the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this. Posts that do not meet this requirement can be posted to [email protected]
Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again
view the rest of the comments
Alright, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. In a world where Western "Marxists" are largely ultra LARP freaks who sell out to Western academia and University Presses to publish anticommunist propaganda, Roderic is a comrade and is a genuine AES-upholding ML.
His work on RedSails is an invaluable compendium of literature given how other leftist writing repository like Marxists.org are hijacked by Trots.
People need to understand that just because someone is a proper ML doesn't mean you'll be best friends with them. Expecting that is the fastest way to being disillusioned in real world organizing and praxis, when you inevitably meet some ideological comrade you don't necessarily vibe with. The history of socialism in praxis is filled with people who both learned, and failed to learn, to acknowledge others who are near entirely ideologically aligned yet clash with on a personal and social level.
Roderic has an abrasive online personality and has made L takes on frankly tangential subjects through his Twitter debatebro addiction. This just makes him another case of the 70%/30%.
Additionally, his thesis on Redsails that emphasizes the buy-in nature of Western propaganda, if that is what you are referring to, is an absolutely cogent interpretation of the dynamics between propaganda and its recipients in the Western paradigm.
As abrasive as he can be, his brainwashing thesis has been proven true right in front of our eyes the past 6 months with Israeli propaganda. It’s so casually lazy and racist, the people who “believe” it are obviously CHOOSING to because it makes them feel good.
It was immediately obvious Israel bombed the Al-Shifa hospital but we (by which I mean westerners broadly) spent like, a week or more debating whether or not it was a misfired Hamas rocket? Give me a break. By all means critique Roderic, he genuinely welcomes it, but that is easily one of his strongest contributions.
I've only read this piece once so should probably revisit it, but I honestly didn't find it all that persuasive. Yes, the ideas presented in it may be applicable to a subset of the western populous but certainly not universally.
It is an interesting thesis that is worthy of consideration though, I'll give him that.