chapotraphouse

Right? I thought I had just read the introduction and then it just... ended. I seriously thought it was going to be 7X longer and I was prematurely judging by taking a critical note of his "early" statements. But... those were all of his statements lol

Like how video essayists all critique culture because it’s easy and nebulous, so too is calling for “resistance” or “organizing” and pointing vaguely at the collapsing imperialist state

Like bruh I'm gonna be honest with you I have talked with Shea and this kind of shit makes me sad, he seems neuroatypical (if the Adventure Time fanfiction comic did not give it away???? (???????)) and can be engaged by regular ass conversations. If I had the energy to type all your stuff out to him I would. I just exchanged a few sentences and mentioned how depressed I was that this time around we have 3 crazy old people in the Dem primary/Greens (who r dem voters let's b honest lol) versus Biden. It's like a walking joke. RFK Jr, Williamson, West, they're all kooks!

At any point during that time did you attempt to reason with the man who has only two comments on his substack and a dozen faves? He's almost 15% of the way to figuring something out! People like this, once you renovate them, blog away for you in absentia. That is unless you decide to have a struggle session in absentia where nobody sees it? Makes me sad for both Shea and Hexbear. Lol. Posting is about bringing ideas together!

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

To start off, you're only beginning to approach a real criticism of what Shea was saying here and you all went off talking about your opinions on Trotskyists. "Not always 100%" could be taken to mean the MAN HIMSELF is not always at 100%. He clearly belongs to the category of GrayZone contributors who have their little articles and haplessly become Blumenthal's bitches in the hopes of getting what they see as important messages out there. Mate seems like more of an operator. Nevermind, unread that sentence. Let's continue.

INDONESIA IS A PERIPHERAL COUNTRY. Any amount of military force and death is almost justifiable if it can still conceivably enclose the entire country. To (mis?) quote Stalin every historical parallel is perilous, this one is asinine. Militarized killings of communists continue in Indonesia to this day. The US does not need a Jakarta method, it has the PSL, CPUSA, DSA (if you ask me).

I disagree with the notion that PSL ghosting the Uhuru movement and then scheduling a march to draw attention away from theirs isn't harmful. The best you can really say about the PSL is they are keeping their sponsors and participating in electoralism while also being as visible as possible activism-wise. If you start looking into their webs of funding and all these organizations like ANSWER it's a really small world.

I don't think this is going to lead to an Indonesia-style mass killing. That's insane. But Shea isn't advocating any solutions here either. Just kind of implies people should try harder?

You want to know what my solution is? Fuck you! I've been waiting years for yours! I am moving to VIETNAM!

Why do people here really not like Trotskyists? Is it just because of his beef with Stalin and not an actual criticism of his views? Do people really not think a global movement is superior?

Trotskyism in the US is defined by rhetorically supporting the idea of world proletarian revolution while materially supporting US attempts to overthrow every actually existing proletarian revolution in the world. The Trots I know in real life were all about the idea of ending the terror war, but against any specific action that might threaten the "unified working class effort" to "free" the people of Iraq, Libya, and Syria with American bombs. They were all about ending America's new cold war right up until it was "necessary" for them to support NATO to "fight Russian imperialism and stand with Ukraine's working class". They were all in favor of liberating Palestine, right up until the "brutal Oct 7 Hamas terrorist attack" made it "necessary" for them to "stand with Israeli leftists in calling for a 2 state solution". Trotskyism is popular in the empire and nowhere else because it allows imperial citizens to adopt a counter-cultural self-image while maintaining the exploitation of the periphery that they materially benefit from.

They tend to be ultras (and, in contradiction, sometimes obsessed with electoralist approaches) and fairly disruptive to others' organizing. Discussing Trotsky himself or permanent revolution can be a good exercise and a way to develop theory but that's usually not what is actually happening.

Examples:

• Notorious for trying to enter other left spaces and take them over. Especially if those spaces seem "ascendant". A lot of this weird tendency of self-congratulation and appointing themselves as the vanguard or whatever even though all they did was show up to something that someone else organized and then take a picture of themselves.

• So critical of the USSR, historically, that there was a serious pipeline from Trots to neocons. The USSR is gone but terrible international takes are still the norm. These are the people telling you to believe in the Israeli working class rather than criticize settler culture in the Zionist entity. Not all, but it's dominant.

• A belief in leading through publications that nobody reads that say a lot about what should happen according to them. Kind of harmless I guess but it does waste people's time when they could be doing useful things or becoming educated. It's also a funny contrast to how they usually characterize themselves as (the only true Marxists).

• A dogmatic subscription to certain approaches to labor that simultaneously alienate everyone else in the space while also supporting labor imperialism. This is annoying to deal with because when other socialists enter the space it will already be hostile to them. I've dealt with this A LOT.

• A cynicism that I don't want to overgeneralize about and can't perfectly explain. Maybe it's just that a lot of them are older. But their approach to issues relating to gender, race, sexuality, etc is often only a way to relate to their target audience rather than a principled position. This really shows in how they use language, incorporate others into their processes, etc. Everything is working class this, working class that, and then some token words so they can pass for "progressive". This does not apply to all Trots but it's very common. I've had to have many talks with Trot orgs' leaders about not being transphobic it casually racist when they want to have a speaker at a rally or something.

A lot of what I'm describing are also behaviors common to the reactionary Western leftist stereotype and is not necessarily about Trotsky or a lot of what constitutes Trotskyism. Think of them as the only acceptable Marxists allowed to survive the Red Scare because of their hypercritical approach to other leftists and the fact that they are usually dependent on the approaches to "organizing" handed down by American and British cishet white dudes in the 1950s and 1960s.

Anyways I should mention again, "not all Trots". I know plenty of Trots I can work with and bring into coalition etc. But I know way more that will basics ruin the space lol. Some of the issues are attributable to Trosky in the sense that he created a narrative for himself as the anti-Stalin and a hypercritic of the USSR. But a lot of it is also just that "which way, Western leftist man?" thing I've harped on.

I don't have much to add, because I don't know any personally, but I saw one on Twitter this morning comparing people making ice-pick memes/jokes at Trotskyists to throwing noose imagery at black people. Which is wild.
Found it. Apparently this guy writes for WSWS

I heard they mostly just pass out newspapers. The only one I’ve met was basically a run of the mill conservative. Anti-Ukraine, anti-vaxx, anti-blm, etc.

They hate us cause they ain't us