What is it with Left-wing politics in the 21st century that seems to lend itself to being so readily adopted by people who view it as an aesthetic/lifestyle choice rather than as a meaningful political position.
Teenage ☭TANKIE☭s, anarkidies, Larpers, twitter slacktivists, why do these people far outnumber any actual working class Socialists involved in party building or Trade Unionism?
I guess what I'm saying is that every time I see some obese 20-something with a black beret they've affixed a red star to, I want to gouge my eyes out, especially when they're amongst the people most likely to wail about how their "comrades are wrong/problematic/liberal" when they meet anyone who does anything meaningful.
This is a problem with politics in general, especially online. It's been "hobbyized" or turned into some sort of game or mere intellectual pursuit instead of being centered around issues that are extremely important to people's everyday lives. I imagine this is only widespread in countries with advanced capitalism and heavy alienation
Matthew Gray
rich careless teens wanting an identity
David Wilson
that post is actually funny though sell newspapers somewhere else (NOT labour party conference)
Cameron Gonzalez
Young people are fucking cancer. We really need to outlaw any kind of participation in political activity, either voting or activism, for anyone under 25, or possibly 30.
Jacob Cox
Kys fascist
David Jackson
kys
Jordan Cooper
I sell the paper wherever I want user.
Nathaniel Hill
Left wing orgs should restrict membership to workers ages 25 and up. Only antifa needs teens and students (because they can take hits and have lots of free time.)
The closer you are to the margins, the more you attract people who are drawn to what they perceive as "radical" for pathological reasons. From genuine mental illness, to people going through childish rebellious phases, to people who are eager to have a community and identity due to social detachment. This is true to student organizations, political parties, and communities like Zig Forums.
The solution to that? I have no idea.
Lincoln Hughes
based Trotskyist
Dominic Cooper
This has always been a problem. Orwell has this quote:
The solution is to genuinely give these people some purpose in life. Turn them into honest people through a distinctly leftist sort of discipline. That means self-discipline, discipline that comes from personal conviction rather than outside force. Finding a universal formula for this is difficult, but we should pursue the ideal relentlessly, even if this at times makes us look naive. We need good leadership, or rather, people who dare to be good leaders, something too many people shy away from (myself as well). And a good leader is not someone who commands others what to do, it is someone who reminds people that they have a responsibility to themselves to pursue their ideals, who helps them organize to this effect, and stands at their side to guide and support them.
Luke Thomas
IMO people are just so alienated that they have trouble conceptualizing what real action looks like.
Even some basic shit like producing stuff as a hobby and sharing it with the group under commie principles is alien to them.
Aaron Powell
I really don't want to offend you, but your worldview would not survive a single week of the dramas, call-outs and victimism that is characteristic of left-wing groups. Read about those dramas and struggle sessions in the Democrat Cops of America - which is, as left-wing organization go, incredibly normie and easygoing - and tell me how you'd give these people who start witch hunts over nonsense a higher purpose in life.
They don't want a purpose. They don't want self-discipline. They don't want to fix themselves. They definitely don't want anybody telling them to do that. They want to wreck and to attack others, because with all the baggage and personal troubles that they have, it feels cathartic to them. In some cases, it feels like an opportunity to be "rebellious", if that's their goal, because what's bigger evidence that you're an uncompromising radical than being too radical for a left-wing organization? And they can do so without the risks, because being a radical in the real world can get you a police record and career troubles. Wrecking a socialist group? Nobody cares. So you're attracting this great combination of empty radicalism and cowardice, that will just sit and wait for an opportunity to spread their shit on the rest of us.
Thinking you're going to shape and mold people who join left-wing organizations as an outlet for their own personal and emotional turmoil is something you can only believe in if you never interacted with them. Performing counter-productive, self-destructive antics *is* their purpose. Don't nothing and LARPing *is* their purpose. They don't you or me telling them otherwise.
Aaron Wright
I'm going to be honest, I have no fucking idea what modern first-world praxis is supposed to be. Like you would think unionization would be important, but I'm in one of the largest unions in North America and the experience is totally underwhelming, absolutely zero revolutionary potential, and the union is practically toothless even when up against our employers.
Dylan Roberts
every revolution ever has involved students you dumbass.
Adam Gutierrez
Yeah I'm not saying they should be absent, just that they should be in the background and far away from any and all leadership positions.
Anthony Long
Employers have the advantage of global free movement of capital. They can just outsource most things these days (not a permanent solution but a huge blow to negotiation powers of workers). That means the answer has to be going around the capitalist and building up mutual aid networks or solidarity economy. Big revolutionary direct action would be shit like squatting defunct factories and getting them running again, putting the stuff produced into the local economy/community. Putting porky in a position where they can try suppression at the cost of making people hate capitalism more is excellent - it draws attention directly to the problem of private property.
The aestheticization of politics is a constant problem, LARPing and lifestylism is just the form it takes in our age. What is interesting to me is that people often end up revealing their vapid attitude towards politics and lack of real committal through exactly their attempts to integrate politics into every part of their lives. Like there is something about a certain degree of distance from or alienation from the political that is necessary to actually engage with it, and when someone attempts to engage with the political "as such" they end up in a costume party.
Why are these people so fucking obsessed with Trots?
Blake Barnes
aHEM FUck TROTS
Luis Butler
Depends what you mean by fail. It played a considerable role in the breakthrough of left-wing ideology in the West and was an unseen instance of student militancy. The direct political results were indeed disappointing, but I strongly doubt that has to do with "too much" participation of young people.
Jaxson James
I mean, Trots are annoying but yeah they seem deranged.
either they're nuts, or they actually had a bad encounter with trots in their group / their membership had bad encounters with trots in general. also british trotskyists love nothing more than badgering you into joining the labour party to vote for the left slate.
Ryan Ward
Aren't most of the remaining Trots skeptical of their members joining Labour? The SP and SWP, who account for the vast majority of Trots in the UK are against directly joining.
tbh i don't know for certain, i mostly see misc. self-identified trotskyists, some AWL, and some IMT. (lmao this subheading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Marxist_Tendency#2009–2010–2016–2017_splits ) i'd probably know more but i try to stay circumspect because most of them are perfectly nice but give off a cultish and the last thing i need is to be drawn into a situation where i have to choose between politeness and not joining a cult. socialist worker still show up to every march going though naturally.
big word
Adrian Gutierrez
For you.
Nicholas Stewart
if the cat is angry why doesn't it just damage company property until it's happy again?
Camden Moore
if the Labour party actually goes Demsoc there will be no need for SP/SWP
Aaron Perez
Yeah, and I feel like both groups know that (which worries them).
That said, oddly the SWP has claimed to have had a minor spike in membership after 2015, although that could just be the Comrade Delta stuff being less topical or a broad renewal of interest in left-wing ideas.
Jose Nelson
Section from the IWW's website, dunking on you niggers, and your tendency to be corrupted, and get killed by the fash "IWW expresses its solidarity with SAC – Syndikalisterna, other grassroots unions, and Swedish workers.
We note that the Swedish government, in collaboration with big business and mainstream trade unions are proposing legislation that would severely restrict the right of workers to take industrial action in defence of their interests.
We consider this attack on Swedish workers as a form of class war more to be expected from authoritarian regimes than from a social democratic government and union bureaucracies who are in clear collaboration with the capitalist class.
In particular it will be illegal for Swedish unions to engage in strikes or other forms of action, including handing out leaflets outside a workplace for any other purpose than not having a collective bargaining agreement with an employer. The only recourse for discrimination or illegal sackings will now be a flawed labour court system.
It will be illegal to engage in a strike to get a collective bargaining agreement if a union is “known to not usually sign or hold” such an agreement. It will also be illegal to strike to get a collective bargaining agreement if there is already a collective bargaining agreement with another union – even if they have no members in the workplace or sector.
These proposals will severely reduce the potential for independent solidarity unions to take industrial action of any kind.
They also enable employers to create their own yellow unions or to incite unions organising the same workplaces into competition that suits the employer rather than the workers.
These proposals contravene ILO conventions ratified by Sweden in the 1940s as well as European Convention articles on the right to free association and the right to union organisation.
The IWW extends solidarity and applauds Swedish unions and workers who have taken to the streets in recent months in an effort to resist these reactionary proposals becoming law. Representatives from Danish and Norwegian unions have also campaigned at home as well as attending protests in Stockholm.
In recent decades the struggle against the restriction of union rights has become central to the global class war and it must therefore always be waged internationally. The IWW stands with our Fellow Workers in struggle in Sweden and across the world."
Doesn’t the hand realize it can’t strangle a rose?
Gavin Clark
It would also be stabbing it, and if that's not symbolism idk what is
Hudson Johnson
even on the plane?
remember when they got sanders to voice Eugene Debs
the point of social democracy is to get your hands cut up and bloody in the name of being the right kind of ideology for a certain kind of person.
Aaron Kelly
He made that by himself. Nigga, why burden yourself with both capitalisms shit, and heavy taxes that go to a goverment funded by porky? Btw do Socdems not understand how hard electorialist bull shit screws them in 50 different ways (polite sage as i don't want to further derail)?
Cooper Campbell
Real politik, you need a few trotskyites who isn't a disruptive turboautists to join your group Preferably ones who are long established in the backroom politics of their respective orgs This opens back channel communications and they'll help screen the wreckers out In all honesty this is probably already happening somewhat organically under the radar
Noah Cook
That's because groups like the IMT are openly for entryism and working within Labour to push it left, while the actual parties like the SP and SWP rejected entryism after militant was purged and prefer to engage in their own doomed electoralism so they're stubbornly insisting their members shouldn't join Labour (which hasn't stopped a substantial part of their membership to resign and join labour instead after Corbyn won).
Jeremiah Allen
The function of the aestheticization is to allow the individual to perform an identity that can then be used to accrue reputation and a social circle when done correctly. This doesn't require that you believe in anything or do anything to realize the goal of the political view; you need only repeat the correct slogans and signs.
As a result, the various "leftist" labels often function more as consumer identities that can be exploited by advertisers. Importantly, aestheticization prioritizes performance, outward displays of affliation, thus few will hide their political affiliation for whom the affiliation is also a personal identity.
Zig Forums can be criticized for a number of things, but it really doesn't allow for the specific phenomenon in the OP, simply due to how an imageboard functions as a system and as a a culture. Without resorting to strongly discouraged means like names, trips, avatars, and self-promotion, no reputation can be formed. Even with those means, only a few are ever established, and there is little endogenous incentive to merely perform the identity for the sake of others or to adopt a political view as an aesthetic.
Historically the various parties of the internationals at least prior to the 4th kept the youth wing separate from the party proper
Perhaps there might be a reason they did this?
Chase Gutierrez
...
James Diaz
You shouldn't want incompetent fags to shit it up, but that doesn't mean that you should recruit on merit, when it comes to young people in leadership
Jason Long
*shouldn't
Ian Rogers
My party has also a separate youth organization, although you can already join the party with 16 years. Recently I've met some people from the youth organization and I was quite surprised, what kind of people consider themself as youth: Everybody was around 25 and refused for some reason to leave the youth organization, to join afterwards the party. I simply don't understand this. The world is on fire, but my potential comrades don't want to grow up.
Owen Fisher
...
Ryan Peterson
t. Person who's never been involved in any trade union or political party and gets their opinions from "SJW leftist owned compilation"
