My thoughts on the western online left after some days on Twitter 🤮
My thoughts on the western online left after some days on Twitter 🤮
And I thought Reddit was bad...
I want to preface with this: 1. I'm not western. I don't think anyone in this world would consider my country part of the west or the imperial core. I'm from the global south and working class. 2. I'm young and only a couple of years ago started engaging with marxist theory and as a consequence the online western left. And 3. Everything here is my opinion and some details escape me due to the fact that I don't follow the discussion on the internet 100%. While I spend a lot of time online, most of that time is not wasted on Twitter or Reddit or what not. That being said, this is an insomnia induced rant aimed mainly to my american comrades, but anyone else in the western/anglo sphere also can take something useful from here. I don't know.
I started following western/internet leftists on twitter recently as a consequence of me making a twitter account. I've come to the conclusion that the western/western adjacent left (ie. All the anglosphere) is completely useless staying on the internet in any capacity. American and european communists debate the dumbest possible shit and reach no useful results. Motherfuckers agree on 99% of things and start attacking each other like rabid dogs for the stupid 1% in which they disagree. I wouldn't even call it infighting because that would compare it with the debates and disagreements of the historic left like the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks were debating and discussing actually important thing while actually doing something, while going to the people and organizing. Imbeciles do jackshit and pretend that by attacking someone else on twitter they are achieving something valuable or reaching to the people and making a change. Their "propaganda" is garbage. While the people that actually do something to bring about the revolution aren't concerned by their idiocy. The example of this are the "discussions" that a lot of "leftists" have had with Ben Norton recently and that is what compeled me to write this rant.
In my opinion Ben is the best journalist out there. Both with the ideological conviction and the actual ability to do the job of journalism with integrity and courage to denounce the capitalist rulers, and his work clearly shows it. Similar to the people at The Grayzone but actually a communist. And by the way, it is clear that that is the line along which he "broke" with Blumenthal.
Ben, having seen with his own eyes the hell brought to Latin America by the United States (living in Nicaragua), naturally empathizes with the struggle and the outlook of the people towards the US. But people on twitter still attacks him or disagree with him on completely delusional matters.
One example: Noah from Midwestern Marx. I love Modwestern Marx. Carlos and Eddy are some of the best propagandists you americans have right now. But twitter really damages any possibility of reaching the masses significantly. his disagreement with Ben is about the US flag. Ben is on the opinion (rightly so), thay the US flag represents terror, war, imperialism, death, to the people's of the world. And that US communists should NOT use a symbol like that to rally the people. Noah disagrees and says that using that symbol has been democratically elected by the people (?). Not only that, he states (without a grain of evidency and clearly not even listening or reading what Ben actually says) that Ben is "reading too much Sakai and not enough Lenin"... WHAT THE FUCK?! And then he doubles down and defends the use of that flag by some indigenous people in the US. Needless to say, but I'm saying it anyways, colonized people holding their colonizer's flag doesn't make it a good flag.
Some others, like Xiangyu of all people, post stupid shit like "Oppose the Nortons" (mf you are not Mao) or call Ben a radlib, and being rude in general. Straight up infantile shit. And oh, while also self righteously calling people that disagree with him "degenerates" all while saying he laments Dugin's daughter assassination (a whole other can of worms).
I hate that that is the state of the left in the US and adjacent. And I hate that I saw that shit willingly. If you american communists don't get to work and do a revolution soon, the rest of the world will, with or without your support, and things will get ugly, like, really ugly. For us, but specially for you.
I post this all not because I think the details matter, they don't. But to illustrate the point that as long as you keep falling to the trap of social media like twitter (it makes you angry by design), you won't achieve anything. And the people that will do something will be the worst elements of the western society, either on the right or pretending to be left (coff coff Maupin). The west, and specially the US, have a way of shaping your mind that I have seen too many times, both online and offline. Shake that shit out of you. It is making you inhumane and ineffective, and the bourgeoisie is winning thanks to that.
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Not only that, he states (without a grain of evidency and clearly not even listening or reading what Ben actually says) that Ben is “reading too much Sakai and not enough Lenin”…
I'mma keep it a buck with you if I hear somebody really fix their face to say that, they getting cut the fuck off. That kneejerk response in anyone anglo-adjacent is exactly why I take a third worldist position-- I no longer believe the 'American left' is capable of anything but being the lapdogs for empire.
If you american communists don’t get to work and do a revolution soon, the rest of the world will, with or without your support, and things will get ugly, like, really ugly. For us, but specially for you.
It isn't going to happen, specifically because Anglos(and those who gleefully tapdance for them) will relinquish nothing that revolution requires one relinquish. I hope the outside world bulldozes us; I hope for my ashes to be mixed with the soil of the land my ancestors were stolen to build. Because y'know what, that's the closest that Any of my people will ever get-- or anyone else the Anglos have ever exploited, for that matter-- to owning the land we cultivated for the crackers.
I hope for my ashes to be mixed with the soil of the land my ancestors were stolen to build.
I would hope that socialists would at least be aware enough of the culture to be open to reparations.
You'd hope so! You'd also be very, very wrong. The vast majority of American 'leftists' I've spoken to are the type to "there's no race problem, just a class problem" on some 1920s IWW shit.
An interesting take I've seen from some marxists is the idea that "race is class". It more or less functions as its own class system. Gender is also a kind of class. It gets close to the idea of intersectionality but hasn't been co-opted to be toothless yet.
See, I like this a lot; because it acknowledges what I've been coming to think of as axes of class. It was never just one class-based aspect we were supposed to be looking to, I genuinely think there's a 'gap' in the theory there that's never really been investigated-- at least, not by those who are more dogmatic than they'd like to believe.
Much to the chagrin of white communists; intersectionality has a bulletproof point that class has several dimensions.
Capital is ultimately a system of who works and who doesnt have to work and live passively.
Zoom out and there are other systems of "captial" such as systems of racialization and gender conditioning. Those exchanges are as immutable as having to pay rent.
Whites just want the easy solution without having a reckoning of what revolution genuinely asks of them to do.
Sakai was not wrong. But it is up to white workers tonprove Sakai wrong. It can be done; but they actually have to do it.