'Marxist-Leninist' on r/communism (Reddit) praised fascists to attack my article lol
'Marxist-Leninist' on r/communism (Reddit) praised fascists to attack my article lol
In their first comment too. I mean I know Reddit is a cesspool and I know r/communism is Gonzalo Central, but damn, it's infected far. I went back on the platform to promote my articles because despite the malding, it drives a lot of traffic lol. Otherwise I would never touch that website (though the TrueAnon subreddit loves them and it creates interesting discussions, I'm not gonna lump them in with the rest of Reddit like that).
I forced that person in a struggle session over their take and they moved the goalposts until they decided to disengage lol. But it's okay, they know what they said.
If you want to read the exchange: https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/182vnkk/the_end_of_ukraine_and_after_the_war_in_ukraine/kalpc0v/?context=10000
They are just so unpleasant. I remember when I was a baby leftist trying to learn more, and feeling so distressed in every interaction I had with /r/communism, that it probably delayed my progress by a few months. I thought, these are not people I want to meet or interact with in real life.
Reading and learning about how communists like Huey P Newton or Fidel interact with people, always with respect, always with the idea that they truly want what's best for you and humanity, and seek to enlighten rather than alienate, you realize that /r/communism is trying their best to do the exact opposite and alienate every single person they can. This is why reddit lets them exist, but bans other genuine communist subs.
Their ideal is the Gonzaloite terrorist killing peasants for not being revolutionary enough.
r/communism has always been a controlled opposition type thing. Any real communists get banned.
True of all leftist and even liberal subreddits. I remember getting banned from one with a very threatening DM after I called out a nazi.
It's a sure-fire way to know if something is controlled opposition: if you make a genuinely effective push against fascism and they ban you for it. It doesn't cost the opponent anything to put on leftist aesthetics or even to support leftism itself, but if you start suggesting ML/MLM/Diamat that's genuinely threatening to them as it has a chance of turning the controlled opposition into real opposition. Much easier to keep the left placated since they know they're not going to be able to trick them to the right. You know, that thing every single anarchist community does.
How many internet leftists even know what Dialectical Materialism even is? All their knowledge of communism comes from the right.
Damn. Their last "stance" was like them eagerly byting on a cyanide capsule after somebody asked them for the time.
Geopolitics [...] is obviously reactionary to everyone who understands Marxism
TIL Lenin didn't understand Marxism and was reactionary
The funny part is class struggle is not even the biggest component of Marxism (it shares that spot with diamat and the LTV as per Lenin). I don't even call myself a geopol analyst or anything like that either lol.
lol I just realized it was them that brought up the term in the conversation. In their defense it says in your substack description "I write about geopolitics,.. " so maybe that's where they got it from. But I agree calling you a "geopolitical analyst" was putting words in your mouth for the purpose of slander.
Was Lenin talking about the impacts of those concepts?
Bc I would even consider diamat foundational to CS (which would only strengthen your point)
Anyway there is a more central issue in their argument though:
If I make a good faith attempt at understanding the point of this other person: they could be talking about CS bc of its central role in driving historical progress. In that sense their focus on CS (vs LTV/diamat) is understandable, "replacing" that with "national struggle" is not admissible for a marxist.
But it can't be denied that what Lenin (the staunch geopolitical analyst that he was) did constituted an extension to Marxism that recognizes state/imperial competition (what they mean when they say "national struggle") as a driving historical force. Considering nation states are a tool of the ruling class this doesn't constitute a break from Marxism. So they were creating a false dichotomy.
Lenins additon has some grave consequences however when it comes to interpreting how class struggle manifests. Some trots apparently consider the Palestinian struggle in an utterly perverted way, where the Palestinian working class needs to rise up against their ruling class (and they don't mean the Israeli class that is ruling over them), while a Leninist correctly identifies thei national struggle as anti-imperialist and consistent with class struggle overall.
So maybe the person you encountered was just affected by trot brainrot but I believe they were just not liking your opinions shying away from an argument and cowardly retreating into ostensibly principled territory, a behaviour that always creates a shitload of confusion and toxicity, pushes a movement towards dogmatism and harms the ideological struggle in general. This sounds exaggerated in this case, but I really can't stand this "reaching for a priciple" just to feel safe. Same reason why they immediately compared you to fascists. Whoever reads this, don't fucking do this.
Of course Marxists can write/discuss about quantitaive production of munition, the depleation of weapons stockpile, logistics in war. Barring us from doing that is barring us from assessing at what is going on, in a way it is them that are turning away from scientific socialism and from Marxsim towards idealism.
Marxists are only allowed to talk about what happens within their own country's borders. Anything else is fascist because we know that fascists like to talk about disliking things outside their own country's borders.
Ooh! You got the coveted Maoist-Fascist connection! Funny how they'll gladly side with the CIA or actual open fascists before siding with traditional MLs. Almost like they have no real understanding of theory at all and some of them just want an excuse for adventurism. 🤔
A painful lesson all communists learn I think is that not everyone is your comrade. But I have to be honest the maoist-fascist was a new one for me.
The line on Gonzalo is “if you don’t believe what they tell you about Stalin, why do you believe their “lies” about Gonzalo.” When your ideology is contrarian it’s not a far step to questioning the holocaust.
I only posted there once and I got permabanned and when I asked why they never replied. That place is toxic.
They're controlled opposition fr
A large part of the reason I prefer discussions on Lemmy over Reddit is that people will actually engage with you rationally on this site. How is it enjoyable to engage with patronising people who only pretend to address your arguments? If a Lib wandered over to Lemmygrad they'd be told why they're wrong instead of just being immediately banned by mods or told to formally fuck off or some shit.
Geopolitics replaces class struggle with the struggle between nations, which is obviously reactionary to everyone who understands Marxism
Who actually sits and types that nobody is allowed to analyze any relationship between nations or else they're a fascist? That's clearly class reductionism to me.
It's an even weirder argument to make after this whole convo because they started with the blanket "[all] fascists are better at geopolitics". So which is it?
The mind of the Redditor is impenetrable.
How is it enjoyable to engage with patronising people who only pretend to address your arguments?
It's not 😭 but what's funny is I get a lot of clicks and subscribers on Reddit, they just don't say anything in the comments. Although they might also come from TrueAnon and the Deprogram subreddits, where they like my articles more. I should test that with the next one to get a feel of which subreddit they come from exactly. Once I get enough steam going on my substack that I don't need Reddit, I might just go lurk those two subs once in a while but I'm done posting there lol.
That is basically seething distilled in text form. /r/communism continued to be terrible.
r/TrueAnon is basically the only left-wing sub still worth engaging with at this point imo.
Every other one is either full of vaushite radlibs or the most annoying twitter maoists possible.
is trueanon expressly communist or is there like all sorts of anti-imperialists in it? The subreddit I mean, I know sometimes discords/subreddits/podcasts/youtube channels for the same thing have very different communities
Made curious by some of the other comments here connecting that Redditor's abusive language and refusal to really say anything of substance beyond 'I don't like this' and Maoism, I just spent kind of a long time looking back through that person's comments trying to figure out what about their thinking is particularly Maoist, especially in the context of that series of insults they wrote on your post, which don't, to me, reveal any particular way of thinking so much as a temperament.
I did eventually find some Maoist language across their comments. They probably do self-identify as a Maoist or Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, though I didn't see a comment to that effect.
But what I noticed more was that pretty much their only mode of discussion was verbal combat, and maybe in some cases declarations on certain questions or definitions of terms. There wasn't a lot I could recognize as instruction, exploration, or listening, although I imagine they'd consider some of their declarations educational.
I'm tired. I can't think. I don't have a thesis here. But OP, I'm sorry that someone took it upon themselves to shit on your work instead of offering you feedback or simply saying nothing.
Thanks, but don't worry about me 😁 I post on these subreddits expressly to have them confront other points of view. While redditors will be redditors, I got 8 new subscribers straight from reddit yesterday after posting (almost a fifth of what I had) showing there is a silent portion that listens.
Moreso surprised a self proclaimed communist would praise fascists. If that person was in my party they wouldn't be allowed to back out of their words and might even get expelled over it.
It's especially weird that they did so rather vaguely. It's not like they were like 'fascist figure X was right about historical fact Y in context Z, and here's why I think that matters'. They just favorably compare fascist 'geopolitical analysis' to your blog post, in general. That does seem like more or less just praising fascists to me.
r/TrueAnnon is fucking garbage. Edgy jokes and slurs are accepted, mods barely even enforce their own rules. Honestly does more harm than good. Glad I found this site
I just got banned from there 4 days ago for the second time. Time to make a new account and go for number 3.
There are American leftists who like Gonzalo?
I think Gonzaloists are (almost) exclusively found in the West!
Even some non-American leftists, unfortunately.
I've heard of some in South America but didn't think enough Americans were even aware of him to be the majority in leftist subreddits.
Damn man I've been lucky enough to not get banned but last time I was on there they at least had some good takes on settler colonialism, but it's not that damn serious...no wonder why people think it's infiltrated by feds cause you can't have any sort of meaningful discussion on anything
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