THIS kind of republican.
26+6=1 tiocfaidh ár lá
(I am more an INLA/IRSP man myself, the ML wing of the Irish Republican struggle. There is no denying the powerful impact of this picture however).
Inshallah
joined 1 year ago
This is the second old thread I've bumped but I searched r/communism to see what people's thoughts and experiences were here on Lemmygrad. Not long ago I had some free time and added some new books to my collection, mainly some of Stalin's writings that I hadn't read and I went along with my partner who was working to stay in the middle of nowhere - perfect for study. But I wanted a platform for asking questions/aiding my study and checked out reddit for the first time. Was banned in r/communism fairly quickly for a couple of days for helping a newbie with some suggestions for reading on a certain topic which was basically some ML theory supplemented with a couple of texts that were from bourgeois media sources and a book in which Chomsky had written a fairly decent account of the basic history of the topic, but these sources were relevant and helpful in understanding the topic in question (I can't remember what the topic was).
Later I was banned for quite a well-thought out ML analyses/comment in a thread that was "upvoted" many times but the mods didn't like it and banned me without giving a reason. I saw other subreddits and found the "you're not a real communist until you've been banned from r/communism" thing being said and found decent comrades but initially I felt really sh*tty about it. It started to make sense to me in that they embody the worst stereotypes about "communists": disagreeable, hostile and all the rest of it which obviously isn't true at all given how much of our work consists of education - education never ends. I saw other people suggest that it was a fed-run operation to turn people - especially newbies - away from understanding communism/communist theory and to put them off entirely. If it could even make me momentarily second guess myself then I can't imagine what kind of effect this would have on someone just starting out.
But yes, fed-run and they have an unreasonably dogmatic rule which is something like: "mandatory: read Settlers" as in you must read what is a disputed work or you are not welcome.
For such a hostile environment supposedly run by and for communists, I can only understand it as being designed to put people off of engaging with communist theory/praxis etc. and this makes me think that its a psyop/fed run or whatever. The J. Sakai thing being "mandatory" was a major sign that something was wrong IMO, regardless of what comrades think of that text.
Sorry to bump this thread - I am new here. Have been listening to 1Dime have a very long discussion with The Marxist Project (the latter of which has some useful introductory videos on aspects of Marxism and Leninism). Some of the takes in this video are quite negative and seem to at times sound fatalist and "Trotskyist" also. The intention of the discussion is to chart the course of the collapse of the USSR without adhering to one tendency, which I think is a highly difficult, essentially "academic" task in itself.
This is the video - History of the USSR: What Went Wrong? ([1Dime radio] Ft.@themarxistproject) - part 1 anyway - the whole discussion is 5 hours long and I'm unsure if its worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nEZuVMjug
I know that I am replying to a 2 year old comment but I think that these patsoc types have made more significant moves into spaces outside of their cultish beginnings (i.e., not being from the USA, "MAGA communism" only became apparent to me recently and I joined Lemmygrad because I was so frustrated with seeing "communist" channels on Telegram, for example, allowing this kind of shit and seeing one supposedly "ML" party from the UK (which as an aside I believe to be run by spooks) embrace the "ideology" and to essentially jump on the bandwagon in a truly grotesque, opportunistic move in a desire to be relevant and perhaps gain some new members. I can't see any other justification for their actions. They make the excuse that the "MAGA" movement contains proletarian elements, which is true, but this is territory similar to suggesting that the "national socialists" contained proletarian elements, or the Union of Fascists of Britain and we saw how that played out. I reminded them that Stalin saw the "national socialists" for what they were before WW2 started, as did most communists I am sure, and also that one of the most significant moments in the history of the proletariat in 20th century England was the Battle of Cable Street, in which antifascists and ordinary members of the public came together to beat the shit out of Oswald Mosley's thugs. Antifascism has been a longstanding current in Britain generally, and to see what is essentially a fascist movement being supported by "Marxist-Leninists" is a disgrace and should not be allowed.
But my main point is that they seemed to have spread. I was fooled into entering spaces before I realised that these movements were so significant. I have seen people discuss them as terminally online but the attempted "synthesis" (again, grotesque: apologies to Marx, Lenin and of course Hegel) of the Cult of Maga with "communism" is a potential danger which cannot be slept on. MAGA fascists were highly visible and helped to bring fascists out of the woodworks. It could well be that the "MAGA communists" do the same.
It seems to me that the whole thing is a psyop designed to discredit communist theory and "communists", given the significant emergence of proletarians in the USA discovering Marxist/Marxist-Leninist theory over the last ten years or so. But I do believe that it has the potential to become a more significant threat to being a mere online cult of wackos that are likely being manipulated by some kind of COINTELPRO style psyop into accepting distorted ideas about communism.
It should be noted that I haven't seen these people defend Israel but they do focus much energy on the proxy war in Ukraine and this was in part why I started to pay attention to some of the articles they put out, coming from places like The Grayzone, but they hardly seem to talk about Palestine at all, which is of course an international emergency requiring the attention of communists around the world as I write this. Also, my only exposure to this is via channels which proclaim to be "communist" but are indeed "patsocs" and who, in these channels, "defend" and promote "MAGA communism", as I said, to the point that a self-proclaimed "Marxist-Leninist" party in my country jumping on this bandwagon (they are a very small party and are highly reactionary, especially on issues such as trans issues, but they claim to uphold an anti-revisionist line, yet are apparently funded by the state apparatus and I hear this from an old comrade who is approaching 90 and has heard and seen it all before. This party split from the original ML party of the Comintern due to revisionism in the main body of the party, which does have serious problems in itself. Anyway I am rambling).