The European Left was unsalvageable once Eurocommunism gained traction
The European left is why Stalin is depicted as a Demon in history
Eurocommunism was a mistake that must be liquefied in order to be rectified.
Amen comrade edit: oh and I recently learned that Andropov was prepping for a formal rehabilitation and even renaming Volograd back to Stalingrad. Who knows if it would’ve passed though
Andropov was prepping for a formal rehabilitation and even renaming Volograd back to Stalingrad.
:kitty-cri:
Its just survivorship bias. You either died a commie or lived long enough to become a villain.
Well that’s easy. The Trumpist right was against NATO (because they were taking a free ride on the US taxpayer and sending back nothing but sneering contempt) and the left cannot possibly agree with them on anything lest they be contaminated by associating with low-status opinions. They must therefore be pro-NATO and pro-war. Even up to and including being pro-nuclear war. “Nuclear war is preferable to a Russian victory in Ukraine” is a theme I’ve heard from some very shocking places.
I spoke to a comrade who was active in the peace movement [in Germany] since the early 90s during an event once and he told me that (perhaps surprisingly due to the 90s image as the decade where the USSR was gone and History had “ended”) indeed it’s all downhill from when he started.
Lots of demoralization, lots of loss of manpower and the like over the years.
Why?
Well, the people were always given a choice whenever a conflict broke out: Do you go and protest against the military action against a country despite it often being rather unsavory?
Yugoslavia was denounced as committing a genocide. You go out and call for “hands off Yugoslavia!” and some people look at you and think you’re supporting the SPS and Greater Serbian nationalism. Boom, some of the more radlib members leave in disgust and few people join to replace them.
Saddam Hussein was a nationalistic and corrupt dictator. You go out and call for the Americans to stay out, and you lose the libs that are happy Saddam’s gone. Qaddafi had similar accusations against him, and it worked like last time.
Then there’s Putin and the war in Ukraine. You all know what’s said about Russia, and you all know Russia is very traditionalist and reactionary in other ways, with the added bonus of Russia escalating the war in February 2022 (which is seen as having started it in the eyes of most people). What happened from that? You guessed it, some people deciding peace is the goal (and it’s achievable by winning the war)
The “they are the greater evil” strategy works wonders to split the peace movement. It worked in the last 30 years, it worked during the cold war (if perhaps less so, as the Socialist states were indeed way more peaceful and internationalist than the western bloc so the libs have to pick out some high profile cases of a seemingly contrary and emphasize them instead - like say the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.), it worked well during the old school imperialist era. “Do you prefer white civilization or cannibals that do human sacrifice and live in their own excrement” and the like. It even worked in feudalism, taking on for example a religious tone of fighting the infidels to reclaim the holy land.
And if you lose people, you lose the capacity to do stuff and it spirals into a downward trend and pro-war positions start seeming hegemonic.
We should not be surprised that it seems that we are very much on the defensive and who knows how to get out of it, but giving up would only make it worse.
the ideal would be to network with other leftists in your area and start to offer an alternative. Of course that takes time and a lot of effort some people might not even be able to do (because say bad mental health) and depending on the area might even be dangerous.
protesting against the war almost feels counterproductive since it just makes us look like a bunch of quacks
Antivaxxers have been spreading their views on the world for 20 years aided by a distrust in medicine paired with the for-profit nature of the healthcare system, so they gathered a fairly large crowd of anti-intellectual minded people. They were seen as cranks and still rightfully are, but when the Covid pandemic and vaccination campaign hit, they suddenly had thousands of people on the streets across Europe and were successful in sabotaging the campaign and encouraged politicians to make Covid restrictions a shadow of themselves.
Did that have a negative effect on the world? Yes, of course, but they were able to effectively educate, agitate and organize like we strive to do, even if they’re out enemy or at least our enemy’s friends.
Unfortunately the ghost of the Soviet Union still haunts us as well as the numerous defeats of the last 30 years and we have both lost the will and the credibility that we can make things better.
Who knows, maybe it’ll take 20 more years for us or more (or less), but even in times of retreat and defeat the seeds of the success of tomorrow can be laid.
Comrades need to understand the MIC and it’s reach. The propoganda is hard and the CIA doesn’t work for the people, they work for the bribers, which are the corporations. Familiarity with Manufacturing Consent will help many comrades and citizens understand this. I don’t know how many leftists or moderates are aware or Manufacturing Consent and connect it with the MIC.
the left cannot possibly agree with them on anything lest they be contaminated by associating with low-status opinions
I mean, its a hard circle to square, because there’s a ton of overlap in the high level messaging. Leftists and Fascists both value domestic industry. Leftists and Fascists both build support using populist rhetoric. Leftists and Fascists both value large-scale labor action as a means of leverage for their demands. And, as a consequence, both Leftists and Fascists advocate protectionist trade policies that shield their supporters from capital flight. Leftists and Fascists are both adversarial to international finance, particularly when the finance is controlled by social liberals with a penchant for culture-war rhetoric.
The underlying reasons for these rhetorical positions vary radically. And the implementation of policies vary radically. But when one or both exist on the political fringe, it can be difficult to draw a sharp dividing line between their propaganda until you get to the more radical wings of the movements. Moderate Leftists and Moderate Fascists present as nearly interchangeable, often by design, as Fascists love to smug reactionary views in under broadly appealing socialist rhetoric.
Liberals and Libertarians love to associate the two in tandem, using vague overarching Totalitarianism-versus-Freedom style rhetoric. And so Leftists - particularly whiter and wealthier Leftists - end up scrambling to unload Fascist baggage piled up by all the other competing political factions.
They must therefore be pro-NATO and pro-war.
I’ve seen plenty of Leftists thread the needle between Russia and NATO, precisely by staking an anti-war position as their primary goal. The Chinese have made this their diplomatic pillar. And on a global stage, it works well enough. None of the other surrounding regions - particularly in the Middle East and Africa - have any interest in this war continuing.
But in the US, where we don’t suffer any of the social costs associated with an ugly war in a regional breadbasket or critical fossil fuel provider operating under sanction by the local financial regime, its far more difficult to explain how you can be “Anti-War” without being “Pro-NATO”.
Note on the German Greens: The factional infighting between the Fundis and Realos was already skewed pretty heavily towards the realos in the 90s, especially as most of the remaining marxists, anarchists and other leftists had left by 1990. Some of them joined the tiny splitter group ÖkoLinx of Jutta Ditfurt (it’s antideutsch and basically only relevant in Frankfurt am Main).
Though many of these leftists had odd ideas and were indeed more concerned with societal rights (and in an internationalist manner - believing in exporting the revolution - even if they saw the revolutionary ideology to be social liberalism nowadays instead of a form of revolutionary Marxism) and didn’t care much for economics and were interventionist to the core. Not supporting the Yugoslav War German military operation (because first combat use of the German military since WW2) but for example were staunch supporters of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Some of them became fascists in the early 2010s and even as the Antideutsche are slowly fading away, the mid 90s to early 2010s were an odd time indeed for the German far-left.
Evidence of this is everywhere. In February, Nato held its first ever gaming event. A young employee of the alliance joined popular Twitch streamer ZeRoyalViking to play Among Us and casually chat about the danger disinformation poses to democracy.
The neoliberal world order would be hilarious if it wasn’t so depressing to live in it.
The article itself is a decent overview of PR strategies that worked to move some people to pro-NATO positions. It’s certainly is a factor. You join a party in 1995 and you have different assumptions on the world than a comrade that joins in 2015. There’s more, or perhaps simply different stuff to unlearn/overcome in order to have a leftist worldview.
BUT it focuses on the “Progressive Left”, a.k.a. the radlibs, the “democratic socialists” and the like. Marxist parties and organizations had vastly different debates and only the biggest cranks/revisionists adopt an outright pro-NATO position.
Evidence of this is everywhere. In February, Nato held its first ever gaming event. A young employee of the alliance joined popular Twitch streamer ZeRoyalViking to play Among Us and casually chat about the danger disinformation poses to democracy.
Remember kids, if you suspect that an adult is acting sus, they may be a russian imposter spreading disinformation so make sure to call an emergency meeting to report them to your local authorities.
Fundis
Realos
ÖkoLinx
Jutta Ditfurt
antideutsch
Some of them became fascists in the early 2010s
German Greens
When I hear that party I can only ever think of how they shut down nuclear plants. What a pathetic excuse for a “left” party.
NATO made eyes at them from atop their throne of loot from the third world “hey baby come here” :bateman-ontological:
the skulls mixed in amongst the oil, gold, and exotic fruit gave the socdems pause… “aren’t you imperialist?” :bottom-speak:
NATO said “imperialist? those are the Russians!” NATO reminds them of all those good times they used to have, opposing everything the imperialist Russian USSR did, not so long ago. “weren’t those good times?”:they-were-comrades:
spoiler
i swear to fucking god we have a donkey-elephant one where the elephants reaching down the donkeys pants? called like bipartisanship i cant find it fuck. anyway how much ‘seduction’ was really needed for the scumfucks who wouldn’t work with the fucking USSR? social imperialists all :kind-vladimir-ilyich:
fucking unherd, are you fucking serious??
what’s wrong it with? they publish a whole lot of stuff, this article seems fine
It depends on the writer, I’ve read great pieces by anton jager and alex hochuli there, both are leftists, and again this piece is fine so no point in making a fuss about it.
