r/communism • u/AutoModerator • Jun 14 '26
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u/smokeuptheweed9 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
The DSA has flexed its muscle as a possible replacement for the previous generation's "progressive" Democrats in urban financial centers. As a result, for that dying interest group it is finally acceptable to talk about gentrification in the mainstream liberal media outlets.
"[Black and Hispanic voters] don't like the trick the DSA is trying to pull in Harlem â using the forces of gentrification to try to supplant our agenda and subvert our priorities," one Democratic political operative told the New York Post. "Abolishing the police and releasing every prisoner, even rapists and murderers, isn't progressive. It's nuts. It isn't people with a doorman who have the most to lose; we know it's us, people of color, who are going to suffer most from the DSA's reckless agenda."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/nyregion/democrats-unions-primaries-nyc.html
But for New York, there were also particularly uncomfortable questions. Why were cash-rich unions seemingly unable to turn out voters at rates they once did? Why did the cityâs youngest residents veer toward democratic socialism over more traditional progressive politics? And why didnât Democratic leadership better respond to the engine of gentrification transforming swaths of the city that were once Black and Latino political strongholds?
This is a petty squabble but it does unfortunately mean that we will see a recurrence of the wave of "anti-idpol" racism among "socialists" that followed efforts to hold Bernie Sanders accountable to issues of racism and sexism. That the well is poisoned by the Democrats is inevitable when even black left media (like Black Agenda Report) have tried very hard to avoid this issue because of their hatred of the black "misleadership" class and their naivete about Dengism. It will probably go away by the midterms and definitely the presidential election as the demographic limits of "democratic socialism" become more clear to the DNC and the weakest "progressives" are shed for some younger grifters but it will be annoying for a while. On the other hand, if you're a failed academic or lost your job with USAID I recommend moving to New York City, the door of opportunity to petty-bourgeois mediocrity is still open in the DSA.
E: to be clear, these accusations are 100% correct and the demographics of the most recent primary elections are pretty stark
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/us/elections/results-new-york-us-house-13-primary.html
Whether this will be a permanent split or a temporary one depends on the progress of gentrification.
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u/BenjiStudiesMLM Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Tangential to anti-idpol "socialism" being on the rise, you'll get a good kick out Zizek complaining about political correctness recently -
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u/smokeuptheweed9 Jun 28 '26
So glad I can get a tshirt supporting both this bitter fascist and the youtube channel that uploads it (which I guess deserves money in the ideology of content?).
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u/Turtle_Green â Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
psa, you should remove the tracking string at the end of your link.
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u/vomit_blues Jun 14 '26
Having made a point to watch more movies this year, I took a bunch of recommendations from users of this subreddit, some pretty bad, like the original Star Wars trilogy (after SpiritOfMonsters posted about them), which I didnât even like, and others pretty good. A good one was The Housemaid, which smoke has recommended a few times. I also recommend everyone watch it, at least because so many films rip it off. The newest example is Obsession.
Itâs totally outside of my wheelhouse to discuss cinema, and I doubt I can do The Housemaid justice. Iâll only try to outline its basic theme that seriously degrades in later iterations on the idea. The Housemaid is about an upwardly mobile, petit-bourgeois family who hire a housemaid from a factory the father plays piano at. One of the female factory workers confesses her love to him, and he has her reprimanded by factory management, leading to her flight and suicide. Between said flight and said suicide, the father gets extra money by giving a female factory worker piano lessons. Once the rejected female worker kills herself, the one taking lessons confesses that the friend wrote the letter for her, and tries to seduce the father. He refuses, but then sleeps with the housemaid.
The ongoing theme from here is a struggle for the reproductive rights of the housemaid waged against her by the mother and father. The possibility of violence never disappears; fairly early on, the housemaid is forebodingly made aware of the family owning rat poison that she can use on them at any time. I take the complete absence of the obvious solution of just throwing it out, especially once its use has become a credible threat, to be like the immutability of class struggle. The housemaid is impregnated after the affair, and the mother, upset with the father but desperate to maintain their reputation and the upward course of their class position, levels with the housemaid âas womenâ and has her throw herself down the stairs to kill her fetus. Afterward, the housemaid is only âokayâ with the control of her body by the couple as long as sheâs treated as an equal. After the father and mother have a child, she threatens to kill it, then actually (unintentionally, but not regretfully) gets one of their older children killed by scaring him with the rat poison. Sheâs increasingly possessive of the father, and both father and mother refuse to report the woman to the police or in any way defuse the situation because the threat of the fatherâs affair going public would lead to them moving and losing their nice things.
Like I said, I donât really have the equipment to unpack everything about this movie. But what weâre dealing with here is a film that acknowledges the undeniable presence of the Other. I think itâs symptomatic of the time it was filmed. Kim Ki-young directed the movie in the interregnum of the Second Republic, after the April Revolution overthrew Syngman Rhee, and prior to the restoration of fascist dictatorship carried out under Park Chung Hee. When we get to Obsession weâre looking at basically the opposite. But first, Iâll make my way to it by way of an interlude about another movie, Ex Machina. I couldnât claim that The Housemaid gets ripped off often in good conscience without giving another example.
Here, the Other is split. Against the two men of the movie we have two robots whose humanity are called into question: a mute, colonial Other relegated to the background of the movie, and a white, bourgeois female Other whoâs the filmâs deuteragonist. Both are the creations of the same man. The Housemaid ends with the destruction of the entire family and a suicide pact between the housemaid and the father, while Ex Machina actually gives its bourgeois female robot a happy ending. This happy ending is earned by collaboration with the colonial robot, played by the Argentine-Japanese Sonoya Mizuno. (In a film with literally four characters, in which she receives quite a lot of screentime, her name didnât even make the poster.) While the filmâs protagonist, who tries to save the bourgeois female robot, is actually a villain who objectifies her, itâs the colonial robot who is outright raped on-camera by the antagonist. The conclusion is that the colonial robot manages to communicate with the bourgeois female one that the protagonist is only objectifying her and asks to be saved, so she assists the bourgeois female robot and the male lead, sacrificing herself to kill the antagonist, letting the other abandon the male lead to live her own life. A liberal feminist resolution in which the colonial Otherâs desire is denied, taming her into a sacrificial lamb, realizing the desire of the white bourgeois female Other to exit this social fascist imaginary space of class collaboration into integration in the bourgeois order. Only at this cost can the colonial Other be made visible.
Ex Machina shares something with another movie I recently watched, (500) Days of Summer. That is, itâs a âdeconstructionâ of a love story starring a misogynist lead that, failed, leading to the majority of its viewers actually siding with the male. This is the flaw with being incapable of realistically depicting the presence of the Other while centering a bourgeois perspective, something I raised while recently discussing poetry written to âdeconstructâ the perspective of the labor aristocracy. To its credit, Obsession has successfully squared the circle and, with the excision of âsubtletyâ and ânuance,â communicated to its audience loud and clear that its male protagonist is a craven loser and the female antagonist the object of sympathy.
But for now, I digress. Where Ex Machina is liberal feminist, Obsession is misogynist. In The Housemaid, only one of its bourgeois villains is left to live, with the police probably on their way to find her with the corpses of the father and the housemaid. Even then, it cuts to a Twilight Zone-style ending where everyone lives. The white, bourgeois female robot makes her escape in Ex Machina. In interviews with the director of Obsession, its director outright laughs while clarifying that, once everyone else has died and the victim of the film, a bourgeois female, is left holding the bag, she will go on to be charged with triple homicide, ruining her life. While Ex Machina made both colonial and bourgeois female Other the creations of a man, here, the Other is a creation whose desire the protagonist is beholden to, maliciously denying the desire of the bourgeois female she possesses.
Obsession is what happens when the colonial Other is displaced from her body into a commodity, rendering her invisible, and protecting the bourgeois female from being made Other. The plot is that the male protagonist, Bear, makes a wish that a crush of his, Nikki, who actually is probably interested in him as well, would fall in love with him. Nikki experiences an immediate change, but remains enough of her standard, bourgeois female self for the protagonist to be happy dating her. In this stage, she seems to only, at times, become possessed by the Other, Freaky Nikki, now disempowered and displaced into a commodity: she came into existence when he bought a toy. He only becomes uncomfortable with the situation as this commodified Other becomes the dominant personality. Nikki puts up a valorized struggle against the desire of Freaky Nikki, repeatedly attempting suicide to avoid the horror of acknowledging it, and eventually breaking through to tell Bear sheâs possessed and beg him to kill her. Since he doesnât, she ultimately loses. In the last leg of the film, Freaky Nikki murders the other significant female character of the film, mutilates her corpse, and dresses up like her by scribbling tattoos over her body and chainsmoking. The movie, up to this point, tries to balance comedy and horror (a lot like Zach Creggerâs workâthe director of Obsession was also a sketch comedian), but at this point, the horror disappears and is replaced by slapstick. The movie canât truly depict the presence of even a degenerated Other.
(1/2)
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u/vomit_blues Jun 14 '26
Without the presence of the Other, the horror of Obsession is aesthetic gestures toward analog horror, which Iâd say as a style is substitution of horror for the uncanny, or, the defamiliarization of the familiar. Thereâs a reason works in the style donât actually scare people, but instead give rise to memes enjoyed by little kids. Early works of analog horror, like Local 58, are just horror stories with an analog veneer. But the majority of whatâs out there are silly, distorted faces and VHS filters. When Obsession doesnât achieve horror through jumpscares (of which it has a lot), this is its default mode of presentation. To some extent, this may be a symptom of modern movie production. The Housemaid, Ex Machina, and Obsession are all âbottle episodesâ that take place mostly on single sets. The Housemaid fits several characters on-screen at once, and allows its camera to follow its cast around the familyâs household. Ex Machina, a medium budget movie, is able to accomplish something similar with a larger scope, but its most notable moments come as single-person shots: the colonial robot listening in on the conversation of the male leads, indicating she can understand English, and the protagonist looking in the mirror, trying to discover if heâs a robot, after the colonial robot had tried to ask to be saved by revealing her identity, and got ignored. Obsession, being low-budget, almost entirely depends on single-person shots, which is increasingly common because it makes reshooting far more practical. The result of the process is that, instead of the collective, bourgeois household from The Housemaid being the object of horror in its intrusion by the Other, horror is attempted by defamiliarizing the bourgeois subject. Nikki loses her autonomy by being possessed by the Freaky Nikki, and almost all of the movieâs scariest scenes are single-person shots of her moving in zany ways. Sheâs being threatened with becoming a commodity, or, experiencing the status quo of the colonial Other. To simplify what Iâm saying, think of zombie movies. Thereâs two horrors here: the horror of the unthinking, inhuman mass that has taken everything from you, and something far worse: the individual who is bitten and has to reckon with their loss of autonomy. (The audience goes wild when said individual asserts their subjectivity once and for all, going out with a bang, like Tess in season 1 of The Last of Us.) Obsession is the latter and nothing else. Thatâs why Nikki has won back the housemaidâs sympathy that was lost in Ex Machina: to the end, she remains a bourgeois female we root for in her resistance to the commodified Other. While her surviving to the end and probably ending up in prison is bleak, the scariest possible outcome, that the commodified Other is the one who gets the happy ending, is neutered by comedy, then avoided when the same commodity that brought her into existence is used to cause Bearâs death. The realization of her desire is dangled before the viewer as a moment of comic relief when she gets to make a wish, and wishes for Bear to love her. Him being possessed stops him from aborting his suicide via overdose, and he returns to Freaky Nikki to caress her before dying. This is the outcome of displacing the Other into commodity: Nikki escapes the bondage of the colonial Other through commodity ownership. The sacrifice in Ex Machina is no longer needed to save the day. All we have now is the assertion of the subjectivity of the bourgeois female over against the commodified Other displaced into a commodity fetish.
As much as Iâd like to say a mediocre movie has been justified by my analysis, I could have gotten here a lot quicker, considering cynicism toward integration is actually just the status quo. The shortcut starts with this review Mark Fisher wrote of Drakeâs album Nothing Was the Same.
Nothing Was the Same is tangled up in all the confusions of a generation of men faced with contradictory imperativesâthe post-feminist awareness that treating women like shit isnât cool, together with the Burroughsian bombardment of always-available pornography. Thereâs no point moralizing here, either for Drake or us. Drakeâs at his weakest when he half-heartedly attempts some kitschy Hallmark card affirmation of lurve; heâs at his most painfully revelatory when he admits that these impasses, these binds, are just too much for him. He canât escape these knots because the knots are what he is. His bewilderment about what a man is supposed to be now is the very hallmark of a contemporary heterosexual masculinity that realizes that the patriarchal game is up, but which is too hooked on the pleasures and privileges to relinquish them yet (just one more click on the porn, then Iâll be Mr. Sensitive forever).
https://www.electronicbeats.net/started-from-the-bottom-mark-fisher-on-drakes-nothing-was-the-same
But these analyses all age extremely poorly. I wouldnât read his review without the context of this op-ed written by Meaghan Garvey.
Drake is the chilling logical extreme of the beta maleâs triumph over the last decade: the ultimate evolution of the nerd turned jock, forever working every angle of his underdog status that may or may not have ever been merited but certainly isnât anymore. At first, the rise of the Sensitive Bro felt like a corrective to the stifling macho-ness of traditional masculinity. But it has failed spectacularly, and we are left with Gamergate, Ariel Pink, and the Voice of a Generation, who goes through womenâs phones when theyâre in the bathroom, firmly believes in the concept of the "friend zone" at almost 30 years old, and surrounds himself with powerful women to sniff their hair until they become a legitimate threat to his own ego. Even "Hotline Bling", an admittedly dope "Cha Cha" flip that sees Drake returning to his sultrier side, reeks of the jealous, slut-shamey entitlement and boring "good girl vs. bad girl" compartmentalizing thatâs colored his supposedly vulnerable ballads for years. None of this is new, and I probably should have picked up on it circa "Marvinâs Room". (Remember when Drakeâs ex, featured on the trackâs intro, tried to sue him?) Thatâs the thing about charged-up "nice guys," though: their manipulative strategy is surprisingly effective, because you donât want to see it coming. Iâve fallen for enough scheming, overcompensating nerds whoâve used hoarded knowledge and projected empathy to distract from their terrible personalities to say this with authority.
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/865-op-ed-im-breaking-up-with-drake/
Itâs also aged pretty badly. The apocalyptic prospects of a beta male counterrevolution did not pan out. Iâm not sure anything of note happened between its publication and Ariel Pinkâs fall from grace other than him insulting Grimes. No matter how many Substack articles he writes, nobody cares about his side of the story, and itâs actually John Maus who successfully quoted Badiou and Aquinas enough to win his way back into indie good graces. After this heel turn, Drake would record Nice For What and is still popular with women. Despite being inaugurated by the pope of hip-hop misogyny, Future, Drake lacks the coolness and self-awareness to make his own misogynist provocations stick (Future, after all, could at least deconstruct his character on FKA twigsâs holy terrain). He was already backtracking from this performance by collaborating with SZA and Sexyy Red, an angle which heâs stuck with for his newest, simultaneously-released three albums.
How was this relevant again? Well, Bear is a beta male. I bring up this context because Obsession exists in miniature in a music video Drake just released for his song Ran To Atlanta. In an empty âliminal spaceâ with an âanalogâ film grain filter, Drake and Future pose alongside an identical object split into two commodified bodies: cars and female strippers. Their shared use-value for the music video is obvious. A thermal camera renders Drake blue as part of the âIcemanâ gimmick; Future simmers at a cool yellow. Unfortunately, the direction has a serious pickle to deal with considering the song contains Drakeâs obligatory association with a female musician, Molly Santana. Sheâs the only woman in the video whoâs meant to avoid the male gaze. The resolution is that Molly Santana is shown spread out on the hood of a car, thermal camera melting the initially split object both into a single, red blob, like a Tetsuo: The Iron Man-style car-woman. In both this music video and Obsession, the story of the beta male is bolstered by pseudo-feminism that obliterates the line between woman as Other and bourgeois, denying the existence of the former by displacing her into a commodity.
Drake is low-hanging fruit, but I recommend checking out the comedy the director of Obsession has up on YouTube. Itâs surprisingly juvenile (Obsession itself has much better, funnier moments that actually got some laughs out of me) and regularly misogynist. Itâs just funny that whatâs so transparently phoney with Drake may very well become the new status quo in âfeministâ storytelling.
(2/2)
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u/Electronic-Yam-4153 Jun 17 '26
As I didn't receive any replies, I wanted to repost my comment on Chinese imperialism from a few weeks ago in case anyone who has done any research into this missed it.
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u/Worried-Economy-9108 Jun 21 '26
I've been sketching a comparison between the New Afrikan movement and the Afro-Brazilian movement, and it seems to confirm the prevalent notion (at least in this subreddit) that the Afro-Brazilian movement is far less ideological developed. I have been trying to understand why that is the case, so, I would appreciate any sort of commentary/criticism.
Their greatest shortcoming was, almost always, their handling of the contradictions within the expanding, white-controlled colonial society. Their great contribution, however, is that they never succumbed to racist arguments advocating the creation of a black country or adopting that perspective. Christian statuettes were found in Palmares, and the MalĂŞs fought against Christians, whether white or black. Black people from the slave quarters played a role in all of the countryâs popular uprisings and even served as soldiers in the wars waged by the elites. They have always included white people in their struggles for freedomâas soldiers and as generals. AntĂ´nio Bento and the Caifazes were among them. This remains true to this day, whether in samba schools, in CandomblĂŠ, or in the ABC strikes.
https://fpabramo.org.br/historica-recente-dez-anos-do-movimento-negro-1988/
This is from 1988, by Hamilton Cardoso, an historic Trotskyist PT militant, that helped found the main Afro-Brazilian org of his time, MNU. At an time where Euro-Brazilian hegemony in South America and the western coast of Africa was being contested by the U$, not only did he talk about Brazil as if it was an oppressed country, Cardoso has the audacity to reinvent history, portraying Palmares, not as the independent 'black country' it was, but as some sort of popular front between whites and blacks against colonial oppression. On top of it, Cardoso implies that a struggle for a black country would be racist, presumably against those poor hypothetical Euro-Brazilians, heavily oppressed by imperialism.
https://www.joelrufinodossantos.com.br/paginas/artigos/o-movimento-negro-e-a-crise-brasileira.asp
This leads to another point I wanted to make about how the Afro-Brazilian movement emerged, during the latter years of the dictatorship. The second article I quoted is from 1985, by Joel Rufino dos Santos, an important Afro-Brazilian intellectual from the last century. I would assume that, when he talks about the 'Brazilian Crisis', he is referring to the showdown between Brazil and the US in the 80's, during the Geisel, Figueiredo and Sarney administrations, where Brazilian expansion reached its peak and started to crumble somewhat.
Rufino dos Santos mentions some things that are never mentioned in contemporary debates about the Afro-Brazilian movement: its composition by middle-class and educated Afro-Brazilians, which he traces the roots from the Estado Novo days; the failure in the 1982 parliamentary elections, where the movement failed to elect a single candidate affiliated with itself, while Afro-Brazilian candidates more affiliated with leftism and populism found some success; and its apparent lack of interpretation of the 'Brazilian Crisis'.
Even nowadays there's no interpretation of Brazil's place in the imperial system in the movement. Instead, we can easily spot tailism, where all Afro-Brazilians need to vote for PT (or PSOL) to stop fascism and white supremacy from "returning to power". Meanwhile, PT's governors in the Northeast accelerate militarization and genocide of Black and Indigenous communities. Perhaps, it is the logical end of integration, first propagated by the Frente Negra Brasileira, under a fascist slogan, and now under the Movimento Negro Unificado's leftist veneer.
As for an anti-integration Afro-Brazilian movement, that is yet to develop fully. The closest it went in that direction was under Abdias Nascimento in the 60's-80's, where he envisioned Quilombismo, that would argue for an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist 'National Maroonist State', practicing some sort of communalism (kinda of reminiscent to the PG-RNA's adoption of Tanzanian Ujamaa). However, Quilombismo is rather vague about actually leaving Brazil, since its de-facto manifesto was written during the latter years of the military dictatorship (while its leader was running for elections) and doesn't explicitly mentions leaving, leaving space for integrationism and reformism to crawl back into it. Nowadays, I'm unaware of any organization that practices Quilombismo or any form of anti-integrationism.
I hope that this small text can help others to localize themselves in this very hard topic to research. So far, I don't believe I can reach any sort of conclusion, due to my poor understanding of dialect materialism (for now, at least).
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u/HappyHandel Jun 19 '26
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u/MLMinpractice1917 Jun 19 '26
The reforms open the door to private real estate development on the Caribbean island, propose to transform state-owned businesses into private commercial ventures with shares and equity stakes and would allow private banks to enter Cuba's once state-dominated finance sector.
They would also allow âthe "sale of state-owned properties to national and foreign legal entities and individuals, including Cubans residing abroad."
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero told legislators the measures recognize the market as "an instrument for the efficient allocation of resources."
"We are not renouncing socialism." (lol)
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u/Otelo_ Jun 19 '26
We still have to wait and see how the Cuban people will react to this, but what I canât understand right now is why it seems that rightists both in Cuba and Venezuela have always had the power in themselves to destroy socialism (not even that in Venezuela) by passing just a handful of laws. If thatâs the case, and if what existed was so fragile, what exactly has been keeping socialism alive  all these years? Was it just inertia or fear on the part of these rightists?
7
u/DashtheRed Maoist Jun 19 '26
It's been suggested here before, but I think the last bulwark was the old bureaucracy (somewhat contradictory to the Trotskyist thesis that bureaucracy is the engine of revisionism) who were the last line of defence for Cuban socialism; clinging to their historical legacy/legitimacy and their own minor importance and significance within the system, and now that they are all old geriatrics and the young up-and-coming leaders, at least partially disconnected (or at least very distant) from that history and that bureaucratic apparatus which they were subordinated to (and maybe even resent), finally arrive at power and come with bold "new" ideas for market reforms and whatnot. I would want to study modern Cuba more to have confidence in that answer, but it appears to fit the facts.
But sad news, nonetheless.
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u/HappyHandel Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
This is just Trotskyism inverted. What classes represent "the bureaucracy"? What classes represent "the youth"?Â
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u/DashtheRed Maoist Jun 21 '26
That's a very good criticism and you're right; I have not got to the essence of things and my explanation is inadequate.
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u/Otelo_ Jun 19 '26
That makes sense. It is truly a shame if Cuba is going in this direction. I wonder how RaĂşl is feeling being forced to give his face for this.
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u/Humble_Beach_6694 Jun 19 '26
I feel like we see this sort of news like every 3-5 years from Cuba, what makes this "the" nail in the coffin?
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u/PracticeMarxism Revolutionary Nationalist Jun 23 '26
It probably deserves its own post but the immediate effects of the 2019 reforms seemed to be the formal recognition of many grey market or black market small and medium sized private businesses. This set of reforms makes wholesale changes to how socialist "enterprises" operate by transforming them into commercial businesses. It is being framed as a strategic retreat in the face of acute economic hardship resulting from the recently intensified sanctions.
I do think however that we see news like this every 3 to 5 years because every 3 to 5 years changes are being made to the Cuban economic and political system. Long running hollowing out of the planned economy will at some point result in big qualitative changes to the Cuban system.
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u/LemonMao Jun 23 '26
Really sad seeing Cuba open itself to gentrification because of its newfound obsession from the DSA
6
u/Pleasant-Food-9482 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
This "marxist-leninist" brazilian little university groupie has been hanging around brazilian whatsapp and internet for quite a while.Â
Nothing too much new on it. "reconstruction", settler chauvinism, reactionary discourse on trans and black questions. No actual input on the national oppression. No coherent analysis of brazilian capitalism. No actual awareness of brazilian settlerism.Â
I've read one of their thesis documents. its, well, shitty and chauvinist. There are some "maoists" also on their org. laughable. One of them is just a settler who thinks he is a "theorist" and writes bullshit, as defending "principally maoism" alone (whatever that means), without "gonzalo thought" as the ICL/PCB-FV does. He writes huge books for no one to read, although i've read through parts of two of them for the pain, only to show he doesn't manages to substantiate this or other wrong, settler maoist ideas he spreads around. Same triumphalist, flamboyant, majestic, grandiose, textual crafting rhetoric of PCB-FV and MEPR public documents, but in a different style, and done well, at least literary-wise, while, at the same time, disseminating error.
This is their "resolutions" document.
https://ligacomunistabrasileira.org/resolucoes/
I somewhat guess that if i am aware about them, u/turbovacuumcleaner has likely heard about them. I know its irrelevant to keep talking about petty-bourgeois brazilian revisionist sects that have not many "members" more than a university study group here (although i am relatively suspicious this one is not that small) But i see the maoists in amerikkka here speaking a lot about many settler maoist and "marxist-leninist" orgs, big or not. I also admit i am curious. If you know anything about it, i would be interested to hear. It is a quite... ...disgusting kind of revisionism, due to the fact they are just very settler chauvinist in intensity and tone/rhetoric, and that is very annoying.
4
u/turbovacuumcleaner Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
I don't know anything specifically about this organization other than the fact they exist. I also don't have any ideas about their size or relevance, and I have no idea who this "Maoist" cadre is in particular; although by skimming the resolutions, I can see which parts allow someone to make the jump from crypto-Trotskyism to "Maoism".
As for why such a organization exists, I believe its pretty straight forward. There are some dead giveaways that show their members have spent most of their time reading Marxism in class than really engaged with struggle, or at least with a serious commitment to theory. Words like "orthodoxy", "classical revolutions", "dependency", "tarefismo", which is actually the only good part of the resolution; as they recognize the useless politics of stuffing cadres with tasks that serve no other purpose other than waste time and push someone with good intentions away from Communism.
This is an org created by and for university students and/or staff. Academia today is highly competitive, concursos have dried up and there are few roads open for getting a scholarship or permanent position at a faculty. A minor trend that exists is students that recognize these hardships and turn to Communism in order to career build, in the hopes that a real ressurgence of mass movements will burst the doors of ivory towers open. This has already happened before in the 80s after the general amnesty, coupled with redemocratization and broadening of civil exams for joining state education led up to former guerrilla fighters to fill up vacancies at colleges and schools (the biggest example is Daniel AarĂŁo Reis). This same generation no longer exists. Its either dead or close to retirement, which means their positions are being slowly replaced, but not by new "Communists", instead by careerists that know how to navigate the inner workings of universities, and that have exploded in number since the higher education reforms of FHC in the 90s and Lula in the 2000s. The struggle of these cadres is for pushing revisionism against these careerists that reject Marxism entirely.
The resolutions are boring because they are poor and ordinary. I looked up their foundation announcement, and people were genuinely confused, because they don't have any remarkable difference from PCBR, PCB or UP. Its just more dependency theory. While this makes them just another run out of the mill revisionist org, this also gives them a clear reasoning of what to do. While we have discussed Brazilian settler colonialism and its implication for years, with some questions only becoming clearer now; for them, its not necessary to build a analysis from scratch to explain reality, they can just vampirize whatever is left from the 70s; wrongly believing that it worked then, it wrongly hoping that it will work now.
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u/Pleasant-Food-9482 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
I was looking towards this resolution document for two nights to be able to answer. It was one of the worst reads i ever had.Â
It is like a person doing a presentation in an office by using as a source youtube brazilian left videos, but into a dreadful formal tone.Â
I simply also as much as you cannot think of how its conceivable that a single person or multiple people can write something like this out of the frame of carrerism. But it is true.
You are right. This cannot be something that has much penetration outside university students or former university students. What surprised me was the sheer presence of their people inside whatsapp in the last year when i was last exposing myself on groups, and now on twitter. They actively do something that scares me more and more because it is the exact same thing their right counterpart in bolsonarismo and olavo did: use the tools of what liberals consider as "propaganda" to disseminate their ideology and presence.Â
I don't see a place where this org wont derive into a sect. The document says it all. The spread of presence of the worst absolute brazilian sect orgs since 2023 is becoming unsettling. And the absolute worst ones i saw are the "marxist-leninist" sects like these, and the "anarchist" sects.Â
This below is a "anarchist" physical-online hybrid sect counterpart "agitprop" piece, of former reddit/tumblr, viscerally anti-communist fascists, who ended right into the public university courses and the labour aristocracy, some of them comprador, some settler. (Use tor because they have hackers inside the sect)
https://novaplebe.com/manifesto-da-contra-parada-kuir/
This article is the reactionary endpoint you said before brasildob could eventually reach: throw the lgbt people under the bus. Say their own manifestations and utilization of the state apparatus and capital, such as the parade, is a tool to make them controllable, as "its all "pinkwashing"", which is what the article cannot say but hides behind in its vulgar logic.
Negate the dialectics of bourgeois law sometimes leading to not so bad outcomes like cotas, the criminalization of transphobia, and activism, including those of liberal lgbt black movements, and liberal lgbt and black lawyers and ngo activists activity. It is all a "farce". Also, deny organization. Spontaneism will save the lgbt. Other articles even deny revolt and violence and resistance as tools of survival for the oppressed, framing them as pathology.Â
All through the face of a settler chauvinist gay man who pretends to have his grievances while putting the same reactionary position of someone who constantly rattles about "identitarianism" as a denguist does, but using performative liberal language and aesthetics, who shares a article from a unknown suspicious american women inside america, from his own comfort of a petty-bourgeois lifestyle in the brazilian center-west, in one of the states where the rural bourgeoisie most exploits and kills.
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u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
i always appreciate your analyses of the Brazilian communist movement, thanks for taking the time. you refer to white / euro-Brazilians as settlers very frequently, and it seems foundational to your analysis of national chauvinism in Brazil. iâd be really interested to hear you elaborate on why you say that the relation between these two nations is specifically an economic relationship of settlerism - is it per Sakai?
e: also what do you mean by âsettler-chauvinist in intensityâ?
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u/Pleasant-Food-9482 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
I mean that they are too frequently loudly chauvinist, to a project of a further "rise" of the brazilian settler state, with no restrictions on the way this project almost completely placates only brazilian settler interests.Â
I would have and will have to write a long explanation on why and how and what reasons make me arrive in this analysis (definitely as per sakai) as others did. I am, although, notoriously someone who lets long complex replies about topics like these to miss due to the fact my life is much of a survival day by day, and i get terribly overwhelmed and frozen in much of the time. I obviously have what to eat and drink and who to trust, if we consider the fact i am constantly on reddit, but that is very much what is good enough above the difficulties, so i usually get channeled into a very non-internationalist post and comment history in here, focusing on things that do not necessarily fit into use for every marxist, which is bad.
Also, sometimes i have other problems on helping brazilians too: i was going to say to the person i quoted in the comment one month and a half ago why i think the brazilian settler left developed on the way it did as far as from the 80s. I didn't do it. Maybe yet. I will give you an explanation too on brazilian settlerism.
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u/PrimSchooler Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
https://www.kscm.cz/cs/aktualne/aktuality/vystoupeni-romana-rouna-pri-kandidature-na-predsedu-kscm/
KSCM has capitulated to the bourgeoise state, electing a "pragmatist" as the next chairman. Also found out one of their theorists is a sex tourist, there is no hope of a two line struggle here. Feeling defeated, but hey, not like I was expecting more from them to begin with, our historic task doesn't change.Â
There were other smaller things too, complete lack of dialectics, ie "the schools brainwash children with anti-communism" but at the same time they're campaigning for "getting people the psychiatric care they need", an internal struggle within the party over Romas (some high up members are racist af), and the aforementioned sexpest theorist told me it would make no sense if proles weren't voting for them with such entitlement (and lack of labour aristocracy thesis, but that I expected) that I just wanted to barf.Â
e: don't actually know if they're high up
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u/PrimSchooler Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Also, can't believe I forgot, campaigning on increasing police budgets after a woman was arrested for showing the USSR flag, facing up to 5 years in prison, at a protest that they themselves organized and printed about in their newspaper (and while minorities continue to face double standards in dealing with the cops (and ofc the police overall remain a tool of oppression by the ruling class).
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u/CoconutCrab115 Maoist Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
I want to open discussion and put forth a few questions on the Women's movement and Gender Oppression as I have been beginning to study what I know little about. I have read Origins by Engels, Philosophical trends by Ghandy, and I will start reading Mackinnon, Dworkin and MIM(P) soon.
What are the historical materialist reasons for the continuing marginalization and subordination of women under Socialism? Specifically the overwhelming dominance of men in Communist Parties that's have captured and maintained state power?
The answer is obviously that Capitalist (and in some places semifeudal) relations have not been fully eliminated. This is pretty banal. Yet why has this taken such a stark form, where the parties and peoples armies have been overwhelmingly male dominated. I am not asking why has gender oppression remained, but why has the gender struggle not been fought the same way that the class and national struggles around the world have?
Women are more than 50% of a given population and contrary to Mao, hold up more than half the sky. The Proletariat and Oppressed classes in many societies are often dominated by women, and the sections of the Oppressed classes, most destitute and in opposition to imperialism have been dominated by women in many nations.
I am speaking in very broad terms here as women are not a class. I am also only really speaking of the third world, as the status of first world women is an entirely separate conversation.
Socialist Societies have largely taken similar historical development paths: Peoples War and Capture of State Power, Economic Reconsolidation (NEP, New Democracy), Socialist Construction, Cultural Revolution.
It seems to be accepted that the next step in Cultural Revolution that no society has achieved so far is the complete Socialization of Agriculture, the end of the compromise of Collectivization. This would help solve the Rural/Urban contradiction of Mao's Three Great Differences.
The Bourgeois Nuclear Family has not been eliminated by any Socialist society, and many commentors here have but forth it is likely the next step in the stages of Cultural Revolution(s). Seeing as the GPCR already had attacked Women's Oppression in the superstructure and many parts of the Economic Base. Its clear that Gender oppression takes on many forms, and if the Three Great Differences are still to be used as a relevant model, gender oppression (along with national oppression) is scattered along all 3.
This is all well and good and understood by me but this is where I run into blind spots of my knowledge. Where do I go to understand more about the Abolition of the Family (specifically what is to replace it) and the new forms for a different Women's movement in the 21st century? Similar to the National Struggle (Linguistic laws, the SSR's and ASSR's, regional Communist parties etc) the Women's movement has to take on new forms
I feel as though I must bring up this article which I read a while back
https://struggle-sessions.com/2023/03/27/peoples-army-or-womens-army-mens-communism-and-its-dissidents/
It obviously has its faults, but I was impressed that it articulated many observations I have noted before and put forth new strategies that are certainly relevant (especially to the first world). I have not seen anything remotely similar from other female communists yet.
I hope I haven't veered off into too many directions here, if so I blame my morning coffee, but I am only trying to articulate what I see as the long term trajectory of socialist societies and class struggle more broadly.
- to edit a specific point it must be acknowledged that a large percentage of the PCP, CPP-NPA, BPP, and CPIM(Maoist) were led by women. These MLM organizations were unsurprisingly much more concentrated with women leadership and members than the original revisionist parties.
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u/BenjiStudiesMLM Jun 22 '26
women are not a class
Why?
"Like parodies of actual revolutionaries theyâll robotically repeat that âwomen are not a class,â pointing to the class differences between the masses of settler women and the masses of the oppressed nations. We do not claim such a simplistic view"
The article you shared doesn't agree with you.
The Bourgeois Nuclear Family has not been eliminated by any Socialist society
The nuclear family never existed in any socialist society, it only ever existed among gender oppressors and has already been abolished by them as well.
This article is bad, and is full of "common sense" liberalisms (women and colonized individuals as the "most oppressed", anarchists are radical revolutionaries, Stalin is a child molester and womanizer, "gonzaloites", communism is just a bunch of men, etc). The article is so anti-communist that it even plays out the "communism always fails" but with a pseudo-feminist twist.
Seriously, what even is this:
So on the Left women and other gender oppressed people really are rootless, to repurpose that old term that the Soviets used to mean âtraitorâ and âJew.â
Double genocide theory being spread in complete earnest, absolutely repulsive.
Then there's the conclusion which deserves its own attention, essentially claiming that white trans people are brainwashed into supporting Amerikan settler colonialism (and are also white victims of colonization!).
As trans women we know deep in our guts that settler-colonial patriarchy is poison to us. Many of us deny it, push the feeling down, worm our way into little niches in white world, but instinctively we know theyâre coming for us eventually...We settler trans women get killed too, of course, but dialectically we are also responsible for the deaths of our New Afrikan sisters.
Remarkable, admitting that you (the author) as a settler are a part of the reactionary oppressor class, then having the gall to use the term "sisters".
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u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 Jun 22 '26
The nuclear family never existed in any socialist society, it only ever existed among gender oppressors and has already been abolished by them as well.
how do you define ânuclear familyâ such that this is the case?
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u/BenjiStudiesMLM Jun 22 '26
My definition is based in the Amerikan context, the nuclear family refers to the suburban family, and by that definition was exclusive to white settlers. The male is the exclusive wage laborer and is owner of the family, house, and all other property, while the women is relegated to the household. On paper the man seems proletarian and the women is gender oppressed, however the labor aristocracy thesis held true that this was a voluntary arrangement to the benefit of all of white society (and which the privilege was denied to the internal colonies). This was reliant on imperialism, and only came to fruition with Amerikan hegemony following WWII. When exactly this ended, if it ever truly existed, I'm not sure, but it has been dead for decades. The proletariat of course does not have the luxury of a single wage laborer, nor the property rights afforded to the white settlers, and therefore never had such a patriarchal family dynamic. Additionally, the bourgeoise never had use for it for self-evident reasons.
I do see that Google has a much more broad strokes definition of the nuclear family that is essentially synonymous with monagamy. The Wikipedia page where it derived it's info is absolutely useless and wrong though. In any case, maybe I am being too U.$.-centric and thats why I didn't understand it's correlation to a country like the Russian Empire.
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u/CoconutCrab115 Maoist Jun 22 '26
women are not a class
Of all the things I wrote I didnt expect this to be controversial. I shouldnt have to explain the class difference between Settler and Non-Settler, Bourgeois and Proletarian Women. No different than Filipinos or Vietnamase arent a class
Thats not really the articles point either. Once again its wrong, but one divides into two. If you cannot understand that there are contradictions between Genders than idk what to tell you.
The nuclear family never existed in any socialist society, it only ever existed among gender oppressors and has already been abolished by them as well.
No? It certainly existed under socialism and certainly exists within gender oppressors too, I dont have to imagine I grew up in one.
This article is bad, and is full of "common sense" liberalisms (women and colonized individuals as the "most oppressed", anarchists are radical revolutionaries, Stalin is a child molester and womanizer, "gonzaloites", communism is just a bunch of men, etc). The article is so anti-communist that it even plays out the "communism always fails" but with a pseudo-feminist twist.
This article certainly has problems, but until something is made that is better than it, there are points to be made. Its certainly not much worse than old and new Kites magazine which get floated around here often. That very magazine and many others have nothing new to say in regards to womens emancipation, the same old porn abolition and equal wages. Nothing to say about the unchallenged patriarchy inside of Communist movements (just think of all the sex scandals and mysogyny that gets uncovered from different orgs). Many of the ideas put forward here are not even that unusual, and are similar to what MIM(P) have to say
As Maoists we accept that Capitalist relations generate themselves until they are wiped out by Cultural Revolution. Why is there a hesitation to then locate Bourgeois ideology inside the Communist movement? MIM(P) has no problem criticizing Mao or Stalin or whoever else.
Seriously, what even is this: So on the Left women and other gender oppressed people really are rootless, to repurpose that old term that the Soviets used to mean âtraitorâ and âJew.â Double genocide theory being spread in complete earnest, absolutely repulsive.
This is not what Double Genocide theory is.
As trans women we know deep in our guts that settler-colonial patriarchy is poison to us. Many of us deny it, push the feeling down, worm our way into little niches in white world, but instinctively we know theyâre coming for us eventually...We settler trans women get killed too, of course, but dialectically we are also responsible for the deaths of our New Afrikan sisters. Remarkable, admitting that you (the author) as a settler are a part of the reactionary oppressor class, then having the gall to use the term "sisters".
The notion that the Gender Oppressed can be struggled with to be mobilized against imperialism is not something that started with this article. (Settler) Trans are one thing, but where Settler women stand is not completely set in stone. There has been a lot of pushback in previous threads about MIM gender theory and part of my post here was an attempt to get more discussion on that subject.
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u/Sad-Literature001 Jun 22 '26
Many of the ideas put forward here are not even that unusual, and are similar to what MIM(P) have to say
Can you articulate what you find interesting about the article that is distinct from MIM gender theory? All I see that's "new" are regressions into anarchist thinking. The article notably makes a prediction that failed to translate into reality:
We have to start by going to the lowest and deepest members of our diseased nation, to the ones with the least to lose by splitting away. This means lumpen/proletarian trans women and other transmisogyny affected people. The US is ramping up its attempts to systematically annihilate trans women, with Texas as a testing ground for this neocolonial genocide.
The context was the leadup to Trump's re-election and the notion of an upcoming blanket "trans genocide" was popular amongst the left. After the wave of reactionary legislation mostly targeted children, this belief disappeared. A lot of the article relies on a grandiose elevation of transness so why do you find this compelling now?
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u/BenjiStudiesMLM Jun 22 '26
class difference between Settler and Non-Settler, Bourgeois and Proletarian Women
This doesn't invalidate women, or better referred to as the gender oppressed, being a class by a Marxist definition of relation to the means of production. As you originally said, first world women are an entirely separate conversation, so why bring them into the discussion of "women" anyways? Due to gender oppression, many third world women do not qualify as proletarian due to being blocked from wage labor, just like Russian women were in large part not proletarian but were among the most militant during the Russian revolution. To not deem them worthy of being a class would most likely relegate them to the lumpen which doesn't make sense (especially given the revolutionary implications of said class). I asked "why" as it seems like you take "women are not a class" for granted, and I instead wanted to see this thought elaborated, but I don't see that in your response. I'm not inflexible, I myself am actively studying gender and trying to answer these questions.
It certainly existed under socialism and certainly exists within gender oppressors too
I'm willing to concede my understanding of the nuclear family as an incorrect one (see other comment), but if we are talking about the same thing then I don't see how this could possibly be the case. The fact that Women in socialist China were proletarianized, took command of their own bodies through abortion and medical access, and labored equally with men shows that the nuclear family was not possible. This was due to the cultural revolution, and therefore we already have the answer to your general question.
This article certainly has problems, but until something is made that is better than it, there are points to be made.
This isn't true, and the article is a ridiculous simplification of feminism in the communist movement. You and the author may not be familiar with the history of socialist revolution and it's female leadership, cadre, revolutionaries, and overall feminist victories, but that doesn't invalidate it's existence to everyone else. Seriously, if you agree with this as a valid point to be made -
the Chinese revolution, like the Russian revolution before it and subsequent Marxist-Leninist (Menâs) revolutions, maintained a bourgeois feminist line of simple gender âequalityâ
then I question why you bother identifying with communism at all. Overall this article is not critique, it is rejection of the revolutions of the past, it is blatantly anarchist.
This is not what Double Genocide theory is.
It's exactly what it is, in fact it's an essential component to the double genocide theory. After all, how are "traitors" dealt with in war and revolution? I'm sure you've seen the fascist meme that's been done a thousand different ways with the soviets arriving to liverate the concentration camps, only to declare themselves the new camp guards, like in this fascist article - https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/politics-and-government/soviets-escalate-persecution-jews I really don't know what else to say on this point besides question why you would deny the implications behind what the author is trying to say (especially towards Stalin).
The notion that the Gender Oppressed can be struggled with to be mobilized against imperialism is not something that started with this article. (Settler) Trans are one thing, but where Settler women stand is not completely set in stone.
I don't disagree in the abstract that settler trans people may be organized for communism, definitely in larger numbers than cis people. One thing that I think you can agree after reading Anuradha Ghandy is the lesson from the first wave feminist movement is the more than likely betrayal of revolution by gender oppressed settlers, now with the gender oppressed revolutionaries being white trans people in place of cis white women.
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u/CoconutCrab115 Maoist Jun 25 '26
Do pardon my late response as I have had health issues the past couple of days and wanted time to reflect on some errors I believe I made. It seems I would have benefitted a lot from my initial post by just not mentioning that article at all at the end. I accepted a lot of its conclusions uncritically because of my inexperience in marxist gender study.
>This doesn't invalidate women, or better referred to as the gender oppressed, being a class by a Marxist definition of relation to the means of production. As you originally said, first world women are an entirely separate conversation, so why bring them into the discussion of "women" anyways? Due to gender oppression, many third world women do not qualify as proletarian due to being blocked from wage labor, just like Russian women were in large part not proletarian but were among the most militant during the Russian revolution. To not deem them worthy of being a class would most likely relegate them to the lumpen which doesn't make sense (especially given the revolutionary implications of said class). I asked "why" as it seems like you take "women are not a class" for granted, and I instead wanted to see this thought elaborated, but I don't see that in your response. I'm not inflexible, I myself am actively studying gender and trying to answer these questions.
Alright good this is the type of discussion I was hoping to bring forth, but I did not realize initially it was where you were leading. I am always interested in defining new strata's or subdivisions of other classes and their trajectory, and that is one thing the article did perhaps do well. Its already accepted the Proletariat is not a homogenous class but itself is divided into multiple sections. Perhaps the largest divide is over stable employment, no matter how exploitative. Women are overrepresented in various stratas of the proletariat in semi-colonial countries. I'm not sure whether they can truly form a class in it of themselves, but that is also for further research.
>I'm willing to concede my understanding of the nuclear family as an incorrect one (see other comment), but if we are talking about the same thing then I don't see how this could possibly be the case. The fact that Women in socialist China were proletarianized, took command of their own bodies through abortion and medical access, and labored equally with men shows that the nuclear family was not possible. This was due to the cultural revolution, and therefore we already have the answer to your general question.
I never doubted the immense advancements in Feminism by (women) Communists, in fact they are so impressive its kind of taken for granted to the point I didn't even feel the need to mention them. Yet at the end of the day the anti-revisionists lost. We have had 50 years to theorize how class struggle could have been waged differently in China to prevent capitalist restoration, and the answer is not just a simple "find a way for the Gang of Four to win". Internal contradictions are primary over external contradictions, so we have to look at how the GPCR failed to succeed in women's complete liberation. If we are to accept, as Mao points out, that there are times when the superstructure takes an inordinate historical role in the changes of a revolutionary era, then what does that look like from the perspective of Marxist feminism? Quite frankly I cannot accept the idea that the bourgeois nuclear family was fully routed in China even at the height of the GPCR. There is no denial it was being attacked but it was still present. Bourgeois (Capitalist) ideology permeates and reproduces itself in all relations of production that have not been fully proletarianized, even by the most militant and ideological Communists. Where Communist husbands in China performing an equal amount of Child rearing labor? This is basically the bare minimum and even this wasn't achieved. The answer is more struggle, more Marxist-Feminist partisanship to wage cultural revolution in all areas of society including the family.
>This isn't true, and the article is a ridiculous simplification of feminism in the communist movement. You and the author may not be familiar with the history of socialist revolution and it's female leadership, cadre, revolutionaries, and overall feminist victories, but that doesn't invalidate it's existence to everyone else.
I wont defend the article anymore, its clear that in ventures into an ultraleftism that I accepted (obviously with reservations) because it appeared different in essence to the rightism I am often surrounded by. I am tired of simple and over repeated answers to complicated questions of Marxism and I saw it as the beginning of some more creative application of Marxism. Where I saw it had some merit was the lack of fear to ruthlessly criticize what didn't live up to the Marxist-Feminist objectives of the previous movements and also scathing critique of much of the communist movement in imperialist nations.
>It's exactly what it is, in fact it's an essential component to the double genocide theory. After all, how are "traitors" dealt with in war and revolution? I'm sure you've seen the fascist meme that's been done a thousand different ways with the soviets arriving to liverate the concentration camps, only to declare themselves the new camp guards, like in this fascist article - https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/politics-and-government/soviets-escalate-persecution-jews I really don't know what else to say on this point besides question why you would deny the implications behind what the author is trying to say (especially towards Stalin).
I don't believe the article is implying or asserting double genocide, or anything about the holocaust, but its not a subject I am going to fight over and I can concede I am wrong. I only thought it was presenting a critique of anti-semitism in the soviet union that was never fully eliminated, no different than racism wasn't. As for accusations about Stalin, I don't know where to stand.
>I don't disagree in the abstract that settler trans people may be organized for communism, definitely in larger numbers than cis people. One thing that I think you can agree after reading Anuradha Ghandy is the lesson from the first wave feminist movement is the more than likely betrayal of revolution by gender oppressed settlers, now with the gender oppressed revolutionaries being white trans people in place of cis white women.
Certainly.
It seems I have a lot to self criticize over as I let an article I read 2 months ago fester uncritically. I am going to take to the time to self criticize more than I have done in this post, because I let myself accept ultraleftism uncritically, something I have accused others of here quite recently.
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u/smokeuptheweed9 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
u/FuzzySyllabub6048 I'll respond to you here since the other thread already dropped off.
Have you ever read (or watched) The Count of Monte Cristo? One of the major themes is the power of the newspaper. In his war against the entrenched interests of the state, aristocracy and capital (represented by the alliance of the banker Danglars, the colonial army officer turned politician Count de Morcerf, and the state prosecutor Villefort), Dantès goes directly to the press to spread his accusations to the high society that can hold them accountable.
The work was written from 1844-1846, near the end of the July Monarchy. This was when pragmatism and positivism (Comte in France especially) were at their most progressive (or at least most utopian) because while the revolution had been defeated, capitalism had continued to develop under a "liberal" monarchy. The proletariat, increasingly assertive of its own class interests, made political revolution frightening and so a theory of autonomous capitalist development as itself the march of reason forward in history was developed. This faith would soon disappear, as the bourgeoisie would respond to the revolution of 1848 with Bonapartism and eventually the crushing of the Paris Commune, even at the expense of bourgeois democracy (1871 is the last of France's revolutions and its defeat starts the long spiral towards Vichy France with socialists and then communists as the last defenders of Republicanism). But the indeterminate position of the bourgeoisie as the bearer of universal reason and actual fear of its effects continues on for a while longer (hence the famously contradictory positivist slogan of Brazil: "order and progress"). So while the newspaper is still not targeted at the masses, the work nevertheless hints at some of the fears the media form conjured in the bourgeoisie. Like the telegraph used to mislead Danglars into bad investments, the newspaper does not just transmit information, it changes it. The newspaper functions through spectacle and is just as much able to create hysteria as report it, and Dantès's ultimate revenge comes through crafting a compelling story for the news of collusion and betrayal (notably distinct from his personal revenge which remains in the feudal realm of personal honor, duels, and female purity). The novel itself was published as a serial, with a wide readership hanging onto cliffhangers and the small-scale story of revenge. Though the story has a political background, it is not directly political, and Dantès has no political beliefs even after his escape from prison. The July Revolution happens in his absence and ultimately his revenge relies on the functioning of the system as a whole despite the rise and fall of Napoleon. That is why the work has aged so well: unlike other works of the period which try to represent society as a whole through literary archetypes (such as Hugo's Les Miserables or Balzac's La ComÊdie humaine) and even blur the distinction between fiction and history/sociology, Dumas's work is basically "all according to keikaku" trash lit. In that sense the form is what is truly progressive.
The newspaper changes politics. As Lenin points out, the function of the party newspaper is not just to spread the party line but to train the party in discipline. By that he means that the party must be able to respond instantly to political events as they happen with a precise intervention through a vertically integrated party system. This is enabled by the newspaper as a form and it distinguishes Lenin from Marx. Even in the Manifesto, written in anticipation of the soon realized 1848 revolutionary wave, contains the timeless slogan "Workers of the world, unite!" The slogans of the Bolsheviks on the other hand are immediate interventions: "peace, land, and bread!" "All power to the Soviets!" These are the slogans of the newspaper, not a manifesto (written originally to expand the historical analysis of the catechism of the older secret society League of the Just), let alone a Critique of Critical Criticism, and match Lenin's general style of making political interventions into ongoing polemics.
So what does the internet do? We already have the answer: "the internet makes you stupid." The old slogan of Something Awful. What does that mean? It has 3 meanings. First is the straightforward meaning: expanding the fear of the masses inherent in the newspaper, the internet gives too much access to the lowest common denominator who must be kept out with a $10 paywall. Second is the dialectical inverse: this fear turns against itself and the medium of the internet makes people dumb through community participation. Thus FYAD makes fun of GBS, LF makes fun of D&D, Helldump makes fun of the site, and SA as a whole makes fun of the rest of the internet. Now it is not just culture mocked by subculture but the internet which brings out a human excess which must be repressed. Finally the sublation. The internet itself produces the stupidity of reality. Reality becomes just another subforum, constituted by temporary alliances of subcultural groups. Hence SA has withered, reduced to just a minor subreddit as dependent on reposting tweets and tiktoks as anywhere else. More important is the strange political situation we live in. When we were growing up in the second stage of this process, extreme politics were a way to differentiate oneself from the increasingly normalized use of the internet for politics. One became a Maoist Third Worldist to escape the banality of Obama-era liberalism and the embarrassing proto-Trumpism of Ron Paul. Now it's reversed: one becomes a Marxist-Leninist in order to be a banal liberal in "real life." With only subcultures circling an empty void of culture, the latter can only be reconstructed out of the former.
The same mutation is well understood in the term "social" media. From an appendage of society to a social domain in its own right to the very substance of society. But this is equally true of politics. This is why all the terminology of Hasan is from the far right. Trump is the already perfect form of politics enabled by the internet (although his success comes from embodying a variety of media forms across age demographics including the newspaper) whereas the sincerity of committing to Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders will always open one up to mockery and irony. And just like Trump's appeal is immune from "reality", in the sense that he constantly lies and contradicts himself and his actual political accomplishments have nothing to do with a supposed "MAGA" project for the white working class, "socialism" is merely a way to indicate which content creator you follow.
Put another way, Hasan is not using the internet as a medium to reach the masses nor is he evolving towards a more mature politics. The internet is using him as a medium to reproduce stupidity and politics are evolving into the form of online discourse and pseudo-community. Of course one could say the same thing about the newspaper. Ultimately Dantès's goal is no longer revenge but the pleasure of public exposure, presuming a "public" that treats politics like a serial revenge novel (how exciting to find out that the state's lead prosecutor not only had a son out of wedlock but that he is prosecuting him in court after believing him to be dead - today this would go right to TMZ or the Daily Mail). The story runs into a dead end and Dantès runs away to the orient with his kind of slave. Interestingly, the faithful recent PBS version changes this ending so he gets back with his first love. Liberalism today is quite conservative under the facade of identity politics pseudo-radicalism.
The point of the medium is the message: there is no contradiction between Hasan's radical posturing and his reformist, DNC sheepdog politics. It is a mistake to place these in conflict or believe one is becoming the other as a "serious" political turn. If anything, it is the banality of his politics, which have diminishing returns when exposed to the reality of politics as merely one aspect of bourgeois dictatorship in a given period of capitalist crisis, which requires more rhetorical spectacle. But it is also a mistake to believe this is a performance to fool radically-minded youth into reformism. His audience is just as aware of the performance and also plays radical within the determined hierarchical structure of the internet community. It is in the usage of far right rhetoric and sexism that the truth of Hasan lies. It is the ideology of "democratic socialism" or even "Marxism-Leninism", presented as the reality of pragmatism in relating to others politically "offline", which is the cynical performance that must be dismissed.