Leftist Infighting: A community dedicated to allowing leftists to vent their frustrations

So, I'm not cool with genocide. Not cool with that at all. Even if they are landlords. I'm much more in favor of reeducation centers, personally. I'm against the death penalty on moral grounds. I believe that everyone deserves a second and third chance.

With that said, economically, I consider myself to be anarcho-communist or communalist or "left-communist" or whatever the fuck you want to call it.

But apparently all of that makes me a lib, and not welcome on the left? Is that correct?

*edit: I've now been banned from LemmyGrad, so yeah, that kind of confirms it. You guys are morons. Or a PsyOp meant to forever impede any sort of sea-change towards socialism.

I'm seeing a bunch of controversy surrounding which socialist organizations to join and I've heard the best things/least bad things about the PSL. Is this true?

In a recent call on the national question someone asked about how some people say the United States is not a legitimate nation because of settler colonialism and he said he knew it was obviously wrong but was wondering what their mistake is. Someone claimed that “landback” people never have a clear policy proposal. And I was shocked and hoping it could be rectified. Next was said in response that it’s true as Stalin said that the US became a nation when it left Britain because it was a specific group of settlers, but it expanded through brutal means and that should be rectified. After a while into the call eventually the issue was returned to. The fact that there are still many indigenous tribes within the US and therefore should be given their original land and sovereignty was said. In response people said that it would make them to isolated from the union and they have the option to have that sovereignty from their reservations, but obviously choose not to, which is absurd because these states should also get lots of aid and solidarity from other socialist areas (as this would be after the revolution and it would be different to now). I thought it was bad enough but after it was said that primarily settler colonial nations need their histories rectified they said that they don’t even oppose the existence of Israel anymore. Then the gensec said that people are ignoring “dialectics” that things change. People move in and out of territory- (though usually not by genocide)- and therefore the US is no different and we should not try to change that. “All the slaves are dead.”-Though people are still affected by that history, native Americans are still under special oppression by the state, and in the case of Palestine people are still alive that can remember having their land stolen and have physical evidence that it belonged to them- according to another “some Marxists read Marx and Lenin and come to the opposite conclusions” suggesting those bad Marxists are the “land-back” people.

Whoever warned me that they were PatSocs are right. What should I do? Is there hope of convincing them? Should I leave ASAP? Should I wait? It’s been mentioned here that we should follow the leadership of BIPOC people, does anyone know the modern equivalent of the White Panthers or AIM I should join?

Edit: I forget to mention the made the point that refugees are coming here now and if we do landback there would be refugees from here-like, sure people’d have to move but we’ve got space, and aren’t our birth rates declining anyway? It’s not like there’ll be an anti-white trail of tears. With socialist central planning we can allocate resources to support evicted settlers. Also, there’s a whole lotta land that’s privately owned that could easily be expropriated for indigenous people along with national parks which they’d manage far better. I think they also suggested that we need to integrate Native Americans as much as possible because their sovereignty won’t help. Finally, apparently they would’ve supported the new Afrikan struggle in the 30’s, but since I guess they don’t think you can fight fascism and racism and colonialism at the same time.

Communist Party of ~~TERF Island~~ Britain released a statement which includes the following questionable (and downright transphobic) statements:

States that the Gender Recognition Bill is a failure, and does not support it in any way, essentially siding with England because of their antagonism.

States that the bill will only bring confusion and legal chaos, because Scotland doesn't align with the UK

Claims that you need gender dysphoria to be trans, essentially falling into the transmedicalist ideology

Opposes both Scotland and Wales decision to allow people to change their gender regardless of gender dysphoria, utilising a TERF argument of "men" being predators in women-only and children spaces

Believes in Gender Ideology, and claims that "Gender Ideology" suits the capitalist class despite transphobic media being rampant especially in the UK

Anyways, if anyone supports CPTI (CPB), I hope you realise that they're no longer a good party.

Update: CPB has released a post saying that they won't be silenced. It just shows transphobic they are.

https://www.codepink.org/march18

Nationwide protests shot off on the 18th and 19th. Did you see any coverage?

The revolution will not be televised. RATWM is a fascist maneuvering and nothing more, attempting to recoup some of the brewing anti-war sentiment back into supporting capitalism and by extension imperialism. Libertarians, pedo "communists", and outright fascists? We don't fucking need them and I find it frustrating when people seem to think we do.

RATWM was televised because it was backed by money. Dirty, bloody money coming from the likes of the Paul political dynasty. Their pathetic little gathering was not the revolutionary moment some people seemed to imply it was. It was a farce. The people will rise up and they won't need ghoulish demagogues to pay them to.

A good refutation of the ‘KPD is to blame for the Third Reich’ myth is Sergio Bologna’s Nazism and the working class, which focuses more on class analysis (!!!) than blaming ‘the left’ or the Comintern or Moscow or specifically Joseph Stalin for almost everything that went wrong. (It’s also a big surprise coming from libcom.org—of all things—hilariously enough.) Anyway, our theory noob here claims that

the KPD […] rejected several offers from the SPD to enter coalition to stop the rise of Nazism

While there is some truth to this, when we actually examine the relations between the SPD and the KPD in context, as Nazism and the working class does, the reasons for this refusal were more complicated than how she presented them. She also claims that the

KPD and NSDAP also essentially collaborated during the late 1920s and early 1930s to undermine Weimar democracy both as a matter of street violence and using institutional means

By which she meant

in history books you too often find the thesis that the Nazis and Communists went side by side to fight against the institutions of Weimar, and you frequently find reference to the two episodes in which they found themselves in a united front against the Socialist Party: the public transport strike in Berlin in Autumn 1932, and the referendum against the Prussian government under Otto Braun; you almost never hear of the physical clashes which took place between proletarians organised by the KPD and the [Fascist] gangs.

What was wrong with this Prussian government (or ‘Weimar democracy’) under Braun? Sergio Bologna provides us with a clue:

Now, Prussia was governed not so much by the Social Democratic party as such, as by some of its more prestigious exponents. They had considerable power, and they were located on the extreme Right of the party.

The key man in Prussia, for many years prime minister of the Prussian government, was Otto Braun, a man of open and declared authoritarian tendencies, who saw the role of social democracy as being in maintaining law and order, in the untouchability of the state bureaucra[c]y, and in a corporative partnership between trade unions and big capital.

In the words of Theodor Eschenburg, the author of a fine book on the problem of “ungovernability” in the Weimar Republic, he was in favour of a “recallable dictatorship”. Otto Braun's principal collaborator was for many years Albert Grzesinski, who was Minister of the Interior in Prussia, and from 1930 was also head of police in Berlin.

We should not forget that during this period the Social Democrats had considerable powers in the area of law and order, because in 1928 one of their number, Carl Severing, was appointed Minister of the Interior of the Reich. The SPD took advantage of this to institute an extremely efficient reorganisation of the police, with the principal aim of setting up a special corps to prevent Bolshevik disturbances and uprisings.

Unfortunately they were not equally efficient and motivated in preventing and repressing [Fascist] gangsterism. The situation inevitably aggravated the historic fracture between Social Democrats and Communists that had already existed since the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht — a fracture which experienced a particularly acute moment — a point of “no return” — in the events of Mayday 1929.

[…]

Mayday 1929 in Berlin fell in an atmosphere that was particularly tense, due partly to the onset of economic crisis and partly to the onset of a crisis of the political system.

The police chief in Berlin, a Social Democrat by name of Zorgiebel, had already banned all public demonstrations in Berlin in December 1928. In March 1929 he extended the ban to the whole of Prussia, and then renewed the ban specifically for Mayday 1929, asking the trade unions to abstain from public demonstrations and to organise only indoor meetings.

The Communists, however, decided to challenge the ban and to demonstrate in the streets. The Social Democratic trade unions and the SPD organised their Mayday events in theatres, association offices etc. The Communist slogan was: "We do not accept the ban. We shall demonstrate in the streets, and if the police try to attack we shall call a general strike for the next day." And so it was to be.

The police, as has been shown from research in police archives, mounted a deliberate attack, organised by special anti‐subversion units. There were violent clashes, which spread to include workers who were coming out of the indoor meetings of the Social Democratic trade unions. The Communist Party called a general strike for the following day, but despite pressure from many militants did not distribute weapons; nevertheless, in the quarters of Neukolln and Wedding the barricades went up and the police had to lay siege to the areas for three days before they were able to restore order.

The final balance was extremely heavy: thirty people dead, all of them demonstrators; 200 wounded; 1,200 people arrested, of whom 44 were kept in custody by the police. The Prussian Minister of the Interior seized this opportunity to ban the mass organisations of the Communist Party.

These events brought about an unhealable fracture between Communist militants, and the Social Democratic party and its organisations. Oral history research has shown that in the memory of proletarian militants (not only communists) this was a turning point, a “point of no return” in their remembrance of their total alienation from anything to do with the SPD.

Whereas the killings of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht might possibly have been attributed to the Freikorps and not purely to Noske's policies, the blame for the repression of Mayday 1929 in Berlin lay squarely at the door of Social Democratic ministers and functionaries. This trauma split the working class down the middle, right on the eve of the final clash with the [Fascist] militias.

(Emphasis added.)

With all of this in mind, it should not be hard at all to understand why the KPD would turn down the SPD’s late offers for a ‘coalition’ (probably under some very important terms and conditions that somebody neglected to mention, I suspect) against fascism. Given that the succdems were so lazy at suppressing fascism, I really doubt that a coalition would have made an enormous difference anyway.

As for why the Fascists wished to suppress German Social Democracy, hopefully it goes without saying that their reasons were very different from those of the Communists, which probably explains why their collaboration — if you’d call it that — was so sporadic and ultimately meaningless. It just goes to show that being right for the wrong reasons is hardly better than being wrong to begin with.

Hi wisconcom. I know you can read this message, so don't bother saying you haven't. For others who do not know about him, just know that he's a "Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist" (or Hoxhaist).

You keep going on this website, trying to infiltrate it in one way or another, defending yourself when you're being threatened. I have countless examples of your alts. One example is 'Sickomus', who wrote a 'critique' on my essay in Prolewiki. You defended yourself with another account as well, showing your clear cowardice: How about you going on RationalWiki and changing your username so that you can hide away from your edits on ProleWiki?

I just wanna ask some questions. Why do you do this? What do you hope to achieve by doing this? If you're doing to 'trash Tankies and Dengists', then why are you bothering to literally blend in with us to begin with?

Even RationalWiki editors (whom are liberals) know that you're obsessed. This is just laughable at this point.

If you're just doing this to combat 'revisionism' or some other bullshit, then why are you not at all concerned that you're literally on rationalwiki? A website, which literally claims that communism is a totalitarian ideology:

What problem does fighting revisionism have? Nothing by itself. But you care more about fighting revisionism more than fighting capitalism. Therefore you're helping US imperialism.

I would like to end off this message by stating this:

Good day.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/465610

As an artist, I think it is a net negative for us. Disregarding the copyright issue, I think it's also consolidating power into large corporations, going to kill learning fundamental skills (rip next generation of artists), and turn the profession into a low skill minimum wage job. Artists that spent years learning and perfecting their skills will be worth nothing and I think it's a pretty depressing future for us. Anways thoughts?

First, here’s the question that the author asked:

I was doing some research on the Spanish Civil War […] and I noticed in the timeline, that there was a nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and fascist Italy, which it said strengthened economic relations. Can anyone tell me about this? I have severe doubts that the USSR would expand trade with a fascist power.

A pact between the Soviet Union and Fascist Italy. That does sound troubling, and we should very well be concerned learning about that for the first time; it is a serious accusation. Of course, chances are that anticommunists are either distorting the issue or making it up entirely, as usual, but it’s safest to withhold judgement until we have more evidence. Now, how do you think that communism101 responded to this?

The liberal democracies of Europe made similar agreements with Hitler and Mussolini before the USSR did, and shot down Stalin's suggestions of an anti-fascist alliance in the 30s.

That’s… not the issue here. The original poster’s question was asking about the Italo–Soviet Pact and what we could tell them about it.

You trade with fascists every time you go to a store or pay your bills. What's your justification and why doesn't it apply to the Soviet people?

We frequently trade with anticommunists every time we got to a store or pay our bills. That is correct. But this topic is about the Italo–Soviet Pact, and a pact between states is a little bit different and more complicated than mundane transactions between individuals or a bill that we have to pay to businesses.

the USSR rightly determined that it was necessary to have some degree of economic relations with the capitalist world, why is it OK for them to sign peace treaties with Churchill and Roosevelt, both extreme genocidal racists, but unacceptable for them to do the same with Hitler and Mussolini?

Yes, fine, but the question was not asking if it was OK or not for Moscow to sign a pact with a Fascist government. The question was asking if we could tell the original poster anything more about the Italo–Soviet Pact. Here, this is exactly what the poster asked:

So I was doing some research on the Spanish Civil War on Wikipedia (already liberal source, I’m aware), and I noticed in the timeline, that there was a nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and fascist Italy, which it said strengthened economic relations. Can anyone tell me about this? I have severe doubts that the USSR would expand trade with a fascist power.

‘there was a nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and fascist Italy, which it said strengthened economic relations. Can anyone tell me about this?’ That is the question. Unless maybe the asker is experiencing some sort of moral or existential crisis, telling us that liberals co‐operated with fascists is unlikely to be of much help. If we want to demonstrate that socialism in one country is preferable to a bourgeois régime (be it liberal or fascist), this certainly wouldn’t be of much help.

So, what can we tell the author about this pact? Well, you are in luck, because I have a very credible answer right here. Quoting Andrei Yu. Sidorov in History of International Relations and Russian Foreign Policy in the 20th Century, page 190:

‘The sanctions were initiated by Britain, though already in the run-up to the conflict, the cabinet of S. Baldwin had firmly decided that it would under no circumstances go to war with Italy over Ethiopia. France, for its part, informed Britain that it was against imposing oil sanctions. The League of Nations never dared ban the sale of oil to Italy, thus missing the chance to stop hostilities. "If the League had extended economic sanctions of oil, I would have had to withdraw from Abyssinia within a week", recognised Benito Mussolini later.

‘The Soviet Union took rather a cautious stance on the Ethiopian conflict. It did not have diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, while it had been quite closely co-operating with Italy. At the same time, Moscow could not ignore Mussolini's aggression. "However much we wish not to spoil relations with Italy, we cannot but go up against the imperialist war… it masterminds", wrote Maxim Litvinov to Stalin on October 5th, 1935.

‘The Soviet Union supported the sanctions against Italy but did not go any further, mindful of the position of France, its new ally. The USSR representative in the League of Nations was instructed not to be overzealous in the matter of sanctions and not initiate oil sanctions. In December 1935 the Politburo declined Ethiopia's request for assistance with arms and military specialists. All those moves were aimed at avoiding a serious deterioration in relations with Italy and preventing its rapprochement with Nazi Germany.’

(Emphasis added.)

You don’t need to distract from the issue, appeal to liberal memes like ‘HORSESHOE THEORY’ or ‘RED FASCISM’ or even express perfect satisfaction with this turn of events. You exercise scrutiny, you try to get to the bottom of the issue (specifically through Google Books, as the case may be), and you think for yourself by determining which explanation is the most reasonable.

That is how you answer the question.

An anti-communist interestingly made a claim, based on a wikipedia page

Stop caring and grow up. [+7]

…honestly, do I even need to explain why this advice is so terrible?

I have an idea, though: that should be /r/communism101’s official slogan. I mean, what’s stopping them? So many threads could be avoided if only they used this as their default response to everything. Imagine how much time it would save! No need to worry about the people or things that you love when all that you have is sheer, raw confidence! And if ya think about it, can you really say that you love something if you’re worrying about it? Why would you ever do that? Just assume that everything’s fine!

You know what, here’s an even better idea: why not lock up the subcommunity and set that as the entry page’s message? That would solve so many problems! Look, here’s a mock‐up:

This is a great idea! In fact, this idea is so great, that if /r/communism101 actually implemented it, I can guarantee that it would reduce their workload by a whooping 100%! Wow!

They're not a communist or even socialist. Simply a liberal who consumes communist memes, which is why they're spreading a Nazi's rhetoric here. This submission hasn't been removed yet so that others may witness what lies underneath subreddits such as /r/CommunismMemes, /r/ShitLiberalsSay, and /r/PoliticalCompassMemes, ie. they're not harmless.

For those wondering, here are all of the OP’s contributions to /r/PoliticalCompassMemes.

Full disclosure: I'm training to be a psychologist (not psychiatrist)

I've been browsing here a lot since Genzedong got quarantined, as I had been expecting a full removal soon after. The general community here is so positive and funny, I found myself preferring it to the subreddit.

I decided to break from my lurking ways to comment on an unfortunate trend I've noticed: A few, maybe just one or two, users trying to bring legitimacy to anti-psychiatry rhetoric. These users are getting a great deal of attention for their posts, and they seem to me to be legit comrades, regularly posting in other subs as well. I think these users are genuine, and I don't intend to make this about them, nor am I about to speculate about their personal reasons for perpetuating these messages. I will say only this about them: There is a worrying tendency to fully dismiss the experiences and views of mental health professionals, saying that speaking to us is "like speaking to a wall," and encouraging other users to simply ignore our responses. I think I only need to describe this sort of behavior for the troublesome qualities of it to become self-evident. No more needs to be said on it.

Now, I want to speak first to the kernel of truth in the anti-psychiatry lie, because this is somewhat personal to me.

Following the death of my 24 year old brother in 2020, I had a very hard time maintaining my professional life for a little over a year. He was not only my closest friend, but also the only person with whom I could share my political thoughts openly, expecting that he might be feeling similar. Simply put, he was the only socialist I knew.

At my field placement at the time, I was often working with people who were hospitalized. The fact that capitalism contributes to mental illness was not a new concept to me, but seeing how many of our patients were homeless, and knowing that, sometimes, they were sent back to the streets after we had gotten them "back to baseline," was devastating for me. It was the sort of disruption that makes a person question the field they are in.

Cut-to October, 2021, I'm the only student in a classroom, explaining to 6 professors why my performance is slipping lately, and I find myself explaining that I feel impotent as a therapist, eventually yelling something rash to the effect of "If we actually wanted a psychologically-minded approach to helping these people, we'd be giving them houses!" Further, I was boiling in anger so slowly I almost didn't notice it, because I had no one - zero people - in this liberal-as-hell program to discuss my beliefs with. No one outside of it. Just no one. I was surrounded by people who loved to talk about "systems," but couldn't form a coherent thought about the economic system that undergirds all of the ills of these other systems.

It is true that therapy and psychiatry are often bandaids for people living in a sick society. It is true that many of the problems we seek to address are exacerbated or outright caused by living in a capitalist system. It is true that therapy addresses the suffering of individuals, when that suffering is often the result of communal discord.

It's deeply unhealthy to get stuck there though. I was for a time, and my outpatient clients likely suffered lower quality treatment from me during this time. I know everyone around me suffered a lower quality me.

We are historical materialists. Because of the suffering caused by capitalism, it can be easy to lose sight of the materialist understanding of capitalism as an inevitable and necessary next step beyond feudalism, leading to socialism. Capitalism is not an entity you can diagnose as evil and then determine that everything birthed from within it is therefore also evil. That's idealism. The fact that psychiatry and therapy inherited flaws from operating within a capitalist system says absolutely nothing about their inherent nature, the intent of them, nor their impact.

Now let's get more specific. This entire dance of tying capitalism and psychiatry together utterly ignores basic realities - like the fact that some mental illnesses seem to be primarily organic, that is, relating to the person's biological make-up, their "wiring." Primary examples of this include ADHD, Bipolar and Schizophrenia. If you suppose a person with schizophrenia or bipolar would suddenly be highly functional, absent medication, in a world where we've reached international communism, you are simply making a massive, uneducated guess. We don't know that, and anyone who has spent considerable time among the severely mentally ill population will tell you that it seems extremely unlikely. Further, we haven't reached communism, so it seems reasonable to suggest we do what we can for people who are suffering currently.

A lot of anti-psychiatry rhetoric seems to come from the neurodivergent crowd, specifically people with ADHD and/or autism, who have felt mistreated by the field of psychiatry because they aren't disordered, just different from the type of person who succeeds under capitalism. There is a lot of truth to this, and I wish I had better answers for these individuals. Perhaps under communism, people with ADHD and Autism will feel no need for therapy. Then again, perhaps they'll still suffer from higher rates of depression than other people, simply because they find it harder to fit in socially. A lot of unhelpful speculation is required to even have that conversation. I'm more interested in helping people with the problems they say they want help with in their lives, at this point in time.

Now to get on to what most people think of when they think of psychiatry and therapy. When I'm helping someone with OCD learn to work past their compulsions effectively enough that they can finally do something enjoyable with their time, no one gives a flying fuck if capitalism has to do with why they can't stop checking, and re-checking that everything in their home is "just right." When I'm helping a socially anxious person find human connection, or a depressed person find something rewarding to engage in, again, the discussion of how their mental illness is a result of capitalism feels trivial in the face of their suffering. Yes, every single one of my clients deserves revolution. No, I'm not capable of bringing about that revolution on my own, but I can help my clients make friends and find meaning in the lives they do have under this capitalist system.

The last problem with anti-psychiatry being tied to Marxism is more pragmatic: People who are curious about communism come to this site. Most people's (with very unfortunate but real exceptions) experience of psychiatry and therapy will not map onto the exploitative machine described by the anti-psychiatry folks any more than their experience of the medical field does. This means that any curious liberal who comes into this space looking for answers is going to be immediately turned off.

Anyway, I'm really thankful for this place and hope this post doesn't make me a pariah around here in the future. Thanks for reading, comrades.

Edit: A previous version of this post contained language that was unfair to the anti-psychiatry crowd. This was a mistake pointed out to me in the comments, and I see what they mean. I'll do better with that in the future.

Hello. Hopefully I won’t get banned for mentioning some stuff happening in China. From a western perspective, China seems perfect. There is a Communist Party in charge and the constitution says people have labor rights. But I want to examine some topics which make me very uncomfortable. For reference: Grew up in China 2002 to 2012, Moved to America, currently going through University in Americar, planning to go back to China immediately when I finish and restore People’s Republic citizenship. After living in the west for 10 years I am a hardcore communist. After I read the Little Red Book it was one of the most awesome things I ever read. I am grateful that the most populous country with such a huge territory and long history has a Communist government. Forgive me if I’m a bit on edge, the whole Nancy Pelosi Bullshit is making me very very stressed. If Americar and China are going to fight, at least do so after I escape Americar and go back to my family.

For those of you who doubt me: 如果你真的怀疑我是中国人，你觉得一个假中国人能写出这样的话吗？当然， 现代有谷歌翻译，但是毕竟谷歌翻译是机器，有时候还会不能完美地模仿人类的自然语言。全世界无产阶级人民团结！！！

Please please please don’t just see the epic People’s Liberation Army videos or the official news reportings, there is so much on bilibili and zhihu that a westerner wouldn’t know unless you are fluent in the language.

Tsinghua University Rainbow flags incident. Recently there has been an incident with Tsinghua University, one of the most prestigious higher education places in the coutnry. (the fact that this place is prestigious is problematic to me. Aren’t we communists supposed to, you know, ensure equality? I don’t think Westerners truly understand just how unequal education is in China. The quality of school facilities in rich and poor areas are just absolutely incomparable, and graduates of prestigious universities get much better jobs and much better income, which just isn’t fair. An engineering graduate is an engineering graduate, there shouldn’t be any differences in educational standards in different schools) A student left 10 little LBGT rainbow flags on a table, then was punished for it because the school says it is “宣传品“ which can be translated as propaganda OR informational materials. Not everything has to do with LGBT is about western infiltration you know. How can a student be punished for simply leaving 10 (TEN) rainbow flags? It’s a general symbol of Sexual and Gender Minorities. If there is proof of western infiltration, then yes, that is a problem. Right now I see very little Native Chinese activity in terms of LGBT. I agree the Chinese need our own LGBT awareness programs but it just isn’t happening. I don’t know why the central people’s government isn’t just coming out and saying people shouldn’t discriminate against LGBT. Even the word LGBT is western in origin, the Chinese need their own word for it. I think we should use 奻𤲶双跨. Each zi corresponds to each letter in LGBT. On Weibo微博 there were people arguing over this, in typical Chinese shitshow fashion. I heard enough of this in my childhood, my grandparents and my mother are all practitioners of the well-respected art of yelling. (Me too, although I tend to do more targeted insults, against homophobia, transphobia, corporate bootlicking, western bootlicking, religious persecution of others etc). There are very many extremely homophobic people on there saying that this is “western infiltration“ and that the students deserve even more punishment. Some say that Homosexuals should keep to themselves. The problem is, Homosexuals just aren’t seen in society, and if LGBT keep to themselves, how can they ensure that they are not discriminated against in terms of employment, education, and other opportunities? What about school bullying, domestic violence, suicides? How can Gay people even find love if they can’t even say “hey, we are gay?” There were nice people who argued FOR LBGT and insulted the homophobes, by saying that homophobes have no culture (没文化is a very common insult in China) and that although homopbobes say that homosexuals are diseased, the true disease are the homophobes themlseves. When I became a Communist in America, it’s precisely because they are simply the better side, the left supports LGBT, the right does not. I can’t deal with the fact that my home country, which should embrace Marxist Materialism according to its own ruling party, has so much homophobia. Western report: https://supchina.com/2022/07/27/the-rise-and-fall-of-lgbtq-student-groups-in-china/ Report in Chinese language (but not from China), it contains what looks to be official school documents for the students’ consequences. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/684454.html
I couldn’t find any official reportage of this Tsinhua University event, but I do see it being talked about on social media. https://weibo.com/3349258552/KnEhha2e7?refer_flag=1001030103_ Weibo post reporting the government shutting down multiple university LGBT organizations. The user is happy and calls LGBT dirty and disgusting. Some people cite Marx and Engels who were homophobic. I understand that Marx and Engels were from a very different era and I love them despite their homophobia. I know that if they were born in a different time they definitely wouldn’t be homophobes.

The other problem I want to discuss is 996. So…. How are we going to fight against it? Is the government making any progress? They condemned it in 2021. Are companies actually being forced to give their employees human hours? Are companies giving them a 40 hour workweek with 2 days off each week? It is an incredible shame that in a Leftst Red country this sort of exploitation exists. Keep in mind that I ain’t saying Americar is good. University prices are sky high and Americans will NEVER be able to retire OR get a house. The American government is controlled by money. But that doesn’t matter because China shouldn’t be comparing itself against America. China should be comparing itself against the metrics of Communism. I see some western tovarishi (comerades) say that 996 is only in Shanghai and Macau and HongKong. Not true. It is a phenomenon all over. Some western comrades say that this is only the tech industry. Not true. I look on the Chinese internet and it seems to me 996 is a very widespread phenomenon across multiple sectors in multiple places. It is an unmentionable shame that a thousands years old culture which values FAMILY above all gives people 0 (ZERO) time to be with their family. This is not even mentioning the nongmingong (workers who have rural hukou/registration but who go to work in cities) who cannot buy houses in cities for some reason, they live in shitty accomodations and can only see their families for 15 days in Chinese New Near. Paid time off and vacations don’t exist in Chinese culture. Your boss and coworkers WILL call you and expect you to answer, IF you somehow manage to convince your superiors that you deserve a break. And the Hierarchical culture… Is absolutely disgusting. Higher ups will lord it over you like some feudal official. We are 共产主义者for fucks sake we should be equal. Now I admit I spent half of my life in America so I haven’t experienced things personally but I follow Chinese social media quite closely. It really is that bad. And before you accuse me of being a western spy or a Eff Bee Eye, first see if you can read this. If you can’t, then you should probably consider the fact that this is MY culture not yours.. 中华文化是我的文化。我有资格去评价当前的中国人的网上谈论。 The Law has been against 996 exploitation for a VERY long time. But why has the government taken so long to act? Are their policies effective? You can’t just say you’re against something and not use all available force to punish these bad things. Americar makes laws and doesn’t enforce them, I don’t want China to become like America.

Another worrying phenomenon is a new way of looking at history. Confucious, a misogynistic monarchist who puts book-men(who do ceremonies or something) over farm laborers (who provide food) is rehabilitated by the Party. In Official documentaries about history, I see Emperors being praised. This is very dangerous because I can’t see myself loving these dudes who lived in palaces and had 100s of women to play with while their subjects labored in the fields. I see so much traditionalism in Chinese media and not enough revolutionary culture. Why? Please just why? The Great Helmsman (Mao) spent so much time fighting against feudal society. And in recent years, xenophobia is on the rise in Chinese online discours. Everything Chinese is good and Foreign things are bad. If China needs something, it has to be Chinese. LGBT is from the west therefore it is bad. Why would one listen to music from the West if one has good Chinese music to listen to? Westerners don’t beat their children, so we Chinese do. It’s only natural. Everything has to be Chinese nowadays. Where does cultural confidence end and chauvinism begin? I agree every single damn country needs cultural confidence. Look at the rise of the Right in Germany. If you’re not gonna teach to the young Deutschen good Deutsche Kultur, they will fall to Right Wing German culture, the bad part of Deutscher Kultur. And before you accuse me of being a western spy or a Eff Bee Eye, first see if you can read this. If you can’t, then you should probably consider the fact that this is MY culture not yours.. 中华文化是我的文化。我有资格去评价当前的中国人的网上谈论。

Please please please don’t just see the epic People’s Liberation Army videos or the official news reportings, there is so much on bilibili and zhihu that a westerner wouldn’t know unless you are fluent in the language.

His follow‐up post.

I have no comment.

The most important thing needs to be said first. I am not well read on Maoist theory and history apart from On Contradiction by Mao (which is not really Maoist). So whatever I say, you may as well completely disregard it. It won't any difference.

As everyone here probably knows Chairman Gonzalo died on 11/9/2021. On Reddit at least not many people are mourning. /r/GenZedong's pretty elated about it. I personally don't know enough to take a stance.

/r/communism mods are pretty protective of Guzman's legacy. The truth is that every communist figure is heavily slandered in mainstream capitalist canon. Guzman is pretty unique in that he has a bad reputation among communists as well.

I have been trying to read/watch/listen about the Sendero Luminoso and there is definitely a lot of questionable aspects to them. One thing I found out about is the massacres they have conducted. The victims here are usually indigenous peasants. An example is the Lucanamarca massacre, which the party has confirmed was a directive from it's central leadership.

The thing that makes it the most confusing is that the accusations against the Shining Path are superficially similar to PragerU/Victims of Communism-tier slander against previous communist leaders. For example, it's said that Chairman Gonzalo fostered a cult of personality, using armed indigenous peasants as cannon fodder. I am not yet sure if this was true or not, but going to Maoist blogs and websites and always seeing him being praised as the greatest MLM thinker alive does not instill much confidence. This is just a shallow comment though. For something more substantial I will have to read a bit more.

Back to the topic, the mods of the subreddit don't like what they call revisionism. But the refutations that I see are not very convincing. The articles that are linked are not easy to read but I guess they are targeted towards someone who is more enlightened about the broader context.

The mods seem very knowledgeable so I expected more. Since revisionism is so prevalent, I expected to find some good refutations. But instead I just find a appreciation for furthering Marxist theory, waging a war that, while it did achieve significant victories, ended up failing. As communists, I expected appreciation of results and material gains but instead the realm of preference seems to be ideological dogmatism.

Overall it's very confusing.