I got cut off by my family when I came out, and my dad told me that he would kill me if I ever interacted with them again. I just got out of a long stint of homelessness after losing my job due to my workplace organizing - disappointingly received no support from the union.
It can be painful to reconcile that this is what the rest of my life will look like, and that there's little the left can do to help me.
It's also how cults maintain control, once all your friends and family are in them.
I'm actually thinking about how this kind of social isolationism can also foment radicalism of the kinds of ISIS and the such.
And maga and the manosphere*, neonazi clubs, etc.
*A pox on autocorrect
It's heavily ironic because chuds think believing in anything vaguely to the left of them is cultish. Meanwhile look at what they do!
are you me? lol
Basically, being a communist means you will very likely lose a good percentage of your initial social network. It’s probably one of the ways that capital maintains its control on society, forcing you to choose between community or your ideals, while you build a new leftist community (which is likely to be ostracized from their families as well).
i think i'm fortunate on this point in two regards:
first: an overwhelming majority of my extended family is further left leaning that my immediate family due to the fact that they're not white passing like my immediate family is nor did they marry maga-white people like my siblings did. also my extended family is deeply ingrained within a latin american political frame of reference so they already seem radical to my trump-tolerant immediately family.
second: my autism prevents me from ever building a large enough social circle to impact me if i lost access to them; so an individual shunning me has no impact. unfortunately this is a bit of a double edged sword since my autism also gives leftists pause to associate with me, but my anecodotal experience with leftist groups over the last 5-ish decades informs me that most are ephemeral relationships anyways.
Hellyea I too enjoy the +5 Social Pressure Resistance/-5 Social Energy buff of the 
playerclass
the best autism jokes are self deprecating. lol
Yknow what fair I'm undeleting it
this is a great analogy. But, I might do +5 Social Pressure Resistance/ -5 Social intuition instead. For me the hardest part about being on the spectrum is how different my social needs are and how differently I explain or express things. I have low social energy because I'm constantly translating between a ND brain and a NT world. Or because I'm trying to decide how many things I should do that feel unimportant or inauthentic to me in order to maintain a relationship.
I had a very difficult time with workplace organizing as an autistic person. I had to really work on not falling into misanthropy.
Speaking for myself only: I'm unable to keep away from the misanthropy, especially considering that such an overwhelming majority of human beings treat me as they do.
If it weren't for the years of talk therapy, I would have become a completely angry shutin.
I’m a Communist but my family very much supports my activities because I focus on protecting immigrants.
They don’t care too much about Communism, but undocumented immigrants in particular have been thrown away like trash by every major political party in the USA, so they have to accept the help of Communists.
In my opinion, I don’t think most people will arrive to Communism directly through class struggle, but rather through a particular manifestation of it. The struggle we as Communists have in our mass work is to connect the universal with the particular to help them connect the dots.
I feel like Communists in the USA are still subject to liberal biases and this overemphasis on “winning the battle of ideas” is one of them. We should demonstrate to people the scientific nature of Marxism through our practice rather than by lecturing them.
Lest we become like liberals where we’re all talk and no action.
Love what you're saying, but I have to nitpick because it's important for our messaging and strategy.
Is there any 'class struggle' which isn't a 'particular manifestation of class struggle'? Trotskyists, Ultras, marx-only-marxists like to talk about class struggle as if it's only meaningful manifestation is that of the Bourg-Prole struggle. We must struggle against that. Losurdo's "Class Struggle" is a great book on this subject. It's about why national liberation is a class struggle, and why internally colonized liberation is class struggle, and why international strategic China-US struggles are class struggle. We must act in support of all progressive positions in all struggles (collectively), but of course don't waste all your energy on too many. So your focus is very good; you're taking part in class struggle very well
Not everything is a class struggle, but we must understand that Marxism has always had and definitively needs to understand class struggle as more than wage conflicts between 2 particular classes.
I don’t disagree with you. In my mass org, it’s understood that immigration is in essence, a national struggle since in Aztlàn it’s Chicanos and Mexicanos who make up the majority of the deportations going on.
But I also need to stress that while the class struggle and the national struggle profoundly influence each other they are still distinct processes. It’s technically incorrect to say that the national struggle is the class struggle.
The goals of national liberation and the class struggle are non-antagonistic but distinct. The goal of the national liberation is to ultimately upend national oppression. The goal of the class struggle is to gradually abolish private property and the class system.
Since nationalism is considered progressive in oppressed nations, proletarian nationalism is partaken with the ultimate goal of superseding all nationalism, all borders and all states. Proletarian nationalism is a nationalism which is interested in rendering obsolete itself.
In true dialectical fashion, the national struggle and the class struggle are both the same and also not.
Edit: I also want to stress that actually, many issues we deal with in our everyday life is a particular manifestation of class struggle. The struggle against climate change is a pretty good example since in terms of technical know how and resources, we know how to decarbonize but it’s capitals supremacy above all else with it’s avaricious greed for profit which stalls such collective action.
Edit2: Homelessness is another particular manifestation of class struggle. Firstly in that it maintains a reserve army of labor and secondly in that the logic of commodity form compels construction companies to build too much luxury housing to take advantage of larger profit margins. This comes at the expense of shortage of cheap and affordable housing for the working class.
I would recommend reading Losurdo on this! His book is my favorite ever on political philosophy. I would like to make his argument in favor of understanding class struggle as larger than economic classes, and including national liberation and national struggles, But I couldn't make the argument to a comrade as well as Losurdo can.
The broadening of the term only reinforces the importance of national struggles, it doesn't demean that struggle to lesser in any way. There are ultimate goals and current struggles, and the current struggles must take precedence to the ultimate goals while not coming into conflict with them. As Losurdo once said 'every revolution begins IN a nation.'
Not if I cut them off first
Are they uribistas? It sounds like my family lmao
Also on the topic of murder, what do they think of Venezuelans and what should be done with them? Same with people of the caribe
Oh oh and what were their opinions on the ESMAD and the DAS?
Ah and about your edit on ESMAD? They support protesters getting bashed because of muh walls and windows lol.
Thank you for answering, yeah it sounds a lot like my family but slightly less ghoulish
My family are just concerned citizens saying crap like "something needs to be done about the Venezuelan problem" (Rounding them up)
Same with the "costeño invasion"
Uff que gonorrea, camarada :/
Oh is this the Colombian toxicity corner? My extended family thinks that every time I don't spit on the ground and curse Petro's name is akin to me joining the FARC.
My poor mom knows I'm a communist, and hasn't cut me off, she even agrees with me when we talk about social justice and what is to be done. But then she'll turn around and repeat the latest Caracol "petro is the worst president in Colombian history" rhetoric.
X2 jajaja
They were openly but now they say they aren't but yeah, they probably still are.
I think they have fake pity for venezuelans, just like westerners have fake pity for the people of Iran and China.
On the topic of Caribbeans? I haven't ever seen bad regionalisms against people from the coast, in my family or in general. At worst it's against the paisas in Medellin, but it's not bad.
lose [...] your initial social network.
i did this before becoming annoying about political economy by never developing one and then moving a bunch and not using facebook
When I said social network there it's not about Facebook or Instagram but about your community, but yeah your point still stands
Social circle could be a better concept?
i understood what you meant, to be clear: i don't have the irl group and largely never did.
Try to prevent that from happening by not engaging in talks about politics with them. It's hard to convince your family, harder than convincing anyone else perhaps, try not to lose them by engaging in a futile activity.
I don't, they give me shit because of what I post in my social media.
In the case of my parents, they don't even have SM accounts but their friends send them snips.
IME my bf NFiLs always baits with no-context-nobody-asked shit they obviously read off fb days before
Not if I cut them off first mwhahahahaha!
It’s always the one that marries an American. Every single time.
their choice to support their ideological project over familty ties 
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