When a Cuban defects to the U.S., that's treated as proof of the oppressive nature of the Cuban government

The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of hexbear.net, or a fellow traveler?"

One point I haven't seen yet is how high-profile strikes like this get media attention, and how people we'd like to bring around to communism perceive that and communists' reactions to it.

We want labor actions to be popular. We want to be positively associated with labor action, and known as the ones who will go to the mat for workers. We don't want to be libs who may cheer at first but quickly hem and haw and undermine.

If one doesn't know high school-level history well enough that "this guy fought against Russia in WWII" doesn't set off a million alarm bells, they have no business being in government.

If their defense is "I was told to clap like a seal, I did, and it turns out I was applauding a Nazi," same thing.

Reddit sucks, but we also have to resist the impulse to write the masses off and retreat into our own groups. While material conditions are a huge driver of peoples' politics, propaganda works, conversations can change minds, and ultimately we have to bring a lot more people around to socialism before we realize any of the changes we hope to see.

Your pipeline left needs to start where people are, and where people are is shitty corporate social media.

Tells their users to follow the rules = it's a ruse, they're trolls

Tells their users to troll = see, they're trolls!

Says nothing = they aren't even trying to stop their users from trolling

This is what we call an unfalsifiable orthodoxy.

But what if they get into a bitter disagreement over Weimar-era German politics, despite both being well to the left of most people around them and both agreeing on a wide swath of immediate issues?

Yep, the man himself

Republicans would switch to supporting the war overnight if they were suddenly running it. It wouldn't even be hard -- one Trump tweet along the lines of "now that I'm in charge we'll do this right" and the rank and file would fall in line.

A bigger worry across partisan lines in the new poll is that the war will continue without a resolution for a long time. Nearly 8 in 10 are worried about that, including 82% of Democrats, 75% of independents and 73% of Republicans.

The best anti-war line to take is "this stalemate will go on indefinitely, either it ends in a ceasefire and negotiated peace now or after countless more people die." Most Americans already agree with the first half, and the last half follows logically. It also brings out the neolib psychos who talk about the ROI of marching Ukrainians into artillery fire.

Obviously you can oppose the war (especially the NATO role in it) for a hundred reasons, but we already have an in with this one.

Pick one:

• Freedom of speech for fascists, freedom for businesses to exploit workers, freedom for reactionaries to flout the law
• Freedom from homelessness, freedom from hunger, freedom from crushing medical bills

This is great; shows how transparent all these "balkanize State Department enemies" maps are.

There should not be much debate about the fact that online interactions change minds. Tons of people in leftist spaces (including many in this thread) will point to a subreddit, YouTuber, podcast, etc. that was a key part of their radicalization. You see the same thing on the right -- how many people got sucked into open fascism through online rabbit holes? And of course theories on how media can reinforce capitalist hegemony have been prominent in leftist thinking for at least the past ~40 years.

There should absolutely be more effort applied to identifying:

1. Groups who can be brought to our side with a reasonable amount of effort
2. Where those groups can be found online
3. What is persuasive to those groups
4. How to best get persuasive content in front of them

Fascists have been consciously doing this online dating back to at least the mid-00s. We can either abandon ground to them and NYT libs or provide an alternative.

This post is dedicated to the brave fighters of the Mujahideen

A kinder version of a company town is still a company town, in the same way high-paying wage labor is still wage labor.

This is not Google being charitable and caring about housing prices in the surrounding area. These are the people most able to work remotely; Google is bringing them back to their expensive office to justify its existence and saying "this time I'll be your landlord, too."

Can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to have a DM conversation with a person who thinks they're worse than a flat earther

Sir this is a shitpost

It's good as a heuristic because 90% of the time it's correct. Same thing as saying "if the U.S. is supporting it as part of its foreign policy, it's likely bad."

You still have to educate yourself and think, but this is a useful starting point and tiebreaker.