There’s a difference between what’s best for gaining popularity within online “left” spaces, and what’s best for advancing the revolutionary struggle. It’s not hard to notice this problem, the members of the left-wing video essay community “Breadtube” have repeatedly observed how there’s an issue with making politics into a fandom. Yet it’s not like merely recognizing this problem makes these creators able to see what the solution is. That solution is to not just become disillusioned with the notion that consuming Breadtube does anything to change the balance of class power, but also give up the ideology that underlies this false solution. To sell the illusion that online politics represents something genuinely offensive towards the existing power structure, the facilitators and spokespeople of these fandoms have to propagate a certain idea: that anybody who deviates from what’s considered the approved narratives within left spaces is an enemy, that to be considered “respectable” you’d better know what not to think and say.
Not sure on the opp or not since some pretty famous Marxists the last century made similar errors before some of the big wars and had a century less of noise/propaganda to filter through. We do need an international anti-war movement, but it should be grassroots and notso funded by billionaires. The sentiment is 100pct there, lots of sympathy from bars to workplaces in even in the Imperial core, moreso in the periphery, real question is to make use of it, not overcomplicate things, but that’s more for influencers, orgs etc who can project and get out there to come up with everything, not me.
I’d agree with you because RAWM is also funded by various big bourgeois factions (Peter Thiel comes to mind), just a bit more cloaked in anti-imperialism, imperialist anti-imperialism if you will, made to perfectly consolidate some power from the most reactionary parts of the petite bourgeois/bourgeois using some culture war stuff and what’s left of the mostly gone anti-nuke movement as a lure to confuse. Its a simple playing every side that can be found, though not so simple, though by airing their complaints this time the bourgeois again push themselves deeper into fascism.
On diamat he must have done the standard western 3 stager that falls short of true analysis which goes through the ‘dark night of the absolute’, which I think was left off here if I were to wager, which is why on the surface it’d seem like its a critical support ala your usual anti-imperialist but imperfect theocracy or what not, but you look into it more, think of who in the imperial core benefits if this ran to its conclusion, if they’d truly be what they said, who is running this, how bourgeois movements tend to push the opposite of what they desire; Ex fighting for their illusory ill-defined freedom leads to the tightening grip of markets and development of fascism. RAWM is no threat to the core’s machinations for big war beyond our nightmares, and is a good trojan horse should they need to gain control of the movement for any purpose, ironically even pro-war.
Way I look at it, it’s entirely possible for someone to push an opp line without even knowing they are anymore these days; and we no longer have the time to fuck about with bad analysis. Analysis like Rainer’s is going to get people killed, likely en masse; and when the dust settles, he’ll be tryna backpeddle like he had no clue any of this could’ve been in the mail. Just like every other colonizer who’s gotten hella people killed.
He can’t pretend no one told him, I’ve said this to him directly many times. I’ve given him many paragraphs of shit while trying to not to be an asshole about it. The guy really doesn’t care to leave his reactionary bubble.
Hey, at least you tried.