Memes

If this group of people are the ones convincing everyday Americans to band together for something better, it’s no mystery why there hasn’t been any traction.

Taking this personally and blaming a handful of people you briefly interacted with on the internet for the failures of communism in the US rather than taking into account the violent and pervasive worldwide campaign of anti-communism over decades makes you sound like a liberal who, however well-intentioned you may or may not be, has yet to make meaningful progress on unlearning the elitism that has been socialized into you from day one and has yet to begin internalizing the gravity of how violent these matters have been, historically, toward anyone who opposes imperialism, much less tries to organize a socialist state.

If you read this through that same socialized lens of people being ranked on a ladder of quality, you will probably think this is me "dunking on you" or "putting you down" or "trying to one up you". But it's not meant to be any of those things. I like to think of these things, as relating it to the framework of scientific socialism, as striving for "effective compassion." The end goal is a decolonized world where the working class is empowered and free, the ultimate end goal is communism. But the steps to get there require a combination of theory and practice along the way, to understand what is required in context and develop toward change that is effective toward these compassionate goals that side with the colonized, the marginalized, the working class.

This also requires a certain amount of learning from each other. No one person has all of the answers and if you don't already have the humility to consider what others are saying on the face of it without reaching for these sweeping proclamations about the entirety of an instance and the entirety of "leftist" efforts in the US, you need to develop some. We can't afford people viewing contestment of theory and practice as a game of personal attacks and wholesale dismissal with only minimal consideration. Unfortunately, many of us online are accustomed to getting a heaping helping of disdain, if not accusations of being a foreign agent, simply for taking a patient and diplomatic anti-imperialist stance.

Ultimately, when it comes to things like "being an ally," this isn't a secret club that requires a secret handshake. It's pretty transparent about what the ideological expectations are. Vague statements of organizing and caring about the same things make you, if honest in intention, a person who cares, but does not automatically mean you are ideologically aligned. This is something that I once had to learn when I was deep in liberal thinking still. Caring what happens to your fellow human beings is great. Doing something about it is even better. But populism alone is not marxist-leninist, nor anti-imperialist.

If you are already some of these things and I am misunderstanding, you are welcome to correct me on that. But if you are, it is all the more reason to take seriously the discussion of these things in the context of their mechanics, and try to look past whether people are nice to you in how they convey them.