Without reading anything but the headline... Does it have to do with all of them being influenced by Helena Blavatsky?

Rev Left Radio being called "Misleading" is so fucking bonkers to me.

Breht is such a thoughtful and genuine guy. And the show has so many guests on with differing perspectives. Like, yeah ok, some of those guests might say things one disagrees with, are debated within a given field, or are otherwise occasionally incorrect. But the ethos of that show is about getting the listener to know how to think, and thoughtfully approach things, from a broad left perspective. It's not just feeding you normative claims and calling it a day.

Anyway, go listen to RevLeft, Breht is such a gift

Cool, can he stop being a transphobic shitbag while he's at it? Fuck Dave Chapelle

I seem to recall that the YPG/SDF even said that they felt the global left, and the western left in particular, failed them. And that failure of international support and solidarity is what forced them into a position of having to work with the US to fight ISIS.

So now they're in a situation where NATO is actively fucking them over. Turkey has parked itself on the border, and regularly lobs bombs at civilian targets, and the US looks the other way, while it swallows up Syrian oil. They don't want the US there, and openly state as much. But their presence is the only thing keeping Turkey, a fellow NATO power, from invading even more.

And what's the Western Left's response to this obvious imperial plunder? For people who do nothing but post on the bear website, to complain about a lack of ideological purity from a global south leftist movement that's been forced to choose between being plundered by the US, genocided by ISIS, or invaded and occupied by Turkey.

I've even seen people (more on Reddit then here, tbf) smugly saying that civilian deaths are ok, because "that's what they get for siding with the US", as though that justifies NATO war crimes, or that the people of the region even wanted that in the first place.

It's almost like the world is more complicated than a Marvel movie.

Tbh the main reason it's so bad is because everyone picks the most shocking card in their hand, even if it doesn't make a coherent thought, or match well with what's being asked.

Like, holy shit, it's just edgy apples to apples, y'all!

I only buy vinyl records of albums that I really love or are otherwise Meaningful to me in some way. Otherwise, I shoot for cassette tapes, and CDs when I wanna but physical media. I just really like the physicality of it.

The ceremony of deciding what to listen to. Taking the media out of the case, putting it on the turntable, and having to be intentional about flipping to the next side. It's all a nice break from the ethereal, instant gratification machine that is my phone

How organized is the backlash in new Caledonia? A single spark can light a prairie fire, but it needs direction too. I worry these riots are too disorganized and unfocused to really fight off the French. That's the impression I'm getting from western media anyway, so I'm taking it with a big old chunk of rock salt.

no freedom of movement

Source?

• constant shortage of any goods

Think about why this might be, Friend. Really think hard about it. What large geopolitical things were happening at the time?

• being a dictatorship

Yes, of the proletariat

• (contrary to your first point) a housing shortage

Again, source? Also, wondering what you think happened before East Germany existed that might have contributed to this. Surely this changed over time

• a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time

Because people working 3 jobs under capitalism have so much free time? What does this even mean?

• political pressure

Again, what does this mean? All Political cultures and institutions exert pressures on their population... That's how politics works.

• control over the media

I'll agree that the siege mentality of much of former socialism led to a lack of press freedom, which was ultimately detrimental, but again... Why might this have been?

• the fucking stasi

Quick, name the West German secret police!

---

Let's assume for a minute that everything you've said is entirely true. If we're to be thoughtful about this. East Germany was a historically poorer, agrarian, region of Germany, much less industrialized, artificially lopped off from the west (not by the USSR, btw, who wanted a unified, nonaligned Germany, like the allies had done with Austria), it was heavily sanctioned, had been bombed to shit, much like the rest of Europe, but was made to pay the USSR reparations, that it wasn't as capable of paying, as a unified Germany would have been. The USSR even dismantled entire east German factories and shipped them back to rebuild their own industrial base.

How do you expect any country to not come out of that with considerable problems?

And the GDR did have considerable problems. I think you and I would disagree on what those problems were, but in the broad strokes, that much we can agree on.

But I would contend that, even with that in mind, East Germany ended up being a much more positive socialist experiment in many respects then say, Romania, which suffered a much more severe centralization of power, and cult of personality issues, then East Germany did.

In fact, looking at the makeup of the East German Parliament and its mass organizations, there was a much greater degree of representation of various social cleavages then in some other Eastern Bloc states.

While you could say argue that this was only 'on paper', that really depends on what period of East German history you're looking at, as the electoral system was altered a handful of times.

Regardless though, this was an expression of the fact that East Germany had a more open Political culture due to its institutions being establisehed as part of an intended nonaligned, unified, German state. And due to the fact that it had received the socializing effects of industrial capitalism that gave it things like an incredibly progressive Queer movement, that other Eastern Bloc states, which were formerly feudal backwaters, hadn't developed.

Tl;Dr - this shit is a lot more complicated than listing off bullet points for "why East Germany was Evil", That I was taught in the 7th grade.

I can easily imagine a government committing human rights abuses in response to a security threat.

From what I remember, this was basically the conclusion of a UN report on the subject.

That China was engaging in this broadly successful de-radicalization campaign, that there was evidence of human rights abuses in certain areas of that program, but that they didn't amount to genocide. In fact, I don't think the report ever mentioned the word genocide.

To my understanding, there was something of a line struggle in the Panthers between those influenced by Mao's China, and those influenced by Juche and the DPRK

Haiii creamsicle!!! <3

Imma tell my kids this was Paul Atreidies

Dune is like if Baron Trump went to Gaza, Joined HAMAS, crushed Israel, then killed Joe Biden, and made himself god-emperor of the entire world.

That "one issue disagreement" is concealing a fucking genocide. How can people post this, and genuinely think that bombing Gaza to dust is just an UwU Smol Bean disagreement?!

It's gotten some high praise

To be fair, I've also seen a ton of work being done with these encampments by SDS and FRSO, not as much PSL, but they're definitely there too.

Bingo. Darwin wouldn't have had much, if any idea about dialectics or its minutia. But his theory of natural selection is an incredible work of dialectical materialism, that outlines all the same laws of motion, just in different terms.

nobody in the PSL identifies as Marcyite, its not really a thing.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, Marcyite isn't a ruptural tendency in the way that ML or Maoism are. And the people in PSL and even WWP, are basically ML. I did say that the Marcyite trend reinvented ML in my initial post.

But just to say an ideological trend only exists if people identify as such, is idealist. Various forms of revisionism, right or left deviations, or even just banal differences of opinion all exist within ML.

ML isn't a monolith, and we need to be able to trace where these trends within ML as a tendency come from, to hopefully avoid making tactical mistakes.

Dialectically, there are two general kinds of formulations, "Two Into One," which is the standard "Thesis, antithesis, synthesis" model that serves as most people's introduction to the concept.

And "One Into Two", wherein internal contradictions lead to a fracturing. For instance, a singular species which had divergent evolutionary branches. I.e.Humans and other apes sharing a common ancestor.

While these two formations themselves dialectically interact, the one we give primacy in our analysis shapes how we come to view all kinds of things.

Social Democrats like Eduard Bernstein took a "Two into One" approach top class struggle, which led him to erroneously conclude that the interests of the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat could be reconciled through reforms.

Why is this important with the Marcyite tendency? The primary way that the Marcyite tendency arrived at reinventing the wheel of ML is through the theory of "Global Class Struggle" that Sam Marcy, and others in his wing of the SWP arrived at, which I described in my initial comment.

That Global Class Struggle Theory also asserts that, since AES aren't technically socialist, and in a post cold war period, are allying with anti imperialist States, like Iran, they view this formulation of Global Class Struggle as a Two into One formulation, where various anti imperialist States are forming a unified bloc against the west.

In many ways, this is correct, but by viewing this solely as a Two into One formulation, the Marcyite trend sometimes ends up papering over the internal contradictions within this loose bloc. So you get weird offshoots like Caleb Maupin and his ilk trying to claim that Iran is Communist simply because it's anti-imperialist.

Or that achieving Multi-polarity is the same thing as achieving global socialism. Rather than as what it actually is, which is an opening and opportunity for more socialist States (but also other competing projects) to be founded without starting down US hegemony.

This isn't inherent to all people or orgs that come from this Marcyite trend, and plenty of them are very dedicated and principled MLs, but it's worth keeping an eye on, because it does crop up.

So while I brought up the Marcyite trend history as a historical footnote that I happen to find personally interesting, it is genuinely important that we be able to sit down and think through these things fully, rather than just throwing up our hands and papering over the line struggles and trends within our movement, because "well we're all just MLs, so its fine".

FFS why not just be ML and skip the pointless gymnastics?

For all intents and purposes, they basically are MLs, as others responding to my comment have pointed out.

They just ended up reinventing the wheel, through a really weird, round-about way, that I find interesting.

Very cool!

Though if I may put on my theory nerd hat, PSL aren't exactly Marxist-Leninists. They're Marcyites, who are trots that accidentally reinvented ML, through Trot talking points.

So, for example, Sam Marcy split from the Socialist Workers Party to form the Workers World Party, and argued that Actually Existing Socialism's were "removedd workers states, like Trotsky asserted, but that this was a necessary stage they all had to pass through, by virtue of having to survive on a planet dominated by Capitalism.

Therefore, the Marcyites support AES, instead of opposing it, like other Trots do.