I agree with the point but it is quite fatalist to merely state a fact and to not try and do anything about it. In Britain, I feel that it is the duty of communists to call out groups like the CPGB-ML (and the “Workers’ Party” as someone pointed out in another thread, which is career-opportunist George Galloway’s project) for their grotesque opportunistic support of crypto-fascist movements. Online and offline.
I was speaking specifically about Midwestern Marx who I have seen praised on here in another thread, albeit a couple of years ago, but I was speaking specifically about them - didn’t know they were patsoc until I looked them up on prolewiki. All I have seen of them is their shorts with the wee wrestler guy and these were mostly on Palestine. I don’t even know who “Beau of the Fifth Column” is.
Most of what we are talking about doesn’t seem to have had much interest outside of the USA until recently, due to certain opportunistic moves by some disgraceful “ML parties”.
I use Telegram to speak to one of my best friends who moved to Russia before the “special military operation” as we cannot communicate via most other mainstream (western) platforms and I know refugees who use it to communicate with relatives and so on in other parts of the world which I wont mention, so I would say that some good does/can come from it if it is used for certain purposes.
It is also good for getting on the ground news from Palestine and other places (Yemen, Syria, Iraq, statements from the PFLP, Kurdish groups, Irish Republican news and non-Marxist-Leninist groups involved in active resistance in the ME such as Hezbollah and certain Shia brigades who are fighting/assisting Palestine). But for the most part it is a political cess pit, at least in terms of western representation as well as reactionary/openly fascist elements in western and eastern Europe who make use of it although I have never looked at those channels and wouldn’t. Aside from the ones I have mentioned, the only ones I have looked at are nominally “communist” and most of them support “MAGA communism” and seem to be run by the CPGB-ML.
With no adequate party and with a fragmented, impotent left in the real world where I am but especially in the USA which dominates the digital landscape, it is hard to find spaces online to speak with genuine comrades and have decent, helpful, respectful discussions etc.
edit: Although to be fair I cannot speak to the parties in the USA. In the UK the “ML” parties are a joke/run by spooks and Trots are generally more visible, have higher numbers and this has especially been the case since the Comintern splits over revisionism, also due in large part to their entryist tactics in relation to the Labour Party in the last century. Now the left is fragmented but class consciousness has developed over the years and this is why I asked this question, due to the prospect of naive, new potential comrades falling for the traps set by these reactionaries masquerading as communists, rendering them impotent at best and at worst, at the service of emerging fascism. They might come across the CPGB-ML and join without understanding what’s going on and what they are really about, because they have “communist” and “ML” in their name - I started out as a Trot due to being fledgling when it came to theory - and it is our duty as communists to warn prospective comrades about what groups really stand for, again, hence this thread.
With all due respect, your replies haven’t been useful and I don’t think you’ve really read much of what I’ve said, or have at least only seen/understood it through a narrow USA-formed lens. “MAGA communism” only appeared to me in a “serious” way the day before I made an account here. Before that it was described on Twitter as a terminally online cult with no real world support and didn’t seem to be taken seriously - not everyone is aware of the nuances and intricacies of the online US-left, especially outside of the USA… Seeing “MAGA communism” suddenly being promoted in Britain by the CPGB-ML was a shock and is worrying for reasons I’ve mentioned, hence why I came here to ask.
Maybe this should’ve gone into a different community where it could be discussed properly.
I just closed this thread to look at another one in which someone (from outside of the USA such as myself) was praising Midwestern Marx, particularly when it comes to putting out communist propaganda. They have given credence to “MAGA communism” now. Would you say that anybody who spent time listening to them as being “wide open to cryptofash”?
But yes, you are certainly right about the state of the left in the USA and I am saying this from the outside. It is terrible here - at least severely fragmented with no serious ML party - but “MAGA communism” was not something we had heard of until recently, being taken seriously by the party I have mentioned.
Thanks. I didn’t know much about it at all either until I saw it being taken seriously as some kind of legitimate proletarian movement in spaces nominally run by “Marxist-Leninists”. This is what led me to ask about its real world implications.
I don’t think that’s fair at all. As I said, I only recently started to use Telegram and only encountered “MAGA communism” in the last week or so in a channel called something like: “The Marx, Engels and Lenin Institute” which was riddled with people defending “MAGA communism” all of a sudden because there was some circle-jerk discussion coming up, in which the party I mentioned (nominally “Marxist-Leninist” but believed to be run by spooks) were having their leader speak at. The group I believe is run by the same party and, being new to that platform in general, all I did was join groups which came up after searches for “communism” or “Marxism”. I had only heard about “MAGA communism” on Twitter a while back before I left that platform, asked what it was and it was pretty much brushed off as a small online sect of lunatic crypto-fascists. But seeing it being given credence by a party which claims to be “ML” in the country that I live in and which runs what is supposedly a Marxist study channel, I went to prolewiki, saw the definition and joined Lemmygrad to be around people who saw it for what it was and to ask the question I did, which was whether this “movement” could go offline and have influence in actual politics. As I also said, this was the first instance of any MLs I know of in Britain even discussing the movement, which is of course a movement in the USA.
What you said is unfair - as soon as I noticed it and called it out, which led to one or two people defending me and then three or four making an effort to try and defend “MAGA communism”, using distorted interpretations of Lenin’s work to try and justify their defence. I left the group after sharing the definition from ProleWiki and wrote a comment condemning it and warning comrades about what “MAGA communism” really was in other groups/channels, started a channel and was then invited to join a channel which openly condemns it but which is run by a Hoxhaist which presents its own issues, but at least openly condemns this “movement”. On weekends, I turn my smartphone off unless there is an upcoming event (a branch meeting, a Palestine solidarity event or whatever) but I came here to discuss the real world implications of a movement that I wasn’t aware was being taken seriously and was barely known of in Britain until that party started to give credence to it (they also banned me from the various channels they run after I left the comment condemning the movement).
I can’t think of an equivalent movement here in Britain/the British isles unless we include non-leftist movements such as the neoliberal, right wing “Labour” Party which has long abandoned any pretence of socialism, as I said in my post.
Making such an assumption as you did is not right and is especially unhelpful given that patsocs are clearly putting a lot of effort into invading spaces that are at least nominally Marxist/Marxist-Leninist and especially when a so-called “Marxist-Leninist” party actually jumps on the bandwagon.
This is about educating and warning people, not dismissing them because they have only just encountered such an obviously crypto-fascist movement. Frankly it was shocking and disappointing and I condemned them and all of the people entertaining them as soon as I figured out what was going on.
I suppose the question is: is the threat of patsoc, particularly the “MAGA communism” development a significant threat beyond the terminally online proponents. I’ll add that to the beginning of the post.
THIS kind of republican.
26+6=1 tiocfaidh ár lá
(I am more an INLA/IRSP man myself, the ML wing of the Irish Republican struggle. There is no denying the powerful impact of this picture however).
There is a problem and it is the job of communists to call out parties that support this shit and to offer them places to get properly educated. I only recently discovered prolewiki for example but if someone asked me about “MAGA communism”, I’d possibly suggest that they read the prolewiki page and then we can discuss it.
Again, I don’t think that that’s a fair statement. It is the reactionary “ML” parties who are jumping on this patsoc bullshit in an opportunist fashion. I’ve been active for around 12 years and have never thought revolution was around the corner. That said, education, agitation and organisation never end, do they?
There are two things I always remember from Lenin when discussing or contemplating fatalism: 1) is the quote ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.’ and 2) his letter to (I think his mother but I might be wrong) in which he speaks in fatalist terms, as in that feeling we all have, like banging our heads against the walls.
I see this “MAGA communism” phenomenon as part of the never-ending fight against fascism and the material conditions in the USA as well as here in Britain (and all of Europe generally speaking) are ripe for fascism. We are seeing it in Britain and this is another manifestation of it. When the EDL come out, or the BNP back when I started, we would be out too ready to fight them, physically.
Fatalism is bordering on counterrevolutionary and being eager to call out fascism does not mean that you expect the proletariat to suddenly rise up under the banner of any given nation’s “communist party”. We have at least three “Marxist-Leninist” parties here, mostly run by spooks and several Trotskyist parties, as well as some ultraleft groups such as ancoms. I am under no illusion about the state of proletarian consciousness (or the lack thereof) but this doesn’t negate the need to organise. And the question of consciousness is in large part what leads me to see “MAGA communism” as a threat: it has money behind it, the algorithm favours it and it is having an influence on impressionable people. Are we meant to merely let that slide because the left is a joke?
If we can mobilise for Palestine solidarity marches almost every week in most major towns and cities, we can propagate against patsoc movements and call out the parties which support them.