this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Leftist Infighting: A community dedicated to allowing leftists to vent their frustrations
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The purpose of this community is sort of a "work out your frustrations by letting it all out" where different leftist tendencies can vent their frustrations with one another and more assertively and directly challenge one another. Hostility is allowed, but any racist, fascist, or reactionary crap wont be tolerated, nor will explicit threats.
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I'm personally a fan of Black Agenda Report, i think they do a lot of good work, i always enjoyed reading them and listening to their programs and i find it quite sad to see this conflict that has developed between them and certain parts of the communist movement in the US. But i was also quite shocked at how many NATO talking points about the Ukraine conflict that they have repeated. I don't believe that they do this for any malicious reason but simply because the imperialist propaganda is so overwhelming and omnipresent, and the pressure to accept at least part of it in order to not be completely ostracized and demonized in progressive and other liberal adjacent circles is so high.
It's of course your prerogative to disagree with Rainer, there are valid critiques to be made of the strategy that he endorses, but i do think it is about as unfair and disingenuous to accuse him of "carrying water for fascists" as it would be for the other side of this debate to accuse you of guilt by association with imperialists because you support BAR who have connections with so-called progressive and pro-Democrat organizations.
Ultimately coalition building is always going to be messy. Someone is always going to be disappointed and some of the temporary alliances of convenience that one enters into are going to make some people feel "impure", as if merely by associating with certain people with whom one has ideological disagreements one's soul becomes "tainted" or "dirty". This is understandable as we all have certain ideological positions that we are very heavily emotionally invested in, and when we encounter people who take the opposite position our negative emotional reaction is very strong, particularly when the issue in question is one that affects us personally.
For instance if your number one enemy are internal reactionaries and the threat they pose to you and your community then it makes sense for your own self-interest to compromise on imperialism and ally with liberal adjacent forces. I can't blame anyone for making such a choice for the sake of their own safety and survival, even if i do fear it may be short sighted. It takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to assign a lower priority to the threats that reactionaries pose to marginalized communities. But by the same token don't be surprised when people for whom the primary threat are not domestic US reactionaries but the actions of the US empire abroad (which is the case for most of the global south) choose the compromise that they feel keeps them safer.
On the whole i will say though that i think both sides of this particular debate make some valid arguments but i also see problematic aspects in each camp. I am hopeful that this can be resolved because i think there are more commonalities than differences, and in my opinion the disagreements are kind of being exaggerated...it's not so much that there is a major qualitative ideological difference but merely a difference of where the focus lies, what each side sees as their number one strategic priority.
I do wish you would continue to read what Rainer has to say and continue to seriously critique it, i think that these discussions are valuable, they are the kind ideological struggle that needs to be carried out internally among the left until we arrive at a synthesis to resolve this contradiction we are seeing.
cfgaussian was saying that BAR repeats a lot of NATO talking points about Ukraine and you're saying that repeating NATO talking points is actually "code-switching" for survival. Ok, then what's the point? What's the point of having a leftist org that repeats imperialist talking points?
You make a very good point that BAR should not be discarded just because they have some bad takes on the Ukraine conflict. We need them for all the good work that they do in so many other respects, we simply support the good positions that they take and reject the bad ones. But by the same logic however, could you not simply disregard the reactionary positions of those involved in the RAWM protests and just focus on supporting their anti-NATO and anti-war activism? Is that not something that is inherently valuable for the communist movement regardless which ideological direction that it comes from? As communists we should have enough confidence in our own convictions that we don't need fear being subsumed and losing our identity just because we work together on occasion with people and groups from different ideological camps. After all, we also have no problem working with anarchists and even socdems when it comes to things like labor organizing, tenant unions, prisoner advocacy, etc. So long as the practical results are positive isn't that what really matters?