We're in a stage of rapidly accelerating alienation and atomization in the context of a declining American empire. One result is that young people working in shitty jobs and living in shitty apartments are now even more frantically searching around for some kind of identity and some semblance of psychological security, and their ideas about doing revolutionary politics doesn't extend beyond arguing with people on Facebook. They tend to do this on their own, cobbling together some extremely online mish-mash of an identity, because as workers they have no identity or culture they can call their own – and collective organization on the left is weak.
The parties that do exist also tend to function somewhat like cults, with high barriers to entry, and they burn their people out. You're a newly-radicalized communist and you see the enormous weight of the world and … then what? I've seen anarchist groups go from zero to 100 very quickly – like a tea kettle with steam shooting out the top – and then the thing implodes. I think there should be more ways for people to participate in a kind of low-pressure way where people can find little tasks that you plug away at in little bits over time. You know, start out by saying this is a 20-year project, not a next-month project, or (directed at the socdems) a two-year project to elect Bernie Sanders or whoever.
Anyways, what we're seeing is still probably encouraging in its way, as the young people called themselves Juche-Gucci Gang Marxists are trying things out and seeing what works and what doesn't. I don't have all the answers. You maybe shouldn't be too hard on them because if you're a communist then odds are you're probably fucked up in some way too. I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, you've just been fucked up by capitalism so it's totally understandable. I know I'm fucked up.
In my experience with socialist groups they will often do "how to talk about socialism" sessions. I've found it helpful.
Nobody is blaming young people, just saying that there's not enough socialist material out there for newcomers to refine their views so they often fall for traps. Spare us your normie millennial vs boomers rant.
Don't agree with all of it but it's worth reading nonetheless – very critical of the PSL and a kind of burnout culture within it. The part about newly-radicalized leftists hyperventilating about the latest imperialist outrage (and the socialist movement's inability to both calm this down and direct this in a productive way) rings very true to me.
Christian Johnson
Dumb determinism. People don't automatically turn left-wing when the system fails, because without the necessary education they're just as likely to blame proletariant institutions for such failure. In fact attacking unions and social programs for the flaws of capitalism is one of the oldest trick in the book. The biggest period in growth of left-wing class consciousness occurred during the relatively stable and peaceful days of the Second International, because a lot of effort went on educating and spreading propaganda. Since then we've had several episodes of economic and political crisis that failed to shift mainstream political sentiments at all. You have a bad understanding of the concept of base and superstructure.
Lucas Nelson
There is a lot of material out there but you have to actively look for it. This is why you certainly have to rely on your peers and maybe even reddit to point you in the right direction because all this stuff is pretty buried.
Samuel Sullivan
You can't invalidate someone's generalization based on personal experience just because it doesn't match yours, and sure, people often internalize whatever political philosophies are accepted in the mainstream and thus diffused in society and its institutions, so their political development is more left to circumstances than individual agency, but a "radical" turn by definition implies a break with this, and how to develop this sentiment, not its origin, is what's being discussed here.
Noah Wright
jesus christ rhizzone still exists?
Liam Morales
Now imagine if that guy falling apart over Syria happened to be the board owner of a certain left-leaning Zig Forums board Hmm might explain some things, wouldn't it
Henry Johnson
I don't know how you can stand reading this shit m8. I hate the way these people write
Ayden Morgan
Young people are either sucdems or larpy occupy wallstreet types
