yes its very inspiring to people in europe as well. LFI, melanchons party in france, is thinking of a similar strategy of using presidential power to create room for bigger mobilizations and dual power.

the party im is is pretty classically marxist-leninist, but we advocate for learning from all movements. and in the french 2027 presidential elections it has been a big topic of conversation.

I’d follow comrade cowbee in the revolution. For the record.

You don’t even have a firm position you are arguing. You simultaneously argue that the revolution is strong, continuous, undefeated and this is only a momentary retreat - while also arguing that Venezuela cannot win a war or resist and has to give in. Those are contradictions. You are the one with the incoherent positions.

A socialist project that “must” give in to American demands and control of their economy is not “strong” or “undefeated” and ownership is not “momentary”. It is an accelerating feedback loop that has destroyed almost every socialist project in history.

This goes to show you are just an instigator.

Oh fuck off, I have never “instigated” shit. I lurked on the newsmega, speaking up a few times only to defend comrades with sensible analysis getting bullied for having an opinion different than yours, people being hounded for having the audacity to say that the leadership running Venezuela now may be making terrible mistakes. And after that, I fucking left. I barely read it now even though it used to be an enjoyable part of my daily routine. I’m sure you’ll celebrate that though, because that’s your intent, to drive out any dissent so that you can have an echo chamber where everyone falls in line with how you say things are, period. And yet you call me the instigator? Yeah, you can fuck right off.

Myself and plenty of others have very directly explained and discussed this topic for months, with no hostility.

Maybe so! But if you haven’t been dishing out hostility like you used to (which I doubt) it’s only because you were successful at driving out anyone who dared question your omniscience. I check in from time to time, see the same garbage being spewed, and go back to reading the news on the rest of HB or other ML news sources that aren’t infected with a panglossian clique. But there certainly was plenty of hostility from you. It’s why I spoke up months ago, as seen in my account history, and why I left. But again, I doubt that it’s true there has been no hostility, it’s possible, but I certainly don’t trust you to tell the truth, considering the falsehoods you’re saying even in the comment I’m responding to now.

Our points are ignored, as well as our questions of how firmly cemented opposing positions are justified, like smugly suggesting an entire movement of millions of people is “dead,” a term used over and over

I never said any such thing, and I’m suspicious about your claim that someone else did, but maybe so. I definite would not say it’s dead but I would say it is being threatened not just by the imperialist US but also by the capitulation of its leadership to the imperialists. But you can keep going and lying about what people are saying, it doesn’t actually help your position the way you think it does.

about these actual people who actually have to deal with what is going on, yet you have the audacity to call us smug for pushing back against people claiming chavistas are not actual revolutionaries.

You’re just going to make a long list of my supposed crimes and none of them are going to remotely resemble reality, aren’t you? It seems clear all you can do is lie when called out on your bullshit. It’s pathetic.

Why are you lot allowed to declare millions of people actively in an ongoing struggle as not revolutionary enough

First of all, unlike you, I am not a member of any “you lot,” I spoke up to try to curb what I saw as a nasty current in the newsmega that was ruining a community I enjoyed being a part of from the sidelines. Unlike you, I am not part of a group that is trying to police the kind of analysis that is allowed in the newsmega, I’m not the one dedicated to stamping out any analysis that dares to include the fact that even socialist states are not perfect and pristine and always know exactly the right thing to do in a hostile, complex, and ever-changing world. So I guess I am part of a group if being part of that group just means remembering what happened in the early 1990s and having concerns that something similar is within the realm of possibility. And see, that’s another part of it, I freely admit that I don’t know for sure what’s going to happen but I refuse to rule out negative possibilities like those of you who insist that all of this is absolutely for the best which is an undeniable fact that is beyond questioning and any questioning is actually doing an imperialism. Massive eye roll.

As for the ongoing struggle of millions of people, it is literally my uncritical support of them and a desire to act in solidarity with them as best I can that leads me to have fears regarding what their leadership is doing, which to me and other principled communists (some of whom are in this thread as well), it sure as hell looks a lot like betrayal.

but clutch pearls when we point out you are not only ignorant as fuck but also showing your complete lack of understanding of the very foundation of Marxist analysis?

And there it is, that’s your typical bullshit. There has been excellent analysis not from me, but from others who do not toe your line, those who come to mind are @InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net and @Leegh@hexbear.net. But in response to their analysis, your first reaction is to screech things like how they’re “ignorant as fuck” and unlike you aren’t real Marxists. You’re so full of shit with all your whining and fit throwing about the supposed “pearl clutching” of people who don’t think you actually know as much as you pretend to. “If you don’t agree with my analysis [which depends on knowing the minds of the post-Maduro Venezuelan leadership] then you completely lack understanding of the foundation of Marxism!” You say that to people who have been reading Marxist theory for more than two decades and applying it in the real world through organizational work, community building, and direct aid to families who need it, but your reasoning for telling any Marxist who disagrees with you that they’re not real Marxists like you are, always just comes down to you somehow knowing the inner machinations of Venezuelian leadership, and lying, as you have throughout your comments to me. When you do that, you’re trying to con us into accepting you’re telepathic, and calling it analysis - analysis that can’t be argued with. It’s not analysis when you’re being a petty tantrum-throwing crybaby because others dared to disagree with your magically unimpeachable conclusions. I’d say trying to reason with you is just as bad as trying to get through to a dyed in the wool liberal but it’s actually worse because you should know better.

You are really going to cast stones on an entire nation and then cry when you get called out?

More of your bullshit and lies. Making up absolutely absurd accusations to throw at your detractors. Yeah, I’m “casting stones on an entire nation.” Wut. It would be laughable if it weren’t so aggravating. I never “cast stones on an entire nation,” well… not Venezuela anyway, and neither did anyone else you’re trying to bury in your bullshit accusations. THINKING THAT WHAT IS HAPPENING, WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE THE KIDNAPPING OF THE HEAD OF STATE AND THE FOLLOWING CAPITULATION WITH THE US IS NOT IN THE BEST INTEREST OF VENEZUELA AS AN ANTI-IMPERIALIST COUNTRY is nothing at all like the lies you’re accusing me of. And for the record, I wasn’t even “called out,” I spoke up in defense of others that you and your clique were constantly shitting on.

It is you all who claim to know delcy is a comprador, despite there not being any validity to the claim. You are a hypocrite, plain and simple, assuming you know the inner motivations of a person you just heard about for the first time.

Ok, show me anywhere, anywhere where I claimed to know her inner motivations. You can’t, because I never did. I’m not the one whose understanding and “analysis” of the situation heavily relies on faith that Delcy and the current Venezuelan leadership can do no wrong and are masterful 5D chess players whose moves you alone can magically see for what they are. I never even called her a comprador, but I committed the evil crime of considering the possibility she might be, oh no! She may or may not be, I honestly don’t know, but I do know it really isn’t looking good. We’re half way through the looking like, walking like, and quacking like phase, so I am fine with saying that yes, I am worried that it might be a duck.

No, this is what we are pushing back against. It is you all who claim to know delcy is a comprador, despite there not being any validity to the claim. You are a hypocrite, plain and simple, assuming you know the inner motivations of a person you just heard about for the first time.

So you’re really just going to flat out do the “every accusation a confession” thing, I see. Bad look on a supposed principled communist. I speak for no one else, but personally I never once pretended to know what Delcy’s inner, private motivations are and it’s an absurd thing to say that I did. To the contrary, I openly admit I do not know what is going on in her head, if she is knowingly selling her country out, or if she genuinely thinks that she’s saving the movement. I go by her actions, which include unnecessarily praising the president of the country that kidnapped her president and murdered some of her comrades, opening up to western capital, and as the title of this OP states, talking about “transitioning fully to democracy.” My position is entirely based on what has actually happened and unlike yours, does not rely on pretending to know her mind. So no, the hypocrite is clearly you, who has to invent secret inner motivations to preserve your cope that all of this complicity and kowtowing to the US is somehow obviously done for the benefit of Venezuela.

You are obviously editorializing what that user said and honestly it is more insidious, using actual problems of HB culture pushing people out that have, to my knowledge, literally nothing to do with the topic of Venezuela. The majority of the users who have been pushed out of here were pushed away for unwavering solidarity with oppressed people

As a point of information, the example I gave was indeed unrelated to Venezuela but had to do with the criticism part of the critical support of China and going beyond the complete redwashing of their government even where it was historically deeply infected with if not captured by liberals. This I believe would fall into the opposite category of what you characterize as “unwavering solidarity for oppressed people”. I’m sure there are also cases like you describe as well, though.

an insistence that everything happening is obviously great and for the best

no one is saying that!! maybe try to actually listen

I am not the one making predictions! I am not claiming to know what is going on!

Don’t just spout ‘one true materialist’ memes at me. That is absolutely reductive and reactionary. You aren’t an ultra.

Look at what I have said on this topic elsewhere. This is a critical junction point for this government. We will have to see and wait for what happens. Not what is said, what actually happens. We cannot be proclaiming that the sky is falling and socialism is doomed because of a speech. Socialism is not made from public addresses.

It seems like the natural extension of existing problems in the community’s ability to assess geopolitics that it would decay into standpoint epistemology but for Gorbachev.

You’ve seen a vice president of a revolutionary project become president after the president was kidnapped by a foreign government? What did that person do ? What are the relevant details that are comparable to this one ?