cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2331989
I don’t really think he knows this site’s culture at all. No one is dissuading people from reading theory lol
Yey or ney for him?
As someone said in the post
As far as I can tell, he’s a guy who spends all his time posting about how all leftists do is post.
And this ain’t the first time, Roderick’s a bit terminally online, arguing against other progressives like JT (Second Thought) and Michael Hudson…
Edit:
Ok I’ve made a right-deviationist mistake in saying that Michael Hudson is a progressive, and indirectly agreeing with the views of the former…
I’ve not investigated into JT’s MMT videos nor looked carefully into Hudson (I thought he was also against capitalism, turns out, only finance and feudalism…, just cares for industrial capitalism)
What he expects is for the western left to take itself more seriously if it’s to have any success at all, and dodging critique by hiding behind “it’s a site for memes” isn’t doing any good to anyone that actually wants change.
Not “expecting too much” from a link aggregation site is like not expecting too much from any western communists. The masses are online and online spaces are not separated from “real” life like that. No one is saying we can’t have any fun, but at the end of the day If we don’t take ourselves seriously why should anyone else take us seriously.
While I do find lemmygrad a bit better than hexbear in regards to this, it also still has an abundance of low effort meme posts and a lack of serious discussion.
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It’s not about individual comms, and there is, of course, a place for being silly. The problem is that the “silliness” “spreads” to the entire site. Look at how people are “arguing” against Roderic’s point on the hexbear thread about it, in what’s supposedly a comm for critiquing bad takes. Most of the comments are random jokes, and most of the actual written out ones are blatant lies, strawman arguments, or similar (some of the really bad ones did get removed as far as I can tell). The same exact tactics anti-communists regularly use to shit on AES states or our ideology in general.
The actual origin of it is western anti-intellectualism which we have to overcome in our organizing. Of course hexbear won’t be a vanguard, but we’re not doing our job as communists if don’t fight against these tendencies.
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Lemmygrad is a more serious site, I agree, and that’s why I use it instead of hexbear. However, I do still think we can improve. I’ve noticed a decline in the frequency of the type of theory discussion posts that I really liked when first coming to lemmygrad, and an increase in low effort posts, probably coinciding with the reddit exodus last year.
One thing I really like here is that certain matters are considered settled in the lemmygrad community. For example, each time a new “is Russia imperialist?” thread pops up, prople quickly link to past threads with excellent answers or post another version of those answers. I just think we could do that sort of thing - debate, come to a conclusion, adopt it as our stance backed by our arguments and proper sources, and present it when asked - with many more topics which still just “hang in the air” somewhat.
I am not sure what taking itself more seriously entails. What would a serious Western left Lemmy instance look like to you? Is there any other website in this domain that you point to for inspiration?
Doesn’t specifically have to be a lemmy instance, but any online communist space could be a serious place where anti-intellectualism is not tolerated, and where discussions with proper sourcing could lead to actual debate where certain issues are actually settled. Instead, now you have most people just yelling out their opinions with no sources, not bothering to actually engage with the counterpoints being made, and any criticism is taken as a personal attack and kts substance is ignored. No actual debate is being held, and any issues that come up stay unresolved and get brought up again and again with the same results.
What communists in the past did in newspapers and journals, we should be doing online.
The communists who were doing that in newspapers and journals were on the forefront of organizing, they were actually learning and developing new things to write about. the western left hasn’t even digested the lessons of the past, it won’t be them who suddenly develops into the vanguard of revolutionary theory and ideological innovation.
Those communits weren’t somehow “at the forefront of organizing” before, and then decided to start publishing articles. They became the forefront of organizing by publishing these articles, having these debates, and putting the things they figured out into practice. This is a centeal thesis of Lenin’s What is to be Done?
Yes, the current western left is not going to form a vanguard tomorrow, conditions will still need to change. But at some point a vanguard will need to be formed by western communists, no one else can do it for us. These barriers aren’t permanent, and they can be overcome. A part of that includes ideological struggle and debate within communist spaces.
Sure those things were happening simultaneously but most of those folks spent all their lives organizing with real people who had much more similar class interests to them, and the media dissemination was a part of it. The largest periods of writing and publishing were often in exile from state repression. It was through their actual organizing and life experience that they had the position to be writing and debating such things. A bunch of westerners who have barely struggled for anything in their life, who benefit immensely from systems of oppression and don’t have the same class interests as the majority of workers in the world, and self identify as communists but still choose to spend more time online than trying to organize in the real world, are not the people who will be forming a vanguard which also might not ever actually be formed. There is no promise that a vanguard must develop in any nation, especially the imperial core.
My point is mostly to highlight the reasons why I don’t think you can create such an online space that will be very active, because the majority of people online who self identify as communists have no reasons for a space like this, they are looking to socialize and shitpost with a certain aesthetic. The .0001% of westerners who would want such a space without the casual elements would be such a small community of people that there probably wouldn’t be enough going on in such a space to make it active enough and couching such a thing in a place like lemmygrad or hexbear seems like a better move than trying to remove the casual elements and have a purely studious, serious organizing space online.
He’s talked several times about creating such a space, and why not? We are experimenting many things still, maybe this kind of space could work. I take the view that there’s always something to learn about anything, whether we like it or not, or whether we intended for it to be a lesson or not.
He’s also not entirely against fun and memes, it’s just that it’s not his thing. I’ve talked to him in DMs once and he said that’s fine with him, it’s just not what he’s looking for. That’s valid too.
I think on some level people think of him to be infallible and the end all be all, but I don’t think he claims to be. He’s just very present and he makes a lot of good points, which perhaps cultivates this image in the process (which I don’t think is intended). I mean that we can have Lemmygrad and Hexbear, and there can also be a third instance that’s this more serious, heavier moderation space.
I mean hexbear is just one online place. It’s not like the revolution depends on how hexbear is operating. Same for Lemmygrad. If I look at my own work for our party I think my real life efforts are endlessly more important than the shitposts I make on Lemmygrad. To me he comes off as a bit sour because he sees people having fun and he decides that’s a problem to him lol. Sure, we could turn this place into a discussion board majority only but I have a feeling that we will be without users at the end of the year. Discussion is always welcome of course and we encourage it even. Everyone is free to ask whatever they want.
Exactly, I often tell this to my friends; the reason you cant find my views on youtube or whatever is because people like me are actually out here doing shit in real life; you should be sus of people whos entire grift is posting online, they are likely detatched from reality.
💯
I miss the better memes and more frequent discussions here.
Even lenin shitposted in private letters comrade, we shouldnt be expected to be anything in a anon shitposting space.
We will not respond to his silly letters…
Our political memes should be both funny and a good reflection of our politics; it’s right there in the concept itself. Of course you don’t hold them to the same standards you would theory, but if the political point is sloppy enough it’s just not a very good meme.
That’s also setting aside occasions where people are having a substantive discussion and someone cops out with “come on this is just a meme board.” That flies some for memes themselves and joke threads, but there are plenty of run-of-the-mill news discussions where that pops up, too.
Could it be that the western left prefers spending more time socializing online than seriously undertaking the construction of revolution because of their inherent foundation in a labor aristocracy which benefits more from imperialism and neo-colonialism than it has to gain from destroying capitalism? With most people so socially alienated in the west, coupled with having limited capacity outside of productive and reproductive labor, it isn’t hard to imagine that westerners would default to commiserating on the internet over using any free time they have to study, be of service to the masses, and improve themselves. For the west, shit posting on the toilet is much easier than looking in a mirror.
In today’s world, socializing online is not some distinct separate thing, it’s an integral part of daily life for basically everyone.
Yes, the western masses benefit from imperialism, but they are also exploited and it’s the communists job to successfully link the struggles against this exploitation with wider anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World.
It is easier to just sit idly in the status quo, but do you find that to be an acceptable level for communists to be at? We’re not talking about the masses in general here, we’re talking about self-identified communist spaces. I want and expect more from them, and a critique of their current errors is a first step to changing them.
Personally I don’t think it’s worth spending the limited energy one has to improve self-identified communist spaces and try to make them more rigorous over trying to organize the masses. Only one of those groups has actual revolutionary potential, and it’s not the self-identified online western communists.