never said that marginalised peoples don’t have rights. I said this: “I ask again, do you not want us to have rights?” I address you directly because you seem to want to downplay marginalised groups in the name of “Anti-imperialism”. You claim it to be a “discussion” around the characteristics of fringe political movements, which is incorrect. What you are advocating for is downplaying the fascistic nature of Patsocism even if that is not your very intention.
I write in a different way from him. That’s perfectly fine. I do tend to accuse you a lot but that’s because I tend to read between the lines more often and tell you what is wrong. I don’t want to become him. Nor will I ever. I don’t understand how that is relevant to our discussion.
Maybe you didn’t, but you did claim that introducing Conservatives to supporting China and Russia would suddenly make them more “anti-imperialist”: “As far as the social conservatism goes, they are appealing to people who already have those sentiments but bringing them into a frame of reference that is anti-imperialist.” Why did I call this removing reactionary sentiment? Because anti-imperialism is inherently progressive (i.e. progresses towards socialism). Yet their reactionary nature still remains.
Let’s just say Conservatives (for some unknown reason) are willing to support China and Russia. Why do they do this? Because they do it for their own benefit. They support China and Russia only, and only because it’s contrarian to the Democrat position of opposing China and Russia. Is it truly anti-imperialist if they do not actually care for the support of a nation? Furthermore, would these positions further cement their conservative positions? It most likely will. Conservatives rarely change their stance, if ever, because they benefit the most from the capitalist system, or they believe in fundamental ideas because they are usually petit-bourgeois or live in rural regions. Of course this is all hypothetical. Most Conservatives don’t even support Communism, and MAGA Communism isn’t a popular trend with Conservatives.
I’m willing to concede that, yes, the Patsocs (at least in this discussion) are an extremist group. But just because they do little damage doesn’t mean they don’t do damage at all. Overall in the grand scheme of things, they are just a rehash of what Lenin called ‘social-chauvinists’ in Russia. If Lenin needed to tackle the social-chauvinists of the Great Russians, then we must tackle the fascistic nature of the White Settlers. Both are similar (in fact they are the same, with only the difference being location), so we must tackle the latter.
Yes. We can tackle both. We must put efforts on both sides as they are left and right deviations (of the extreme kind). Unfortunately you fall into the right deviationist bracket by assuming that Patsocs don’t do as much damage. They can, and often do. Again, struggle against both sides. You forget to understand that MAGA Communists tail behind the masses, following their every word even if it is not right. That is not what marxists do. Marxists must convince the masses of socialism. Tailing behind them won’t work.
You’d be surprised how even ‘socialists’ make mistakes of people not apparently being settlers just because they were born it. Many Americans think they are not settlers. In fact, they deserve to live on the land they have because they were born in it. For the minority that do think they live on stolen land, they think Settler Colonialism is long gone or something along those lines.
I never said that. I said we must convince the masses that socialism would be more advantageous for them and thus they would be able to support socialism. However with those very people, we must convince them of their settler mindset, and make them understand that they live on stolen land. It is a fact that they live on Stolen Land, yet if they ever feel that their safety is threatened, they are settlers which do not want to support socialism. It is not only I who believe it is correct, but Lenin too. Indigenous people have a right to self-determination.
If it won’t ever take hold in this country then the United States would remain a settler nation even under “socialism”. There is no socialism where the oppressor nation continues to exist and oppress the oppressed nations. You’re being defeatist again. In fact you are supporting settlers with this argument. Decolonialism must be supported by all settlers, full stop. If that cannot be achieved, then we will not have socialism. It is not optional to skip Decolonialism. By skipping it, we do not have socialism.
I am just asking you questions regarding your defeatist mindset. Is that a fair question to ask? If not, why?
Whatever is channeling within your post is doomerism. Do you not have a sense of revolutionary optimism? I am not saying we will manufacture a revolution quickly, rather that we need revolutionary optimism such that we can see work being done. Just because you claim to be a materialist, does that mean you must channel your doomerist attitude?
I never said this. I also never said anything in that paragraph.
Patsocs tend to poke fun at “wokeists” i.e. LGBT people because they think transgenderism is bourgeois. It has plagued the patsoc movement which we must consider. Again you seem to downplay this. Is it because you do not know? Or is it because you have underlying intentions? I don’t know either way but you are downplaying. I address you directly because that is the purpose of your argument. You seem to downplay marginalised people and downplay Patsocs as well for the name of “anti-imperialism”. If you don’t know anything about Patsocs, read this Prolewiki article as a first basis.
Hahaha, it was exactly because of the AI slop at the end that I just had to post it.