https://twitter.com/eshaLegal/status/1620522264835002368
“stalin this stalin that” the guy died in the 50s while their favorite “socialist” country is a white cracker country that exploits the global south and does eugenics.
Probably using communism in the US political sense of “when government does stuff” as a joke, but I don’t know i will probably never listen to that podcast.
Western Leftists are radlibs and nothing more
If you’re primary job is a podcaster or YouTuber or twitch streamer, what else can you be other than a radlib with some socialist aesthetics? You have no material interest in an actual proletarian struggle because you’re doing fine. To an extent, this applies to most western workers, if their job is subsidised by the third world.
I listened to one episode of that like two days ago because they were doing a reading snd analysis of a mark fisher essay (mark fisher has recently become a love/hate obsession of mine since I finished capitalist realism), it seems pretty ok. They’ve done a series about reading State and Revolution but one of the members is in DSA so :shrug-outta-hecks: . I’d say it’s probably more good than it is bad
(mark fisher has recently become a love/hate obsession of mine since I finished capitalist realism)
Do you know about Trash Future? they’re weird and English, but one of them used to do book club episodes. this one is an examination and commentary on Mark Fisher and “K-Punk”, a book of some of Fisher’s unfinished works.
Yeah, I’m not too attached to them having the “correct” opinion of a Soviet leader who died before my parents were born.
Frankly, I find Trots and LeftComs, who at least agree Lenin and the pre-Stalin USSR were cool and good, preferable to radlibs who denounce “Soviet-style socialism”.
He did defeat fascism and for that will always rank higher than any imperialist ghoul, but his postwar international policies were ATROCIOUS. Coming out of WW2, 70% of liberated Europe enthusiastically supported Communist parties (France and Italy especially), he told them to back down and accept social democracies, while he worked to kill actual communists who resisted nazis in the East, alienateing Yugoslavia, ect . The sentence ringing in my head anytime Stalin is mentioned “In the Postwar period, although many forces were aligned in fighting communists taking power in Eastern Europe, no force was as persistent, deadly, and effective at undermining, weakening, and killing communists than Stalin’s”. After that, communism was pretty much defeated in Europe as an ideal and would remain for the following half century. Stalin was either a monster or an idiot
IDK saying “I think so but I haven’t learned enough to say for sure” isn’t a “Hitlerian” position, it’s not really a position at all. Maybe give a comrade some room to breathe - we’d all be better off being comfortable saying we don’t know enough about something to stake out a position.
That’s fair, but I think the point being made here is if you’re going to have a podcast talking about the positive aspects of communism, you should have a better understanding of Stalin and his positive influences on the movement.
You’re right though in pointing out that many of us are also on journeys of understanding and I’m glad you bring it up
