• JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 months ago

        Yeah, the Infrared crowd hates Maupin because they see him as an old fuddy-duddy who (gasp) wanted them to do real stuff in the real world, and not just be edgy online. Maupin dislikes them because (1) they rip off his ideas without attribution, and (2) they went whole hog on the “recruit from the right” thing in the dumbest way possible. And when I say dumb, I mean really dumb: as in “talk about Hegel in front an American flag bikini poster” dumb. Yes, Haz actually did this.

        Basically, the way that whole sphere works is: Maupin says something that’s wrongheaded, but somewhat thought out; Haz presents it a few days later as his own, mixed with some dumbass Ned Land/Dugin/Larouche stuff; then Jackson Hinkle, Midwestern Marx, Sameera Khan, and other assorted intellectual lightweights spread it all over the internet in the form of lazy AI-generated memes. With each step the original idea gets stupider, with @REVMAXXING being the absolute nadir.

        That I thought for a long time that whole crowd could reform and become principled Marxists is one of the worst blunders I’ve made.

        EDIT: for instance, look at this not-very-original piece of analysis. I think my dog could come up with something about as profound, and I don’t even have a dog. Face of modern communism, anybody?

        • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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          4 months ago

          Yep. At first he didn’t even name them, just called them a “pro-unification church”, and now he doesn’t care anymore and namedrops them any chance he gets.

  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    Extremely unpopular take but they’re not worse than the CPUSA and their geopolitics are correct.

    We’ll see how it develops from here, many of these were MAGA guys explicitly supporting Trump before but the party official statements reject both parties by calling both trump and biden zionist and genocidal.

    It is entirely possible they were engaging in tailism as a strategy to gain clout, and leech working class people from the republican party.

    Honestly they have my critical support, for now. More chaos internally in the US is only good for the rest of the world.

    • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 months ago

      Beware making false friends when it seems there are no real friends to be made! Hinkle, Haz and the midwestern marx crowd have been active for years and have yet to produce anything beyond youtube videos and donations. Even this founding statement does not indicate any party was established or formed, it’s literally just a PDF. They nameblasted several CPUSA chapters in this document who quickly got on twitter to say they have absolutely 0 ties to the “ACP”.

      At every turn patsocs have lied and misrepresented both marxism and their positions. Even today they have very little support, because their plan of appealing to the maga working class (misidentifying that magas are mostly petty bouge, strike number 1) didn’t get them anywhere. If you run in their circles the average age is something like 14 years old, it appeals to the same kids that find Andrew Tate interesting. It’s edgy, it’s new, but it’s all aesthetics.

      Even the video they published to accompany their party is only stock and AI Footage, the same kind content farms in Youtube shorts rely on to tell their “5 tips to a stoic lifestyle” lol.

      More broadly, patsocs are trying to organize the “industrial” capital – they’ve said so themselves that they’re not against industrial capital (strike two). But industry by and large doesn’t exist anymore in the US, with over 80% of the workforce employed in the service industry. Yet, they unequivocally position themselves against this service industry, claiming they perform unproductive labor (strike three).

      Beyond the aesthetics they don’t have much to offer, and their aesthetics are the exact same as cryptobros lol. Once they actually have to explain their line and not just talk about Dugin saying this or that or cherry-picking Marx quotes, they show they don’t get marxism, or perhaps purposely misrepresent it.

      They’re Strasserites, which is nothing new. They’re also embedded in Laroucheist cults.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 months ago

        Yet, they unequivocally position themselves against this service industry, claiming they perform unproductive labor (strike three).

        How does it feel to try to organise a marxist party without even skimming Capital and Theories of Surplus Value and jumping straight up to vulgarity bordering fascist ideas.

    • Anna ☭🏳️‍⚧️@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 months ago

      It is true that they are not worse than the CPUSA. But just because they produce good “takes” doesn’t make them worthy of critical support. They may have good ideas surrounding geopolitics, but their “critical” support (or lack thereof) makes them more prone to chauvinistic stances which are displayed within the takes of the Russian Federation. It may be more correct than the CPUSA’s international stance, but they’re both social chauvinists on different levels.

      Let’s not forget that patsocs initially “critically” supported Trump, who was deemed an anti-imperialist (or at least his actions were anti-imperialist) by Hazites, and likely the same by those who follow MWM or Hinkle. Just because the party statement rejects both parties doesn’t mean it won’t likely remain that stance. CPUSA claims to not be a puppet of the democrats yet in their twitter they claimed to be “small d democrats”. Their tailism is a product of their chauvinism, they believe that the masses have nothing wrong with their thoughts, of being transphobic, homophobic, etc. That’s revisionist, and just because they leech the working class from the republican party doesn’t mean those chauvinistic thoughts go away. If anything it may be reinforced.

      Also, critically supporting them for the sake of accelerationism is not going to do much. The regard for “chaos” at the cost of trans, gay, and black people would be more costly for them rather than for the cishet whites (or Conservatives to be more specific). This is not a party worthy of support, by any measure, as supporting them is supporting the same social-chauvinistic stances which Lenin initially opposed.

      • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 months ago

        I’ll still give them the benefit of the doubt, i am not American so my perception is very different. Let’s evaluate on their actions and results going forward, they are very young so their politics are still developing.

    • GlueBear [they/them] @lemmygrad.ml
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      4 months ago

      This isn’t a wrong take, they’re better than the CPUSA because of their stances on foreign policy.

      Both are almost the same when it comes to domestic politics, their dynamic is similar to the dynamic between Republicans and Democrats.

      One pretends to care about minorities and socialism and the other doesn’t care about minorities but pretends to care about socialism.

      In the end, both are destined to fail. You really can’t hope for socialism in the US via electoralism. The contradictions run way too deep.

    • Like the rest of the compatible left they exist to drive attention and engagement into the bourgeois press through their reaction-analysis, feuding over it, generic branded activist news outlets like Democracy Now and tech rights publications which do the same things, in order to make their own living. They are broadly indistinguishable from The Young Turks and influencers posted on Lemhexgrad and the like, they interact with them, use the same journalistic methods with minor variations in style and branding.

      • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 months ago

        I guess i can’t bring myself to dismiss them because they have correct geopolitics, which is never true for the compatible left…

        • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          I wouldn’t necessarily say that they even have correct geopolitics, they sort of get partly correct geopolitics, in the way that some conservatives accidentally get more correct takes on Russia or Palestine.

        • A lot of them don’t, though, they exist to subvert and shitcoat the correct stances of countries like Cuba and China and Venezuela. Please don’t be mislead by their branding and associations with midwitted posters.

          They definitely have some people who like them who partially relate and don’t understand it’s a grift.

    • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 months ago

      I gave Haz & Co. critical support at the beginning, only to see them get worse and worse and worse. Early on, when they were associated with CPI, their tailism was absolutely a strategy. They would say all kinds of offensive things, and pepper their speech with any number of right-wing memes and dog whistles, but you could tell that it all rested on a basic Marxist worldview. One can disagree with such tactics (I do), or find them stupid and counterproductive, but it was almost certainly sincere. Since early 2023, however, the predictable has happened, and Haz, Hinkle, etc. have become prisoners of their own brand. Now I don’t see them as trying to do anything other than a sort of 4chan with Stalinist aesthetics.

      It’s a good cautionary tale, though with an obvious moral: don’t try to do all your organizing online.

  • Soviet Entropy@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    Their website lists the Austin Texas Branch of the CPUSA as a signatory?
    The ones who were just the “current thing” because their branch was liquidated?

  • darkernations@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    Silver lining if they can siphon both democrat and republican votes utlitising better geopolitics.

    However, they are giving an awful impression of right wing tailism, and if this is that then history suggests that it will end badly.

    (And I need to read Losurdo’s Class Struggle.)

  • darkernations@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    If the take in this video (YourCommieDad) is true then this is so much more worse than just tailism (ie they are American Strasserites): https://youtu.be/7S6zqrQ2vbI

    Addendum: At this stage Liger and Garrido are not Strasserites but they need to be careful who they associate with and they should condemn the impression of tailism, and furthermore educate themselves about accomodating the reactionary (and ridding themselves of any reaction). One can become the company one keeps.

    • This guy seems cool and I will probably reach out to him but this video isn’t very accurate or thorough. It just kind of draws a few parallels between the Strasserites and what the guy admits are “vibe reads” off of MWM. I think it’s concerning that MWM may be clout chasing with ideas lifted from better authors and cultivating an audience of harder reactionaries like Infrared while focusing on their own relatively limited output on their blog and their own jobs.

      They do make legitimate criticism of the CPUSA and the far-right but encouraging people to devote more energy to those topics seems like it would be appealing to the feds.

      Strongly relate to putting off anything interrupting my audio stream until I’m forced to. Music + books is still the superior option.

  • darkernations@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    Gramsci cautions against workerism especially catering the reactionary in order to gain appeal; here he is criticising the Socialist Party of his time:

    “The Socialist Party claims to be the champion of Marxist doctrines. One would therefore expect the Party to possess in these doctrines, a compass to steer it through the confusion of events. One would expect it to have that capacity for historical foresight that characterizes the intelligent followers of Marxist dialect. One would expect it to possess a general plan of action, based on this historical foresight and to be in a position to issue clear and precise orders to the working class, engaged in its struggle. But instead, the Socialist Party, the champion of Marxism in Italy — just like the Partito Popolare, the party which represents the most backward classes in the Italian population — is exposed to all the pressures of the masses and it shifts and alters its position following the shifts and alterations of the masses. This Socialist Party, which proclaims itself to be the guide and educator of the masses, is in fact nothing more than a wretched clerk, recording the way in which the masses are operating of their own accord. This poor Socialist Party, which proclaims itself to be at the head of the working class, is nothing more than the baggage-train of the proletarian army.”

    TLDR: the importance of leadership and vanguardism (especially as opposed to tailism).

    Via Roderic Day: https://redsails.org/the-communist-party/

    It appears this ACP is led by pat-socs and tailists masking class lines accomodating reaction with their blend of producerism ultimately bowing down to capital (they clearly lean towards a false distinction between finance and industrial capital).

    /edits for clarity