cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4925558
So, back when I was a social-democrat slightly intrigued by communism I tried to listen to “both sides” to form my opinion and so I looked for videos from both communists and anti-communists. Out of the few things I watched I retained mostly, “Debunking every anti-communist argument ever” by spooky scary socialist on the pro-communist side and this series of 3 videos on the anti-communist side:
Marx, responsable des goulags ? La lutte des classes
Critique de la lutte des classes selon Karl Marx
Critique de l’économie selon Karl Marx
Those 3 struck me as relatively convincing at the time (I knew nothing about Marxism whatsoever back then).
Recently, seeing recommended videos from this channel made me look back and wonder how I would see these same videos now as a Marxist-Leninist and after procrastinating it for months I finally decided to re-watch them. And low and behold, they are dumb.
The youtuber makes a big show of explaining his bare minimum knowledge and shaky comprehension of Marx’s writings which makes it looks like he know what he’s talking about to the uninitiated but it’s really mainly the old anti-communist drivel: denying class struggle and the labor theory of value, pretending that communists want a perfect utopia and say “that wasn’t real communism” when AES are brought up, pretending that Marx was an accelerationist, etc…
I would be interested in having other MLs opinions on this brainrot, especially since for better or for worst it has been part of my political evolution.
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It’s important to understand that constant propaganda leaves layers of bias, not just a clean single sheet. You can learn more and unlearn more bias, but you yourself will likely not see that you still have that bias without doing a lot of self-crit.
I was raised in a conservative family, so my journey to Marxism has been a lengthy process. Nearly fell down the alt-right pipeline, then was a liberal, a socdem, a demsoc, an Anarchist, and now a Communist.
The biggest driving factors of these shifts have been peeling off these layers of bias, which was usually a combination of touching grass, sympathizing with marginalized people, and reading theory. YouTube videos were helpful at first, and now actually reading Marx and Marxists are my primary ways of engaging with theory. Lemmy has also been instrumental, talking with leftists of all kinds.
Everyone’s journey is different, but theory and grass touching I think are universal bias-peelers.
