Are Maoist orgs mostly cults?

what the fuck do you mean with this?????

lol. Niggers are monkeys

Chinamen ruined my picnic.
🐜 🐜 🐜
🐜 🐜 🐜

The idea of the "Mass Line" is like something right out of a cult.

This is only true for western Maoist organizations. I don't think you'll find people in the NPA language policing you and when you try to impose some top-down cult hierachy on them they'd probably tell you to fuck off.

In Germany there is the MLPD and I can confirm. I've been to one of their events and the people are a different composition than what you usually find in communist parties. Usually there is the Cold War veteran, the 60 year old hippies and a bunch of students. With the MLPD, there is an surprising amount of suburban moms and relatively "normal" looking middle class kids, this is not something you'd expect in a radical movement that is so far from the mainstream. The whole thing smelled a little bit like a scientology summer festival, and a comrade of mine has told me that they do the exact same shit you are talking about, trying to isolate members from their friends and family, or trying to get the families into their circle. At that event, some of them brought their babies, The leadership is hereditary too - the chairman was the same guy for thirty years and now his stepdaughter took over.

Why? Bordiga suggested something similar but because he calls it "organic centralism" it gets a pass.

By the way, it's scary how true that chart is not only with Maoist orgs but with communist parties in general. They really havn't taken the 90s very well.

Especially when they are shittalking every other communist party and deem them "revisionist", "incorrect", etc. based on /extremly/ pedantic stuff, like: "This guy said something wrong about the character of foreign trade of the USSR in 1973" so the ENTIRE PARTY is REVISIONIST, LIBERAL and ANTI-COMMUNIST RIGHT-WING TROTSKYTE WRECKERS. Fucking insane.

clearly they didn't actually read althusser or they'd recognize this as another precondition of
the ISA, but no surprise - Maoists are essentialists, generally.

It means OP doesn't understand Althusser

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Red_Army
uh…

Early in August, two defectors were lynched and their bodies buried in Inba numa marsh, Chiba Prefecture. In the winter of 1971–1972 the United Red Army was hiding in the mountains in Gunma Prefecture. They established camps and trained for military purposes. The leaders of the United Red Army encouraged their fighters to examine their weaknesses in criticism and self-criticism, and these sessions turned into lynchings. The group purged itself one by one of members deemed not sufficiently revolutionary. Many of the twelve victims died tied to posts in the open, exposed to the elements, but others were beaten to death or slaughtered with knives. The first died on 31 December and the last on 12 February. The United Red Army leaders later did not admit that they had killed, but called it death by defeatism (敗北死 Haiboku shi).[1] In mid-February two men escaped, and the remaining paramilitaries decided to abandon their mountain base, but the police had already closed in on them. Tsuneo Mori and Hiroko Nagata were caught, and then the others, but five militants escaped, took a woman hostage, and held out for nine days in a holiday lodge in the Asama-Sanso incident. By the end of the siege they had shot and killed two policemen and a civilian.

Haha this literally sounds like the U.S.

Seriously though fuck off. I don't care if this is true; we get it. You didn't have fun in your club, and they were mean to you. My greatest apologies for your loss you sensitive faggot. Most of this shit you listed is totally normal.
No shit? What philosophy says you need to remain prejudiced and old in your thoughts?
Yeah they are Maoists fucktard. Are Donald Trump supporters all cultists for wanting you to agree with Donald Trump to be in their group?
This is self-explanatory for why it's dumb.
As opposed to what?! Are they supposed to constantly go about telling you other people's views, and then explain how Maoism is wrong? Kind of defeats the point of being a maoist.
Nothing wrong with this, especially from a maoist viewpoint. Trots and anarchists are some of the most liberal ""socialists""you will ever meet. It's because the former requires no defense of former Socialist nations and the latter requires no justification of anything.
Wow! They think the people they disagree with are wrong! And they say that they are wrong! Barbaric!
You realize that media is created for the express purpose of affecting your mind, right? It's made expressly to achieve a purpose, and that purpose is not to give you an objective view of happenings. It is made to change your mind, and people will lie and distort to do so. Recognizing that a publication is made by liberals, trots, etc… and recognizing their bullshit is just good form, not cultism.
Everyone does this! This is done all the time, you do it by accident, your grandma has done it, and your children will do it. By the simple action of expressing an opinion, you have propogandized. You have projected an image of an idea and it has an effect. Perhaps an old man sees your disheveled appearance and is turned off from the idea, you've created an association with that man. Reproduced an idea and spread it without intent. Calling things propoganda is merely a way to socially, morally threaten people for spreading their ideas.
This is the basic underlying portion of any grouping of individuals ever. You literally can not have a meaningful grouping of individuals that isn't separate from the rest of the world. It would cease to have meaning if it wasn't seperate.
I don't know why you are making this post, but it is flak. Fuck off with your conspiracy posting, and stop trying to instill doubt in Zig Forums.

Found the RCP-USA member.

Elaborate how strikes, anti-fa rallies, making squats for refugees and the homeless is not """justified""".

Nope, don't even know who those are, probably radlibs dressed up as socialists. Feel free to apologize to Stalin.

Interesting take on what I meant, but you didn't understand. What I am saying is that Anarchists don't have to stand for anything. They don't have to justify their beliefs because they literally do not believe in setting up Socialist society. They just magically "poof" the state away. And then totally don't establish another state right after. It is magical thinking and is thusly impervious to criticism.The proletarian state is a 100% necessity of any socialist revolution, and being an anarchist is one of the easiest ways of dodging hard questions, outside, of course, being a trot.

It's hard to know with the LLCO, they don't seem active enough to be a honeypot (RGA tells their members to do shit like show up to protests with guns, whereas the LLCO doesn't seem to exist outside the internet). I don't know enough about their internal workings to say if they're a cult. They're definitely a joke though.
Don't know what that is.

Most of the items listed in that image apply to the moderation of r/anarchism.

If Stalin was so great, Khrushchev wouldn't have been able to completely undo all of his policies with the snap of his fingers.

Also, Mao was pretty clear that he considered Stalin a mechanical materialist with no ability to think in dialectic and Marxist terms (one of the few things Mao was correct about), so I don't even understand why Maoists bother defending Stalin.

Yeah the whole self-crit obsession among maoists reminds me of the flagellants honestly. Creeps me the fuck out when supposedly scientific socialists start on that shit.

Attached: maoism in marxist leninism45.jpg (696x423, 42.89K)

Former high ranking cadre of both RAIM & LLCO.

RAIM is a straight up, toxic cult. Mostly targets middle class mentally ill, alienated, shutins, etc, and very tightly controls their personal lives. Outright practices a kind of new-speak internally, and has a dedicated commission for re-writing language. Most of their cadre very quickly become emotionally dependent on the group, and are encouraged to shun all of their non-RAIM friends/family. Everybody who goes through their org eventually develops gender dysphoria. I've known RAIM cadre who have developed such extreme white guilt they develop pretty extreme skin shame (hatred/repulsion by the color of their white skin), and refuse to go out in public - buy all groceries online, and refuse to leave their rooms. RAIM is known to rewrite histories of members who drop out, and demand that their "cadre" drop contact with anybody "problematic" (former members, etc).

While LLCO was drifting towards cultism for a while under PF, particularly post 2012, that ended when PF was kicked from the org. After that, the group began a big internal rectification to purge the PF era cultism. Since PF got removed, the org has taken a hardline anti cult stance. While PF was a shitty human being and pretty much universally hated in modern LLCO, Their current chairman (director-general) is unknown outside of party circles. I'd say he is a genuinely good person, along with most of the people in the current leadership.

That being said, while LL is doing exceptionally good work in west-africa, LLCO in the first world has more or less imploded in the last year in all but name. I expect the entire FW sections of LL to collapse within a year.

Attached: dee.jpg (600x1147, 62.95K)

cointelpro

NPA prohibits their members from swearing…

Lack of transparency is also one aspect of cults, i.e. you don't know who the higher-ups "really are" or what the doctrine "really is" until after you've given a shitload of your time and money to the group.

Why did Jason Unruhe leave the LLCO, and why is he not allowed to talk about his reasons for leaving? That sounds incredibly cult-like.

Protip: any group which makes "decolonizing the mind" the center of their praxis is a straight-up cult. No questions asked.

hi jason.

Most leftist orgs of various ideologies could fit the definition of "cult" according to this criteria (which seems heavily biased TBH). Bernie fans are very cult-like. Palestine solidarity groups can be very cult-like (there's a reason Finkelstein called them out). Chomsky fans are EXTREMELY cult-like. Anarkiddies can be cultist as can MLs, Trots, LeftComms, Hoxhaists, primmies, feminists, you name it.

leftwingers are into collectivism and group think. If anyone isnt pure they get tossed into the pit of struggle session.

The far right are into tribalism and big strong daddy men who are going to make it all right again.

Hyper individualism is a feature of liberal capitalism, A self indulgent bourgeoisie hedonism that is all about fuck you got mine masked under peace and love

The ironic part is that self-crit is in theory a great idea. I find that Maoism has a lot of good concepts for practical organizing, but its adherents seem to fail to put them into practice vert well. To take an example from personal experience, I was involved with a mainly Maoist org about a year ago, and the one guy (although he didnt have any offical position of authority the group tended to cluster around him simply because he was the most active) was obsessed with mass line. The problem was that he never seemed to be able to move on from "uniting the most politically advanced" stage, and absolutely refused to scrub the cultural revolution tier imagery from our posters and shit to attract more moderate people (ie "elevate the moderates").

OP here. Self-crit is one of the most cultish things about Maoists. You HAVE to announce all your fuck-ups (no matter how seemingly small or insignificant) and beat yourself over the head (proverbially) to show that you've learned your lesson and won't do it again. And yet even after you do that, others in the org will bring up past shit you did at later dates if they're pissed at you or want to gaslight you. It's also very ritualistic, kind of like the "excessive chanting/prayer/meditation" shit from the BITE chart.

I agree, I'm just saying that conceptually I don't see a problem with it as long as it isn't taken to an extreme degree.

No, RadFems generally love Althusser. They prefer him to Foucault for the obvious reasons.

Why would western vs. eastern be a thing in all of this? Eastern Maoist groups are just as culty in a lot of ways, just look at Sendero Luminoso if you want an example.

No, I'm making this list and thread as a warning to others who may want to get involved in these groups. Recognize this shit so you can avoid it at all costs regardless of what goodies the parties/orgs sell you.

It's not so much the "overcoming old biases" thing, but the way it's carried out. For ex: in my org, one guy was told he should stop talking to ALL of his reactionary friends, because "lol Althusser said friends reproduce ideology too". This guy grew up in a pretty right-wing suburb with a lot of fundie Xtians, so naturally most of his friends were right-of-center politically (and realize, Maoists consider ANYONE to the right of Mao to be "reactionaries"). If he didn't disown his old friends he'd have to self-crit like mad or else leave the group. I'm not kidding.

Race-to-the-bottom is a terrible epistemology.

It's weird and definitely fits the BITE Model. Mennonites/Amish and Chassidic Jews all dress alike even though no one forces them to, and there's no way you wouldn't call those groups "cults".

It's dogmatic and ironically something Mao spoke out against. Only knowing the "Maoist" side of shit is like only knowing the anarchist/leftcomm/Trot side of shit. It's one-sided and promotes poor understanding.

Wut? Trots and anarchists (and leftcomms) have to justify their ideas all the time. How many anarkiddies do you see trying to justify ro-JA-va?

"Everything I don't like is revisionist" is, again, a pretty dogmatic and one-sided statement. A good Marxist of any variety will have a more holistic approach to things if they want to remain theoretically strong.

I'm an adult human being with agency.

I'll tell you one story which made me realize my group was fucked: there was one guy who was kicked out of the org for *cheating on his girlfriend*. Even after he apologized and his gf immediately took him back, he was still reprimanded and let go. Now, if he was *beating* his gf, that would have been a whole other story (especially since domestic abuse among leftists is actually pretty common, unfortunately) but fucking *cheating* isn't anyone's business except for the guy, his gf, and their therapist.

Mao's China was full of total thought control. Makes sense that would rub off on his western followers.

Because you made that up and can't be arsed to flesh out the lie, especially if that would mean having to do more research about something you have a strong opinion about without knowing much about it?
2/3 of that applies to my employer (it would be 9/10 if I were in management).
>My hypothesis for why this kind of shit flourishes in Maoist groups (as opposed to most other leftist ideological groups)…
Hah. Political groups that have no electoral success and are clearly not on the way to having electoral success any time soon need to have something to keep people committed to it, so you will find some of that friendship-ersatz stuff in the chart in just about any such group.
You can't just make any argument coherent by adding the word hence here and there. Why on earth would it follow from Chinese culture that Maoists in the West have that aspect of Chinese culture about them, when Chinese people form only a small minority in these groups?
Althusser strangled his wife and people still read him, so your point is??
With that and/or thrown in, you could say something like that about so many groups, like the British Fabians (most virtuous) or some anarchists seeing homeless druggies (most oppressed) as having the most potential or whatever.
I would say that about groups dominated by students in general.

The Maoist party in my country are said to be extremly sect like.
My one teacher was a member when he was younger and said that they got extremely indoctrinated (that's what drove him away from socialism, even tho he is secretly extremely pro GDR). Every year they get like 100.000 Euros from some old fucks that have nothing to do, besides, spending all their inheritance to a Party with 1500 Members.

The Party leadersip has stayed the same for like 40 years and then it got passed onto the step daughter of the Chairman. They hail their old Chairman as their great Party leader who created the party of a new type. He writes book and everyone then proceeds to read them and members get asked if they already read them.

Also they have a fetish for over a dozen US military bases in Syria and deem Syria and Russia as Imperialists idk why tho

Holy shit, how can you understand anarchism so poorly.
Fuck off
How about you first learn what anarchists mean by 'state' before you talk out of your ass? Anarchists find that unjustified hierarchy will lead to a new class developing. The necessary functions of a state would exist but the important part is that the 'state' is organised in a non-hierarchical fashion as much as possible.
Yeah man actually analyzing why the USSR degraded is tantamount to dodging the hard questions. Pretty sure that takes more analysis than going 'nah lol it was a workers state, totally great'.

no

White Maoists feel the need to imitate what comes out of China, for the obvious reasons. Maoism itself is pretty much steeped in Chinese culture.

He was a shitty philosopher and human agency is real and important.

The Fabians were also shit. And this is a tu quoque fallacy on your part.

Maoists are the worst with this.

0/10 try reading a book on how to logically construct an argument next time.

I wish I had more to add but I remember reading the MLM website years ago and they did Maoist movie and music reviews and analyzing Britney Spears lyrics to determine whether she should be sent to a re-education camp. Suffice to say it didn't convert me to Maoism.

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If Trotsky was so great, Stalin wouldn't have undone his entire life with an icepick.
Seriously though? Yeah, leaders can undo past leadership. I'm shocked beyond belief, Stalin btfo.

I don't know a single thing about Maoism outside of Zig Forums memes. I told you I'm not about maoist.

I don't watch Zig Forums people. I try to distance my life as far from Zig Forums as possible. The takes you find here are so incredibly terrible that I really just come here to find the occassional good takes and more books to read.
and to argue

O wow strong arguments no strawmen here.
Let me just preface this with this, I don't care for your amazing, specialist interpretation of Anarchism. Hierarchies do not necessarily develop into class, but of course that is why you have "unjustified". That way you can support and not support hierarchies as you wish. I can't argue against you because you will run around in circles. The whole hierarchies is a meme, nothing wrong with them outside of class. The entire goal of anarchism is vague, while with Marxism I can clearly tell someone that I think property should be socially owned, the state should be seized for the DOTP, and that markers should cease to exist. It's simple and easy, unlike running them through the justified list of oppre- hierarchies. Just so you know, I don't have some sort of hatred for Anarchism. I just realize that it is a great way to be a faggot and am wary of it.
Because that is clearly what I was talking about? Stop strawmanning, you hurt the part of my brain that thinks.
My point was, and still is that justified hierarchies can be and are whatever you want them to be. I have literally never seen anyone argue for unjustified hierarchy. A more obvious definition if anarchism would be the opposition of all hierarchy. which I disagree with. But to get back on track, you can dodge (literally?) every argument as an Anarchist.
Unjustified hierarchy man.
Yeah I agree his hierarchy is unjustified.
Yeah man he's justified.
You can do this for days, it's just a philosophical game. An Anarchist standpoint can be practically anything, and can thusly be very Socialist or very liberal.
By the way, the USSR was a workers state. And yeah, it obviously failed, but you don't need an arcane theory of justified hierarchies to know this.

I'm tired of posting, but sure yeah you're right and understood what I was saying.

Those birds deserved it.

To be fair, seven months is a decent amount of time to be involved in a sketchy honeypot which begs for money.

He is "allowed" to. He chooses not to, because he doesn't want drama.

It isn't secret. Info is available on their website. I agree that lack of transparency is a serious issue with their org though.

Probably MIM. They were nuts.
See: youtube.com/watch?v=d0Cgs4G51cc

Nope. E. g. some think everything went to shit with Deng, some don't. The claim of Chinese culture strongly influencing western Maoists would only make sense if either 1. they had loads of ethnically Chinese with strong ties to the culture of their immigrant parents (they don't, and besides people getting out of a country tend to be less enthusiastic about spreading its culture), or if 2. there were some huge Chinaboo trend among them and the mimicry would have to run deeper than copying some aesthetic things. It's a dumb argument. If you think that Maoist organizing/discussion methods lead to cult-like behavior, just directly argue from what these methods are. Don't go into a tirade about the permanent true and hidden essence of those wacky orientals or whatever.
Did he shill much for adopting specifically organizing/discussing methods that Maoist groups have? Is Maoism what he is mostly known for? And how in hell could he possibly serve as an example for Maoists deleting people completely from discussions due to bad behavior?
>>With that and/or thrown in, you could say something like that about so many groups, like the British Fabians (most virtuous) or some anarchists seeing homeless druggies (most oppressed) as having the most potential or whatever.
But what if OP is specifically about why Maoism is shit, not the left in general? So if this point doesn't highlight some aspect that is specific to Maoists (and it doesn't), it doesn't really work to support that thesis. If Alice says her brother Bob is the only fat person in the family, and he points out that she is also fat, and so are many others in the family, he isn't committing a tu quoque fallacy.

Why would there be drama though, if the group wasn't so secretive?

Also, you say the LLCO is huge in West Africa. I highly doubt the LLCO does a lot for the people in whatever country they're in (I'm assuming Ghana, since Roo has mentioned Ghana before), given that they'd need a fuckton of funding to actually get a successful revolution off the ground. Since I doubt anyone in the LLCO is a millionaire and can donate sufficient funds, I'm guessing most LLCO activity is - at best - symbolic.

Let's not forget Maoism is what birthed modern idpol, and it's no surprise Maoists today are some of the biggest idpolers.

I’m not the poster you’re replying to but contrary to the bs LLCO spews, I bet something like 50,000 dollars actually DOES go along way in Ghana

Yeah, assuming this were true, HOW is that money getting to the supposed Ghanaian "revolutionaries," especially without the state massively cracking down on a would-be communist organization? Do you know how much comrades in the Third World are repressed? It's nothing like the US or Europe.

OK nevermind I re-read your post. And yeah I would agree 50k is probably the Ghanaian equivalent of a few million USD. Roo flat-out lied about the cost of bread in Ghana being 2 bucks, it's closer to 1.10 USD.

LLCO has handled a lot more than $50'000. One of the big factors that led to PF being kicked out was him fucking up on a very substantial 6 figure donation from one particular donor - who got screwed over in more than one way.

The amount that LL sends to West Africa now is in the low 4 figure range monthly. Some of it goes into paying the living expenses of top cadre, so they can afford to organize full time. A lot of it goes into transportation, and misc party costs. You're correct that the party is not sending nearly enough. To get a people's war, or any kind of advanced class struggle going, even in a very poor country costs tens of millions of $USD a year.

LL Ghana has some of it's own self sufficiency projects. In one particular rural village, which has basically been won over entirely to the party, the village elders granted the party use of farmland, where they are setting up a kind of medium scale farming coop.

Yeah, and the average Ghanaian worker is making about a dollar a day, maybe $300 a year. Imagine paying a full day's wage for a load of bread, which can feed maybe 3 people. Water is also very expensive in Ghana. Enough water for 2 people to live off is about half a day's income for a lot of workers.

Assuming a 6-8 hour work day in the US at minimum wage, that would be the equivalent of paying about $25 for a 3 liter bottle of water, or $50 for a loaf of bread.

There's definitely a tendency for maoist orgs to turn into cults, more so than other socialist organizations(even trots tbh) i guess some people see certain aspects of maoism(self-crit especially) as a chance for them to feel powerful. Maoism often feels like a purity-project, which is attractive to(among others) 'woke' students who are unable to cope with the insights given to them by Marxism(the realization that capitalist society is spiraling towards destruction, taking us with it) while also being convinced they are destined for greatness, making them perfect as members of the vanguard. I guess what I'm trying to say is that maoist orgs often turn into cults because of the people they tend to attract: the people who are unable to cope with the realities of capitalism are also unable to relate to normal people and are in fact often completely unwilling to actually convert normal people to the cause of communism. They tend therefore to turn inward and perfect themselves out of some vain notion that 'the people' will look to them as a leading light when they actually just think they're weird.

This is, of course, an incomplete explanation but I do think there is something about the state of being a student(espescially if you come from a rich family) that makes you extra susceptible maoist cults(FYI I don't think all maoist orgs are cults).

Pic related a maoist cult from my country

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So who are these comrades donating all that money to an otherwise clandestine organization? I take it it's not Soros or a Mexican cartel. A white-guilt ridden trust fund baby perhaps?

We didn't have a lot of success with the white guilt ridden trust fund babies. Those sorts of people generally labelled LL as a "white supremacist group". If we did have success suckering upper class, white guilt ridden liberals into coughing up dough to build communism, I'd have been all for it when I was a part of LL. We didn't play the idpol enough for that though.

Black nationalist groups like APSP have a lot of success with that strategy. They've got a whole gravy train of stupidly wealthy, guilt ridden liberals who are willing to hand over part of their 6 or 7 figure allowence to be told they are "one of the good white people" every now and then.

Regarding supposed involvement with cartels - that was a myth PF made up to make himself look hard. The guy was dealing with a very obvious mid life crisis, and fantasized about being a white el chapo. In reality, he was a very unsuccessful, downright incompetent low level drug dealer. His "work" never had anything to do with the org as a whole, beyond him trying to tie it into his attempted cult of personality.

Most people outside the org swallowed his BS hook and sinker. Those of us who were in the org found him about as unbearable as anybody else.

So the LLCO gets their hundreds of thousands of dollars from working with Black nationalist groups?

Also, how does the LLCO ferry that money to comrades in Ghana, especially without being noticed by the feds?

I think you misunderstood me.
No such relationship exists between LL or any black nationalist groups.

The LLCO is clearly using evangelical front groups. You'd think they're showering Africa in Bibles, but when you open the book it's really the Collected Works of Mao Zedong.

I'm not asking you to reveal too much I just want to know how it's possible for an otherwise clandestine group like the LLCO to receive that amount of money (six figures). Most mainstream communist groups on't even get that much. It stinks of something fishy.

While I believe LL should be a lot more transparent with this info, I personally can't & won't divulge a whole lot. Legal fundraising, legal front groups, etc. If you're expecting anything crazy or illegal, you'd be disappointed.

I'm not asking you to reveal anything you wouldn't tell a cop. I'm saying I find it highly unbelievable the LLCO would be getting 100k in donations.

Mind me asking, are you in the First World or are you in the Third World? Again, I'm not asking you to show your face or expose where exactly, just want to know if you're organically connected to the Third World or not.

That's actually a good idea. An real marxist group should do the same thing but with actual communist theory.

yes lmao

Trump cult, Bernie cult, and Ron Paul cult are the worst.

I'm not even going to post twitter hot takes cause its too obscene

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It's honestly hard to tell if anyone really liked Hillary or if she was just not as obviously evil as trump

ok after actually looking at that first picture it looks like hillary is just another face for the bougie liberal cult

The only people that liked that bitch are boomers.

It's funny I have always hated her, when I was on the right and now as a communist. I guess because I never had a phase where I was just a generic American liberal.

shitposting flag etc.

even for liberals, her fearmongering ("black teenage superpredators" and her husbands expansion of the war on drugs were considered hugely problematic

Most LEFTIST groups are cults.

include me in the screencap.

OP here, and so much this.

I've found that one thing Maoists tend to be heavily concerned with to the point of outright obsession is the notion of "making the colonizer self-reflect". Of course, by this they mean the colonizer (white people, etc.) self-flagellate, denounce themselves and their "colonizer" identity, and do a whole little routine about how evil they were and how they now "see the light." If you're white, you have to constantly denounce settler-colonialism. If you're Jewish, you have to constantly denounce Israel and Zionism. In practice, this works VERY MUCH as behavioral control from the BITE: you feel ashamed to be white, Jewish, from the suburbs, "labor aristocrat", "net exploiter", etc. And all of that shame and guilt-tripping is only cured by reaffirming your belief in the highest stage of dialectical materialism and Marxist theory.

There's an old joke which says western Maoism is just white people calling other white people "crackers." I think it's entirely true.

Identity politics was absolutely the aftermath of western Maoism, specifically the post-Althusserians (remember Foucault and Derrida were Althusser's students) but also New Left groups which took heavily from Mao, like the Weather Underground. "White-skinned privilege" was originally a term used in Mao's China to denounce the landed classes. It was later taken up by 60s radical groups to denounce white supremacy, but lost all of its radicalism and original meaning after 80s-90s postmodern academia took hold of it. Idpol is Althusserian and therefore Maoist, because it views contradiction/dialectics as almost purely external: ideology and material conditions are constantly reproduced until something from the outside comes in and "breaks the cycle". For Maoists, those "cycle breakers" were not the proletariat but a coalition of the willing, hence why he could justify siding with the national bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie. For idpolers, those "cycle breakers" are the people on the margins of society: the indigenous transgender prostitute, the disabled hijabi queer, the half black/half Polynesian mental illness survivor, the polyamorous feminist Hindu. They are stigmatized because they don't reproduce ideology in accordance with what capital needs, hence they have the ability to be the break in the system if they're organized as such. See what I mean? Let's not forget Maoism is very big on language and thus language policing as well.

Naw.

You will be hard-pressed to find a political movement that isn't a cult.

Most people who call themselves leftists are merely contrarians. Anarchists for instance come in 500+ different flavors. Anarcha-feminism, queer anarchism, etc.

It's just idpol on steroids.

Cults aren’t necessarily bad btw almost every type of social organization can be accused of having “cultish” mentality or structure

How are they good?

Ive thought about this in passing before- a lot of what gets described as "cult-like behavior" sounds like more extreme forms of more normal social pressure.
makes y'think

Think about it like this: one of the “radical” pomo critiques of science was that it was every bit as dogmatic as traditional religious fundamentalism. Scientists have their own biases and assumptions but also they exclude evidence that doesn’t meet their expectations. For instance, if a Christian preacher tries to debunk evolution using the Bible this is typically excluded automatically because it isn’t empirical evidence of the type that scientists prefer.

Science isn’t neutral, it has its own ideology and while it’s a diverse body of thought these underlying ideological precepts are known as philosophy of science. While some scientists are under the illusion that their research and hypothesis are without ideological content in fact they are rife with it.

Scientific bodies self-select for people who are like themselves, they typically come from similar social backgrounds. Peer-review is simply a group of likeminded people getting together and reviewing each other’s work, they typically have similar perspectives and research methods. It can and has be argued that scientific truth is simply a fable that all or the majority of cult members agree upon.

Anyone, who dissents from the underlying methods and ideologies of science risks being osctracized and run out of the cult on the grounds that their work is “unprofessional” and so on.

Not to be a fedora-fag about the whole thing but which “cult” do you think has done more for the world, science or Christianity? Would science really be more productive if attempted (assuming it could) it’s cult-like structure that keeps our outsiders?

I don't think your explanation, while interesting, makes up for the extremely deranged and controlling behaviors of cults, religious or political.

Well, the image in the OP doesn’t really explain much either. Going by the definitions there all of society is pretty much a cult

I’m not even sure what you mean by “makes up” for anyways, as if I’m trying to justify the eccentricities of some mentally ill Maoists I don’t even know personally

Cult behaviors are very specific. No one denies the rest of society is coercing you into some things, but a cult forcefully dominates and manipulates every aspect of your life without any respite.

RGA attacked a PSL meeting last week, ostensibly because one of the PSL members is a "rapist." What evidence RGA has provided for that is unclear, suffice to say. They are also "outing" people who they claim to be in PSL, but just seem like random people. The optics are particularly bad since the RGA members are mostly white and the event they attacked was mostly black and Hispanic.

The PSL seems to believe that RGA is a COINTELPRO-type operation.

Attached: RGA2.png (606x477, 223.52K)

Yep, sounds like a cult.

Yeah I don't know if they're COINTELPRO or just a cult, but it doesn't really matter. I know a lot of people here are from Europe and other places, but don't let their militant image fool you – they are really enormous shitheads and bad news, and probably 99 percent of the actual "work" they've done has been trying to intimidate socialists in their area.

The OP's explanation also makes a lot of sense.

Fed Guards Austin is 100% an op/honeypot

Cops don't fuck with them at protests either. They go after the anarchists.