What is the bias?

Sounds like whatsboutism. What time is it in Moscow?

The article does not describe any political persecution, it just repeats a vague assertion by one guy and then makes implications about COVID lockdowns

Capitalism will not abide people not working just because they don’t want to. Even in rich countries like the US where imperialism and the undocumented immigrant labor underclass could provide everything truly needed to survive, capitalism requires that the population be exploited to realize even greater profits.

I mention imperialism and the immigrant labor underclass because work is still necessary for production and momentary examples to the contrary (e.g. COVID lockdowns) are an illusion built on the backs of the hyperexploited. However, if we were able to depose capitalism, we could focus our efforts on eliminating the need for work rather than building everything around profit maximization.

They’re called scabs because they are supposed to be receiving beatings from union workers.

Democrats and university admins just ran a standard PR playbook. They depend on students’ naivete to succeed at it, and that worked. Several encampmentd accepted mere promises of consideration to disband while others got stronger concess but without them actually being in hand, which were easy to renege on.

For campus protest to work against something as entrenched as Zionism, these lessons need to be learned and consistently passed on and there need to be strong ties to orgs outside the university that can provide seasoned advice.

That’s a process error, not an individual’s fault. Sounds like not a single person reviewed the code, they just said, “sounds good, deploy!” on a major production system.

You can be certain that there are tons of other bugs in the system that just have more subtle effects.

They were used extensively in Virtnam and China when the cadre party was underground. The CPP currently uses many.

I appreciate this new perspective on “front orgs.” I was viewing them as deceptive and a bit anti-democratic or entryist before. This adds nuance.

Hilariously, the motivation for forming MUG, which can be found on Cosmonaut, is fundamentally entryist.

I believe there is quite a bit of prior reading, study period and application process to join MUG, but I agree with your assessment of DSA at large

That’s what they say, but nearly every MUG member I have met doesn’t know the basics of Marxism and certainly not anti-imperialism. I can think of only one exception.

I am glad MUG and Red Star Caucus exist in so far as there is some opportunity for Marxist education and formation within the DSA, which I view more as a “mass org” than any party or Marxist-Leninist organization.

The DSA is an incoherent social club that, when duty calls, always fails to meet the moment. More commies in more places is good, but despite controlling half of their leading committee, they have not produced substantial results. And their ground game is… not great. I wish Red Star luck but I don’t think it is a practical way to build an org. For example, their chapter membership in my area is smaller than a communist org my comrade creater just 1 year ago.

Cosmonaut is mostly just the newsletter for the Marxist Unity Group in the DSA. MUG, in my experience, is full of unread chauvinists. Their main thing is to say we need to amend the US Constitution, lmao. “Revolutionary socialists”.

I think it is a shame that ML groups don’t merge, as it does mean that there is some level of dysfunction, but that is not a good reason to not create or join ML orgs.

Similarly, I don’t think the author appreciates the true value of front orgs, which is the protection of the cadre org from both external attack and as a way to pipeline liberals without needing to let them into your organization and fuck it up with their terrible opinions. DSA does the latter and that is why it is garbage despite having so many members (on paper). You literally don’t have to read or do anything to join and MUG has similarly low standards.

I do think that there is an overprescription of an aesthetic of democratic centralism, which I view as more of a situational tool than something essential for all communist organizations. The hard work of making it truly function is more about personal relationships and building the organization’s capacity through education in theory and practicr and modeling productive behaviors while discouraging toxic ones. How to treat each other well and constructively, to protect each other and through this the organization and not the other way around. Only then can you have productive struggle rather than endless splits and “why I am leaving” essays.

In other words, the person with a correct opinion at the party. What a nice compliment!

Most coherent liberal

Sounds like I was right lol

I guarantee you that it is blatantly rooted in orientalism and treating 1 billion Asian people as either agencyless victims or buffoonish idiots, and it’s never questioned that crackers “joking” about him a yellow cartoon character would be a problem. This is a longstanding trope with roots in Western “race science”.

You can also find it in the ethnic rhetoric used against Russians at the moment - “savages”, “hordes”, “orcs”, and the classic false trope of sending masses to die as an attritional strategy (the last one also being literally Nazi rhetoric). You also saw it in the anti-brown islamophobia after 9/12.

When the US wants to target an enemy, they have very little trouble playing on the unquestioned racism of their audience. They often don’t even think it’s racism at the time - or even afterwards unless sufficiently embarrassed.

FDR was a communist,

I’m actually implying that he was an anticommunist and that The New Deal was an attempt to mollify more radical elements, including militant labor.

If communism is so fucking great why does it fail all the fucking time hey?

Communist countries, i.e. those run by a communist party, have consistently punched above their weight, particularly considering the relentless attacks they face.

For example, compare the struggles of Haiti to those of Cuba. Haiti has suffered under neocolonialism and with basically zero counterweight to the constant imperialism directed at them, including still being forced to pay debts to France for their own liberation from a slave colony and undergoing several Western-supported coups, on top of the constant drain of resources and underpaid labor that come with the territory of exploitation by international capital.

Cuba, despite blanket sanctions and constant targeting by the global seat of capital for over half a century, provides massively better lives for its people, with better literacy and infant mortality than the US. It’s still a poor country, understandably, but it teaches a simple lesson about how international capital actually functions for imperialized countries.

Happy to answer more questions.

Sure but that’s no excuse to not make fun of these babies. Their reaction is very funny.

Yes, of course I think that. Even self-proclaimed Marxists have often barely read Marx, let alone liberals that speak entirely in vagaries.

At best, someone claiming to have “read Marx” has skimmed and misunderstood The Communist Manifesto. That is, incidentally, not a book, more like a slightly extended pamphlet.

I’m guessing you don’t talk to people, and haven’t read Marx beyond the above description.

Tantrum noted, accepted, and appropriately celebrated.

Sorry but I just learned that sarcasm and jokes are disingenuous so I think I’m gonna spend my time getting upset about things I’ve never tried to understand instead.

It’s 100% my thread, lol. Nothing even remotely threatening, just tantrums and liberals telling on themselves. And all I have to do is ask nicely whether someone has read the basics to have their opinions. The answer is always no, because having opinions is clearly much more valuable than doing anything to earn them.

This works out great for me.