So the question is a bit weird and for the sake of not sounding like a complete edgelord I will try to explain what I mean
I used to be pretty active inside the hooligan scene (lol) when I was younger. I still follow lots of football ultras accounts and the occasional hooligan thing gets posted there as well. It should be no surprise that some hooligan groups are pretty right wing or out right fascist. One of the Dutch accounts posted a Feyenoord hooligan picture in which some of their members posed in front of a ‘anti antifa’ banner, with the purpose of looking cool of course, flexing their muscles and whatnot.
I decided to call them out on it, saying it’s messed up since Rotterdam was bombed to pieces by the Nazis even. They deleted the post afterwards.
I rarely see people do this, not even leftist accounts I follow. Which made me think, should we be less afraid about calling shit like this out? To send some sort of message that we are not afraid of losers like them? Or do you think it is counter productive to do so?
I don’t mean we should start doing ‘come fight me bruh’ things, but I feel like the left is sometimes missing a link between neanderthal fighting and your average debate me bro intellectual leftist that speaks to the people.
Calling out right wing bullshit is very much justified and necessary. If nothing else it allows us to put forward our own perspective and educate others. The goal isn’t to try and change the mind of the right winger, but to provide additional information for other people who might see the post.
There’s this interesting debate going on in our party for example about how we should make ourselves clear to the world. On the one hand we want to reach your average worker but on the other hand we don’t want to do it by adopting often times reactionary talk like far right parties do. But we also don’t want to become an elitist left wing party of which many exist already.
Why I want to focus on the online sphere is because over here, right wing parties by far spend the most on online advertising, and even studies seem to point out that social media is a key factor in radicalizing young people wrt right wing ideologies. I feel like the left needs to find a new way to reach these same people, or at least be at the places the right wing reaches them to call out the bullshit, without necessarily spending more than the right does right now.
I don’t think we can succeed on platforms owned by the right wing, and that defeats the entire point. The problem is that the right can do and say almost whatever they want, but if the left starts to talk the same way we get banned. Building up alternative platforms helps, somewhat, but I have no idea if there’s actually any way to succeed on platforms like Twitter or Reddit.
Would shouldnt illusion ourselves into making that our prime ideological battleground, but we gotta try a bit. Genzedong worked for a while, we can do similar things without getting too attached to it not being banned eventually. Revolutionary propaganda should be spread as wide as we can.
We don’t just get banned eventually, it’s not random. We get banned once we’ve actually started to have an impact on discourse.
This necessarily means that we will always be banned before accomplishing anything. At best what this can do is help other leftists on the internet find each other, and that’s not nothing, but these platforms are not a terrain of struggle any more than consumerism.
I’m sure there’s a decent amount of people that wouldn’t have been radicalized or organizing without gzd or Chapo. Isn’t a moment of impact better than none at all?
True, maybe in the final moments of a lefty community it manages to radicalize enough people to be a worthwhile use of time?
I’m skeptical it’s the most efficient use of time, but maybe online matters more than I’m giving credit. Still skeptical, though.
I don’t think we can succeed on platforms owned by the right wing, and that defeats the entire point.
We might not be able to succeed long term, but these platforms can be subverted to our cause in the mean time. Of course that while we are irrelevant these platforms don’t care about us and in fact transform us into yet another product to sell. Capitalism subsuming all critics into itself and all that.
Having the content over at multiple platforms help, but if you can start gathering people online in a mainstream platform, once you have enough people you can start to move into decentralized spaces like here and/or matrix for when we are not accepted anymore.
I can even give a concrete example of this. There’s a growing number of communist content creation channels here in Brazil (in fact they are the reason I became a communist, lol). Quite a few of the biggest names of these comrades in youtube and twitch are part of a collective, which have a discord server of 60k+ people right now, and previously there was mention of they studying alternative platforms and open source in general to move into, since they are getting big enough to the point where if either youtube or discord wants, most of their work online will get lost. I don’t think there have been any more updates on this yet, but it’s something they are aware about.
The problem is that the right can do and say almost whatever they want, but if the left starts to talk the same way we get banned.
I haven’t seen this before. From what I saw it just doesn’t work to use their tactics. If we lie like them we can’t build trust, so it’s not a luxury we can have. If we make “photo of capitalism country bad, photo of communist country good” memes, it doesn’t work because we are not the dominant ideology, when they do the opposite, the majority of people already agrees with the message from years and years of propaganda and it just reinforces their views.
It’s a difficult situation where we need to get creative and must go with the hype and latest trends to try and subvert the narrative whenever possible. Having more communist content creators that cover different topics and spheres is always good tho. Class conscience needs to be disputed in the nerd online spaces, just likes it needs in the programming, gaming, development, fitness, and other spaces, on all platforms in as many languages as possible.
studies seem to point out that social media is a key factor in radicalizing young people wrt right wing ideologies.
I feel like this was being talked about 5 and 10 years ago about how the right wing radicalization pipeline through youtube existed and was outperforming anything the collective left was doing-- which is to say yeah, I’d be VERY INCLINED TO AGREE that in lieu of having ready-made infrastructure we could worm a counter-pipeline through, we need different methods in the same domain of conflict.
I rarely see people do this, not even leftist accounts I follow. Which made me think, should we be less afraid about calling shit like this out? To send some sort of message that we are not afraid of losers like them? Or do you think it is counter productive to do so?
Oh this type of stuff should be called out in a more aggressive manner a 100%. Far too often I see both communists and “left” liberals just replying mildly to straight up racism or fascism online. I see it all the time on twitter, youtube, instagram and reddit.
Sometimes a simple “go fuck yourself you racist piece of shit” is way more impactful than trying to make a point or using reason when responding.
Correct. Fascists, nazis and other forms of organised oppression should be more afraid of us.
Sometimes we should start doing “come fight me bruh” things. The oppressed should be never alone!
Honestly, I respect it. Call it out, drag it for filth, and move on; with aim to keep from devolving into the “drop your location”/“pull up then” type keyboard-warriorism (unless you’re actually on go like that, but most ain’t); I can respect energy like that. There’s always a chance it might reach someone who otherwise, might’ve played fence-sitter. Might pluck 'em down off it.
In the situation I mentioned above I was indeed hoping to reach lurkers or people on the fence. I called them what they are, fascists, which for many people still is a heavy line to cross. But by posing the way they did, which is by showing their well trained bodies, you can actually reach easy to manipulate young guys. But by calling them out, without also adopting a counter toxic masculine way, I think we can show those same guys that this is not the way to go.
I greatly admire your bravery and strategy, though I wouldn’t entirely worry too hard about presenting toxic masculinity in calling out fascists. The Overton window is so fucking far-right that any attempt at criticizing capitalism and fascism makes you the bad guy and/or a “OMG soyboy es-jai-duyba!”
Ill be completly honest, from where I am sitting, what ever the left is doing us failing. We all seem to be seeing that capitalism is in decay, and everyone seems to know it, from the “Apolitical centrist” to the most ardent Neoliberal will admit that the status quo isnt working, however a large number if not the majority of the ones who have left the wierd “we can just reform it, its the lack of competition l, its the best we have” have decided to go to facism, and the next biggest catagory have gone to a social democracy of just wanting healthcare, but contenuing to build this wealth from the exploitation of the global south, the third biggest catagory is the Anarchist, while a theoretical ally, never seem to have any systematic plan or action in how anything will come about.
So before I ramble on too much and make a fool of myself more so than I have, all of this is to say I wiol welcome any change in tactic at this point. We have a very egg head strategy, of lets read theory, and most of the rest is very ingroupy.
We need a lot more oompf than that. I am planning on trolling chuds with mods
I’d imagine that most normal people do right wing fashy things without know they are right wing and fashy. If you’ve been brought up in a place where right wing fashy things are just the default with no alternatives presented as a viable option, why would you.
So yeah, if somebody you’re acquainted with or friends with says something shitty … you can/should call them out on it. There’s always a chance that they didn’t know or had never had a reason to self reflect on it.
Feels like it still falls in the realm of larping.
For situations like this, absolutely. There is a line to be drawn on how aggressive to be against each instance though. Coming off too hard on things that are not as severe an issue is a good way to turn people away. When the other side is basically already fash there’s not real reason to pull your punches. What bothers me is seeing people take this same stance against people for minor things because they might simply not know better.
Not sure if this is what you mean but I tend to spend a lot of time online responding to right wingers. I usually target when they are attempting to be critical of liberalism and frustrate the narrative. I usually take a hard stance and am ruthless in exposing their ignorance of, for example, feminist discourse. I want them to know why I think they are worse than fools. Part of how I left being a reactionary is realising that much of the narrative was based on disengenous interpretations so I double down on that.
So if someone is bemoaning that everything bad that happens to women is their fault, and that it is not studied that women hurt each other because of feminist propaganda and obsession with patriarchy, I explain that feminists have been talking about the role of women in patriarchy for decades. Litterally, every waking moment of their life has been an opportunity to learn this, yet they prefer to shit in their hand and smear it all over instead of taking their education seriously. It is wildly undignified, completely unworthy of respect to say something so demonstrably false just to demonize women. There is no excuse. My hope is that it may illuminate that they think with ideology too much and that their ridiculous conservative identity might be holding them back and making them a fool.
Honestly, however, I don’t think it’s very effective and is sort of a gamble. Potentially, it is an information hazard. The right has been coopting “left wing” talking points at a higher clip than they were 10 years ago and I feel like using discourse can end up hurting more than it helps. We need something more than discourse to go along with it imo. When I turned, I also had lost faith in everything I knew. It was more than just persuasive talking points or stirn instructions.
