The sectarian BS is symptomatic of a deeper problem - no modern western left wing movement has a viable theory of victory. If some group puts together a set of tactics that advance a strategy that repeatably provides material victories, then everyone will fall in line because that movement keeps winning. Until then, we'll all argue over which idealistic horseshit is a more palatable excuse for why we're not winning but some day we will be.
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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no modern western left wing movement has a viable theory of victory
Modern? There's never been a successful revolution in the west, except GDR being literally forced militarily by the USSR to become socialist.
I think this could be quite a chicken-egg view. The fear is that western groups aren't providing material victories because we're arguing over idealistic horseshit.
That being said, all western countries used to have communist orgs that were making material achievements 50 years ago, and that seemingly wasn't enough either.
When my city participated in this nationwide anti-Trump protest a couple weeks ago someone posted on Lex about how superior they were to the liberals out protesting, because they were doing “actual liberatory work” (I hate that haughty fucking language these people use).
Then a couple years ago when the Dobbs decision leaked these same people cared more about “swooping” the PSL-organized march, or stayed home and acted so high and mighty on Twitter (not to mention, straight up harassing me online because I asked for sources/details about the allegations of misconduct levied at PSL, which had always been spoken of in an incredibly vague manner).
It’s almost like they thrive off right wing authoritarianism. During the Biden admin it was almost like a joke how these same people calling for le guillotine xD would suddenly become so quiet, except when they needed to maintain the image of being against empire, irrespective of party control. Reminds me of Cato the Elder, ending every sentence with CARTAGO DELANDA EST. Oh I had fun going to the beach today, but also fuck Joe Biden xD.
In my city it almost feels like the “activist community” knowingly helped re-elect a spineless soft chud mayor back in 2020 just so they could keep bullying him and sell “[Mayor] is a poopy head” tees.
Anyone who is "into" Socialist politics has a 90% chance of being too far gone into sectarianism and book worship. It's just how the world works. People with a highly developed ideology almost always have at least some parts that are wrong and will consider the most marginal culture-war issues to be complete dealbreakers for cooperation.
Stop caring about Leftists, they're more trouble than they're worth. Join the PSL. Work with real working-class movements in your city, and don't get dragged into the struggle sessions of your local DSA and Food Not Bombs chapter. Work with Arab groups, Jewish Voice for Peace, work with the libs who are opposing pollution and police violence. If you find an issue that speaks to people and organize around it, the people will come. Recruit from the people, not terminally online Leftists.
I'm not trying to say that they're bad people. I believe they're trying their best. But speaking from personal experience with our local organizing (of which I am just a very small part), other "Leftists" basically do not do anything that has any real effect. The DSA is a thinly veiled dating club, the CPUSA has terminal security culture brain, the Anarchists don't really do anything of their own volition because they have zero organization outside of polycules and rock bands. The only local group with anything close to the level of organization and professionalism as the PSL is the Palestinian Youth Movement.
This is the real answer, when you actually go among the masses, get out there, and organize with folks around local community issues you will see all those petty beefs melt away almost magically.
The left is such a fringe minority in the US the idea that if we all stopped be sectarian and united together we'd be some force to to reckon with is delusional. We'd just be a slightly bigger fringe minority with tons of infighting whenever we came to an sort of ideological impasse, like anti-Zionism.
Sectarianism isn't always a bad thing, sometimes have a strict party line and sticking to it and telling others to fuck off is a benefit to leftist groups. The Bolsheviks rise to power was in part to them sticking to their opposition to the war and not collaborating with parties who were weaker on that position. It's not about having the most leftists it's about having the leftist line that motivates the masses the most.
In your opinion, what's the leftist line that will most motivate the masses in the US?
Lining up healthcare executives and publicly executiveing them
Probably is, but if the people calling for that also want to respect trans people and not nuke Iran they're immediately going to turn away from them.
Maybe but it's still worth a shot
This "shot" has been taken like 1000 times and it always misses.
Wish I was smart enough to say.
I think part of the issue is that "the masses" in the imperial core are generally more reactionary and less open to socialist ideas due to their position in the global economy. Socialist ideas have only really gained traction here in recent times with highly marginalized groups within the broader worker class. Also we don't really have a constraint industrial proletarian class, our workers are atomized in distributed tertiary economic activities.
I don't really see MLs shitting on other tendencies unprompted, only calling out the things they see that are false or dunking on people after the other tendency goes on an "anti-authoritarian" rant which takes the offensive against MLs and AES states. If you and the Pentagon agree about pretty much anything geopolitical (China is committing a genocide, Cuba/ Venezuela/ DPRK need democracy, Israel has a right to defend itself Slava ukrani, etc) then you have truly taken the side of the enemy and your pseudo leftist persona doesn't absolve you. Being a liberal who likes leftist aesthetics doesn't make a comrade, and the idea that someone saying "I am a leftist" is enough to say you are on the same side is exactly why so many movements have been infiltrated and destroyed from the inside.
Either way, focus more on organizing with people in your community and less on anything online
when will the left drop the sectarian BS and work together?
the premise of the question is flawed. there is no "left" in the united states in any meaningful sense of the word. there are individual people with left wing ideas, but at present they do not constitute a political movement. there can be no sectarianism because there are no sects to fight about, because there is no movement with sects to begin with
there is no western left
The “western left” in modern times is either controlled opposition or what amounts to a glorified online message board.
Yep
I am the western left. It's me.
Why all the sectarianism and infighting then? Stop beating yourself up so much.
Online Marxists beefing with online anarchists isn't going to move the needle one way or the other. In real life there are cross-tendency groups showing up with rifles to guard drag events and keep cops from arresting Food Not Bombs people. The PSL works with local organizers to run Palestine marches which provide incidental cover for saboteurs to slash cop tires. Environmental groups publish flyers calling for action against logging legislation while radical elements in those groups go out and spike trees.
yeah the best reaction to unhinged "anti-tankie-aktion" types IMO is to just be normal and put in the work, IMO. Be willing to work in good faith with basically anyone who isn't actively sabotaging and undermining you (at least in public-facing work, obviously opsec becomes a concern at some point). The majority of regular-ass people, anarchist or otherwise, will see that you put in the work and that the committed "anti-authoritarians" are more interested in screeds against you than finding common ground or achieving anything.
I guess that's the belden method basically lol
I don't care what people say I care what people do. If they show up when they say they will, if they bring good ideas and move discussions forward rather than derail, if they put in the work, then we can work together. If they don't, we can't, regardless of tendency. I'm not going to work with an ML that only talks about half-understood theory and wont apply it to reality or feels they are above the dirty work/busy work, but same goes for anarchists or anyone else.
This is all in the context of nascent imperial core organizing of course, not like, russia 1915 or whatever.
my ex was like one of these terminally online anarchists that bitched about tankies and never actually did anything to help anyone irl. as part of unpacking the trauma i got from them abusing me, i had to think about this a lot
for them, it seemed like they needed to feel ideologically superior to everyone else, or else they would start having to question themselves and their cruelties, which was more introspection than they were capable of. i imagine this is the case with a lot of them.
there's probably also an echo chamber effect where u start to feel like shitting on tankies is genuinely a good thing to do and one of the only good things you can do.
idk tbh im not terminally online enough to interact with many of these sorts of people
There is no leftist project in the west, until there is a focal point to rally around we will all be wolves lashing out in the forest.
And whatever this rally point is its not going to emerge out of the internet
May we all live to see the day when there is no one left to fight but other socialists.
The contradictions are sharpening no doubt, but so few people have internalized the reality of the current situation.
Denial - most people are still here
Bargaining - marginally aware people are here
Anger - a lot of libs are stuck here
Depression - many baby leftists
Acceptance - leftists that actually might organize and do something
Take for instance "the erosion of due process" that is animating libs very effectively. The problem is that this framing feeds into a Blue MAGA mind palace perspective. If they weren't against Kamala et al due to the US prison industrial complex, they still are a long way from Acceptance of the reality. There are a lot of radlibs that are currently comparing the unfolding process to "USSR", "Chinese Authoritarianism", North Korea and so on.
We have to filter out chauvinism while organizing for the current situation, then some real progress can be made.
socialism has powerful enemies. Those enemies don’t care how you feel about Marx or Makhno or Deleuze or communism in the abstract, they care about your feelings towards FARC, the Naxals, Cuba, North Korea, etc. They care about your position with respect to states and contenders-for-statehood, and how likely you are to try and emulate them. They are not worried about the molecular and the rhizomatic because they know that those things can be brought back into line by the application of force. It’s their monopoly on force that they are primarily concerned to protect. When you desert real socialism in favor of ideal socialism, the kind that never took up arms against anybody, you’re doing them a favor.
the kubler-ross stages of grief are not sequential, acceptance isn't an end point
And guys I've met that have read Marx, Lenin, Kropotkin et al turned into crypto bros. It might honestly still be a pretty decent analogy.
The stages of grief are not anything, really. There's basically no evidence to base them in reality. Borderline pseudoscience.
Sectarianism is a psyop that worked. We have pretty conclusive evidence of this. Comunist orgs were infiltrated and hot takes and infighting because priorities. Anarchist organizing was infiltrated and anti-authoritarianism was prioritize. I am sure like the progressive liberals were infiltrated to for some reason.
So, when a tendency forms that cannot be infiltrated people will accept it gladly. We saw this in the 70s. Unfortunately they just went mask of and shot everyone involved. So there are two barriers to entry there. So when china opens a WPA for the American leg of the belt and road program is when we can see it work.
well for one you should remember that Marxist/Anarchist online beef doesnt matter in real life, specially on 2 lemmy instances
when the situation is bad enough for white men that they set aside their bullshit.
obviously not all men and not just whites but lets be real its mostly white men.
I'll admit that I was in that thread and did spend some time just trying to dunk for the sake of dunking —I gotta admit that it feels good but it's not productive when the target isn't even someone who wants to oppress anyone, just someone who might be misguided about some internet slapfight.
I think it's true that we have to be a lot more united. No ifs, ands or buts there. This website is a place to post memes and news, though, so maybe part of the problem is that for a lot of us it becomes a proxy for political action, especially for those of us who might not be in the correct circumstances to do more things on the ground.
For what it's worth I personally take part in this because I need to understand better where all this is coming from and how people think and it's also incredibly disappointing for exactly the reasons the OP pointed out. Yet these "tankies bad" posts just keep on coming and are symptomatic of the state of the left in the West.
I approach online discussion thinking that there could always be people reading it who could benefit from seeing the counterarguments. I know I did, I used to have far more brainworms (no doubt I still do). But without seeing the arguments I don't think I would have evolved past them, at least not as quickly. Our basic westoid countries are very hegemonic on the bourge talking points.
It doesn't mean I don't touch grass or try to aid class consciousness in my every day, but I am not going to post about those on an online forum.
Very correct
I mean, many successful leftists were very sectarian.
In America, the hipsters of the 2000s and 2010s grew into becoming what is now known as the left in this country
Someone link the thread 
On a slightly more serious note, there is no collective Western left. There is a myriad of small splinter groups, each of which claims to have the only true reading of Das Kapital.
Leftists are like Orks we fight each other as much as we fight our enemies.
You're right! Now what actions need to be implemented, how should they be implemented and organized? The schism happens at literally the first important step anything less is basically just radical charity, which is fine and good and cool and necessary but left unity can't exist after any step to take power is made. We can put out fires together but to stop the arsonists a specific direction is necessary.
Those old white people who go to Republican party meetings
Coprolites
I've found that the only line I'm willing to draw in terms of who is and isn't socially-minded for progress is between those of us who want to build an end of the political spectrum to make things better, and those who want to revert to some earlier form that led us to where we are now, or just enforce the status quo because the burning room they're sitting in seems fine compared to the uncertainty of change.