CarlMarks @lemmygrad.ml

This instance has a challenging inconsistency in that it wants to hold lines like an org without adopting the (necessary) culture of patience, consensus-building, and mutual education required to do so. Most of the work in functional organizations is emotional, it is hearing some bullshit and finding a way to move the group to the correct positions rather than reaching straight for vilification, uncharitable assumptions, and callouts. And it requires planning and coherency for projects that take months to complete. By the time people are pissed about ignorance, the (education heavy) project that would actually address the issue should have been going for months. Just dropping a reference and saying "educate yourself" is not an example of this. The reference must be adopted as a priority and focus with an accompanying schedule, rationale, contextualization, and implicitly some kind of buy-in like having all committees promoting participation and working it into their own projects. And it should become part of an adopted set of fleshed out positions and a "required reading" bibliography so that new members must adopt this education as part of an onboarding period. To be clear, I amnot criticizing the feeling of being pissed at someone saying something wrong or harmful, that is often entirely righteous. But the knee-jerk reaction is often the wrong one to take, it can tear down rather thsn build.

Without this educational and patient emphasis - and without structures that help democratize the way the organization communicates and functions - the group becomes at risk of toxicity and focusing endlessly on grievances based on whoever is "in charge" at the moment. Sometimes you get lucky and the people "in charge" keep things running well and avoiding turmoil. More often, you get toxic cliques, subsequent imbalanced application of norms, and a treatment of comrades as primary enemies. creates burnout and alienation between everyone.

This instance is increasingly tending towards the latter, with calcifying cliques at various levels that are increasingly hostile towards the userbase. They frame this using communist and liberationist language, though often inconsistently. For example, I know that one of those that is throwing around accusations and being generally aggro has also been repeatedly explained of how something they are saying is anti-X (being vague because I'm not doing a callout), but rather than acknowledge this and do the work to build to a consensus understanding, they are lashing out. Others have been banned for less than their behavior, but they seem to be unscathed. It is quite clear that this user is both burned out and a member of a clique, and nobody with any power is either interested in or has the capacity to actually deescalate and, instead, are just supporting their in-group.

It should also be noted that this is a standalone website and not an organization. I'm going on and on about (dys)functional organizations, but a website of anonymous users has its own challenges and limits. But the social core I'm describing seems to be there.

I see a lot of tokenizing logic on this instance, which I see as internalized liberalism coming from a good place - seeking liberation - but then combining with petty toxicity to act more like a weapon for mutual alienation. "Someone with an X identity told you it bothers them so you need to stop", that kind of thinking. To those of us with a liberatory mindset struggling against reaction, this can be appealing, as we see ourselves as co-struggling for liberation with or as "X" and in opposition to any anti-"X" action. This makes it easy to adopt this tokenization, maybe even not notice that this is what is happening, never stopping to wonder what it means when an "X" person has the polar opposite view of another "X" person and how the logic then falls apart, therefore requiring a different justification for the initial position. Tokenization, aside ftom being itself [racist, sexist, ableist, etc] makes our theory fragile and organizations weak, at risk of takeover by liberal positions that attach themselves to sn identity. And, to me, not recognizing and rejecting tokenization in a left space belies a naivete, it means they have not had to combat it in irl organizing where it is ubiquitous and can straight-up destroy entire projects and organizations.

For one example, I have seen more than one allegedly socialist / clasd conscious organization fail to maintain an anti-cop position in the US because, and I kid you not, "most black people want more police". And this is often coming from white people, who are only understanding black people through tokenizing logic: they have decided that "the" black person position is actually a pro-cop sentiment (more to unpack there, of course) and are not engaging in the correct analysis of why we must understand cops as part of the racialized capitalist prison industrial complex. Though to be clear, I have also heard this same logic from other black people, namely those in proximity to bourgeois interests, those in leadetship of NGOs (funded by bourgeoisie) or business owners, all of whom understood (black) community improvement in terms of capital investment (shops, black owned businesses etc), of capital investment only coming from private investment (because this is their actual lived experience), and cops as the business-protecting alternative to street gangs. If you try to adopt tokenizing logic to justify one's position on racialized policing, let alone forming a political program by which to organize against it, then you are vulnerable to its same weaknesses when it is weaponized for a liberal position. And the liberal position will benefit from being amplified by capital.

So, to me, it seems like those who aren't hyper-aware of tokenization just plain don't have much experience doing irl organizing. They are underdeveloped in terms of praxis and will make various (near?-)fatal mistakes for the groups they are in.

Anyways apologies for the long post. We should of course oppose misogyny, anti-blackness, transphobia, and fatphobia, all of which are part of this infighting. We also need to be able to communicate patiently with one another, prioritize education, and be willing and ready to accept criticism, as we have all internalized logics of marginalization that need to be purged. Either that or we will need to ban everyone except me, the one true leftist on this site.

To make an unsolicited recommendation, it is to get involved with irl organizing, in any capacity, and to seek out organizations that are socially competent: where there is an emphasis on education and understanding to resolve internal disputes. These orgs will have better humility and better external projects, in my experience. This place ia just a website, it could go poof one day because the domain owner gets alienated enough. But a network of irl comrades has real staying power and will help develop actual impact and inclusion.