As an autistic commie, I must say I’m also really glad to have joined here. I don’t comment much because the meme about “actual organised militants don’t have time for internet” is actually pretty real. But it is great to know that, no matter how hectic life gets I still always have this safe leftist and leftist-owned virtual space to come back to.

Vijay Prashad will march with us tomorrow, really cool

Hecking cool! Good luck to you too. Stay safe and hydrated!

I think one thing about “classics” is that they’re just classics for their culture. You should look for art that somehow ties to your own history. One of the best experiences I had was reading “Vidas Secas”, which is a book that ties very well a lot of common themes for my family and community but also our local dialect that’s slowly being erased by the internet.

I can’t really recommend you anything, but I can’t see why the story of Les Miserables, however well written, might touch a good portion of the world population.

I also really enjoy taking note of the many ways some video games portray their themes besides dialogue and text. Things like camera framing, colour coding, ludonarrative, music all driving the same point forward. It’s about both appreciating the emotions that something makes me feel and also the techniques employed to make me feel that. And a great contrast is things like a bad TV series that’s supposed to be tense but it ends up just funny.

I haven’t read either yet, as I haven’t had much time, but as a methodological side note I just want to say I really enjoy this “tribune” style of usage of the forum. Having well thought out polemics is part of the development of a correct line.

I’ll try to read them both carefully later, but right now I just want to compliment the effort put forward by both users.

It not being a holiday there is horrible.

At the very least share some post about the anniversary of the murder of Jordan Neely to show your discontent.

No idea, but if he is, the fact that it never comes up is exactly what I’m complaining about.

Don’t worry about losing your social circle by changing parties, you’ll probably still meet a lot whenever your new and old parties converge on specific actions. Some might even follow you or try to organise joint actions.

For changing, if you get into touch with some comrade from your current party, ask them about how it’s going and advice on making the jump. Other than that, if they publicise any of their events (specially reading groups, those are the usual recruiting gateways) try to go and meet some people, and see if you feel comfortable with the people there. Eventually you might get close enough to someone for specific advice.

Good luck comrade!

I don’t expect much from broader leftist YouTubers like hbomberguy, Shaun, philosophytube, so it doesn’t disappoint me when they do a liberalism, and their content is otherwise fine.

But I actually really dislike the couple “actually socialist” ones like Second Thought because they do the exact same thing as the previous ones (pointing at the problem with no perspective for solution) but are lauded as some heroes of Marxism-Leninism. The only video of his that I find minimally ML is the one telling people to get organised. He barely advertises US parties (keeping in mind that’s his main audience) or points to what can be done, and wastes too much effort on “production values” over agitation. If he refuses to join any party, the very least he could do is make a video explaining all of them to help out his followers. Effectively, he’s an anti-capitalist/pro-China agitator at best, and I’m tired of USAmericans hopefully waiting for China to fix everything. The other deprogram lads fit the bill too, but I don’t even bother watching them.

English-language YouTube is generally really bad at agitation (clarifying the contradictions of singular notable events), specially due to “monthly video” model. There’s a huge space for short daily news analysis being ignored. But there are some really good propagandists. So I’d like to recommend RevLeft Radio for current events and Red Pen for understanding theory. Besides that there’s also Socialism for All for commentated reading of theory, though he is MLM.

Oh, I didn’t know breakthrough news was theirs. I thought they only owned Liberation News, which usually lags behind the news cycle by a lot.

On the other hand, Chinese state-supported media model sidesteps these barriers by decoupling news accessibility from commercial pressures.

The same could be said of the BBC, DW, France24 and many others. They’re still trash. Being state supported is nice, but the interests of that state are key.

I’d like to add that western communist parties are doing a very lacklustre job in fighting for hegemony in the digital media/news space. It is depressing that single-person channels like First Thought somehow are better at constant free news coverage than the PSL or other English-language ML parties.

It might not take off in the west where there’s too much propaganda against China for people to turn to Chinese sources, but that’s not the case for the global majority.

Most Chinese news platforms are still mostly only in English, which isn’t accessible for non-westerners. And national bourgeois media is happy to only translate what supports their interests. I’d rather they support the building of national left-wing press structures abroad.

If you look on the FBI “most wanted” page he is one of the top “fugitives” lol

If there’s an anti-war movement, it’ll be very diverse in its tactics.

Well, in that case those other things can’t be said outright as answers either.

What can be said is a list of sources, perhaps.

TM 31 210

Other more up to date TMs and FMs

Chemistry Youtuber

Some theory

Also check out some circuitry courses online and try to learn how to solder and short-circuit batteries. And join the SRA, maybe budget for a 3D printer.

And finally I recommend reading through David Shub’s biography of Simon Ter-Petrosian, for some lessons on what to do, what not to do, and what can go wrong.

However I still advise those other things to be done with some sort of organisation.

If we get nuclear Armageddon, everybody in the planet will die. There’s no escaping it, we have more than enough nukes to make earth uninhabitable.

I’m guessing you are asking this from a US perspective.

The Practical Policy of Revolutionary Defeatism

First: Get yourself organised. Action without organisation is either liberalism, anarchism or adventurism. Join the FRSO or the PSL.

Second: your organisation should organise against the war by agitating against the state itself and for peace, but also by hampering the capabilities for continued war, through strikes, protests, road blockages and whatever else is an acceptable method for your organisation.

Third: Survive yourself but also help others survive. Whatever was the US engages in now, there’ll be a severe economic impact due to deindustrialization. Your organisation should act to help those most in need, which serves a double function of cementing which side the communists are on (the proletariat) against the interests of the parties with state control.

As a side note, it honestly confuses me how much I need to remind people on a Marxist-Leninist forum that getting organised is the first step. I don’t know if this is a cultural US liberal thing of thinking oneself too unique for a movement or too good for a middling party, but that’s what it seems like. I’d understand if the complaint was “I don’t have time for militancy” but it’s usually just “the parties are bad” like a good party is just going to spontaneously manifest itself.

For agitation and propaganda, mainstream websites are infinitely more effective than whatever we have on the fediverse. That is not on you as an individual but on your organisation as a platform for that agitation.

Now for individualist arguments, there’s the clear reason that sadly most people are still only on corporate social media.

The fediverse works as a safe space, and allows for deeper discussion and studies, but it’s definitely not a place for reaching an audience.

Those are absolutely beautiful. What a great gift.

The Vietnam essay exists already 😄 https://criticalresist.substack.com/p/how-vietnam-decolonized-and-what

Nice!

And patsocs don’t deserve an essay of their own lol

I disagree. You quite clearly have some very developed thoughts on them that I’d like to read more about and comprehend better, and I believe right-opportunists should be mercilessly opposed from the cradle to the grave.

This is well meaning critique, but I think you mashed two really good essays into something lesser than they could’ve been. I’d be way more interested in either a thorough dissection of the organisation principles of Ho Chi Minh and specifically about General Giáp and another essay carefully tearing down whatever passes for Marxism in the US with clearer evidence and more neatly tied together.

As somebody who knows very little about both the CPV and the Yankee pseudoleft I look forward to more of your writing on these topics.

I absolutely hate how hardware is made to be impossibly hard to repair nowadays while also incredibly expensive to replace in the Global South. Your month’s worth of minimum wage cellphone broke a button? Your options are either paying half the phone price to replace a piece half the size of the phone, or getting a new one.