Before discovering this community, I was in a different community that proudly calls itself leftist. I posted a documentary; Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang which was very eye-opening for me.
Anyway, posting that started to really upset people, saying that the documentary is PSL propaganda. That PSL is authoritarian, backed by a Chinese Maoist billionaire and that PSL is riddled with sex abuse scandals. That of course PSL would simp for DPRK because it’s authoritarian. I was even called a holocaust denier for defending DPRK.
So is PSL bad? Where can I find better information on this? I’ve already tried looking into PSL and it all seems okay? The sex abuse scandals I am not sure about, is there more information on this? Am I being too critical on this?
No seriously, go watch Brian Becker’s own show and come back and tell me I’m wrong. You are looking at a democrat who barely even hides it.
What I find on him at a glance so far suggests that he’s consistently on the side of anti-imperialist messaging and defense of AES states. What does that have to do with being a democrat?
Edit: Watched an episode of what I can only guess is the show you’re referring to (this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-dtDQ2yrPo&list=PLwZtBKjGSMzU5sfEXGAUcC-ZqOINABYNi) and in one episode, he already mentioned Marxism and socialism explicitly and quoted Engels, so I dunno what you’re on about comparing him to democrats.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Because he intends to achieve antiimperialism via electoralism and marches. Picture a guy installing fake airbags in your car and saying he just wanted to make you feel better when it kills a passenger. Do we credit ACP for their inconsistent ideological support of AES countries (depending on how public the group/voice chat is 👀)? They are building influencers and a settler labor movement in the fashion of the CPUSA and DSA. Their existence is dependent on large donors, their fundraising network is synonymous with progressivism (I realize this is a structural claiming requiring extensive citations, I’d like to cover every one but each day a new person like that Abugazelah lady pops up and adds 6 more to the graph).
The USA crushes people who support militancy or build the party form of socialism. The PSL is training influencers that, if you go to your local protest, have built a relationship with the police in order to make things peaceful and orderly. Unless they have radically shifted in the past 2 years since I left the country. Following them online, it seems to be the same.
This is all assuming that you can even join the party. They often tell people to bugger off because they’re full and want to balance their demographics for optics, because again they are not a mass movement. Notice how people here are not saying they are actually in the PSL, only what they have heard about it.
Is this making any sense, or should I save this all for something long-form to avoid agitating and confusing others? I would like to cover the history of the FRSO as well. Avakian is fun too but he’s too blatantly kooky.
Not really to me because 1) it’s a lot of broad claims without receipts and 2) it doesn’t reflect what they appear to be doing in actuality.
It’s one of those weird moments where like, I don’t think anybody here has a super high opinion of them like they are the proven vanguard of the US working class (idk maybe I’ve missed the sentiment if such was expressed), but they are doing something. And you’re arguing like they’re actively harming instead. So it comes out sounding like it’s a debate between whether they are saviors or villains, when it’s surely more complex than that.
Okay, then maybe we can have a separate discussion another time on if we think tricking people into doing fake revolutionary activity is good or bad. I usually post on my phone when I shouldn’t post at all, so I’ll definitely get back to you after sorting out my bookmarks. Thought that someone else might find the experience of listening to Becker and Prysner shoot the shit a bit jarring after interacting with PSL accounts.
My contention is this isn’t the party form, it’s one of many ideological nodes in a wider alternative media and NGO fundraising network that developed out of a preexisting network of money laundering and capture that was exposed during the McCarthy era (I’m not basing this on their opinions and current tactics alone). One that actually crosses over seamlessly into Scott Ritter/ACP territory. Not to mention Margaret Kimberly, RT, and PressTV (personally I do not think that black Americans and foreign state media should spare resources on distractions in a battle for life and death). If I were trying to sort people into good and bad buckets I wouldn’t even notice this stuff.
The prison activism stuff is particularly heartbreaking once you realize how this kind of thing is used to stall people out and ruin their lives, just long enough to avoid prison riots. Have you read Blood In My Eye by George Jackson? https://annas-archive.pk/md5/20f816158d230048174c52c634c6eb2e
(Apologies if this is not the best file on offer from Anna’s, I’m trying to keep better track of it these days but mostly going off files on the ereader and searching.)
Actually I have one more thought about the saviour/villain thing. This is much more serious than that. It’s about distilling what we focus on down to what’s important so we can spend more time with family and friends. Isn’t that important to you? Isn’t the political energy expended on protests valuable and finite? The time spent reading articles by Ryan Grim instead of reading Leila Khaled’s story or finding comrades internationally?
What? Of course it’s bad, the question is not whether it’s bad, the question is whether that’s what PSL is doing (so far, your only evidence of that I can discern is that they do protests and that you believe they should put their focus on other things). Protest culture has its problems, but you have not demonstrated that PSL is discouraging people from doing more than that and you have not demonstrated that PSL is only doing that.
Well, I’d have to see the clip because I don’t know what interaction you’re talking about and if you want to talk about limited time, I don’t want to spend my time trying to hunt down exactly what you’re referring to because a single person on the internet says an entire party is misleading people. I already went and watched an episode of a show with Brian Becker, in which nothing particular seemed off about him. Other than maybe that he’s not exactly Lenin, but my expectations for the US left are pretty low.
I have read Blood In My Eye, though it was a while back. I don’t remember it well enough to guess at what connection you’re making between it and protest culture.
The continued comparisons to ACP seems rather disingenuous to me. The reasons why the ACP is a problem has come up many times here in detail, the most basic of which is that they’re patsoc. I have not seen evidence that PSL shares that tendency, or other corralling or wrecking tendencies that you’d expect to see from a party that is there to divert revolutionary energy, and given the willingness on this forum to call out issues with western parties and investigate what is going wrong with them, I would expect to have seen such by now.
I would rather you do it as its own sourced thread if you’re going to do it at all, so it’s more visible and people can work through the claims collectively.
That’s fine. I would hope people are more alarmed by veteran activism at this point, but let’s come back to it later. I have someone else going full Youtube comments on me and accusing me of supporting rape. Just thought that the thread could use a bit more than a dozen people saying the organization is secretly awesome and has transformative potential not already demonstrated.
Folks who have been part of the same imperialist forces that dropped Rainbow Pesticides all over SEA & forbid troops from referring to Vietnamese people as human beings don’t benefit from being told that they are special sparkling stars. Their place in a working class movement needs to be strictly clarified.
I did not get the impression people were putting PSL on a pedestal in this thread, but maybe it comes across that way just from the hope of the US having any notable organization that is not shit on imperialism/AES/colonization. I guess the way I see it, the consequences of the Red Scare and the downfall of the Black Panther Party put the bar pretty low for not being shit.
Oh there are some people in this thread who even take the SRA quite seriously. Don’t worry about that right now though!
I need to emphasize if the PSL changes its form of organizing that it will lose a large part of its fundraising network and collaborations. Internally, maintaining these ties is justified as “coalition building” when it is in fact limiting tailism. (You can be a tailist strategically and run your own candidates sporadically, see progressives/US greens.)