It’s finally happened. r/communism is formally a Gonzaloite cesspool. This happened after a few months of openly displaying the Shining Path hammer & sickle as the sub’s logo.
I’ve had conversations with one of their mods before, years ago. They’ve always been Gonzaloites.
They seem to be rather peculiar for Gonzaloites in that they really like Sakai. Most Gonzalo people I’ve met dislike Sakai, sometimes even considering him a revisionist.
must be american gonzaloites then
Why the change to make it more explicit now then? Any ideas?
I doubt there’s any real plan involved. Probably just mood. Got fed up one time too many with people’s disagreements with the mod team so now it’s official party line of the sub instead of their internal beliefs.
If any communist doesnt just call themself a communist unless asked to be more specific they should be met with deep distrust.
I’m at a point where I don’t even think communists need to be more specific unless they are actively a member of an organization that follows a particular strategy deliberately aligned with whatever tendency. As in, unless a person is physically performing leftist action in the real world I don’t see major distinctions between disparate groups of people in the west based on vague affinity for certain political philosophies.
Like what even is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist if it’s a person whose primary affiliation with like minded people is a discord channel or a sub reddit? Is it just a posting style or something you can announce affiliation with all willy nilly. Like I’m reminded of the libertarians who have all these goofy subgroups like ancaps, argorists, minarchists, etc and yet these groups have no consequence outside of forum arguments.
I’m not excluding myself in this by the way. I haven’t done proper work in a few years, and even when I did I floated through both Marxist and anarchist groups so the specific ideological label thing never sat right with me. I’m just communist. Theory is fun to talk about and argue over but like we’re all in the same boat here
This is exactly my attitude as well. We’re light-years away from a scenario where even ML vs. anarchist might truly matter for anything beyond a choice of day-to-day tactics (and I think there’s room for different orgs pursuing different tactics), much less ML vs. MLM. I’ll work with anyone pursuing the destruction of global capitalism and its replacement with anything that isn’t even worse. In my experience, these sectarian differences matter very little to most people doing direct action in the real world. Organizations that are super preoccupied with ideological purity and never working with people who have a different “flavor” of communism are rarely doing much that’s important anyway.
Trots lmao
Trorts catching strays by omission lol
In my experience, these sectarian differences matter very little to most people doing direct action in the real world.
100% in an org I used to be a part of we had anarchists, MLs, an MLMs working together and would always joke about sectarianism and who was going to band together to beat up one of the other tendency aligned members. Nobody fucking cares what you call yourself if you are doing the work.
I’ll work with anyone pursuing the destruction of global capitalism and its replacement with anything that isn’t even worse
Yeah unless you are part of a party or an active movement that is doing praxis right now I dont see the point in calling myself a posadist-with neo-swiss characteristics or something like that.
A deep distrust? Literally why? What’s so sinister about someone calling themselves a Marxist? I think it’s understandable in a world where words like “socialist” have been corrupted to mean liking Sweden and Bernie Sanders. If we’re talking about someone saying they support the shining path or some other esoteric stuff, yeah it might be cause for concern, but that concern I think should be a lot more to do with the boiling babies than simply with someone being specific about their political perspective/analysis. In fact I think being specific about one’s analysis being guided by Marxist theory is very valuable in a political landscape where the actual nature of communist theory and politics is so misunderstood.
To quote Lenin “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism”.
People who call themselves Marxists instead of just communists are generally Ultras and book worshippers. Someone calling themself a Maoist instead of just a communist is usually just domeone with dreams of living on a compound. I’m not gonna refer to myself as a Marxist Lenninist in order to be specific when I have no reason to, I’ll just say I’m a communist cause people understand that better.
Exactly, it can often be a sign of someone less concerned with communication and more concerned with letting everyone else know how special and big-brained they are.
I have found through experience that when talking to someone you dont know well Irl, having called myself these things before you get different reactions: anarchists, you are dismissed. Socialists, you are treated as a radlib. Communist, you end out with a real conversation. Going hyper specific type of communist makes you seem too involved in your bullshit to talk to. Even when I was an anarchist I referred to myself as a communist to non leftists cause it got the best engagement and chance to educate. A lot of non online people, especially older folk wanna hear you out when you say you believe in what they’ve been taught to fear and you’re here being the biggest sweetheart you can be. I’m trying to be a good representative
Exactly! You say you are a communist, most people in the west are shocked, as their image of a communist is some kind of nebulous villainous red army soldier, ready to appropriate their TV and their toothbrush for the revolution. So when you are just a regular person who is a communist and are willing to discuss communist ideas with someone, they are often quite willing to listen.
When you present yourself as a “Marxist” to the average person, they may not quite know what that means, and it implies that you are trying to distance yourself from being called a “communist”, like you are hiding something and being shifty about your true intentions, which ultras often make worse when they gleefully quote mine some obscure Marxist thinker to “dunk” on some random person who was just trying to learn about them.
The first conversation they come away with a better understanding of communism and might find themselves agreeing with the ideas talked about, even if they were “communism is still bad though” in the moment. In the second conversation they learn nothing except that the person they were talking to is a smug asshole who thinks they are smarter than everyone else, and that has something to do with communism, so it only makes their knee-jerk reaction of “communism bad” even stronger.
Damn the PPW finally actually conquered something.
Protracted posting war
Pig Poop Walls
damn that got a chuckle out of me
Everything turns to shit on Reddit, leftist subs included
Im sure the rule will again be changed to “no non-MLM-Gonzalo thought- adherents” since afaik many gonzaloites also hate other kinds of maoists
Damn…thought I’d finally found a home for MLM (Prachanda Path) people like me
Hey! Don’t you mean Contributions of Universal Validity of Chairman Gonzalo? Gonzalo Thought is only for Peru!
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?
DIE, HERETIC! *douses in boiling water*
I took far too long on this edit but I thought you all would enjoy.
Lmao funny seeing Gonzalo having a cult following with weird gringo leftists
“petty bourgeoise radicals only”
The “communist” subs on Reddit have been moderated by sectarian losers for years. There are some good posts by casual participants, so there is some utility to those spaces, but it’s entirely hamstrung by those in charge
I think I’ve only seen one Gonzalo stan on Hexbear, and it was someone from one of those smaller ideologically murky forums who was being shit on for being an anticommunist. It’s such a weird Trotskyite kind of dynamic.
DOXXBOIL THAT BABYboil em mash em stick em in a stew
Maybe not the time to bring it up, but what’s the actual source for the baby boiling? I’ve never looked into it deeply tbh, but assume there’s probably some good evidence, which is why is accepted fact in most leftist circles and not just considered another intel agency atrocity propaganda fabrication
iirc it’s a conflation of incidents where they killed babies and where they burned adults with whatever fluid
If you had sources for either incident I’d appreciate it
Here is a Maoist source discussing these incidents.
Most of the replies are illiterately stumbling over exactly the topic in question and it’s a little distressing how people can’t parse a sentence, even if the phrasing on Black Like Mao’s part is silly.
Oh wow, you weren’t kidding.
That’s genuinely really bleak.
Oh hey it’s BRG blog lol. I love that guy.
Thank you
I typed out this exact same comment and scrolled before posting lmao
what’s the deal with gonzalo
killing babies and throwing boiling [something] at people
ok but why do these weirdos support it, what’s the angle
it’s edgy
Because it means revolution in the imperial core is impossible so they don’t need to do anything
Very few people support it, it’s not a reasonable ideology. The angle is that corporate and government can’t have a agreeable ideology on r/communism
IMHO, the same reason Hoxhaists exist. Both of them were very hard on the anti-revisionism train, which makes it a very inciting ideology for someone who want to call themselves a communist but be vehemently against any successful communist project.
NO HOMERS
r/kkkcommunism
Wtf r/communism used to be a relaxed non-sectarian space with good posting
That was a long as time ago before the literal CIA took over administering reddit and banned r/cth. It’s been shit for years.
Does anyone even know why someone would unironically stan Gonzalo?
Led a revolution that at one point seemed like it would succeed near the time of the height of the “end of history”. It didn’t succeed, AFAIK in large part because of various issues with the Shining Path as a group (and Gonzalo as a leader), but I think that’s why (at least partly) some people do like Gonzalo.
if you read anything from the shining path you immediately realize that they’re a freakish cult
Yeah, not a great look, it’s kind of weird to stan people like that.
To clarify, I’m not expressing an opinion on the Shining Path here. I’m only describing how (I think) some people come to support them/Gonzalo. @puppygirlpets@hexbear.net
Oh lol not a dig at you, comrade.
It has to do with his fanatical anti-revisionism (or what he considered “anti-revisionism”) and massive ego. He did nothing to discourage the personality cult.
There’s a gonzaloite “New Communist Party of Canada” that formed last year but idk why they like gonzalo
Funny enough Zack De La Rocha of RATM supports shining path, shining path now disavows Gonzalo. Communism gets real messy in the 80s and here we are.
