https://twitter.com/ThoughtSlime/status/1627029198245359618
Twitter thread continued:
Sometimes people will say “You made me an anarchist” and like… buddy, I don’t even think it matters that I myself am an anarchist.
And I regret that that sort of “we’re fighting the good fight” mentality has allowed some of the worst grifters on the platform to flourish by manipulating people’s passions for their own weird petty reasons.
I think what I do has a lot of value, I’m just saying that what I perceive that value to BE is a lot different than what I thought a few years ago.
I can’t tell whether Slime’s position here is that changing peoples’ minds is completely pointless as there’s no hope of change or revolution in the end, or just that changing peoples’ minds is pointless without any form of associated praxis. Either way I disagree.
It’s fine if this gets removed for sectarianism, but if ThoughtSlime had even an iota of brainpower or even a basic grasp of theory, she would have always known that what she was doing was simply contributing to the liberal entertainment complex. Perhaps a better contribution than the default state of things, but not actually praxis. Even Hakim or RevLeft do not count as praxis because they are not attached to an actual party or organized communitarian (communist or anarchist) political system that makes decisions democratically as an organ of working class power or authority. They themselves may believe themselves to be anarchist or communist, but it is instead a liberal, ideological, and independent adoption of that ideology outside of any material circumstances or larger social movement with actual responsibilities and duties.
I’m not saying that whatever works she is doing is valueless, but it is not praxis, and the fact that she ever mistook it for praxis is why YouTubers and podcasters should never be in charge of any movement. Not enough time reading, too busy posting.
I would challenge your sense of how a “movement” looks in all honesty. The west is missing anybody who wants to partake in communist/working class parties, and recruitment is a part of that. I agree with your point that it’s not praxis, of course, but recruitment/ideological work among masses is absolutely still a necessity to have movements gain any sort of trust. I think we likely have enough of it, and we don’t need 20 more Hakims (just as an example, insert whatever name you want), but if someone ends up doing the ideological work on the internet better than him, they should do it. We live in a period of time where the accesibility of an ideological work decides its impact, meaning that youtubers and other such people are necessary links to connect people to the world generally. Pipelines exist now and have to be worked with.
Dont read this as a full-throated support of youtubers as leaders or something, I dont think most of them consider themselves even close to that, but it being necessarily liberal is wrong.
That’s fine for you to challenge that sense, but I remember what movements, even flash-in-the-pan ones, ‘actually’ look like. And I can see what they look like in other countries. What we have is a big wet fart that doesn’t even disturb the water.
My point is that if the propoganda and ideological work is not attached to an actual, real, existing and operating political movement or apparatus, it does little to actually advance revolution.
To paraphrase Disco Elysium, all the education does outside of a party context is make you sad. And sad people don’t stick with political work, they primarily seek escape.
, all the education does outside of a party context is make you sad. And sad people don’t stick with political work, they primarily seek escape.
:doomjak:
i’m in this picture and don’t like it.
there’s no party for me to join and i don’t have the rizz to start one or the money to escape.
What party though? In most of the west, especially the big imperial core states, there are absolutely no leftist parties or even orgs with a single iota of political power. As an individual working-class person who also has to work and survive within capitalism I genuinely feel like the best thing I can really do is plant seeds in other people to change their opinions, so maybe in 100 years if we aren’t all dead maybe we’ll reach a critical mass of leftists and something revolutionary might spark that I had one one-millionth of a hand in causing. Feels unfair to ask even e-celeb lefties to somehow create a political power where one isn’t.
Leaders are people like Chris Smalls, any media personality is just a freelance propagandist until they join a party
Yes, this exactly. Chris Smalls is attached to a political labor organization that has a voting constituency, terms and a concrete political aim. When he goes and talks to people and does propoganda, it constitutes praxis on his part not ‘because’ of the action in-of-itself, but because of the context of his actions.
The gray area is what to consider his actions ‘prior’ to the union actually forming. I think they can be considered ‘activism’ or ‘approaching praxis’, certainly more effective than any single podcast or YouTube channel, but he became someone ‘doing praxis’ when he had a labor organization the he was affiliated with outside of himself.
Sure, freelance propagandists arent bad though if they are working to get people into socialist orgs. Chris Smalls isn’t trying to do ideological work, he’s being a leader. So of course they’re different
Eh, a lot of people have been radicalized by Youtube videos. Even if it’s not directly achieving change, opening peoples’ perspective and educating them lays the groundwork. Once a person has been radicalized by online sources, they will be undoubtedly far more likely to join real, material movements and parties.
It ‘can’ lay the groundwork, but in my experience it mostly leads to sadness, isolation, and malaise. Political work and education has to be a community project, a part of a communicating body politic. Not isolated instances online or para-social communities.
Imagine being in a civil war led by podcaster commanders. The white army is at your door step and all your comrades are injured. You’re awaiting orders from the big boss, likely a broken arrow command. But during the last moments of your life you find out he’s too busy arguing with some 20 follower account criticizing him for not wearing a mask to the war room
To be fair I’m pretty sure Breht from refleft is actually involved in leftist orgs, and I think that his show has gotten more people to get involved in orgs. Something I think needs talking about more is that when communist ideas exist in your head but not in your actions or relationship with your community then you aren’t a communist, just a class conscious worker, being a communist should mean more than convincing people of this or that tenet of Marxism on the internet, but being an anarchist is not the same. If your anarchism exists only in your head it’s just as valid as any anarchism because it’s individualist , and freeing your own mind is the extent of its liberation.
From Chapter 1 of Lenin’s “What is to be Done?”
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.
The popularization of leftism and marxism in the past few years has done nothing to bolster the left or further unify its disparate tendencies. All it’s done is watered down and further confused the issue of leftist politics as they’re pulled into the recuperation machine and spun back out as cool shirts and podcasts. The internet has only sped up this issue by allowing individual’s with freak beliefs to be amplified far past their position creating abominations of theories and tendencies (re: MAGA Communism and/or “i’M a LaRoUcHiTe-NeO-tRoTsKyIsT-pAlEo-StAlInIsT wItH aNaRcHo ChArAcTeRiStIcS”). There is work to be done, less to be talked about
There is work to be done, less to be talked about
Ironically, lot of that work to be done is talking just to neighbors, coworkers etc and not randos online. But those are the types of conversations people have anxiety over.
But even then the thing to do isn’t to go door to door like the mormons sharing the good word of Karl Marx. It’s to use our well developed material analysis skills to take the lay of the land locally and either join up with or start an org that goes about doing the work needed to move the needle and then through that process reach out to your local community to expand your efforts. If you live in your neighborhood you know what it needs and if you give the people what they need they’ll listen to what you have to say. Hunger, housing, and education are almost universally an issue that needs to be addressed in every community. Let’s have the marxists lead the charge rather than the professional NGO lib class that will only make the situation worse or god forbid the right-wing church charity groups that are really just there to hand out jesus stickers while their actual political apparatus dismantles the institutions that would otherwise make their charity unnecessary
