I think the main idea is that the colonial state is going to wither away on its own because zionists are already leaving due to how unsafe it is for them to be there, and by the time a two state solution would be implemented, this will have already reached a point where those people will not return and anyone like them who remains will want to leave even more because they have had their colonial project taken away. This will lead to an inevitable one state for Palestine because all the euros will flee and Palestine will have a majority and keep gaining power in the area, while the colony is fully weakened, loses a lot of population, and by then maybe even a lot of external funding.

China having this position makes sense because they are trying to be taken seriously as a mediator and the two state solution is the closest thing to a good deal for Palestinians that is actually being considered at the moment, but the average communist position should absolutely be an end to the zionist state entirely. If China adopted a one state policy in favor of Palestine, they wouldn’t be included in any serious negotiating because that is obviously not something one of the parties in the negotiation wants to accept at the moment.

I don’t have it in front of me but I remember a Stalin quote saying something quite different in the case of supporting anti-imperialism in West Asia despite the social conservatism. I haven’t suggested supporting conservatives as you claim, just that the MAGA communists trying to appeal to conservatives to bring them to the left (their stated goals) doesn’t seem like the building of a reactionary army or adding momentum to fascism. It is at worse changing nothing about the current political landscape and at best introducing otherwise politically undeveloped workers who default into an inherited ideology to some new ideas which aren’t all bad on their surface.

Then why support them to begin with? Do you not care for trans people (as I am), or feminists (as I am), or black people? All of whom are oppressed because Conservatives don’t want us to have rights? I ask again, do you not want us to have rights?

I’ve never suggested supporting these groups, but you respond as if I have and then question my character which has nothing to do with an analysis of the topic at hand. Surely you aren’t suggesting that marginalized people don’t have rights because MAGA communists are trying to appeal to settler workers, and I haven’t in my cursory overview of them seen anyone calling for such things. Accusing other people of wanting to deny marginalized people rights for trying to have a discussion around the characteristics of a fringe political movement is inflammatory at best and unhinged at worst. The other person in this thread communicates without all the hubris while still having the exact same positions you have, I’d recommend looking to their writing for some examples of how to communicate in a way that is actually effective at getting your points across.

What identity should communists appeal to? The US identity is born out of a white settler identity. That is a fact which most settlers refuse to understand. Just making white settlers support Russia or China isn’t enough to rid themselves of their reactionary nature. Conservatives (and Liberals too) need to understand that they live on Stolen land and thus they need to support decolonisation in full. For a US communist working for a decade, this is shocking to hear. Instead of paralleling communist ideas, convincing the masses that socialism is superior to them, you instead compromise your position with conservatives. There shouldn’t be any compromises when your own ideology is at risk with such compromise.

You are editorializing what I said in order to fit in into your already predesignated conceptions of what this topic contains and what people who are participating in it without unquestionably adopting your view points must believe. I didn’t claim that conservatives will suddenly be cleansed of their reactionary nature by adopting stances that don’t promote war against China or Russia. I’m asking why some MLs here are so scared of what they claim is an irrelevant fringe group for trying to appeal to people that have the same identities as they do to take anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist positions. Wouldn’t that be better than them having imperialist and capitalist positions? Would it be any worse for the US political landscape for them to try?

I’ve made it clear that I don’t believe anyone at our stage of political development should spend time organizing with or for those positions, groups or people, I’m just confused about why you all seem to be so afraid of them to the point that you say they are nobodies but also put a lot of energy into making sure everyone knows how much you hate them. In a country full of actual volunteer feds in every workplace and community regardless of demographic, I don’t see why these guys are getting you all riled up. It’s not MAGA communists spreading anti-China propaganda from the left, its Anarchists and Maoists and DemSocs. It’s not MAGA communists calling to kill “tankies,” and bar them from organizing spaces it’s Anarchists and Maoists and DemSocs. I’ve never met a MAGA communist but I’ve seen a lot of Anarchist and Maoist and DemSoc wreckers co-opt movements and struggles and turn them into popularity contests, social clubs and cults of personality. I don’t think MAGA communists are the most correct group in the US left, but as far as incorrect left groups go, they are certainly not doing nearly the amount of harm I see Anarchists, Maoists, and DemSocs doing to the political landscape and conversations in the US. They barely seem to be relevant to the left or organizing spaces at all, and instead are just spreading positions that mostly align with our positions to people who we would never take the time to try and educate or political develop.

Conservatives and Liberals already understand that they live on stolen land, and they also know that the people they stole it from make up less than 3% of the population, so they already have accepted that it makes no sense to turn over control of the state to such a minority of people, even if they are the victims of settler colonialism. You are saying that you think a bunch of settler labor aristocracy must be convinced by communists to become supporters of decolonialism which really shows an idealist take, “the people MUST be convinced to believe what I believe because it is correct,” which flatly ignores the material conditions of those very people. Just because it is the right position doesn’t mean it will ever take hold in this country, and while I still organize in groups that promote it, I don’t see any clear way that these groups are going to gain traction amongst a population of people who already think the concept is totally illogical nonsense. I personally promote the sovereignty of Indigenous people and New Afrikans but that doesn’t mean I see any way we will ever get there at this point, nor have I seen anyone suggest doing anything except what we’ve already been doing which hasn’t really proven to be effective. The best avenue I can imagine is that if Indgenous and New Afrikan groups are incredibly organized and well armed when the inevitable collapse in the US happens, they might be able to carve out some small enclaves to wage a protracted war from, but that has nothing to do with convincing settlers to get behind decolonialism at all.

Next I see you wallow in your defeatism with: “It’s not like we are actually going to organize revolution in the next few years”, “honestly I don’t see anything else really working very well in this country yet”. What is it are you doing then? You see the troubles within your very country yet you don’t fight back? What have you been doing for a whole decade to let yourself wallow in this?

there is a LARPy privilege in your tone which I see some online leftists do and I just don’t get it. feels like they are trying to channel Lenin or something, real weird to me.

purporting that a sincere communist who has spent thousands of hours organizing in streets and workplaces with the masses is somehow wrong for having a sober analysis of the conditions of this nation, and that instead we must blindly commit ourselves to the idea that somehow the non-existent left in the settler-colonial labor aristocracy of the imperial core is going to manufacture a revolution before the process of dedollarization and shift towards a multi-polar world forces a collapse of the US economy which results in some sort of fascist take over and/or civil war scenario can only come from a place of privilege that I have never had and can not relate to. I am a materialist, and if you think acknowledging in the reality of the conditions I live in is somehow wrong, I would say that is a form of liberalism that needs to be thoroughly investigated.

It seems as if you are suggesting that somehow me and others like me not “fighting back” hard enough is the reason why the left is failing in the US as if there are any examples of capitalist or colonial nations having a successful workers revolution. I think it is really foolish to assert that fighting back in and of itself means success is assured. If the conditions are not ripe for these ideas to spread, there needs to be another phase of development first. The CPC did not have a socialist revolution before they led a New Democratic revolution, for example. Meeting people where they are at and guiding them towards socialism is different than standing at the end of the road screaming “THIS IS WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE” to a bunch of people so far away that they don’t even recognize your existence.

Are they truly going to blame the billionaires? No they will blame the so-called woke left which is what we are. They argue that ideas like transgenderism are bourgeois, and yet you seem totally quiet about this. With anti-LGBT and racist sentiment, you don’t care as long as it is “progressive”.

they do blame the billionaires from what I have seen. I haven’t seen any of the other things you’ve claimed here and have acknowledged this is new content to me but again will point out that your consistent editorializing and knee-jerk presumptions about my positions “you don’t care about this, you want that, etc” just undermine your entire argument and present as anti-social. No one wants to be spoken to like that and if you are actually a sincere communist I don’t know why your default stance is to be inflammatory and vitriolic instead of being amicable and pleasant to interact with. Saying “you, you, you,” especially when making up really outlandish positions that you are projecting onto the other person is just not it.

I replied to the other person with my main points if you’d be interested in replying there to those points!

Some things from this thread:

The people they are trying to tail are not interested in being friends with China, stopping the genocide in Palestine, or being pro-labor.

Why would they use these positions which most of the people they are targeting would immediately hate if they didn’t believe them? Why wouldn’t they just become like the Shapiros and Carlsons and Jones type grifters if they were really trying to just grift? Wouldn’t they make way more money and get way more clout if they didn’t actually inject these talking points into their rhetoric?

Is your premise that the feds are uplifting these guys so that people who would be radicalized towards communism get led astray? They seem to only appeal to people who would never be interested in communism so I don’t really know how that adds up. The only self identified leftists I see who are swayed by them seem to be people who agree that the left is further alienating a large portion of the US working class from socialism by using rhetoric, jargon, and aesthetics which they are pre-programmed to reject. So they couch their positions in US iconography to bypass that. Its not the strategy I would spend time organizing, or the group I would target in my organizing, but if they want to try, whats the problem? If we get a Hitler as you said, it won’t be because these people are the way it happened, it will be because it was an election year and we live in the US.

I’ve never had twitter and basically just heard about these people but have watched a couple YT videos featuring them and talking about them and then seen a couple threads here on lemmygrad about them in the last week or two. So I don’t have a lot of info or cemented biases on the matter. I did watch a recent video from just a few days ago with Hinkle giving a speech to a crowd using Lenin quotes and talking about Marxism so saying he has completely stopped talking about it doesn’t track.

As far as civil wars and decolonization go - you don’t really think if a civil war happens there will be any leftist group or de-colonial group that will stand a chance to take any power do you? Its gonna be the MAGA vs the Lib technocrats, there won’t be any decolonization going on, just a redrawing of colonial borders, like a (hopefully) less cartoonish Fallout: New Vegas landscape. The majority of Americans do not consider decolonization a viable option and while I am 100% behind the idea as someone who has been organizing in groups promoting it for many years, it doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction among the average Americans because it means they lose their luxuries and power gained by settler colonialism.

I appreciate your tone and style in response it makes dialogue feel accessible and not so polarizing as these spaces often do. I’m trying to understand why people think these guys are both insignificant but also “the enemy” worth vehemently opposing. I admit I don’t know a lot about them, but with what I’ve seen I don’t see how they are going to cause any more harm or damage while I am also intrigued about if they might succeed in spreading an anti-imperialist sentiment within the Trump base that could influence his policy when he becomes president again. If so, I think that is a good thing and would be better than Trump on his own without that or any Democrat, and if they fail or just fully grift then nothing is different about the world.

Again, as a person just hearing about this guy, I am reading his quote and reading what you say he means and it seems to be the opposite of what he says,“It was Vladimir Lenin who would send party members to the meetings of the fascist and anti-semetic Black Hundreds peasant groups in order to disrupt them and win people away from their reactionary worldview by teaching them Marxism.”

I don’t understand how you could read that and say ,“what he REALLY is saying is that we should integrate into fascist groups and adopt their perspectives.” He is blatantly calling them fascists and saying we should be convincing them to steer from reaction and become Marxists, not at all what you are claiming. You seem to already have a pretty cemented perspective on this topic but as someone just getting introduced to it I can’t help but feel like it is weird to read that quote and get what seems to be the exact opposite from it.

As far as the social conservatism goes, they are appealing to people who already have those sentiments but bringing them into a frame of reference that is anti-imperialist. The other option is that they just remain where they are at, but more reactionary through the already existing status quo in the US. If this group of white cis chronically online people wants to try and convince rednecks in the US to not beat the war drums against China and Russia, I don’t really see that as a bad thing. They aren’t promoting anything worse than what is being promoted by the people who already influence this demographic, but the majority of the things they are introducing in a digestible way to this group are things we all agree with. If they didn’t somewhat appeal to the “US identity” and all the chauvinism that comes with it, the messages wouldn’t get through the gates, but could they be inoculating progressive ideas into the white working class by not presenting in a way which totally alienates them from even beginning the conversation?

I’m not so quick to say that isn’t possible, and as someone who is an ML that has been actively organizing in the US for a decade, I don’t feel so quick to write it off because honestly I don’t see anything else really working very well in this country yet. I see some union gains here and there but unions aren’t inherently progressive either, and in our country have a long history of being reactionary as well. I’m not suggesting that we leave the orgs we currently work with to promote MAGA communism, but what I’m thinking is:

If Trump is going to be president anyway, is it bad to have a group already interacting with his base in a way they are open to listening to, but potentially driving them away from imperialism? It’s not like we are actually going to organize revolution in the next few years, nor will we organize any real leftist taking institutional power from within, so whats the problem with these guys trying to convince settlers to back off on China and Russia and place the blame with billionaires? What harm does it do that isn’t already being done, and does it have the potential to actually sway any of these people away from supporting the US to continue being imperialist?

Speaking of Trump, I haven’t seen anything of these guys saying to vote for Trump, can you show me that?

In regards to follower count and some of your last statements, I don’t think we can honestly look at the state of the US psyche right now and say that influencers don’t have an impact on the perspectives and beliefs of the average person and that having a larger platform doesn’t increase that impact. They seem to have just launched some sort of org recently, I watched Hinkle’s speech from it and he had the crowd of white people cheering Hamas and listening to quotes from Lenin. We’ll see what they do with that org but I don’t think it is safe to say these people won’t be able to influence the Trump base in the same way the Tea Party and other groups influenced the Republicans and decided their policies in the past. If they sincere about even half their positions, particularly the anti-imperialist ones, this would certainly be better than having on anti-imperialist positions within the Trump base, no?

I consider DSA and Bernie to be reactionaries at this point but I can’t say I don’t know many good comrades who went from apolitical -> DSA/Bernie -> MLs and I see the value of that.

Okay I wrote a lot here because I’ve been thinking about this MAGA communism phenomenon lately after getting introduced to it for the first time recently. If anyone wants to engage with me about this and help me work out an analysis of the movement, I would appreciate it, because there is something about it to me that I can’t quite put my finger on but makes me feel like it shouldn’t be flippantly rejected and ignored by people like us as is usually the case.

Did you read what he wrote in the linked thread? He actually mentions the Black Hundreds, calls them fascists, and notes that Lenin sent cadre into their meetings to teach them about Marxism and sway them left. I don’t know anything about that but I find it interesting.

Especially because down the line the party had to do several waves of purges to remove all the right wing people who had joined the party but retained their fascist consciousness, the most notorious of course being under Stalin who had an actual 5th column of Nazi collaborators within every level of government.

So on one hand, I see his point about trying to appease to those types of workers because they are workers too but on the other hand we see the result is that they do not voluntarily rid themselves of their rightist views even after they allege to adopt Marxism. By uncritically getting right wingers to agree to your premises, join your organizations, but never over come their bigotry and chauvinism, you are really just diluting your movement with closeted and subconscious reactionaries who may eventually revert back to their underlying ideological base.

I just heard about these MAGA communists recently and it has been very intriguing to me, not as a follower myself because I am a “death to amerikkka” type and don’t believe you can reform a settler colonial nation without completely replacing it from the bottom up, but because I do know that most americans are not on the same page about that and in some way or another see america as a flawed but otherwise legitimate entity - including the most marginalized people. This is likely because most americans no matter how marginalized are a part of the global labor aristocracy and benefit from imperialism, capitalism, etc more than they would benefit from ending those things.

Therefore, would it be more practical to steer these american labor aristocracy workers towards a movement like MAGA communism? If the platform they espouse was really on the agenda, it would certainly be better than what we will have otherwise - the same thing we’ve always had. If most Americans don’t want to destroy america and return the land to Indigenous people and New Afrikans, the things I personally would advocate for, then it seems like what I want is a pipe dream that is far too politically advanced for the average american, and therefore not nearly as possible as what the MAGA communists are espousing - a movement which fits inside the current political understanding of the US masses while advocating for removing US military bases, joining China’s BRI, ending all sanctions on other nations, etc etc.

Aside from MAGA communists generally seeming like transphobes, misogynists, and potentially racists, (something all the other electoral groups in the US also are), the rest of their platform is lightyears ahead of any US political group that has any traction with a lot of Americans (Hinkle has gained 2 million followers since 2019, PSL has almost 100k since 2009). When it comes to anti-imperialist nations, we tend to accept their social conservatism under critical support because we understand that they are the product of their conditions, but when we see anti-imperialist Americans who have similar social conservative views, we reject them entirely for it and call them fascists and feds.

If the option is between status quo and MAGA communism, because americans are not willing or interested in a full bolshevik style revolution, isn’t MAGA communism better for the rest of the world? If the settler crackkkertariat in the US have to choose between the republican party, liberatarian party, or an ostensibly anti-imperialist, anti-war group that praises China as a model to follow and collaborate with, wouldn’t that be a better option to provide those folks? I’m not saying that this movement is worth us personally putting time into, and it likely wouldn’t be relevant to non-white people who have national interests of their own to organize around, but are the MAGA communists existing and gaining traction in the white worker base really a bad thing or worse than them not existing at all? Is there potential that, like DSA and Bernie, this group could be a wide funnel into the left that could result in some sincere right wing conversions? Is it possible that MAGA communists could be inoculating the settler working class with marxist ideas that could bear fruit down the line one day when the contradictions come to a head and the benefits of imperialism are taken away?

Beyond that, wouldn’t it be better for folks like us to be engaging and disagreeing openly with MAGA communists to provide the people attracted to their ideas (which are likely unpoliticized people who see the issues in society and are looking for answers) another option of development beyond the MAGA phase? Through rejecting and insulting them, aren’t we just further alienating the impressionable workers who might be able to be pulled farther left if someone engaged them in way that was critical of the clear issues with MAGA communism but not vitriolic or troll-like?

TBF sanctions have worked really well against Cuba, Venezuela, DPRK just to name a few. Smaller and isolated economies which have not fully industrialized can artificially be set back decades via sanctions, and while those nations still exist, we can’t pretend it hasn’t been an immense struggle for them which is almost entirely due to the sanctions. The US thought their war strategies against the Taliban and ISIS would work against Russia and they thought their economic attacks would work the same - not realizing in both instances that Russia isn’t a literal or figurative island with a fragile economy.

Doubt it, they are likely trying to win favor with China after sending more boots to Ukraine which I imagine Xi gave Macron an earful about. France is always happy to say something that “goes against the grain” but then still fall in line when the rubber meets the road.

If you have only a basic understanding of Marxism, its not hard to get to a class reductionist analysis that goes something like: workers in US need to rise up against US imperio-capitalists > there’s a huge population of the working class which are very alienated from the left due to propaganda > make propaganda that appeals to them where they are already at to begin pulling them left > eventually enough people will be radicalized to get organized and make an impact.

This is kind of the basic Marxist model right? Unite the workers against the common enemy, the bosses, and fight together for a better world. Why wouldn’t you want to bring such a large demographic of workers into the fold instead of rejecting them and thus giving them only one political option in the right? “If only all the rednecks would be like the early 1900’s again, we’d be able to make so much change!”

Patsocs realize that there is a large, white working class demographic of people in the US that is only being targeted by right wing media so they are utilizing symbolism and rhetoric that said group already identifies with in order to get content views which they see as radicalizing them towards the left. The reality is that the majority of workers in the US, not even just white ones, would identify with the US and the idea that the US is a legitimate state over the idea that it should be abolished and made into a bunch of smaller nations of some kind, especially anything run by Indigenous people who are such a small percentage of the population that people can’t imagine being governed by them.

This all fits nicely into a very antiquated and reductive analysis of Marxism that avoids the concept of settler colonialism and neo-colonialism, and is missing the sub-classes of workers which actually keeps the workers of the US at large, particularly the white ones, in a sort of global labor aristocracy which sees them as fundamentally on the side of capital because they benefit so much from it. Without understanding this reality, it is easy to imagine we can just get all the workers in the US on the same side against their common enemy and thus would want to try to meet them where they are at and guide them towards the light. Instead, the truth is closer that these demographics of US workers are brown shirt sleeper agents who will allow any atrocity to be committed in their name as long as they get to keep their comforts more or less intact. They do not have the same interest as other workers in the US, especially the colonized workers that they exploit domestically like Indigenous people and New Afrikans.

I believe the PatSocs genuinely believe the logical thread I spoke to above and think that they are going to incite the working class white people into some sort of communist ballot box revolution in the US that will usher in a socialist USA. They reject the idea of the US being illegitimate because it has existed for “too long,” the people who’s land it was are “virtually gone” in the majority of areas of the country and it has and continues to have such a profoundly large global impact that it is firmly cemented in reality as a nation. A lot of Americans don’t vote or care about politics but they do identify with America, because they do benefit from imperialism, and the idea of the USA not existing is something I’d bet most US citizens would find totally implausible.

All of this will be very validating to the PatSoc engagement reports for similar reasons that DSA and anarchism has a lot of traction in the US - they don’t ask anyone to change their self perception, or beliefs. They don’t ask you to commit class or race suicide or even grow as people, you can just adopt a new rhetoric and aesthetic and feel like you are better than anyone to the right or the left of you. This brings money into the PatSoc’s bank accounts which affirms their positions and creates a positive feedback loop which keeps them chasing clout/money/power and forces them to become grifters even if they thought they were sincere at some point. I’m sure they go to bed at night thinking “we are spreading communism and socialism farther each day, we are radicalizing the masses, this is the correct thing to be doing,” but once you have patreon subscribers paying your bills because they like the content you put out, you are pretty much on that track for life.

Personally I think instead of rejecting them entirely, people need to be engaging with and showing why their rhetoric is undeveloped and backwards.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Exterminate All The Brutes

aside from all the ones mentioned

For a brief second I thought this meant Columbia University and was quite surprised

ahh I misread that entirely

my biggest issue with this is, why would you send a guillotine to the capitalists? You’re supposed to round them up and bring them to the guillotine, that is just simple transportation logistics. They aren’t going to open up their Amazon package, assemble the guillotine themselves and put their own heads in it.

DSA is the true FEDiverse

Whatever it is, we know Juan Guaidó will stop it dead in its tracks.

Surprised to see so many upvotes and no one correct this to Marxist-Leninist uprising since Maoism was barely a thing at that point of history, and the CPC at no point as ever advocated anything called Maoism.