cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/766438
Some of the replies and reposts have me chuckling.
100% behind Ben. He’s a goodamn foundation.
Lol ben seized the means
This whole situation is crap. I have respect for all parties involved and I get informed from both platforms. Yes, I would probably agree far more with Ben Norton over Max Blumenthall ideologically.
But I tend to judge people based on their work, and Max (alongside Aaron Mate) are doing excellent work in covering US imperialist and capitalist attrocities. So does Ben. And that’s the only part of their relationship to me, as their audience, that matters. Everything else is borderline sectarianism.
I do get it why some people in the West are sceptical of mRNA vaccines even India government didn’t do thorough check and tests but I can tell I took Russian Sputnik V and now micro Red army are running in my veins. That’s far more reliable than Pfizer. Aaron mate is really good though.
Couldn’t have said it better. GZ and Norton serve different purposes to me.
Hell, the Duran ppl, who iirc are paleocons, have extremely useful analysis in certain areas. I think they’re very mistaken in other areas.
At some point recently I freed myself from ideological bloc discipline as it relates to media sources and just started sampling broadly and making up my own mind according to my values. It’s liberating.
I could not agree more. This is my sentiment as well. Once you become confident enough in your own ideological convictions as a Marxist-Leninist there is no reason why you can’t draw on sources with all sorts of different ideological inclinations as long as the analysis they provide is solid and valuable. I find it is a sign of weak conviction in one’s own position when someone tries to exclude sources based on their ideological orientation rather than their credibility on a given issue (because i don’t believe in blanket credibility…everyone has their biases). I’m not going to suddenly become an anti-vax conspiracy theorist because i read Grayzone articles, and I’m not going to become a paleoconservative by listening to the Duran, because my political and ideological views were not formed on the basis of online personalities like is unfortunately the case for many among the “breadtube” left and who seem to think that simply by listening to people who are not perfectly aligned with you ideologically you will suddenly change your core beliefs about the world. If your views are informed by a solid, scientific understanding of the world, you are if not completely immune then at least highly resistent to anti-scientific nonsense and you can pick and choose what is valuable and true from the analysis of people with whom you have disagreements and discard the garbage.
I’ve had conversations with ‘leftists’ who religiously ignore right wing literature and are shocked to hear me cite it after revealing that I’m a Marxist. Concrete analysis of concrete conditions and the ruthless criticism of all that exists mfs. That means you’ve got to learn to read things you disagree with.
You can’t treat it like a team sport where you assume that your side has a monopoly on knowledge (well, MLs do, but that’s different 😉) or as if contrary views are contagious. If you’re at risk of reading a biography of Reagan and becoming a neoliberal, perhaps you’re not as principled as you’d like to think.
Once you become confident enough in your own ideological convictions as a Marxist-Leninist there is no reason why you can’t draw on sources with all sorts of different ideological inclinations as long as the analysis they provide is solid and valuable.
This is literally what Marx and Engels did. They read Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, etc and it was all important in forming their thought. They even read scientific stuff like Darwin, etc.
I think leftists need to look outside their little bubble otherwise things are going to blindside them. One example I can think of is how most lefists were completely blindsided by Andrew Tate and didn’t even know about him until after he had already blew up and was on the verge of having all his social media purged. And the standard response is “hurr durr why do I need to know about him, hE’s A nObOdY!!” I mean yeah, to you he might be but he was super influential to millions of men and boys(and still is). And if you want to reach these guys you need to know what they are immersed in. Then you can apply a mass line tactic of sorting them into advanced, intermediate, backwards and do all that analysis. But you can’t analyze what you aren’t even aware of.
American left is kinda nutty in that there are a lot of people siding with Blumenthal in the replies which I find insane. Some choice ones include a guy ridiculing Norton for calling Blumenthal’s turn right-wing. Some guy implying Norton is paid by Pfizer. Another one did not like how Norton covered the “freedom” convoy.
They need to readsettlers.org.
I could not care less if Norton stole money or intellectual property or whatever. It’s great if he did.
Eh, Settlers is kinda a bad book, has been done better since 1979, and includes stuff you learn in history class in school anyway.
The problem with the people supporting Blumenthal in the comments is that Twitter is filled with PatSocs and LaRouchites.
So fuck 'em
I liked settlers. It’s thesis was a little extreme, but I learned a lot of new stuff from it (probably because it’s old). Which parts did you learn in history class? In a way I don’t want patsocs to be able to group us in the Sakai stans, but I’d also like to promote it to spite them. Yes, there are better books now.
We are communists, we don’t automatically refuse extreme just because. Problem with it that it was undialectical and thus unmarxist.
The Filipino War, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the ethnic cleansing of the “civilized tribes,” New Deal and the inherent racism of it, etc. I’m, err, not exactly sure what I’m missing, but there you go.
But hey, if you want to spite PatSocs, you do you. As you yourself said, there are better books now since 1979.
They didn’t cover next to anything that Sakai covered in Settlers in my history classes; for damned sure. Let’s hear about why you find it to be ‘a bad book’; because the only ‘critique’ I ever hear about it seems to be coming from aggrieved settlers who don’t like what they’re reading from an accountability standpoint; and I want to see if you’re any different to that trend.
Been there, argued that, not wasting the electrons again. Go away.
I’m non-white. The person misquotes several people and attacks several orgs I know in-person for being. We don’t even know the person’s credentials or whether they are a “Sakai” to begin with. Prove to me the credentials of the person and maybe I’ll take what the person says at face-value; until then, read it critically and maybe consider the other side of the story when it comes to documenting the labor movement.
includes stuff you learn in history class in school anyway.
dog what, did you go to school on the moon or something?
Uh, I was in a southern state. I learned a lof of what it talked about in several history classes before reaching college (which definitely did talk about this stuff as well).
I am not American but I think American PSL type leftists should learn from these fellows , specially their recent activism against US foreign policy in Ukraine and China . I agree they have very low level /primitive/none understanding of LGBT issues but I think none of the so called left parties can address the issues of inherent racism and LGBT problems promptly . I like how they agitate against the US foreign policy which is the main driver of imperialism and also the causes of many problems in US. I mean you have Cornel west but he thinks USSR was anti semitic , I have found very scanty people who have a coherent ideology in the western hemisphere . I mean what is this from him
“Ronald Reagan was a freedom fighter in terms of supporting our Jewish bros & sis in the Soviet Union & opposing vicious forms of communism.”
PSL is doing activism against imperialism. It’s just not talked about because the media likes that anti-war stuff is only coming from the right, and RAtWM can be used as evidence for horseshoe theory.
Why is it insane that people are siding with Blumenthal? I don’t know much about him/the situation, but these accusations seem pretty serious.
I think they’re talking about Norton’s takeover (assuming Blumenthal is telling the truth) of their shared Patreon and social media accounts
Yeah, I’m with Ben on this one. The whole thing from Max Blumenthal appears to be incredibly malicious. First question is, why come out with this now. What is he trying to achieve with this smear campaign. As Ben arrives in a new country to benefit from the goodwill of his hosts, citizens must be warned that a criminal mind is lurking in their midst. Seems a tad much, is he warning all of China against him?
The only thing I could think of would be him trying to get Ben’s visa revoked. China has pretty strict non-criminal record requirements on their visas (at least on work visa, not sure about other types).
