this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Brian Becker and the PSL critically support Russia. Shea takes the critical part and makes it seem like Becker is a "Russia bad" commentator. He's not. Don't listen to Shea talk about Becker. Listen to Becker directly and form your own opinion. When you do, you'll see Shea is dangerous.
I do not totally dismiss much of Shea's writing, yet this is wrecker behavior. Anyone who listens to what PSL is actually saying knows they are not against multipolarity, they're the only prominent Amerikan communist organization even tackling its importance!
I don't take anything Shea says at face value. I've listened to the part of the interview in question and find Becker's answers to be weird and contradictory. As I've explained in another comment, he answers the question “is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?” and his answer is in essence no because it seems like he just argues against some multipolarity in general without considering the material reality of today’s world split into the west and the rest (with China on top). His answer implies that today’s multipolarity is like that of pre-WW1 which is in contradiction with his stance in general.
He's answering the question. Multipolarity, in a vacuum, does not immediately lead to socialism. Socialism must be present along with multipolarity.
He's waffling and refusing to give a clear answer, and the only correct answer for a socialist to give is: yes, because without the defeat of the unipolar US hegemony socialism cannot arise or thrive anywhere.
I guess this is exactly where this belongs then, in leftist infighting. My comrade, you are applying a ridiculous purity test to a political figure who has a much bigger scope of influence, audience, and perspective than you do. And you are choosing to give Rainer Shea the benefit of the doubt in his assessment that the PSL isn't worth listening to despite being shows as a bad actor but not willing to listen to more of Brian Becker to understand where he's coming from despite multiple comrades telling you that it's worth the time because Becker explicitly supports the end of US hegemony.
My perspective is that of someone sitting outside of the US for whom the defeat of US imperialism is the primary interest since that is what is making my life worse and revolution in my country impossible at the moment. I don't know the conditions in the US well enough to say whether what Becker is doing is worth it to attract more people to his movement, but my impression is that he is misjudging the level of support that exists for anti-imperialist and anti-NATO position among the general population. Except that he seems to primarily be addressing a liberal and socdem audience which is why he thinks he needs to add all these caveats and hide his real views.
Yes, he is trying to remain able to draw in liberals to the far left. This is a far better strategy than focusing purely on far right people just because they like Russia at the moment.
So your position is ignorant. Got it. Brian Becker used to be an anti-war liberal. He's been against US imperilaism since he began organizing during the Vietnam war. He understands better than any of us how popular sentiment flows around the US machine, the history of US imperialism, the history of NATO, etc.
Just stop trying to hold your position. It's unwinnable. You literally have no idea what you're talking about because you won't even engage with the content we're discussing.
Dualism isn't dialectic, it's a patently blatant fallacy.
There's more than two sides to anything.
Eating the horse to catch the cow...
Meaningless word salad. Give me a clear answer: how can socialism arise let alone survive anywhere in the world today so long as the US empire, unless challenged in the way that Russia and China are currently doing, is free to use its global reach and all military and economic power at its disposal to strangle any nascent revolution in its infancy and slowly ratchet up the suffocating pressure on the remaining AES states? What other alternative is there than for some state or states to take the fight to the empire and actually hit them back and weaken them the way Russia and China are currently doing?
Please, if you know one, tell me of a practical path to revolution and socialism in a world where the US empire reigns supreme.
A lot of leftists like to talk about anti-imperialism in the abstract, but what Russia and China are currently doing is anti-imperialism put into practice. When push comes to shove suddenly opportunist elements of the western left don't like the way anti-imperialism looks when it's more than empty rhetoric... because it alienates your liberal friends, because it's messy and bloody and dangerous, because it requires some amount of compromise, or because the "wrong people" are doing it and that doesn't fit the idealized picture you had in your head.
These are all vestiges of a liberal idealist mentality that it seems much of the western left is not yet mature enough to have outgrown.
Please tell me you don't really believe those genocidal libertarian hard-c crackers are actually anti-imperialist; as opposed to using a cute little photo op to launder their reputations. If that's really what you believe, you're more lost than I ever thought you to be. It is not compromise to work with the genocidal, it's actively endorsing suicide.
I don't believe that they are, no, i think they are a mix of delusional idiots, contrarians and cynical opportunists. But results matter more than motives, and i see that they are among the only ones actually agitating against NATO and against the war and actually gaining some traction among the population. And i see that there are some sections of the left, such as the PCUSA, that have made a judgement call that it is worth to piggyback on this despite the contradictions present. I would love nothing more than to see a popular leftist movement against NATO and against the lies and propaganda that the West's support for this war is predicated on, that way there would be no need to share a platform with reactionaries. But instead, much of the western left has chosen to side with the imperialist position on this conflict in order to stay in the good graces of the liberal establishment, and are doing so under the pretext that to support Russia or to refuse to support Ukraine is tantamount to siding with reactionaries.
Instead of attacking those who reluctantly piggyback on the libertarian platform because they have nowhere else to go if they want to be anti-NATO, why doesn't the part of the left that is also critical of NATO build its own platform for this purpose? This is a rhetorical question because i know the answer: the left isn't given the same freedoms and leeway to be critical of the liberal establishment that the right is. We have already seen communists persecuted and jailed for taking a pro-Russia stance. Unfortunately this is the environment that exists in the imperial core today, and it is in no small part being enabled by the more opportunist elements of the left which have chosen to side with the imperialist narrative and demonize pro-Russian communists as "tankies", "patsocs" or "Putin puppets". This leads some of us to conclude that, however distasteful it may be, the only choice that anti-imperialists have left is to use these dubious platforms because that is the only way to get the anti-imperialist narrative out to the people.
What good is tailing the right gonna do. Ukraine isn’t going to do better or worse thanks to a couple more people protesting. There are a lot more praxis that US left action should be going towards. All I’ve seen come out of RAtWM was radlibs getting evidence that we tankies are just fascists in red.
Do you really think we have any more of a hope of getting radlibs to switch to our side than we do people on the right? I think both are more or less the same level of brainwashed to be anti-communist. If you can turn one you can turn the other too. Or if you're a pessimist you could say both are hopeless. Or to put it another way, do you think that the communist revolutions in Russia and China didn't also include people who had reactionary biases? Didn't the Chinese communists work with the nationalists against the imperialist invaders?
Of course that doesn't mean we should tail the right, quite the opposite, we should unapologetically continue to advance our own progressive and revolutionary views. And we can do that better if we do not cede the anti-war and anti-imperialist position to the right. We need to be on the front lines of the anti-war movement since it clearly has great potential to gain popular support as most people are instinctively against such proxy wars abroad that for them serve no purpose and only come at a social cost. The only reason they continue to passively support them is because they are so propagandized and because there is no alternative presented to them.
And yes, it's true that we can't do anything to really help either side of this conflict directly, but what we can do is undermine the imperialist narrative about this conflict which will have the effect of slowly but surely depriving the imperialists of the social basis they need to maintain the support for the fascist Kiev regime even as their own countries slide further into crisis. The ruling class is not all-powerful, and though it may sometimes not seem like it, they do rely to some degree on the implicit consent of their populations.
Why else would they invest so much effort and resources into controlling the narrative? They have banned all pro-Russian media and are even imprisoning people in some countries, not even for being pro-Russian but simply for refuting the lies that are being told about what is happening in Ukraine. So if they consider it that important to keep the population propagandized about this conflict and about Russia (and also about China of course), then it follows that we must do all we can to break through their narrative control which they are petrified of losing, because that is the only thing we can realistically do to influence the outcome of this conflict.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure most of us came here from liberalism, not the far right. How is showing up at their events not tailing them?
Maybe i am confused but since when are libertarians far right? On the European spectrum at least they are usually not considered far right. And what makes RAWM "their event"? The essence of it as far as i understand was opposition to NATO and war, which is not inherently far right or even libertarian. Tailing means adopting someone else's positions out of opportunism, but being against NATO and against imperialist wars is not a right wing position. And so, as long as communists maintain their separate political identity, what is so wrong with having a broad-tent anti-war movement? Do you think that just because communists participate in the same anti-war event as some libertarians they will suddenly start singing the praises of the free market? Or do you really think that communists have the numbers in the US to build a meaningful anti-war movement on their own? Clearly the liberals are not interested in anti-war, they are fully on board with war, they are ecstatic about it and almost salivating at the mouth for bloodshed and killing Russians.
Libertarians are generally far right because they call for as little as possible control over their private property by the government. This is their most consistent line, as some more socially liberal parts aren’t pushed for very hard if at all. They can cry for the same things that republicans do without being called hypocrites as they never have the power that would force them to go back on their so called principles and support monopoly capital (ironic they claim to oppose “corporatism” when one of their main funders are the oil billionaire Koch brothers). Also, the further right faction known as the Mises Caucus dominates the party. Patriotism is inherently reactionary in a settler colonial and imperialist state, so it’s telling that only patsoc orgs feature in the “socialist” camp. The average liberal is not a bloodthirsty ukranazi. Most of them are just like “based on what the tv told me Putin looks bad, I wish this war would end” and they just need some more facts to cut through the lies. Twitter isn’t reality. I’m not saying people take all the positions of those they are in coalition with, but the libertarians are the stronger party and the stronger party usually dominates a coalition. I would also like to say what I noticed from the speakers. The top three, which I recognized were Jimmy Door, Ron Paul, and Tulsi Gabbard are trash. Jimmy is a liberal opportunist who sold anti-vaxx nonsense for clicks. Ron Paul is a libertarian and son of Alex Jones’ favorite senator Rand. Tulsi Gabbard is a fascist congress woman who has ties to the fascists in India sans has called for the Middle East wars not to end, but to be more quiet with more drone strikes and less troop death, what Obama was doing anyway.
If that is true then Shea is wrong and should have done his research on Becker and the PSL better. But i can only judge based on what i have read and heard from them so far. If you can point me to where they say they critically support Russia i would appreciate it.
Bro it's literally all you post about
Of the 36 posts i made over the last three months 5 have been about this rift that has developed among the western left between those who support Russia's SMO and those who do not. This is something that is not going away, the conflict has not yet been resolved and remains topical as it relates to one of the most impactful geopolitical developments of our generation.