It’s obviously based that he called Biden a war criminal, but I think the point was mostly that Waters got there pretty much exclusively through campism and that is not based, ask him if Putin is a war criminal and you’ll probably get a no even though he every clearly is given the past year. just to a much lesser degree. Obviously the West is much worse and would be better defeated and weakened by a multi polar world, but when that’s your politics is “critically supporting” capitalist states to take on other capitalist states your politics boils down to harm reduction first and maybe some marxism and socialism next, but probably just mostly just west bad. He also chooses Ukraine specifically bc of this, you wouldn’t hear him talking about Biden enabling Israel to genocide Palestinians as a reason he’s a war criminal, bc Putin is highly complicit in that as well and both governments have cordial relations with Israel. The same with Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen, something both states are complicit in supporting.

Good luck telling the Yemenis and the Palestinians that they’ll be saved by a multi polar world when both poles are against their existence and contribute to their genocide. This is where the west bad analysis is shallow , and, leads to people just siding with one less shitty government instead of actually just using marxism / socialism / materialism to come to a conclusion, and, maybe sometimes not cheer leading one side over another when both do not represent any good or your values whatsoever. Waters analysis also stops at campism, he does not advocate for any kind of socialist project and is just some rich guy who prefers Russian hegemony or multi polarity vs the lib who is just some rich guy who supports US hegemony and unipolarity, it’s not bad to like that people call out the US rightfully for being bad and the great satan of this world, but you can also expect more than just saying they’re bad with the exact same depth the lib puts into saying they’re good. And we’re communists not multipolarityists the world becomes a better place with more socialist projects, not just different factions / pecking order of hegemonic states.

You can obviously disregard all of what I’ve said and say west bad is a sound philosophy if you believe China is a socialist state that will take the reigns of hegemon and usher the world into an era of world socialism, and the more the west is weak the more strong China is and the faster they’ll press the socialism button or something like that, but, I personally would not place all my eggs in a non interventionist state that has been flip flopping from the socialist and capitalists roads all the time. That is basically the ML (aes) justification that some people have where anti americanism and critical support can just replace critical thinking, where any state is anti imperialist if it does something that’s anti west even if it meets all of Lenin’s and others definitions of imperialism as long as it reduces US unipolarity and all the other details are mostly irrelevant.

Ultimately I don’t think you need to take a side in interimperialist wars, and, that it’s pointless and even harmful to treat west vs Russia China bloc as a spectator sport, instead of just focusing on the working class of the world, the working class of both Russia and Ukraine being much better off without this war not to mention the 100,000s of dead both Russia and the West with Ukraine being complicit in starting / prolonging the war, and, it’s good to denounce imperialism and atrocities and not just constantly engage in some harm reduction where you just get a free ticket into good/bad sides analysis vs actually evaluating individual events and using your theory and critical thinking to make up your mind about it yourself.

did you watch the video from start to finish yes or no ?

fuck any radlib, optic-baiting, red scaremongering post-berniecrat loser who thinks anything Waters said was remotely out of line

this is the reason there was a struggle session

It’s sectarian, I don’t go and put bayarea415 or Daniel Dumbrill videos in the dunk tunk bc I don’t like/agree with them, I respect other people being able to have their own opinions, not like let’s shit on this take that other people may well think is reasonable

like legitimately you made a post dunking on a socialist / communist perspective you disagree with that is not what the dunk tank is for

They basically espouse Andrew Yang level let’s not move right or left let’s move forward, but for “communism” . It’s almost comical to go out and claim revisionism is bad, but anti revisionism is also bad, and for that matter anarchism is bad, trotskyism is bad, ML is bad, maoism is bad, left comm is bad, when you say every tendency is bad, there is clearly no room for thought other than your enlightened centrism within Marxism that is pure and untainted by identifying with a coherent set of beliefs. I think most of it just boils down to people don’t like the USSR they remember gulags first so we shouldn’t talk about it and then goes and lists how every ML head of state was bad and totalitarian and it’s dumb to bother with any of them bc ppl don’t like them.

I know this 1dime guy is a friend of 2nd thought, I think this guy would be the first guest that would cause a backlash appearing on the deprogram, his critiques of MLs are really shallow and a bit :LIB: even, they are also doing the thing where they are basically saying every left wing ideology is flawed besides their brand of just the Marx hold the rest “pure, unadulterated” Marxism which they never elaborate on and constantly punching left. Really weird vibes, listened to another episode of theirs, I don’t get the appeal at all, really reminds me Jacobin, I’ve honed my craft to be able to be the most annoying person you ever met in a Brooklyn book store :brainworms: .

you don’t see too many people who claim to be just Marxist communists, I guess :pika-pickaxe: or :bordiga-despair: , I think the tradition is highly concentrated in grad school / read too much theory / holier than though / new left / Jacobin types … some of the points are interesting, but a lot of it is just very navel gazey

the last time I listened to something Cosmonaut adjacent it made be go :jesse-wtf: too I think I need 13 more years of grad school to understand them

edit : I though they were defining Stalinism as Anti Revionism which is a definition that is in usage, but they defined it as a dictatorship of the secret police :agony-minion:

oh my god the podcast brings up Cockshott as a reasonable ML :agony-minion: :agony-minion:

the guest identifies as a “republican marxist” :agony-minion: :agony-minion: :agony-minion:

Grover Furr is just Stalinist :zenz: complete crank

He should get a Netflix special, he sounds just as funny as Dave Chapelle