free_casc [comrade/them]

If Hexbear has a culture problem it’s poor communication and a seeping anticipation that the person you argue with is a latent fash.

“Latent fash” give me a break.

Their position is being called “ULTRALEFT”. Agree or disagree, nobody has ever implied that ultra-leftism is fascist adjacent. I would NEVER imply that about a member of our community and I’m offended at the implication that I would ever do so.

OP is not suggesting that the protests are effective at anything, but that it is an opportunity for those of us who want to make some people effective. I fully agree with u/jack that there are tons of queer people who are stoked to get educated, and they know for a fact that these protests don’t achieve anything and they love to be given an answer.

This is like 10% of the people there, ran into a ton of empty liberalism, but 10% of 40k is far more people than my group of 5 could possibly talk to anyway. If we can get just 5% of our contacts converted into canvassers for the next event, that will more than double the size of the group (of protest canvassers, not the org as a whole). Exponential growth!

If we dig in and make personal phone calls and contacts with the couple hundred sign ups we got, the retention will be much higher than 5%! These people are now part of an org where they can develop their knowledge and skills, and have the opportunity to become true comrades who are ready to hop into PSL or something like that.

Yes that’s the same position that OP bumped into in a previous thread as well. That is what’s being addressed in this post. It sucks to put in some work and come back to our community and be presented with that feedback from those we look to as comrades. As you can see from the thread, we aren’t the only two who are frustrated by this, and we have an opportunity to address it now.

As hardcore Marxist communists socialists, sometimes it is the materially correct move to win credibility by developing a social democratic party and government. I think our history has led to a lot of “Bernie-burnout” now that it’s been 5 years, but it’s time to reject that nihilism and throw support behind Zohran and build on that, instead of being “too cool for school”.

It’s basically the same as the smug Liberal leadership who want your vote, but if you approach them for a deeper discussion, or to get more involved, you get an empty smile and nod cause they “know more about how things actually work than this ‘socialist’”.

The "ultra left " position on here is basically the same. You DO know more than the liberals and socdems, but how tf does it look when you stand off and watch, and then be like “yeah you liberals don’t know what you’re doing, try harder next time”. Dive tf in and take charge, YOU KNOW MORE THAN THEM. You won’t co-opt your local 50501 or whatever, but pulling a significant portion of them into a socialist faction and developing that into an independent group (or shove them into DSA, or into PSL, or ???) is a reasonable goal.

The way it reads sometimes is that people want to be a disciplined member of “the Bolshevik Party” or something, but the Bolsheviks were a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party!! (I don’t think our comrades literally think this or don’t know the history, just a vibe I pick up on). If we want to emulate and adapt material conditions of successful revolutions, a proven move is to have a strong social-democratic movement. Then you continue your work from there (often internal to the party).

If you went to the protest, did some canvassing/organizing work, and posted about it here later in the day, you’d know exactly where OP is coming from. I know because I did the same thing, but didn’t have enough fury to bang out 7 paragraphs about it.

It’s important to call out this ultraleft position in our community to invite our comrades to reflect and develop a different perspective.

No, I currently work with my union who has a lot of DSA-adjacent type stuff going on. Most of this is just online and IRL yapping, just to get the juices flowing in people who have a left-of-liberal mindset.

I might be down to have more specific conversations with people who have an established account on here (like you), so DM if you’d like to carry that on a bit.

I don’t think revolution will happen in the imperial core, but we can fight for social democracy and force the federal government to shut it down. It would be a great experience for liberals to see their electoral movement get shut down on their faces. Those are the circumstances under which people will shift left into joining an outright socialist org (perhaps a party?) that has a regional focus. I hope to be in the mix when that happens ofc (maybe I’ll see you there??)

Cause we are still chock fucking full of liberals who are barely ready to fight for fucking anything (including basic social democratic reforms that they already believe in). Theyre coming around to “the illegitimate colonizers of the United States government have nothing to offer you and never will, so we might as well focus on the illegitimate colonizer state governments which at least offer a smaller playing field for us to actually do a couple things to stabilize ourselves with some succdem shit” type of thinking.

If we can rouse some real grassroots direct democratic support for some succdem shit, then the US will be forced to crush it and heighten internal tensions, or let it slide and the West coast might actually start to believe a better future is possible.

The average west coaster has views to the left of the Democratic party at both the state and national levels. Objective right now is to make that apparent, and jdpon don is doing a lot to help that along. “Hey CA! if the feds are actually going to cut all of your federal funding, why TF are you sending them 30% to get nothing in return?”

I already know that there are Cascadia state agencies that are preparing to reject the Trump admin funding that comes loaded with “you must cooperate with ICE” and “you must hollow out your DEI completely” strings attached. Looking forward to the US weakening its own taxation authority, cause it releases some obvious fucking questions, even for liberals! MSM will have a very challenging time trying to spin that narrative if it takes root among “progressive liberals”.

Anyway, the ingredients are there, we just need to turn up the stove this summer and get it simmering. If Dems lose in 28, “West coast independence” will be a viewpoint at the fringes of the mainstream in 2030. Won’t be any more controversial that “yeah I’m a Bernie fan, off if you think it’s ‘unrealistic’ or whatever”.

More and more people are saying it!

This is all factually correct, but I hope Californian comrades are talking to their local liberals about this stuff. “Normie” types don’t like what’s going on and are down to think about what life would look like without Trump in the picture.

“Yeah if they cut all federal funding, then why are we paying ~30% as a state to the US? Let’s just stop, what’s the worst that could happen?”

This has never been in the media before so you can finally kick of an actual political conversation that has very few existing brainworms.

Maybe in a decade “West coast secessionist” viewpoints have a space in the conversation, although at the fringe of the mainstream (thinking along the lines of “alt-right”). This sort of internal tension is bad for the empire and good for the global south. I think socialists should be advocating for it. We know that the Democratic voter base, and even many Republican voters are to the left of the Democratic Party on a lot of social issues. Weakening the DNC means we could actually get some socdem shit done while things are unstable and on decline.

Ideals don’t drive the wheels of history, but they do steer them. As you said, this is not something that is practical materially, but on the ideological battlefield, we need to wield it as a rallying point for something to the left of neoliberalism. If everything goes well, you’d probably get the West coast to be another Canada tbh. Maybe would even make sense to annex in to Canada?

Fuck it, it would take like 5% effort to win the libs over to “Cascadia, but pretty much a SAR/vassal to Canada” and even though a full “peoples republic of cascadia” would be much cooler, I’d rather be solving Canadian problems than American problems atp

Its difficult because there are many people who are transplants in our major cities cause they don’t want to live in chudsville or wherever. They still have family in those places. The short answer is that as much as I would love to solve Ohio and Alabama’s problems, I would also like to solve the problems of my Kenyan and Indian and Honduran comrades. I have no effective political or economic power on these places. I do have a smidge of influence in my local community so that’s what I’m able to look out for.

I could go on but I’ll pause here.

It’s like 65% a bit so don’t bother ;)

For us on the west coast we can appropriate “calexit” or “Cascadia” as progressive propaganda, but I can’t speak for socialists elsewhere in the United States. Different material (geographic) conditions may make the “balkanize the US” tactic unpalatable.

If you happen to live in the so-called “Pacific Northwest” region of the United States, you can have them DM this account for answers.