Caesura109 posted:suggests the whole thing is a psy op
I had a conversation with a friend about this recently too when we were discussing that moderate rebels ep. I don't think trotskyism is entirely a baroque conspiracy (though the ISO itself is extremely sketchy and probably run by a collaboration of intelligence ops.) It's an "organic" result of white settlers who 1) recognize the human necessity of communism 2) still believe western imperialist propaganda because they were raised in it and the alternative is confronting their own complicity with capitalism 3) are too proud and narcissistic to resolve that contradiction and consequently 4) attack anyone who reminds them of that contradiction to chase away the painful cognitive dissonance.
These tendencies would exist even without being egged on by counterintelligence sabotage, though it's a certainty that western intelligence organizations take advantage of it and encourage it.
this leaves me agnostic as to whether they’re as directly controlled & manipulated by U.S. feds at a higher level as certain earlier Trot groups have been revealed to be, because my impression is that the sort of people ISO attracts / creates don’t have to be handled that closely to cause problems through just their existing ideology, which seems to say that people in poverty-wracked neighborhoods love 1) local cops and 2) a bunch of strangers marching through carrying copies of the exact same confusing sign, which is how you build socialism.
also, because if their pseudo-autist boot camp were run by actual dirty-tricks experts at high-level federal pay grades, you’d think they’d be better at their jobs. but that may be assuming too much interest on the part of those folks, because while the police state is deadly and dangerous as can be in the U.S., probably at least 50% of anti-left domestic activity in the U.S. is still a giant scam to pay cops to file false make-work reports and get drunk at conferences, if there’s such a thing as ISO duty, that’s gotta be easy street because Western Trots psych themselves out for free.
don’t tell ISO anything, no times, no places, nothing. when they pester you to give them a seat at the table, ignore them, act like you never knew they contacted you. nothing they can offer will be worth it. they’re pretty much the only group i’d say that about in a total, blanket way, although i’m sure there are others who deserve it, ISO is just the one with which i’m familiar.
pushy/tone-deaf folks sorta floated to the top without training. the sort of people ISO attracts / creates don’t have to be handled that closely to cause problems through just their existing personality.
the lack of professionalism and personal favoritism that guide the national leadership seem like it'd be hard to fabricate;i don't think they need nudges from the feds to be how they are.
cars' advice is good, there's p much nothing productive that can come of interacting w them
ialdabaoth posted:there was absolutely no boot camp or cadre development program in iso when i took over a branch and ran it into the ground years ago. they seemed to hardly even notice the evaporation of branch membership and assets and their condensation into iso-hostile orgs and independent local movements.
pushy/tone-deaf folks sorta floated to the top without training. the sort of people ISO attracts / creates don’t have to be handled that closely to cause problems through just their existing personality.
the lack of professionalism and personal favoritism that guide the national leadership seem like it'd be hard to fabricate;i don't think they need nudges from the feds to be how they are.
cars' advice is good, there's p much nothing productive that can come of interacting w them
did you do anything cool when you ran the branch into the ground
lo posted:did you do anything cool when you ran the branch into the ground
no it really wasn't fun or cool at the time. i did encourage the rump of the branch to join a faction opposed to the national leadership that wound up getting ejected from the org after i bowed out
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:i did sex.
dont do it again
Caesura109 posted:I have a suspicion that at least one of the hosts of that show were an OG LF poster
Yep it's the vaguely sad one who doesn't practice self-criticism on their facial hair
swampman posted:Yep it's the vaguely sad one who doesn't practice self-criticism on their facial hair
deep lmao
Edited by zhaoyao ()
tears posted:le_nelson_mandela_face posted:i did sex.
dont do it again
no it really wasn't fun or cool at the time. i did encourage the rump of the branch to join a faction opposed to the national leadership that wound up getting ejected from the org after i bowed out
Themselves posted:"citations needed" is also bueno. https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded
idk if im just in a good mood or what but this also been good listening. maybe im just not used to hearing people talk about thing while not havin really disgusting reductionist opinions, sorta theraputioc
I also have never listened to their podcast and never will lol
Edited by neckwattle ()
neckwattle posted:yeah if I recall correctly there is a twitter Tendency that really sees Blumenthal and Norton as psyops since they both supported the Libyan intervention fairly early on,
imo it's a bunch of insecure purity bullshit (if people change their minds they're vectors of attack somehow), pure paranoia or, at best, an understandable skittishness about infiltration that needs to rein itself in. there are probably dozens of points where i disagree with those guys, but it seems incredibly unlikely they blacklisted themselves from much of the media where they previously appeared to further some sort of "sheep dip" cop agenda, and there's no evidence of it at all. if everyone has to come out of the womb an anti-imperialist to be considered one, then there are none, not even in the post-colonial world
of course none of that precludes them being wrong in the future but that's probably the weakest argument i've heard for condemning them so far, because this has hardly been some Democrat business where the entire public turns against the invasion of Iraq and then pundits follow them, which is how you knew they'd snap back to the spook camp for Libya, Yemen, Syria, etc. instead these folks have adopted incredibly unpopular positions in their home countries from what those countries' discourse consider radical positions of critique, and if someone wants to explain to me how they're using them to destroy anti-imperialist politics from within, actually doing that, i'm all ears
Edited by neckwattle ()
https://soundcloud.com/champagnesharks/cs-083-the-throwaway-people-pt-1-04032018
https://soundcloud.com/champagnesharks/cs-085-the-throwaway-people-pt-2-04032018
https://soundcloud.com/champagnesharks/cs-087-the-throwaway-people-pt-3-04032018
cw: jeffrey dahmer
This one is a fave. Two indigenous women do post colonial analysis on various shows and movies. They will never run out of colonial nerratives in sci fi. Nice work if you can get it.
I am also a moderate rebels fan. Thanks shrieking violet.
