Should I (or other Americans here) join any of these? Are there any past or current members here that want to share their thoughts?
Should I (or other Americans here) join any of these...
Liam Williams
Other urls found in this thread:
iww.org.uk
medium.com
twitter.com
Connor Cox
Joining a trade union is always a good idea, it might as well be the IWW.
Ryder Williams
Dsa has some entryist radicals like the Libertarian Socialist Caucus and the Communist Caucus, but it's mostly socdems and will likely remain as such. IWW isn't what it used to be but they still organize labor and are more effective at it than most. There's two SRAs, one is allegedly run by a landlord and the other has little irl presence, I don't know which is which so join at your own risk. The PSL expects $300 minimum in dues and doesn't do much with it, they're also the source of some of the obnoxious twitter tanks.
Jace Thompson
What are the requirements to join the IWW?
Cooper Foster
Be a worker and pay dues. Maximum dues are $33 a month and less than half of what PSL asks for the same income.
Caleb Sanders
An annual labour party membership is £60 a year, an annual union membership is £186, both cost £210.
I really don't see how you can justify a week's wages before tax for a membership, especially in America where working class people have less disposable income and there are lower business overheads.
Bentley White
These all seem like sham organizations to me.
Brayden Gonzalez
Hold on what now.
Oliver Thomas
I would not join the SRA, it's a liability that endangers any actual chance at arming the working class, in an already incredibly unlikely scenario where the government cracks down on leftist insurgency, the working class need not advertise their intentions.
If you want to actually organise and train yourselves in a lefty gun club, you need to do it off the books, invite people by word of mouth only and keep it to yourselves. Especially given how asymmetric such a potential confrontation would be between the US government and any leftist guerrilla cells, the fear of the unknown red army would be an even stronger factor than an infiltrated open club.
Ryder Phillips
Yes it might surprise you but running even a local party campaigning for park manager is actually capital intensive, not as expensive as OP's figures would have you believe though.
Noah Cooper
But that's not fair.
What's to stop me from gathering up a group of people and funding rallies with them, everyone paying a small bit themselves, and people democratically voting on where to hold speeches and such or whatever they do in there for some reason. For all I know Porky can just be scamming me out of my punts.
Isaiah Gonzalez
Not at these rates £1-£18 per month
iww.org.uk
Its not a massive organisation.
So as a scam, even if most subs were nearer £18, it just wouldn't be worth doing.
Austin Cook
Burger Leninist parties are Scientology for edgy college students that just read State and Revolution. IWW requests much less even at the maximum dues level ($42k+ a year) and they do shit for members like help labor organization while the PSL is mostly concerned with self-promotion like running a granny for president.
Luke Turner
the IWW is the most functional and has actual power because they're a union first and political organization second, this means the government can't just raid their offices and declare them all terrorists (not that they don't try)
Brody Allen
Legal aid, collective bargaining, political representation…
Carson Gomez
nice try cointel………….
Justin Gonzalez
British unions provide this too for much less, that was the point of my post. A full time minimum wage worker over 25 years of age makes £313 a week before tax, a typical union membership that provides benefits like legal aid, insurance etc costs around £186 a year like I already said.
Brandon Williams
I'm a member of the SRA, and can shed some light on the situation. There was originally the Facebook SRA who started the group. The Facebook SRA was just a bunch of people posting gun pictures and talking online about Socialism. Then the group became inactive, and one of the leaders of the group split to create the new SRA, which was focused on legally organizing as a firearms information group. They changed the model and among other things, sold yearly memberships along with membership cards which allowed members to get in touch with their local chapter. Then the Facebook group saw this, and offered to allow the new SRA to merge with them. Negotiations fell through, when allegedly the Facebook SRA wanted to become a militia which is questionably legal at best. Then the Facebook group started creating ridiculous smears against the new SRA accusing them of the most blatantly ridiculous things, such as falsely accusing a leader, named Scott, of being a landlord based on no evidence. They also attacked them over petty things, such as their organization's legal status as a non-profit. I'm have a hard time finding the article, but the Facebook SRA also had a chapter in Texas which worked with police and federal authorities.
The new SRA is actually making a difference. They have sent people with supplies to help in areas devastated by natural disasters, organize at the range, and are growing very fast. Membership fees and where expenses go are shared with members, in a newsletter they send out. If you are afraid of being put on a list, they have no problem with you using a fake name, and don't care if you use a PO Box or something else. Plus they have been very open to any suggestions, and have added things like a warrant canary at public suggestion.
I went to a range meeting, and I was expecting it to be a cringefest, but honestly there were around a dozen people there with the group, and everyone was nice. Fairly equal ratio of men to women, and the only edge lord stood out like a thumb tack. My favorite quote from him was when he was asked what his ideology is and he said "Well I really like Mao, but I also really like Kropotkin".
Angel Lee
How did he stick out like a thumb tack? I'm also a member and about to go to my local meeting. Also, is there anything wrong about liking both Kropotkin and Mao, what was it that made the quote your favorite?
Ryan Thomas
To be quite blunt, he was very overweight, while the rest of the group was in decent to good shape. I don't really care that he was overweight since nobody is perfect and we all have to start from somewhere, but he also said a couple things that set off red flags in my head. For example he wanted to start an armed leftist neighborhood watch, and then said he didn't want to lead the group as he was a "privileged straight white male" so he would create the group and then let someone else run it. He wasn't a member of the SRA, and said he was just attending the range day to make connections. Call me tinfoil hat, but he kinda sounded like an undercover cop.
Well there isn't inherently anything wrong with it, but Mao and Kropotkin are as different as two Communists can be. It seemed like a generic "offended nobody" kind of answer. If you are a Communist then you definitely have an opinion on those two, and you definitely know where your ideology is between those two.
The entire quote just kind of reinforced my suspicion that he was a cop.
Joseph Miller
Hunter Howard
Is this what left-wing centrism looks like?
Dominic Fisher
Mao-Spontex gang
Brandon Long
To be fair, if one takes the "radical faeries" to include the strain of thought stretching from Harry Hay to Hakim Bey, along with the actions of the Faeries themselves, it's basically anarchist-maoist and boylover-supportive.
(form radical base areas, four-character-jingle-of-the-TAZ, etc, etc)
OTOH, that PARTICULAR dude, well, what it sounds like…
Wyatt Thomas
So the landlord thing was a baseless smear? Once again Zig Forums anons led me astray.
Not gonna lie, that would have been me 4 years ago except for the privilege shame. Dude may have just been overzealous and trying for "left unity" instead of a cop, but it is suspicious.
Jace Cooper
I go on occassional range days with the SRA (not the Facebook one), though I'm not a member. It's a lot of fun with good people and a chance to try out different firearms and shoot with likeminded people. If ranges are full of groups of guys wearing III%er gear then why not us? It has never been my impression (despite the imagery) that it's anything insurgent in nature, and if it was, I would not go to these meetings. In any case, if anyone is thinking of trying something like that you would be crushed like a bug so fast it would make your head spin.
Could also be some local "patriot" yahoo who thought he'd go on some kind of secret mission.
Nathaniel Morris
I like DSA because it's the only group I know of that has meetings in my area that even talks about capitalism being a bad thing. PSL doesn't really exist here and it seems kind of culty.
Jaxson Long
bottom right looks cool. everything else looks internationalist
John Butler
Internationalism is cool
Adrian Lopez
Some chapters (East Bay, Philly) are good. Most small city chapters who do nothing but phone zap and relitigate the Russian Revolution. Some big city chapters (NYC, Boston) are idpol tirefires.
Cult
Full of strong feminist fatqueer wmxn who work are coffee shops.
Honeypot
Daniel Campbell
DSA seems like a cointel deradicalization group secretly run by the Democratic party
Jason Davis
The COINTEL groups were the most outwardly "radical" or identity-focused (Progressive Labor, Cleaver's wing of the Panthers, Ad Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party, US Organization, Redstockings, We, etc etc etc). Deradicalization was never a COINTEL tactic.
Dylan Richardson
Not Marxist in the slightest and simply a SocialDemocratic organisation
An actual Marxist party though extremely micro
If a chapter is in your area I would suggest it
From what I've read not much of a mass Union anymore as much as a protest group
Almost certainly Feds
Eli Morales
I work in IT. Can I join IWW?
Colton Young
Yes.
Jayden Hall
You can, sure, just don't expect anything.
Nathaniel Price
I hope you don't think "working class" is a euphemism for poor industrial workers.
Also some guy replied to you saying not to expect anything but it depends on your area, there a few chapters in the UK that have led successful strikes and have work place recognition ie legal bargaining rights. They all had to start with one guy, I'm with Unite myself as they're the most common one.
Evan Ortiz
Sure
Nathaniel Campbell
Easton Williams
Who cares? I certainly would like it less if it was MSNBC or some shit. At least Russian media platforms communists because they aren't spooked about it and it's useful for them as it creates discord in the West.
I don't know, but a vanguard party isn't you Trotskyst reading group, it needs financial assets and discipline of its members. If you can't even sacrifice a portion of your income for the revolution you are not in it anyway. That being said I am not shilling for the PSL here because I am not a burger and everything I heard about communist parties in the US is straight-up horrible (tranny orgies etc.) but that's just my general perspective.
Owen King
...
Thomas Gray
Stop being undialectical utopians and start being paypigs.
Ryder Hall
Right, go back trying your ebin grassroot anarchist project where you occupy some houses with some hippies. In Germany we have the DKP which is constantly broke because people have that attitude which causes them to even having to cancel international communist meetings. On the other hand, the Maoist party, the MLPD is rich as fuck because they have some super rich grandpa as a donor and they are more in public discourse, putting up more posters, etc. despite them being five times smaller than the DKP.
I know for a fact you are probably wasting your money on all kinds of useless shit but "hurr durr I don't wanna pay memebership fees for a party". Pathetic.
Jackson Murphy
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS INTENSIFY
Jaxson Gray
lol
Yes how dare the proletariat strive for some semblance of a social life instead of forking over a week's pay to some party that will blow it on dead end electoral campaigns, ineffective stunts, or vacations for leadership's family. To be truly revolutionary is to live like a monk and give all you have to the party for them to get Abby Martin to do a panel on imperialism or La Riva to stump Trump with less than a percent of the vote in 2020. Viva Revolution! Viva PSL!
Carter Mitchell
You do realize that's literally a COINTELPRO tactic? There's a difference between being cautious and saying "this organization looks like it could be sketchy/useless" and acting like a wrecker and accusing it of being a honeypot. It's also not particularly helpful to shit on something and not offer any alternatives.
Thomas Barnes
The best thing as an American (and other Americans) you can do is to commit suicide,so there's less of you human trash pigs around.
Anthony Collins
I'M KOREAN
SON OF A BITCH AMERICAN
AMERICAN IS PIG
DO YOU WANT A HAMBURGER?
DO YOU WANT A PIZZA?
AMERICAN IS PIG DISGUSTING
GEORGE WALKER BUSH IS A MURDERER
FUCKING U.S.A
Chase Miller
It's almost certain that the average poster's knowledge of cointelpro comes from skimming the wikipedia article or reposting the infographs of postmodernism being a cia op, usually with the conclusion being anyone who disagrees with them is a fed or being controlled by them. This is a great triumph for reaction because it both prevents the nominally radical from assessing themselves by giving them a boogeyman to blame for everything and it creates an atmosphere of fear where virtually anyone can be a wrecker looking to destroy you. I think it's unlikely there's any honeypots designed by the feds and more likely the left embraced some dumbshit ideas after the failures of the 20th century, most infiltration will be an undercover cop who you should be on guard for but not to the extent you retreat into being a hermetic social club instead of a worker's movement.
Aaron Morris
fag in the pic about to actually die of cancer. press S to shit on grave
Aaron Jenkins
Aside from the smoking gun of a memo literally ordering NSA agents to flood social media with SJW gobbledygook a decade ago, what is the practical difference between an org flooded with identitarian zealots, and an alphabet soup honeypot?
Remember that, inherited from their days as goons, SJWs use approximately the same tactics (identify ideological nonconformity, dox target, smear with unfalsifiable accusations, swarm with pseudojudicial lynchmob) as the FBI did in the 1960s to destroy activists.
Nathaniel Bailey
Since when did the pinkhaired girl that blocked you on Twitter pay someone to assassinate you?
Jordan Moore
S
Dylan Davis
Revolution is when you crowdsource Ben Becker's Ivy League tuition.
