Roderic Day talking about this site

memes and Redditism

Hexbear hated him because he told the truth.

"why isnt this niche left shitposting site a vanguard of the proletariat???"

- back in my day we got downvoted by libs and we liked it kids have it easy these days smh my head

Quite flattering for him to call us an "organization" lmao

I didn't realize we were in an organization and now you're telling me we are already a declining one?
- Just by existing we're organizing, damn we're strong
- We’ve been in decline since the closure of MoreTankieChapo2, the true posting proletariat

Roderic is the one who should read more theory

Specifically, Mao's "No Investigation, No Right To Speak"

Fuckin gottem
The work that phrase comes from is Oppose Book Worship. The phrase isn't the name of the work.

At least he isn't accusing all our trans users of faking it to cover for red fascists

Roderic Day try to understand humour and dry sarcasm challenge: Impossible

He's right about the laziness though lmao, but he fits in because he didn't bother to check whether we're not all yanks

we're too lazy to write important 100,000 word essays on how Anthony Bourdain is the CIA
- he is cia tho

I think this place has the most encouragement to read theory I've ever seen, and I did an actual philosophy graduate degree.

yeah shout-out to the hexbear book club for helping me get through vol 1 of capital

we're here to laugh at the picture of a pig shitting on its own balls, this is not a communist org. we're not here to "up the ante" lmao

I'm just here to occasionally post screenshots of the cartoons I'm watching
- Yeah but if all you lazy shitposters turned this into a real org, then my lazy shitposting could be a worthwhile contribution to something meaningful

"It's got good stuff, but mixed with memes and Redditism and laziness"

that's what I'm here for mostly.

Literally a space for leftists to hang out and be free from libs and chuds except the few that wander in from the wider fediverse. "Why doesn't the hippy drum circle at the park overthrow the federal reserve?"
Honestly that really needs to be a site tagline

"this shitposting website is neat! why aren't we overthrowing the bourgeoisie together though??" is not an uncommon misunderstanding from new users

he'll figure it out or something

Wasn't the "you actually have to x and y to learn z" just a bit?

Also, does he not see the pinned Das Kapital reading megathread?

And what does he expect the site to do, organize demonstrations in the public internet for feds and fascists to see?

Hello, fellow Radicals! Is anyone up to plan some REDACTED?
- yes, i am
  no one ever asks tho
Also, does he not see the pinned Das Kapital reading megathread?
He probably sees those of us who fell behind and have yet to catch back up. In many ways, this is completely my fault. You'd think he'd notice I'm not from hexbear though.

Who the fuck is Roddy Day

He's the guy that runs Red Sails
https://redsails.org/mission/
As far as I can tell, he's a guy who spends all his time posting about how all leftists do is post.
- All leftists know is eat hot chip and post
- Bit idea: make an account about how much Roderic Day posts about how all leftists do is post in hopes that some day he will see it.
I'm also wondering that.
i believe he's a pro wrestler who does a lot of backbreakers and wears small boots
- I thought that was Roderic Strong, who last I checked, was a member of the ~~Adam Cole Appreciation Society~~ Undisputed Elite.

the conditions for creating a vanguard party don't really exist in the west, and he shouldn't expect a shitposting site to be able to do that. We're here to commiserate together and just fart around with fellow leftists.

I would take this guy more seriously if he had any amount of engagement.

We need a higher quality of critic. Is there any chance we can convince one of the Krassensteins to complain about this place?

Noo, because if the libs find out about this place, all the fascist YouTubers will talk about us then we'll have an infinite amount of weird trolls constantly pouring in.

we have "this could have been a serious site..." as a site tagline for fucks sake

How much has the profile of this site grown? It seems like more people known in leftist circles are aware of it. Wasn’t Second Thought or someone on here at some point? I also remember a leftist streamer posting on here.

Hexbear is mentioned on a Deprogram episode, I don't remember which. JT said the place is cool but our vegans are very aggressive lol (I'm vegan and yes)
- JT gave a shitty answer about needing his tendies and it had to be brought up on the pod that he got dunked on for his smol baby reply.
- He didn't mention Hexbear directly, did he? He just said that vegan leftists kept on roasting him for his shit takes...
JT (Second Thought) and Yugopnik have both visited yea
- More specifically, JT has done a couple AMA's here and Yugopnik came here to recruit our own local talent Eugene_V_Dabs to do video and editing work for him.

well-meaning dirtbag

guy literally saw one post saying personal experiences are also important to understand and concluded the whole community is against reading theory

Um, actually experiencing capitalist oppression is weird Christian nonsense
Mao stay's winning
When asked the sources of their ideas, opinions, policies, methods, plans and conclusions, eloquent speeches and long articles they consider the questions strange and cannot answer it. Nor do they comprehend that matter, can be transformed into consciousness and consciousness into matter, although such leaps are phenomena of everyday life. It is therefore necessary to educate our comrades in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge, so that they can orientate their thinking correctly, become good at investigation and study and at summing up experience, overcome difficulties, commit fewer mistakes, do their work better, and struggle hard so as to build China into a great and powerful socialist country and help the broad masses of the oppressed and exploited throughout the world in fulfillment of our great internationalist duty.

Bro literally made this exact point

You might say that Americans aren't communists because they aren't as exploited and benefit from the super profits of imperialism.

Seems like he's just a contrarian for the sake of it.

We're a shitposting site. Sorry if that is not what he is looking for.

It’s completely untrue that Hexbear is federated with most of the other major Lemmy instances? Either this person knows nothing about Lemmy or they’re deliberately lying.

Preston (who has an account here on lemmygrad: @aspensmonster@lemmygrad.ml) doesn't know about hexbear's federation I assume.
- Y'all aren't federated with lemmy.ml? Well shit then. I'll go with option "knows nothing about Lemmy."

Ofc Roderic Day couldn't tell that first post was a joke lol

He also gave me shit once for sharing an article of his with a sectarianism cw, I think that's the first time he noticed we existed
- which article

Nah his last comment is 100% spot on. Though that is the site culture most people want to be fair.

Also, I will continue quoting Samir Amin until some of you actually start reading theory.

What of Samir Amin in particular? I haven't read too much theory recently after a hard burnout but I'd be down to read whatever you think is relevant
- Oh "The liberal virus" is a much shorter work and is a pretty good introduction to his style, to see if you like it or not. Honestly I think people should recommend it over Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, the latter is full of random digs at "market Stalinists".
- It really depends on what you want, more social or more economic analysis. At the end of the day, it's all interlinked. You cannot truly seperate the social from the economic.
  Though I think that "Eurocentrism" and his critique of culturalism should be required reading everywhere. Though "The liberal virus" is a much shorter work and could be a good introduction.
  For more a more modern economic focused work, there's "Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx’s Law of Value". Be warned though that there is a lot of mathematics involved, and you will have had to have read Marx prior to try to understand it.
  You don't have to read or watch anything if you don't want to, and if you're burnt out, a lot of his long from lectures from the past are available on YouTube.
  I think this interview series is very short and relevant today
- What of Samir Amin in particular?
  I believe she has a suit of power armor from the Chozo and fights Space Pirates on the reg.

this mirrors the same angle when people got disillusioned that the leftist comedy podcast didn't want to involve itself in "actual politics" and was content to just do comedy podcast stuff; as if them doing it would mean that everyone listening to the comedy podcast would transmute them into contributors to the cause rather than passive listeners to some guys making some jokes

same here, why isn't the pig poop balls website (that sprung around said comedy podcast) more involved into "actual politics" therefore making my posting be active contribution to the politics of the nation, rather than a place to post pig poop balls countdown gifs to the libs wandering in telling us about whatever insane shit radio free asia made up this week

this comment like all my comments on this site are just my little part towards the emancipation of a revolutionary working class. not that i'm some kind of hero of the working class or anything and i will vigorously debate anyone who would call me that. it is just the humble contribution of that kind of person who doesn't ask for greatness but on whom it is thrusted. excuse me i must go stand in the hall by the bathroom with my fist in the air while I listen to another rendition of the internationale. 3 times every day i find a new version to listen to. it really keeps me in touch with comrades around the world and prevents burn out while i do this gruelling but important work. then i will return and refresh my notifications.
- it is just the humble contribution of that kind of person who doesn't ask for greatness but on whom it is thrusted.

How dare he! Some of these allegations are only half-true!

One of the more wild things about a lot of these terminally online western leftists is their insistence that Marxists need to be "all business all the time." You can't make jokes or talk about anything other than the Revolution. You must behave exactly like a caricature of a communist from a Hollywood movie at all times. 0 personality, 0 interesting things to say, you must discuss the theory at all times. You can't behave like a human, you must be a smug elitist who consume theory 23 hours a day and is therefore the Best Communist. The only way to win people over is to show them that communists are utterly humourless and completely dull and uninteresting people who believe that life should be homework 24/7. No nuance, no subtlety, just be more "principled" by having less of a personality.

I think this reply perfectly justifies Roderic's position on seriousness. You just strawman his argument to mean "100% seriousness all the time, no fun allowed at all" and then proceed to write some nonsense against it.
Do you really think the western left is serious enough? What has it accomplished? Do you think others will take us seriously if we don't take ourselves seriously, and how can we accomplish anything at all, let alone revolution, if we're not serious about it?
- Perhaps I misunderstood him, and I absolutely was using a lot of hyperbole, but the western left is obsessed with purity and finding "revisionism". As if being more "pure" will somehow make us more successful, instead of just leading to empty idealism. I'm not saying we shouldn't be serious about our goals, but to act like we should be serious all the time and aren't allowed to joke around or vent or be people is not something that wins the people over to our cause. Purity tests don't help our cause.
  Winning over the people helps our cause. We are a people's movement and need to act like people, not stodgy "academics" obsessed with taking theory 100% seriously all the time. I've never managed to get someone to read theory by insisting that they must because it is a Very Serious and Important Topic and they are a Bad Person for not reading it. I have gotten plenty of people to read theory (quite a few completely of their own volition) after joking with them about it, and showing them that is isn't some unaccessable academic jargon, but just ideas, ideas similar to those they've probably already had about our system. Treating it like a sacred holy rite doesn't make it compelling and ultimately hurts us, it doesn't help us.
- Can't be bothered with a serious social scientist who thinks too many jokes is why the American left can't gain traction. Or that someone being silly online (which being online makes everyone silly) is some kind of attempt at sabotaging the western leftist project.
  The left has a problem because it is materially opposed, not because individuals aren't taking themselves seriously. We can be serious all day and not a damn thing will happen because we have no real power and can't seem to take any. I mean the also conspicuously online scolds will be happier until they decide it's our haircuts or dresscode that is a problem.
- Do you really think the western left is serious enough? What has it accomplished? Do you think others will take us seriously if we don't take ourselves seriously, and how can we accomplish anything at all, let alone revolution, if we're not serious about it?
  What does being serious have to do with anything? The Western left sucks because:
  refusal to learn from history
  lack of veteran revolutionaries to pass the torch to the younger generation (a big part of this is the feds jailing and assassinating the effective revolutionaries while sparing the useless and compromised ones)
  general incompetence like the recent case of a DSA delegation snubbing the Cuban president
  active refusal to see Western imperialism as the primary contradiction
  a completely undeserved air of arrogance despite accomplishing fuck all (being serious would only make this even more obnoxious)
  lack of anything resembling a communal or self-sacrificing spirit for the greater good
  over representation of college students that comes with petty bourgeois baggage
  not able to socialize with normal people like a normal person (being able to crack a joke and not give off the vibes of a always-serious cultist does much to alleviate this)
  being optimistic of the intellect and pessimistic of the will
  I could go on and on. And not one of them would have anything to do with not being serious. If anything, I could think of at least two points where being serious all the time would make it even worse.

@RodericDay@hexbear.net hello

The post he screenshootted was mocking some other post, I don't recall what it was exactly but I do recall that.

who?

He's the guy that runs Red Sails
https://redsails.org/mission/
- Most famous for masses, elites, and rebels essay

i dont understand why he doesnt just subscribe to the more serious communities like c/theory and what not and ignore the rest of the site, i guess it would be lower engagement but like he had to deal with twitter morons all the time i dont see why he just doesnt do that. or make a lemmygrad account and make a community that solely revolves around serious discussions and what not

Because then he doesn't get to feel superior by whining on twitter.
Roderic Day is incurious and incompetent don't expect him to curate a feed he can't even read a single post for comprehension.
- I generally disagree. I really dislike his position on how people use language (like he hyperfocuses on pretending you arent serious about a conversation if you use "lol" or "lmao") but i find him to be one of the few people on twitter with a big following that will actually engage with anyone no matter how much or how little clout they have and mostly engage with your arguments as long as you steer clear of stuff he really dislikes like using lmao. Do you hate his articles too? I've generally agreed with the analysis he's had in all of the ones I've read, I'd be open to any criticsms of them that you know of in that case.

We're an organization, not just a silly site free from libs?

Alright I'm in the Hexbear Posting League

Free of libs?
- he meant "full of" i think
- True true, everyone is a lib except me of course, the one true Leftist™

That just means we gotta start being more obnoxious about telling people to read theory again.

Also @emizeko@hexbear.net we gotta post more theory

swing and a miss there Rod

Lmao what a nerd

- ??? i have never seen anyone imply either those twitter accounts are sockpuppets, and i'd like to see actual evidence for a big claim like that.

wot if it was roderic bae

- Joins hexbear and becomes homosexual (am gay don’t remove for homophobia)
  Roderic Gay

Who?

Roderic Day, he does some good work, but is also very extremely combative, and alienates a lot of people who he should be building ties with.
The all should be subject to ruthless critique thing has limits, and we shouldn't be picking pointless fights with ppl we agree on 99% of things with.
Twitter is partly to blame because it destroys people's brains, but all communists would do well to read Liu Shaoqi - how to be a good communist.
- Zhou Enlai's writings are also fitting here.
- I know who he is ha I was just making fun of him. But thank you for the real reply and apologies that my joke was so unclear that I wasted your time. I bet others learned from and appreciated it, though!
- We absolutely must challenge each other as much as possible https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm "To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism". As Marxists we must push ourselves and each to come to a better understanding of the current conditions of our time through dialectical materialism and rigorous criticism of our suppositions lest we be make mistakes that can be avoided. This is why studying is important it always us to argue and together come to the correct conclusion that we then act upon.
  Edit: Fixed my English a bit

Almost like this place is not for organizing and is not meant to be centered on America let alone one ideology.

It's for whatever we want it to be for. The English speaking internet is always America centric unfortunately.

I can easily spell bourgeoisie on the first try.

I’d prefer this place not be a hermetic vault of online theory nerds incorrecting each other.

STFU Bean Dad

People who say they “want something” without actively creating it should not be taken seriously or listened to.

He is constantly "actively creating" content that educates and critiques and moves things forward.
I completely agree with him and would go further to say that this "dirtbag left" shit sense of juvenile humour is past its use-by date. It was funny for a while a couple of years ago. All the jokes are old and it's time to move on.
- I completely agree with him and would go further to say that this "dirtbag left" shit sense of juvenile humour is past its use-by date. It was funny for a while a couple of years ago. All the jokes are old and it's time to move on.
  New site tagline lol

What does he think of fakenews?

Iirc he tweeted about it saying that posting was in fact praxis and if you make jokes on the internet you're basically a counter revolutionary
Finally someone asking real questions about this 2+ month-old beef

He's not wrong, except the first pic where he says it's "full", because it's fortunately only minority.

posters here do the same shit where they see a small number of examples of something, then extrapolate it out to being a site-wide problem.
- It's almost like it's an media phenomenon as old as writing and probably as old as communication.

Permanent twitter brain...

Masses Elites and Rebels guy, pls touch grass... if you want actual change, go to a mutual aid group or something

How some people put this pseud on a platform is beyond me. He falls into the pit of most Western Marxists where they are either completely idealist and treat Marxism as some literary analysis or completely mechanistic who thinks that even discussing the role of ideology or conscious human activity is "idealist." In other words, his analysis is not particularly dialectical, only instead of erring on the side of idealism like the majority of leftists, he errs on the side of materialism. But you don't get points for being undialectical just because you aren't an idealist.

And he's overall not very bright either. There's that embarrassing thread about why sitcoms don't have school shooter episodes and instead of tying this to the production of sitcoms and how syndication, which forms the lion share of a sitcom's profit, requires sitcom plots to reset back to a status quo at the end of each episode, he had some dumbass contrarian explanation on moralism (another favorite word abused by the mechanists) or some other bullshit. That massive tl;dr blog post on how propaganda shouldn't be characterized as brainwashing falls apart with the trivial observation that Burgerlanders are orders of magnitude more brainwashed than their imperial core peers while at the same time living in worse material conditions. Can't shoehorn in dependency theory or unequal exchange to explain why Burgerlanders are more susceptible to propaganda.

Alright, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. In a world where Western "Marxists" are largely ultra LARP freaks who sell out to Western academia and University Presses to publish anticommunist propaganda, Roderic is a comrade and is a genuine AES-upholding ML.
His work on RedSails is an invaluable compendium of literature given how other leftist writing repository like Marxists.org are hijacked by Trots.
People need to understand that just because someone is a proper ML doesn't mean you'll be best friends with them. Expecting that is the fastest way to being disillusioned in real world organizing and praxis, when you inevitably meet some ideological comrade you don't necessarily vibe with. The history of socialism in praxis is filled with people who both learned, and failed to learn, to acknowledge others who are near entirely ideologically aligned yet clash with on a personal and social level.
Roderic has an abrasive online personality and has made L takes on frankly tangential subjects through his Twitter debatebro addiction. This just makes him another case of the 70%/30%.
Additionally, his thesis on Redsails that emphasizes the buy-in nature of Western propaganda, if that is what you are referring to, is an absolutely cogent interpretation of the dynamics between propaganda and its recipients in the Western paradigm.
- As abrasive as he can be, his brainwashing thesis has been proven true right in front of our eyes the past 6 months with Israeli propaganda. It’s so casually lazy and racist, the people who “believe” it are obviously CHOOSING to because it makes them feel good.
  It was immediately obvious Israel bombed the Al-Shifa hospital but we (by which I mean westerners broadly) spent like, a week or more debating whether or not it was a misfired Hamas rocket? Give me a break. By all means critique Roderic, he genuinely welcomes it, but that is easily one of his strongest contributions.
- Additionally, his thesis on Redsails that emphasizes the buy-in nature of Western propaganda, if that is what you are referring to, is an absolutely cogent interpretation of the dynamics between propaganda and its recipients in the Western paradigm.
  I've only read this piece once so should probably revisit it, but I honestly didn't find it all that persuasive. Yes, the ideas presented in it may be applicable to a subset of the western populous but certainly not universally.
  It is an interesting thesis that is worthy of consideration though, I'll give him that.
Is this even true though? I assume the "imperial core peers" you are referring to are Europeans, and if so, I would categorically reject the idea that they are "orders of magnitude" less brainwashed. What is your reasoning behind this statement? Because to me, the way europeans talk about muslim immigrants, or the roma, or the legacy of the soviet union, echoes all the same brainrot that seems to inflict the burgerlanders.
- We're talking about a population where a proportion thinks Covid is a Chinese bioweapon that's also fake and is only like the flu btw or how Jesus rode on a dinosaur which is why we need to continue to send weapons to the Zionist entity in order to bring about the rapture.

maybe i'd care what he thinks if i had ever heard of him

He among others run red sails https://redsails.org/ they have some good translated to English selections of work as well as original pieces which I find are very good and worth discussing.

could hexbear posting be a… treat?😰

Unironically. This is a fuck-around, weapons of mass shitposting-- expecting a full blown organization of even Lemmygrad, which takes pains to be seen as 'a serious instance' is just rank idealism at best, and asking for fed-assisted adventurism at worst; never fuckin mind expecting it of Hexbear.

Some blogger discovered J Sakai's account and simply will not stop talking about it.

Leave Sakai outta this; I already have to verbally fistfight hella settlers who wanna run their mouth about "wah he uses a pseudonym" like pseudonymous publishing isn't kind of a thing for anyone with reason to believe they'd catch reprisal for their work... Which Sakai's work always catches reprisal from aggrieved crackers anyway
- Wasn't insulting him. I was saying the hexbear poster was J Sakai because they were saying that you learn to be leftist by experiencing the exploitation of the imperial core, not just engage with it academically. Roderic is the blogger. It's a pointed albeit simplistic summary of Settlers.
  This was a broader reference to Hexbear's Settlers struggle session we had years ago. My posts contain a depth of meta, irony, and references to shared experiences.

This guy sounds like a weird loser tbh

He actually writes some good stuff on Red Sails (much of it goes over my head) but he seems quick to judge lol

I have no time for crackers who bloviate about optics politicking. I do not give the first fuck what he does, what he runs, or who he claims; Roderic’s come off that way(a bloviating optics-obsessed settler) in what may well be his first impression on me, ergo, I have no time for him.

Go read up what he has to say about indigeneity:
https://nitter.poast.org/RodericDay/status/1728795884110971376
https://nitter.poast.org/RodericDay/status/1740064141979926816
I probably shouldn't have been so nice about calling him a pseud and should just starting calling him an arrogant settler like any other arrogant settler.
- This is such a strange argument that I can't even wrap my head around it completely. What are the "pitfalls" of indigenous (the term) actually? Just that Heidegger used it in his own writings? That seems completely irrelevant to me.
- See, settlers like him are why I start from assumptions of "they're just another cracker" with white people and let them prove me wrong-- because they so fuckin' rarely do. Love to see Kaffe tryna chop it up with him-- I wouldn't have wasted the time and energy.