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(Thread here: https://nitter.fdn.fr/RodericDay/status/1666063389733298176#m) They have some decent stuff, but they are also tailist patsocs. It’s probably better to just read the Black Agenda Report article than buy the book.

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[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

MWM (Eddie) and Rainer Shea are crypto patsocs. They don't believe in Land Back and Black Liberation, they believe Settler Colonialism in the US is over and thus the decolonial movement doesn't apply.

They are dogmatists who refuse to do any historical research of North America, and are class reductionists (who ignore that racism and colonialism are class systems in the first place).

[–] cucumovirus@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've noticed a few times that decolonial points get brought up, specifically in relation to US settlers today, the comments expressing these ideas tend to get quite a few downvotes without anyone really offering a substantive critique. I find it a bit worrying but I don't know if it's some external brigading or if some of the users here hold these views.

In any case, like you said, the US is very much still a white-supremacist settler state. There is a very real material basis leading to differences in interests between racial groups in the US. This kind of divide makes it very difficult if not impossible to rely on a predominantly white working class to be a revolutionary force. There's a reason that most of the theoretical development and all the revolutionary movements in the US have been led by minorities and the conditions to change that aren't there yet. Not even close.

spoiler

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like confused men they don't understand that the system of oppression can hurt them while still overwhelmingly benefit them

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I also want to point out that many of our comrades here who disagree with our takes on Decolonization are being good party members and holding the lines that their and many parties around the world are holding, hope in the American workers. But these parties especially the ones in the settler colonies of North America have not done the necessary investigation of their settler society and land and resource theft. Many of them are petit/semi (landed) bourgeois, educated, and through this have privileged entrance into Marxist theory, me included. We know that Lenin and the colonized comrades had an uphill battle against European Chauvinism within the international Communist movement which is what crystalized Marxism Leninism in the first place.

There is no reason to abstract internal colonization as either finished or different from external colonization, even calling it internal colonization makes it seem like the solution for the colonized Africans and indigenous nations is to absorb them into the settler nation. No, the settler states exist on stolen resources that they use to dominate the rest of the world, but its connection to wealth is here, inside its borders. It needs settlers to take land and hold it for the bourgeoisie to later expropriate. It needs settler dominated unions to build and work the environmentally extractive and damaging infrastructure that only benefits the settler masses. I posted about armed indigenous resistance (backed by the Panthers) to racist fishing enclosures in the 1960s that sparked the American Indian Movement, and that post had far less traction than this one about MWM.

American comrades, find out what tribes inhabited the places you have physical connections to. Learn how they came to no longer own that territory and why you and your people now do. You will learn far more about capitalism and America than through studying other movements, because our conditions are not the same. Apply the methodologies of MLism to the history of this continent, stop importing the solutions from others.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think this is a severe misrepresentation of their position. They have each expressed support for both of the things you claim they don't believe in. What they have criticized are liberal versions of those ideas, that is the misuse of those slogans to advance a neoliberal agenda under the guise of radlib language.

[–] relay@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes this article seems to summarize the Midwestern Marx group's schtik.

Tactically for the movement as a whole it is good to have Americans be more anti imperialist and unionizing in order to undermine the power of empire and funnel people to a more marxist lenninist way of thinking. I don't think they want the disaster of unions for whites.

MWM doesn't say much about marginalized people other than say that they are not revolutionary subjects for their minority status, but by their status as workers. They are very much in favor of AES countries. There is the linguistic criticism that Americans can be proud of the historical workers struggles without opposing their American identity. It seems that it is a linguistic strategy to not trigger barriers to conversion.

Is the criticism that they post very long winded stuff and still don't mention how the secondary contradictions of ablism, anti LGBTQ, and white supremecy are superstructural elements that support the base of capitalism?

From an ideological funnel perspective I don't think that they are bad, but useful to the socialist cause. If there were an actual party with power and they were doing what they are doing now, I'd say that they serve the forces of reaction because their kind of discourse isn't necessary when a communist party with effective power exists. In that situation that party would need to push against our old superstructure even further with a cultural revolution.

For those that can be radicalized with compassion, use one kind of rhetoric. For those that can be radicalized with self interest use another. The core of the party must though be those that are compassionate either initially or eventually.

It is sus platforming Haz or Maupin though.

Unless you are a third worldist that thinks that the USA needs to be militarily destroyed by the periphery nations, I don't think they are inherently opposed to the building of the socialist movement in the United States. Tell me where I am wrong.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The US will be destroyed by the fourth worlders. I've posted elsewhere in this thread why American Communists absolutely need to be decolonial revolutionaries. MWM meeting white supremacists halfway leads them away from the decolonial movement, let's them keep their reactionary views, and puts them into opposition to our liberation. Instead of platforming indigenous and Black revolutionary voices they party with white supremacists like Haz and Hinkle.

[–] relay@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Supporting indigenous people's liberation is certainly morally correct. The way about linguistically supporting it must appeal to the interests of the people you are trying to convince though. We can talk about how we can use indigenous knowledge to have a healthier relationship with the land and live happier and healthier lives. We can utilize the treaties as a means to an end to give rental properties on their land back to the tribes as a means to undo the exploititative rent of corporations like black rock.

What does being "destroyed by fourth worlders" mean exactly? They are locked out of power to destroy the country without help from colonizers thus proclaiming such a strategy is immaterial.

If we see all workers as workers regardless of background and organize in such a manner, but listen to the marginalized about the ways that the capitalist superstructure is perpetuated within our new organizations in order to take actions to meet their needs.

Who they platform is sus though.

I think the core issue is that the working class in the USA is having trouble conceptualizing how to actually achieve power.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's nothing to do with morals. It's ending the colonial relationship to land and depriving the settlers of landed property rights. The struggle for indigenous sovereignty won't end until this happens so it doesn't matter if white Americans build their national socialism they'll have to fight off attempts of the indigenous and Black nations asserting their sovereignty.

Frankly we are soon heading towards the settler nation abandoning large swathes of territory due to their own economic practices. California was settled by the refugees of the self imposed Dust Bowls who were given Californian farms managed by Japanese migrants who were interned by the settler states during WW2. There is no new West to bail them out of their contradictions. It's not listening to indigenous, it's working for them. The decolonial government will take sovereignty over the lands out of the hands of the colonizer class. Political supremacy of the settlers is a continuation of white supremacy. I have no interest in respectability politics if the audience is settler nationalist, we do not politic for the settlers, this is not their liberation (nor was American Liberty calling for the emancipation of slaves). There will be millions of Americans who will follow us, I'm sure of it, but we are right to select them ourselves, and set standards for working together.

We are not trying to convince reactionaries of our cause, we will work with those who are not. Those who'd rather be approachable to the reactionaries than work with colonized revolutionaries are preparing themselves for the dustbin of history.

Someone recently said something like (paraphrased): Many of us Communists will end up going to prison. For you White Communists, you will be forced to chose between the White gangs and the Communists/Brown folks. If you think there is tactics in pretending to be a white supremacist to save yourself, you are not a Communist, you are an enemy.

[–] relay@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm talking about now. I agree with you about the future.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes and you misunderstand. The indigenous people are not marginalized groups of Americans. They are not Americans, they are their own nations, their own political and cultural bodies. Black Liberation comes in the form of becoming an independent nation and indigenous liberation comes in the form of total sovereignty over stolen land. We literally cannot wait for settlers and white supremacists to change their minds and treat us better, we will fight for sovereignty with or without them. Asking us to be subjugated into a settler socialism is assimilation and genocide. We will have white allies, not white saviors.

Anarchism and herrenvolk democracy cannot guarantee our safety and emancipation.

If you believe that a Vanguard can lead a revolution then you must understand that the political beginnings of a Vanguard confederation of decolonial states is a much more realistic and material goal than performing a cultural revolution on American settlers while still under bourgeois rule. How could we ever know if a white supremacists has changed their views? Is it their views that matter or their ability to exercise bigotry through access and adjacency to power?

[–] thefreepenguinalt@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is news to you? Midwestern have always been patsocs, and Liger even recommended Maupin's book as well as admitting to doing a collab with InfraHaz.

[–] thefreepenguinalt@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the 3 ppl who downvoted me are patsocs :p

[–] CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Looks like you shamed one of them successfully lol

[–] cucumovirus@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That whole thread by Roderic is great and really digs into the problems with midwesternmarx and this book.

They've been flirting with patsocs for a while, but it looks like when pressed about it now they are doubling down. Recently they had some friendly interactions with Haz even.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nick from RBN invited Eddie and Haz on after Eddie debated Vaush. Nick b talking to LaRouchites on his show so at this point I'm not surprised. These guys are all grifters.

[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know about the other two but I wouldn't call Nick a grifter

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He's a journalist/podcaster that relies on audience donations to stay in business. He may not be a grifter in intentions but he relies on grifters to grow his platform. He's ultimately a tailist, but what's the qualitative difference between a tailist and a grifter?

[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In what sense is he a tailist? As far as I know, relying on donations is fairly common for independent journalists and political activists, and he isn't exactly making a lot of money

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

His content sits almost entirely within the corporate media landscape, as in he's either siding with one or reacting to it.

He's outside of the democrats now but still limits himself to discussions within that space.

[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is certainly plenty of content discussing that, but it's far from everything they cover. Unless you've heard some unacceptable stance of his (regarding landback or something similarly important) that I haven't, I don't see the reasoning for him being a tailist or a grifter, assuming you don't have this view of more or less any Marxist who's primarily a journalist or pundit

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Uncritical platforming of Haz is the most recent example. He called everyone who criticized him for that Liberals. Haz is anti-Land Back and a settler nationalist.

And look, I overall have a positive view of RBN, but Nick is the one I'm most worried about. It's coming to the point where he's either in it for clout or fails to differentiate clout from correctness.