Good to know!

Thanks! I'll check it out. I've heard of it but was told it was somewhat liberal.

Speaking of Marxist transphobes that people still recommend, does anyone have a suggestion for people to read and cite that cover similar ground as Cockshott? I don't recommend him but it would be nice to have a locked and loaded, "read X instead".

One advantage of reading Super Imperialism is that there's a comrade here that can help guide others because they've already read and understood the work and are good at providing helpful explanations. Combine that with some one on one recruiting, a facilitator if needed, and some promos so people can block out time and follow the schedule and you'll be better set up for success.

Are there any other tie-ins that can be made re: Super Imperialism that would motivate participation? For example, participants could produce a work that relates Super Imperialism to a modern question. For example, challenges with BRICS. Obviously that's more work but if there is something tangible to do it can help recruit and motivate. Doesn't have to be BRICS! Maybe the aforementioned comrade would have a suggestion?

There's an extent to which "settlers should go home" is reasonable justice for settler-colonialism, though not in the ridiculous hasbara sense. West Bank settlers living in stolen homes should be removed so that the people whose homes were stolen can have them back, for example. Many wear keys around their necks because of this vision.

And in that sense Prashad is incorrect, as the stolen homes and land aspect is fresh, raw, and unjist, and any presence of justice in multiethnic Palestine necessitates addressing the crimes of settler colonialism.

Ha sorry I can write long things if I don't go through a few rounds of editing. When hitting the lemmy instance comment length limit is the cue to wrap it up you know you have a problem.

Yes, I agree, this is the fundamental dynamic of being "defensively" aggressive. Even when the defensiveness is justified! This is the difficult work of org leadership, how to carefully let certain things slide or receive a soft correction and then out-organize around them, particularly through education.

An important aspect of this negative dynamic is that it is cyclical and self-escalating. When people are frustrated with aggro leadership, they may not recognize that leadership perceives aggro membership and builds their own resentment and alienation, and so on. Opting into an aggressive approach without education or patience is basically a decision to alienate yourself from the group and to be pretty unhappy in general with the state of the organization. Even when your fundamental point is correct!

I'm trying to think of examples where I've seen it really work out. All I can think of is this instance being kneejerk pro-trans (still could've gone better) and an irl instance where a hard line was taken against the sex industry, though that org split in a very toxic way because of the underlying dynamic and basically no longer exists. I tried really hard to think of examples and had to sift through like 9 irl counterexamples that came to mind instead. So many toxic events.

I thought your post was good! This one too. Sorry it had so many people saying fatphobic things or derailing. Not really what should have gone down, imo. Fatphobic doctors suck and you deserve better.

Developing a line on fatphobia is a good idea. I do think it would improve outcomes to take a look at how previous attempts to establish lines unfolded and to compare this critically with how irl organizations succeed at doing this. Of course it can't be perfectly emulated because it's a website and not a party, but I do think there are recognizable negative patterns.

I agree that political education is valuable and something a site like this can contribute to. I would respectfully suggest that those interested in developing a line recruit and develop openly, for example establishing a committee where folks know who is on it, why they are on it, how work will be done, and how to get on it. And that you bring people along by announcing the intent, declaring when the process begins, and focusing on how the line (which sounds like it might be bylaws more than a work of theory?) will be shared, updated, and balance education (bringing people along) vs. removal (when people go too far and aren't in a position to be educated). This is not because I am dogmatically committed to bourgeois notions of democratic participation or transparency, but because they are ways to create buy-in, avoid alienation, and improve the theoretical correctness of the line as well as the concrete skill of community management.

Anyways, this is meant to be a constructive suggestion based on irl experience and having founded a (still running) left forum, so I hope it is not taken as venting or unhelpful criticism. Running a site is often thankless.

lol I just noticed the removal plus its inventive and mischaracterizing justification. It's an appropriate demonstration of the breakdown in basic abilities to communicate between higher ups and users that I described. To be constructive and not just critical, that would've been an opportunity for whoever removed the comment to instead participate and, if needed, develop a line for others to adopt and build into sitewide culture. And, as a first step, double check one's understanding of the stated position(s) first, since this time it is their misunderstanding.

Yeah, the lack of onboarding is a primary symptom of a lack of organizing. Thinking like an organizer is all about building and expanding capacity, usually through struggle, and adopting various practices by which to loop people in and "level them up" both theoretically and in practice. Not everything has to be Serious Communist Work, of course, but there is an inconsistency in how seriously some take themselves and how at odds their actions are with basic practice. This inconsistency describes the situation fairly well. I can think of some amazing contrasts from the last few weeks but listing them out would probably be toxic behavior on my part.

Re: commandism, I agree with the sentiment, but I think the term may exaggerate how serious of an entity this site is in the first place. It's not a party, there are no lines, and there is nobody to command (not really). Who even knows the dogmas? I wouldn't be surprised if someone making a good faith attempt to list them would catch a ban for not listing them with the right (otherwise completely unstated) framing. In that sense, there is an opposite dynamic that depends on ambiguity and whichever mod saw your comment that day. Ad hoc inconsistent application of correct-sounding logic that may or may not apply. I also perceive a "defensive attack" dynamic in interactions, which tends to mean people alienated to near their last nerve and without anything to ground them, deescalate, or shield others from the fallout. I have seen orgs fall apart or split from not nipping that in the bud. By the time that's happening regularly, resentments that should have been addressed constructivelyages ago tend to prevent self-crit and functional behavior. Finally, commandism presupposes that leadership are more theoretically advanced than cadre (or a similar above/below split) and I really don't think that applies here. To be sure, many in leadership have plenty of good to share with others theoretically, but I would not say the last few weeks represent a mature grounding in socialist or liberationist theory. There are glaring forms of reactionary and liberal thought in various rationales and the main characteristic is alienation and escalatory aggression.

With the example of those in Gaza trying to survive genocide, the contrast can sometimes be disturbing, especially with conflict driven incompetently from the top. There's a wider point to make about chauvinism, perspective, and irony there but I'm struggling to frame it constructively. I'm glad to have seen many of the same crowdfunding pleas on other sites and that it does not just depend on one volatile lemmy instance.

The tokenizing logic of some of the aforementioned black NGO workers was also not disconnected from their own identities nor was it free of theory. One person I have in mind was a former panther and pretty on top of things. Employing the false logic of tokenization does not mean a person is wrong or invalid or "other" in all the various ways a person can be in that situation.

Tokenization is rampant on this instance and is a key example of internalized liberalism and part of why the Western left is anemic. It prioritizes splitting and escalating grievances over mutual education and humility, and one of the main weapons for doing this is blurring the lines wrt tokenization. I'm certainly familiar with this, it's the main thing I focus on in new organizing spaces, as it determines how much humility I can safely show. Toxic environments do not allow for productive self-crit, they reward those most willing to insult and fight and you cannot show weakness. Normally, this just means not reacting and not offering very much engagement in this first place: put one's energy elsewhere.

I have another irl example. I helped a coalition group organize in solidarity with Palestine. They adopted an anti-tokenization stance, but had weak and undemocratic structure, non-existent political education outside of what my org introduced (it was well-received, people usually like these things when they are organized), and later invited an Arab org to participate (Arab group as in, definitely proclaimed itself Arab and excluded non-Arabs). That group ultimately took over the unstructured group using self-tokenizing logic. They included other ideas and arguments, of course, but those were ultimately rejected. When emotions were high and people afraid of state reprisal, that group expressed frustration and began condescendingly telling others how only their group should be the voice anyone listens to and they had decided to disband the coalition. This worked on enough people that the project fell apart. There were more Arab people (from other orgs) there who disagreed with them, but this didn't matter as the white people were already cowed and had their excuse for not taking any risks. Oh, and they exploited doing this in an ad hoc meeting when other orgs were resting. The tokenization here did not happen free of context or theory and those who ran with it seemed authentic to me. They were actually frustrated and not feeling listened to. They really seemed to believe they could boil the situation down to white people not listening to those who knew better because of their connections to the region and upbringings. They simply ignored the other Arabs in the coalition, placing all focus on the white people with identical positions. They were also incorrect in their analysis and were frustrated, in part, because they had no real response to correct feedback. Tokenization emerged as an effective weapon for resolving a situation in favor of their preferred course of action, following a series of other ideas about what should be done and why.

Tokenizing logic is always invalid and is harmful to organizing.

This instance has a challenging inconsistency in that it wants to hold lines like an org without adopting the (necessary) culture of patience, consensus-building, and mutual education required to do so. Most of the work in functional organizations is emotional, it is hearing some bullshit and finding a way to move the group to the correct positions rather than reaching straight for vilification, uncharitable assumptions, and callouts. And it requires planning and coherency for projects that take months to complete. By the time people are pissed about ignorance, the (education heavy) project that would actually address the issue should have been going for months. Just dropping a reference and saying "educate yourself" is not an example of this. The reference must be adopted as a priority and focus with an accompanying schedule, rationale, contextualization, and implicitly some kind of buy-in like having all committees promoting participation and working it into their own projects. And it should become part of an adopted set of fleshed out positions and a "required reading" bibliography so that new members must adopt this education as part of an onboarding period. To be clear, I amnot criticizing the feeling of being pissed at someone saying something wrong or harmful, that is often entirely righteous. But the knee-jerk reaction is often the wrong one to take, it can tear down rather thsn build.

Without this educational and patient emphasis - and without structures that help democratize the way the organization communicates and functions - the group becomes at risk of toxicity and focusing endlessly on grievances based on whoever is "in charge" at the moment. Sometimes you get lucky and the people "in charge" keep things running well and avoiding turmoil. More often, you get toxic cliques, subsequent imbalanced application of norms, and a treatment of comrades as primary enemies. creates burnout and alienation between everyone.

This instance is increasingly tending towards the latter, with calcifying cliques at various levels that are increasingly hostile towards the userbase. They frame this using communist and liberationist language, though often inconsistently. For example, I know that one of those that is throwing around accusations and being generally aggro has also been repeatedly explained of how something they are saying is anti-X (being vague because I'm not doing a callout), but rather than acknowledge this and do the work to build to a consensus understanding, they are lashing out. Others have been banned for less than their behavior, but they seem to be unscathed. It is quite clear that this user is both burned out and a member of a clique, and nobody with any power is either interested in or has the capacity to actually deescalate and, instead, are just supporting their in-group.

It should also be noted that this is a standalone website and not an organization. I'm going on and on about (dys)functional organizations, but a website of anonymous users has its own challenges and limits. But the social core I'm describing seems to be there.

I see a lot of tokenizing logic on this instance, which I see as internalized liberalism coming from a good place - seeking liberation - but then combining with petty toxicity to act more like a weapon for mutual alienation. "Someone with an X identity told you it bothers them so you need to stop", that kind of thinking. To those of us with a liberatory mindset struggling against reaction, this can be appealing, as we see ourselves as co-struggling for liberation with or as "X" and in opposition to any anti-"X" action. This makes it easy to adopt this tokenization, maybe even not notice that this is what is happening, never stopping to wonder what it means when an "X" person has the polar opposite view of another "X" person and how the logic then falls apart, therefore requiring a different justification for the initial position. Tokenization, aside ftom being itself [racist, sexist, ableist, etc] makes our theory fragile and organizations weak, at risk of takeover by liberal positions that attach themselves to sn identity. And, to me, not recognizing and rejecting tokenization in a left space belies a naivete, it means they have not had to combat it in irl organizing where it is ubiquitous and can straight-up destroy entire projects and organizations.

For one example, I have seen more than one allegedly socialist / clasd conscious organization fail to maintain an anti-cop position in the US because, and I kid you not, "most black people want more police". And this is often coming from white people, who are only understanding black people through tokenizing logic: they have decided that "the" black person position is actually a pro-cop sentiment (more to unpack there, of course) and are not engaging in the correct analysis of why we must understand cops as part of the racialized capitalist prison industrial complex. Though to be clear, I have also heard this same logic from other black people, namely those in proximity to bourgeois interests, those in leadetship of NGOs (funded by bourgeoisie) or business owners, all of whom understood (black) community improvement in terms of capital investment (shops, black owned businesses etc), of capital investment only coming from private investment (because this is their actual lived experience), and cops as the business-protecting alternative to street gangs. If you try to adopt tokenizing logic to justify one's position on racialized policing, let alone forming a political program by which to organize against it, then you are vulnerable to its same weaknesses when it is weaponized for a liberal position. And the liberal position will benefit from being amplified by capital.

So, to me, it seems like those who aren't hyper-aware of tokenization just plain don't have much experience doing irl organizing. They are underdeveloped in terms of praxis and will make various (near?-)fatal mistakes for the groups they are in.

Anyways apologies for the long post. We should of course oppose misogyny, anti-blackness, transphobia, and fatphobia, all of which are part of this infighting. We also need to be able to communicate patiently with one another, prioritize education, and be willing and ready to accept criticism, as we have all internalized logics of marginalization that need to be purged. Either that or we will need to ban everyone except me, the one true leftist on this site.

To make an unsolicited recommendation, it is to get involved with irl organizing, in any capacity, and to seek out organizations that are socially competent: where there is an emphasis on education and understanding to resolve internal disputes. These orgs will have better humility and better external projects, in my experience. This place ia just a website, it could go poof one day because the domain owner gets alienated enough. But a network of irl comrades has real staying power and will help develop actual impact and inclusion.

What is the bias?

Sounds like whatsboutism. What time is it in Moscow?

It seems pretty clear you just don't know what imperialism is full stop.

The article does not describe any political persecution, it just repeats a vague assertion by one guy and then makes implications about COVID lockdowns

Capitalism will not abide people not working just because they don't want to. Even in rich countries like the US where imperialism and the undocumented immigrant labor underclass could provide everything truly needed to survive, capitalism requires that the population be exploited to realize even greater profits.

I mention imperialism and the immigrant labor underclass because work is still necessary for production and momentary examples to the contrary (e.g. COVID lockdowns) are an illusion built on the backs of the hyperexploited. However, if we were able to depose capitalism, we could focus our efforts on eliminating the need for work rather than building everything around profit maximization.

They're called scabs because they are supposed to be receiving beatings from union workers.

Democrats and university admins just ran a standard PR playbook. They depend on students' naivete to succeed at it, and that worked. Several encampmentd accepted mere promises of consideration to disband while others got stronger concess but without them actually being in hand, which were easy to renege on.

For campus protest to work against something as entrenched as Zionism, these lessons need to be learned and consistently passed on and there need to be strong ties to orgs outside the university that can provide seasoned advice.