/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

lame ai spiel

Another houditrvke

>Houdini has never seen Chapo

Somehow i believe this

21st century anarchists turned zines into peak reddit shit

>>2331434
Idk man, I'm just tired after work and don't want to do anything

>>2331699

Low-key, a lot of zines are kind of whack. I think there's an oversaturation of zines that are specifically about like identity politics issues and it's not that I have anything necessarily against those issues but I go to look for zines to add to the site and I could create a whole section of just trans issues and zines for that. That's not a bad thing but we need more content.

We need more variety, we need more hardline class-based politics and rhetoric. There is a real need for pamphlets and zines that have a stronger ideological current, that are more focused on education, that are more focused on getting information into the hands of the people who need it, and unfortunately, the only people who are putting these zines out are a lot of times anarchists who aren't ideologically educated. They're not people who are processing Marxist theory and are trying to apply that to the current material conditions, which is why you have to take an anarcho-communist approach. But that's neither here nor there.

People do read these and they do engage with them and they are handed out at physical locations and shows and shit. There's nothing stopping fucking communists from making the same exact sort of content and aesthetic and vibe as the anarchists but with a factual theory involved with actual information and that would do a lot to help radicalize the underground because there are already people talking about imperialism at these shows. There are already people talking about the issues at these shows that just don't have the ideological education to make heads or tails of what the next actions and steps should be to get organized against that that they're already against.

>>2331969
And it's not necessarily even political zines, too. We need zines that appeal to people who aren't being targeted by the people who are publishing the zines, right? I want, I wish I had more money, because if I had money, then I would commission zines.

What about a JDM series of zines, where each zine is an eight-panel single-page zine, and we're selling them for $2 each, but it's breaking down like a classic piece of JDM car history, like, yeah, this zine is dedicated to the 3000GT twin-turbo VR4. That's the type of person who's not getting hit by that type of content thats normally associated with zines. But the format works for that type of content very well. So, it's not necessarily just political zines that we need. We also need zines that appeal to wider audiences that target more specific niches.

If we could get those zines made under the same banner as the zines that are pushing the political content, then we're, that's a huge W, because we're able to onboard people. You grab the Houdini zine that's all about JDM cars, and the next thing you know, you're reading about imperialism on the website or in the magazine or in another pamphlet. Fundamentally, that is the entire logic of operating a culture magazine. There are car meetups. I've been to fucking takeovers. I've been to the fucking places where they're, you know, doing the donuts and shit, and people are getting really rowdy. And those are absolutely places where you can radicalize people, or at least reach people to a degree, where you can just hand somebody a zine and get them onboarded into the culture, into the platform. That's the goal of Houdini Magazine, fundamentally.

This goes for all types of sub-interests. And that's why having multiple writers and submissions and people who are willing to tap in and build up the brand helps, because there's a lot of shit that I'm not necessarily into or educated on that people would be interested in, that we could use to onboard them.

This is also why a lot of people who are hardcore communists, who have already gotten the message, who already understand the theory, who are probably even more politically educated than me, will look at me suggesting this and go, you're a grifter, or you're not making any sense. Because they don't need the entryism, they've already gotten the message. They don't need to be onloaded. They've already received the message so they can hang up the phone. I'm calling people trying to give the message to those who haven't gotten it yet.

>>2331991
How much do you think commissioning those culture type of zines would cost? I could chip in

>>2331969
>the only people who are putting these zines out are a lot of times anarchists who aren't ideologically educated. They're not people who are processing Marxist theory and are trying to apply that to the current material conditions
No shit, are you suggesting they should be? The prevalence of Marxist thought is the exact reason the modern left is as incapacitated as you complain about.
>which is why you have to take an anarcho-communist approach.
???? what do you think an "anarcho-communist approach" is? What do you think anarcho-communism is?
>There's nothing stopping fucking communists from making the same exact sort of content and aesthetic and vibe as the anarchists but with a factual theory involved with actual information
Casual anti-anarchism.
>radicalize the underground
Why not radicalize the labor movement, or normieproles in general, why is "the underground" probably filled with lifestylists your main priority?
>there are already people talking about imperialism at these shows.
I think it would be a better sign if people were talking about wage-slavery, imperialism is a completely irrelevant topic to our struggle and more indicative of an anti-western social-democrat than a committed revolutionary socialist.

>>2332085

I think when it comes to budgeting out the cost of producing the zines, the thing to remember is that we want to do a series. I'm very big on series. We know we operate in a capitalist society, and we know that intellectual property is effectively currency in this game. So you've got to look at it from both the business angle and from the activist angle. This shit has to be able to pay for itself at a certain point. That said, let's say we wanted to do a six-piece, and we wanted to drop a six-piece zine series on JDM. Well, you're going to have to find someone who's able to research that shit, who's interested in the topic to write it up. And the thing with zines is they're not real heavy on the text. It's more of a vibe thing. You have to actually be into the thing you're making the zine about in order for it to come across correctly. I would probably pay someone, what, $20 per? So that's $100. If we want to do a six-piece, it's $120. Five-piece, $100. So let's do it. Let's keep it clean. We'll do five zines on JDM. It's five different cars. That's the first series, $100. Then the question is, you're trying to sell those for, what, $2 to $3 each. Are they going to sell? It can be hard to put a price on this type of thing because we're looking at it as a business, we're treating it like a business because we have to treat it like a business because we live in a capitalist system, and at the end of the day, I have to pay rent. But we don't only have to pay rent. You have to pay the person who's making the objects that has to get paid, and there has to be enough money left over to pay someone again after making your profit to make another set. So you have to operate like a business, but in reality, we're doing this with a political bent in order to get people to funnel them into what will eventually become a political party but is for now a culture magazine.

So you do a six pack, eight-panel, one-page zine. It's real dense with information, though. And then you can turn that into six times eight. That's a 48 novella. That's a 60 booklet that can be republished as an omnibus with additional materials, and that's another physical product.

That's why I think people kind of look at me like I'm a grifter, but in reality, when we have no upstart income, no capital to work with, you have to be moving with that mindset. Otherwise, we are simply never going to be able to create something that's sustainable. I can't rely on one-off donations from rich leftists.

>>2331969
> I could create a whole section of just trans issues and zines for that

Good call breh because when I hear of a new / old socialist group I check their website and when I see trans, trotsky, or immigration on their front page the tab is instantly closed, never to return

>>2332223
How are you going to radicalize the working class in an economy where 25% of the working class is effectively unemployed and 37% of the working class is participating in the gig economy, which means they don't have access to a traditional employment structure? 37% of the working class is involved in Uber Eats, DoorDash, driving for Uber, driving for Lyft. They have apps now where you go from store to store to stock the shelves. They don't even hire grocery shelf stockers anymore. It's all through an app, through a gig economy. But where do all of these people come and hang out at, at the show, on the weekend? When the workers are gathered at other locations, you should go to where the workers are.

Furthermore, shouldn't you want to get the lifestylists on your team? Those are the people who have already made it their life to be participating in these radical movements. Yeah, some of the lifestylists are a bit fucking disconnected, and some of them are a bit weird, but a lot of them have resources. A lot of them have the education and the knowledge that we need, so it seems to me like you don't have a better solution and are simply suggesting I don't do what I'm doing, which isn't a fucking point. You act like I haven't investigated and broken down the dialectic on this. I have.

The problem with the majority of Marxists is that they operate under a dogmatic belief system. They're not taking the theory that they espouse and read and actually trying to apply it to the terrain in a practical, pragmatic way.

The left, like, severely lacks ruthless, pragmatic thinking. In fact, the majority of people who call themselves Marxists would never work with me because they don't think that I'm pure enough. And that's their loss because power isn't built from purity. Political purity without power is just masturbation, and I'm not interested in gooning.

I really struggle to understand why the leadership tactics espoused by Lenin in relation to forming a vanguard party do not have direct applicability to you and your 10-person affinity group. Because of what? Because we just decided that the labels just can't intermingle? That's what anarcho-communism is. It's about taking all this theory and not using it as dogma but using it as tactical information to navigate the terrain because the terrain we are navigating is different than the terrain that was navigated prior when the theory was fucking written.

You have these punk artists who are on stage speaking to 40 to 50 people at a time about anti-imperialism, about genocide, about colonialism, but they don't have the political theory. And they're distributing zines that are very vibes-based and lacking the political education that they need to actually mobilize the people, but they are still giving those talks. Find me another fucking spot where you have 50 members of the working class getting talked about, getting told about imperialism just about every weekend. Find me another spot like that, and then I'll think about why my idea is a bad idea and why whatever you're suggesting is worth considering. At the end of the day, there's a reason why the British Counter-Terrorist Unit arrested one of the members of kneecap is because they are using their shows as a vehicle to push radical politics. And if every fucking band who has that vibe did that, we would see a huge shift. And I think everyone knows this, but no one is willing to put in the work to actually do that. But I am.

>>2332517
Well see now, this makes me want to make that section on the website specifically to turn fucking losers like you off.

Just gotta take a moment to express my gratitude again to anyone who as supported this project and anyone who continues to believe in the vision. It's about the community, the message, and the people. It's bigger than me, and I'm just very blessed to be the one to help get this off the ground. Thanks again.

I don't know if it was someone here who sent the donation I just got in, but I really, really appreciate that, that it doesn't go unnoticed, and I'm so grateful for anyone who sends me anything, even if it's just a word of support.

>>2332534
>Those are the people who have already made it their life to be participating in these radical movements.
You fundamentally misunderstand the term "lifestylist", lifestylists are not professional revolutionaries who dedicate their lives to the movement, they are those who treat the movement as a personal identity or aesthetic for their own individualistic fulfillment, totally disconnected from the labor movement and collective action. They are worse than useless, they are punks who drag down the entire reputation of Anarchism with their edginess.
>it seems to me like you don't have a better solution and are simply suggesting I don't do what I'm doing
Sorry but "the underground" was just a bad place to emphasize recruitment, there are a thousand better places where workers congregate that would be better to recruit normies. It is especially bad to emphasize it in relation to the workplace, which matters infinitely more than you make it out to be, the unionization of the proletariat under revolutionary unions is the first step to revolution, to building a real revolutionary base.
>That's what anarcho-communism is.
Anarcho-communism is pragmatically applying Marxist theory? You are very misinformed about what anarcho-communism is if you think that. Anarcho-communism stands in total opposition to Marxism, just as any other anarchist ideology, both in theory and practice.
>It's about taking all this theory and not using it as dogma but using it as tactical information to navigate the terrain because the terrain we are navigating is different than the terrain that was navigated prior when the theory was fucking written.
The terrain we find ourselves in, the terrain of the American socio-political atmosphere, cannot be navigated by Marxist theory, tactics, or perspective, it never has, thats why Marxists have always failed at building anything substantial in this country and have always been rejected by the American proletariat. Its probably a good omen for your project that most Marxists reject it, they've always rejected what actually works. Whats pragmatic is what actually worked and still can work (Syndicalism)
>Find me another fucking spot where you have 50 members of the working class getting talked about, getting told about imperialism just about every weekend.
Getting large groups of the working class, entire workplaces, together to talk about the evils of the bourgeoisie is a basic function of the union, in a rudimentary sense for many unions, but also in a broader revolutionary socialist sense in revolutionary unions like the IWW, which I am a part of, and where I do see stuff like that. These unions are, as well, a lot more connected to the class struggle, purely proletarian interests, than any punk concert ever will be.

>>2332734
Meanwhile these mythical unions have special exeptions to assure the continue to deliver the bombs that are blowing up kids.

>>2332771
There will always be workers that will work in unsavory industries, you cannot seriously blame the proletariat for this state of affairs, who only wish to feed their families, and so it is better that the proletariat that work in armament manufacturing are unionized so that when the revolution comes these crucial industries are socialized for our interests, instead of remaining under the control of the bourgeoisie.

Don't worry I'm doing my part by posting online about it sometimes.

>>2332734
You haven't provided a solution to organizing within the framework of the current material conditions, which is 37% of the working class is in the gig economy, which means, I mean, how do you unionize DoorDash? If you're doing DoorDash, Uber Eats, Favor, Postmates all at the same time, and you never are communicating with another worker, you have no actual boss, how do you unionize that? I understand there are efforts to unionize people in the gig economy, but fundamentally, those are the hardest people to reach, but they're the precariat, so they're the most important people to be reaching because they're already in a position where the radical politics will reach them.

They're already in a position where the material conditions that we live in are affecting them. But again, you can't reach them through traditional union drives, and that's not even getting into the fact that 25% of the working class is effectively unemployed or working part-time jobs that you work 10 hours at one, 10 hours at another, and you're barely getting by. So you have these people who are simply never going to be reached by these traditional unions. It's not 1917 anymore. We can't operate as if it is. The material terrain has shifted. So how do you reach those people? I'm not saying that the unions don't have their place. I'm not saying they don't provide a valuable thing. The work that's been done to unionize Starbucks, for example, that's fucking big work. That's a lot of shit. But we can't put all of our eggs in one basket.

We need to be taking a multifaceted approach. Where I'm sitting, from what I can contribute to this movement, reaching people at these shows, these events within this culture is what I can do. I don't have access to the dock workers union or a similar sort of union that would be important to radicalize. And if you do, you should be radicalizing that. I'm not going to disagree with you there. But again, you haven't provided a means to reach the people who aren't able to be reached by those organizations. So until you do, I'm going to continue to do what I'm doing.

Noam Chomsky said multiple times that often educated people are the ones who do the least, and in fact often destroy the world and perpetuate evil. Such as intellectuals.

Many lifestylists want to take action but nothing that takes too much effort or puts them at risk. Just sporadic actions that make them feel useful. There’s often a disconnection between the group/movement and their life. If the movement fails their life is unaffected. They still have economic security, so they don’t care of the result.

On my defense, I’m currently a graduate student in Japan so I can’t do anything. Once I go back to my country I plan on: 1. Open an anarchist library (first one in my country ever, I’m from Central America), and 2. Educate high school students to begin a movement and see what happens. I thought about getting involved with indigenous communities but this is more difficult and I don’t want to end up like Che Guevara

>>2332890
>37% of the working class is in the gig economy
Roughly 37% of the working class does engage in some form of freelance, gig, or independent work, but only 10% of the working class engage in gig-platform work like DoorDash, Uber Eats, Favor, etc. as their primary arrangement. The vast majority (well over 90%) are still in traditional employment situations with an employer, and are entirely capable of unionizing. This of course doesn't mean we should not actively try to reach the precariats, but to emphasize them to the degree you do, and understate the need to organize typical proletarians, organize the workplace, is a huge misstep.
>So how do you reach those people?
And I agree, in terms of recruitment we must have a multifaceted approach, we must recruit online, at protests, in the street, at community gatherings, etc. which makes it all the more strange why you choose to emphasize music shows and radicalizing the underground specifically. Then again, if it is all you can confidently do, do so, I just don't think its correct to advise your audience to focus the same.
>But we can't put all of our eggs in one basket.
Then what basket are we putting our eggs in? Affinity groups? A party? The path to revolution is narrow, and even in terms of recruiting the precariat I think they should be funneled into revolutionary union-organizations alongside their more typical comrades, to instill a sense of class-solidarity lost with many. What do you propose as the base revolutionary organization? What is your revolutionary strategy, too broad an approach might as well be none.

>>2332896
That makes sense Noam Chomsky said that

>>2333183
I love the intelligentsia, dawg. Years from now, most "serious" academics will be performing some weird mental gymnastics on how Heidegger wasn't really a Nazi but as soon as old Chomsky keels over they'll be saying that he was a Pol Pot apologist (based) and have his work suffer as a result.

>>2332994
I think you bring up good points, and I will have to double back and check my statistics on the gig economy. I could be wrong. I think that even if we necessarily disagree on the exact topics and ways to approach doing what we need to do, we both know what needs to be done, which is going to the masses and agitating and educating and having hard conversations with people. I think that the way that people are going to go about doing this is going to be different based on their material conditions. I think it's going to be different based on their goals within the movement. We talk about what type of person are you trying to recruit into this. I'm not really trying to recruit anyone. I don't think taking this recruitment sort of rhetoric is really the appropriate way to look at it. I think we should be looking at it like how do we build infrastructure? How do we build infrastructure? Let's say you are really big in the unions. Where are you getting that information out? Let's say there's an action that's going to take place and it's kind of a spontaneous thing, or maybe you just need media support for your strike. Where are you getting that from? You're not going to get it from any of the mainstream news outlets. YouTube videos have their place, but ultimately are at the behest of both the algorithm and the platform that they're hosted on. In reality, we're looking at this with too individualist of a mindset because I've covered strikes on my platform. There were a group of people in Rochester, New York who were striking and they weren't getting any media coverage. Someone reached out to me and I covered them. I wrote about the struggle and I put out that there was going to be an action on Friday. The person who contacted me used my platform to spread that word. That's infrastructure. That is what we need to be building. It's a symbiotic thing. If you are really big on union drives, if you are really big on militant workers and pushing that syndicalist view, do it. If I'm really big on building out media infrastructure, and I'm really big on print publications, and I'm really big on going to the masses in a nonconventional way, well then I can reach those people about your unionization drives via my platform. If we take a symbiotic approach where each person is doing what they can within their means and supporting those who are doing other works in a way where it's like we're jumping off of each other, then we are actually working towards building power. So my approach really isn't about recruiting people. It's about building infrastructure so that we can educate and agitate among the masses better.

>>2331434
>in fact, the majority of the people on the left are people in the upper middle class, college-educated people who have resources, who have fucking time, money, and resources to

No most people on the left are college educated but poor which is why the modal leftist is the adjunct professor getting paid $17/hr or the stereotypical blue haired barista with a liberal arts degree.

They have education, but not resources, and even if they did even upper middle class people can't outgun billionaire techbro libertarian ghouls like the koch brothers, andresson, thiel, musk, etc.

>>2331434
>Fuck Chapotraphouse and fuck this grillpill shit
8 year old reference award
>beyond glad I've never seen a single episode of that slop.
you listen to podcasts not watch them
>You got podcasters living on 200k a year telling you to "just grill", must be nice to be able to grill.
It's even worse, they live on 200k/month, not /year

As your editor in chief I command you to remove this irrelevant diatribe

What is the take of Das Houdinisch on the glorious anti-zionist fight the Islamic Republic of Iran is conducting?

I will not post the shit I do in meatspace online (especially here) and I will not create a brand.
>Anyone could have edited that book, anyone could do what I do
I think you are overestimating other people and underestimating yourself, just hosting works online and printing them out is more than the vast majority of people are capable of without having it taught to them or days of focused practice.

>>2334008
You could tell I added that bit about Chapo after I fucking typed this message out, and I think if you were the editor, you're making a good call by removing it.

>>2334016
What you're seeing with Israel attacking Iran is you're seeing the death throes of an imperialist empire coming collapsing down. Alot of innocent people who are being hurt and my heart goes out to all the people in Iran who were caught at the crossfire, who are being attacked by the Zionist entity. That's my biggest concern. There are innocent civilians being killed now in how many countries in the Middle East by American imperialists? We shouldn't be making a distinction between Israel and America. No more than we should be making a distinction between America and one of its other bases. Is Ramstein Air Base in Germany a separate entity from the rest of the imperial core? It's not. The truth is that Israel serves as the beachhead for Manifest Destiny Part 2. They would love to do to Iran what they did to the natives of California. Don't ever forget that. They picked another group of brown people to genocide for resources. The Greater Israel Project and Manifest Destiny are the same thing, just replayed. That's why Israel feels so weird, because they feel like they're 100 years too late to the party. But I digress. Uncritical support to all of those Iranian missiles hitting Tel Aviv. This genocide has been happening since 2023. If you're still in Israel at this stage in the game, how can you not count them as enemy combatants? We should turn Tel Aviv into Dresden.

>>2334038
>We should turn Tel Aviv into Dresden.

Holy shit based

>>2334038
Holy shit. I like to annoy you and I was expecting a retarded left com-ish answer but you're actually spot on.
You are my comrade, Mr Houdini.

Houdini, would you ever do a Q&A thread?

>>2334061
He has to do a face reveal first. I need a massive portrait of the Leader of our Movement.

Tay-K will not join your party, Erik. Let it go.

Your post is inspiring. Been going through a nihilistic slump lately, and I appreciate that there are people out there who are working towards revolutionary goals despite such hardship. I'll use my position of privilege to do someting good from now on.

Also, please open a ko-fi account. Paypal doesn't accept donations from my country for some reason. I even told leftypol jannies to do it for their own one-time donations but they still haven't, I don't know why.

>>2332223
>Why not radicalize the labor movement, or normieproles in general, why is "the underground" probably filled with lifestylists your main priority
>imperialism is a completely irrelevant topic to our struggle

You have to go back, or at least put more effort into the bait

is there a biggest sign of a pseud than using the word "radicalizing"

>>2332517
Still doing anti-trans/gay and anti-immigrant rhetoric to appeal to the MAGA base and being wannabe Neo-Strasserists I see, how is that working out for you?

>>2332734
>Completely ignoring the main points and rebuttals and nit-picking out emphases and general phrases to: move goalposts, pontificate irrelevantly, and go on tangents

Classic fed tactics

>>2332785
>who only wish to feed their families
If they are in unions, they are more than capable and arguably obligated to joint strike for a just/progressive cause, at least on that front. Billions on billions of dollars in aid and labor for a country we pay their healthcare, school, and genocide machine for is definitely a relevant action for existing unions to do something about and you're acting like these people are drafted to set up these bombs and ammo neat up on their trucks/boats/trains to deliver them on their beautiful journey to Lebensraum pt2

>>2334858
>>2335022
You could just say you disagree instead of these baseless accusations.
>>2335049
Thats an apt criticism

When I think about people who call themselves an anarchist, especially IRL, I think about a guy I met who had never heard of a conquest of bread, who sent me a bunch of Agent Kochinski videos, and then went on to tell me he was an anarchist. It's pretty safe to say that the label of anarchist is almost a meaningless label at this point, and that's by design. They did that on purpose. They recuperated the label back into capitalism intentionally over the course of the 90s and 2000s, and even up to today. And then these are the people who are making the publications and making the anarchist zines, and it's very obvious that they lack political theory and they lack education in order to make the content that we actually need, which is why I'm saying if you're a Marxist, if you're a theory nerd Marxist, you should be making these zines. But instead, those are the people who would just call me a Trotskyist for thinking that publishing things is a good idea. That's why I just call myself a Houdinist, because I don't really have the energy to watch every argument devolve into sectarian bullshit.

>>2335664
>But instead, those are the people who would just call me a Trotskyist for thinking that publishing things is a good idea
why care, they're irrelevant. You will have more impact dropping some agitprop or simply your printed marxist blogpost (zine) in a public transport hub once than they will have bickering online for years.

I care because on a fundamental level, if you can spend your time shitposting on an image board and being a debate addict, then you could be making the type of content that we need to be pushing out in those agitprop spaces. That's why I get mad about it, because it's like the people who spend all of their time on these stupid sectarian arguments have the information and the education and the theory to do otherwise. Instead, they get stuck in the dogma. Finding people who are willing to contribute meaningful work is the challenge. You would think that going to the left, to people who are already active on the left, and whether it's on Leftypol, whether it's on Reddit, whatever, and finding those people and recruiting them to your organization would give you access to that information, would give you access to the people to put in the work. But more often than not, the opposite is true. If you even know who Trotsky was, you're like ahead of 99% of the working class in terms of the level of political education you have. And instead of understanding that and utilizing that, they become elitists or worship inaction and apathy as revolutionary.

I'm probably going to have to fucking join the DSA, and I'm not happy about that. There's an FRSO group here, and there's the DSA. My goal long-term is to try to get an actual socialist on the city council. I think it can be done here, but it's going to require a whole lot more work, and it's going to require me to realy step the fuck up and try to push for power in ways that I've never done before. There's going to be a time where I'm not going to have the time to sit down and make the zines, make the information. That's when you need a party structure, and we're working on getting to that point, but you can't just start a political party without the mandate of the masses. To me, I really dislike all these political parties that go, "oh, we're the Vanguard Party, we're the ACP, we're the American Communist Party, and it's me and my five fucking sausage-fest friends, and we made that shit up, and now you're going to join us?" That's not how this is supposed to work. It's supposed to be that you get the mandate from the masses so that you being a leader amongst the people or you contributing your infrastructure amongst the masses is the most logical conclusion. If the people aren't asking you to lead because of the work that you've done prior, then you have no right to lead. You have no right to start a Vanguard Party.

>>2334038
>Is Ramstein Air Base in Germany a separate entity from the rest of the imperial core? It's not.
WE'RE ALL LIVING IN AMERIKKKA
COCA COLA, SOMETIMES WAR

>>2335664
>>2335781
You should really stop calling yourself an "anarcho-communist" if you are going to be this blatantly anti-anarchist and social-democratic. All your talents are wasted pushing Marxism.

>>2334038
> This genocide has been happening since 2023.
1948
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

>>2335808
Marxism is the left, syndakiddie. Go back to HOI4 with that fake shit.

>>2335808
I'I'm of the belief system that the absolute best way for people to start organizations and organizing in their own communities is to follow the Food Not Bombs model of mutual aid while also pointing out the contradictions of capital.

A lot of fucking mutual aid organizations are just charity, they miss the point of the contradictions wherein the Food Not Bombs, they're getting all the homeless people and everybody who's down bad in the community together at the local park to feed them. Now you got fucking 2,000 people at the local park trying to get food because the state isn't providing that necessary nutrition. Then the police come and arrest everybody and beat the fuck out of the homeless people. And what does that do? That makes the state look a lot worse while making our organizations look a lot bad. That can be replicated basically anywhere.

I think when it comes to actual tactics and organizational or otherwise, whether that's direct action via the form of blockades, horizontal organizing, mutual aid, doing the labor, making the zines, I really do believe that the anarchists have that shit on lock.

All of the most well-known and prolific Marxist-Leninists of the 21st century in America are YouTubers. I have a hard time believing that making YouTube videos is equivalent to putting yourself at risk of a RICO charge while protesting Stop Cop City. In reality, they're both important things, and the competition between the two is counterproductive. We should be working together.

And you might dislike my other perspectives on things, but I really do feel like the anarcho-communist label is appropriate for my own belief system, if we're not going to call it what it is, which is Houdinism, because I'm special and I get to make up my own goddamn belief system and tell you your sectarian.

The cool thing about anarchism is people can just make up whatever the fuck they want to a degree. I don't know if you've ever tried to just skim the anarchist library, but you can find shit that contradicts itself real quick. It's the nature of this belief system. So you might disagree with me, but I still think that the label applies.

>>2335875
>I really do believe that the anarchists have that shit on lock.
And you'd like to funnel all that competent revolutionary energy into parliamentarianism, getting a "socialist" on a city council?
>the competition between the two is counterproductive.
Counterproductive to what? You anti-sectarians never seem to grasp the simple concept that Marxism and Anarchism are incompatible in actual goals. "irreconcilable adversaries… in all forms and on all possible occasions" is the phrase Bakunin used, over 150 years ago.
>if we're not going to call it what it is
Social-democracy with a radical aesthetic?
>The cool thing about anarchism is people can just make up whatever the fuck they want to a degree.
Fuck off. No. You clearly know nothing about Anarchism. Proudhon laid down the bases of Anarchism, which was then developed by Bakunin, and then further developed after that into Syndicalism. Nowhere along this line was anything "made up" except by Proudhon. It is, in the words of Bakunin, "Proudhonism, greatly developed and taken to its ultimate conclusion"
>you can find shit that contradicts itself real quick.
Yes because the Anarchist Library lets anyone who self-identifies as an Anarchist on the site, whether they be egoists or lifestylists or worse. That isn't the nature of the belief system, it is the nature of people being retarded and uneducated about the correct Anarchist line as laid out by Proudhon, Bakunin, Sorel.

>>2335970
>Anarchy is order
Lowkey fascist shit

>>2335970
Yes, I believe that having a socialist on the city council in the city that we are organizing in is a logical and robust thing to add to our strategy. You're not suggesting anything. You're just telling me to not do what I'm doing. Again, the suggestion of inaction is not advice. More people need to understand that suggesting inaction is effectively demoralization. If you're suggesting inaction, you're an ally of the capitalist.

Nothing you have suggested is actionable advice. Nothing you have told me means anything. It's hot air. Do you feel better for typing what you've typed? Do you feel better for referencing the theory that you've read? Do you feel like a man now? Like, I don't understand. You are so wrapped up in dogma, in purity politics, that you don't understand that the goal is to get political power so that we can build a revolutionary movement in the United States. The goal is to get political power so we can build a revolutionary movement. The goal isn't to argue with stupid fucking faggots on the internet.

Are you going to make a zine? Can you make a pamphlet that explains your viewpoints and we can put that out? Can you do any fucking thing besides positioning yourself as the most pure motherfucker like we're in church? Like, I don't give a fuck if you're free of sin, big dog. I don't care.
You have no arguments against my tactics. You have no arguments against my belief system. You have no arguments against how I'm operating. You have no arguments against how I'm viewing the terrain and how I'm trying to move pragmatically with the resources I have in order to make things happen. But you do have criticism of the labels I'm using. It's literally in the COINTELPRO handbook to argue about semantics and labels to distract from actual discussion.

This sectarian label, myself so I can have a personality and fit in with the right group of people shit, is like the most powerful tool they have to divide the left. You don't give a fuck about winning, you give a fuck about being right on a fucking internet forum. I don't give a fuck if I'm wrong, I give a fuck about winning. That's the difference between you and me.

I might be wrong, my whole tactical outlook could be wrong. I might have the whole fuckin' misunderstanding of everything. But you know what I'mma go do? I'mma go do things, and then I'mma learn from doing.

>>2336037
I also find it interesting that people automatically jump to the conclusion that supporting electoralism is the end of the line. "Oh, yeah, brother, their goal is to get a person on the city council in the city, and then that's just – that's the end of it."

Like, no, I'm not going to tell you on a public-facing internet fucking forum that my actual name is attached to what the long-term plans are. Have you ever heard of compartmentalization? Have you ever heard of a read-between-the-fucking-lines? I can't imagine why it would be smart to have somebody who already exists within the current regime's electoral system, especially on a hyper-local level, if the goal is to organize on a hyper-local level. Would it not be beneficial to any party organ or organization to have someon who is operating within the regime's system that can then go to bat for the people who are fighting the regime outside of it? It's not like I'm saying we're going to run someone for president. We're going to waste a bunch of money like with the PSL.

The revolutionary uses every terrain, formal and informal, to advance dual power, heighten contradictions, and build legitimacy among the people. We're going to do hyper-local organizing in addition to the internet shit that I already do. And if that's not good enough for you, man, I don't know what to tell you because there's only so much I can do as one individual. And instead of criticizing me, how about you pick up a shovel and start digging too?

>>2336037
>You're not suggesting anything.
Have you listened to anything I've said thus far? I'm suggesting Syndicalism, the ideology of action, the only inaction I advocate for is the parliamentary action, the anti-revolutionary action, the action that inherently inculcates incapacity.
>Nothing you have suggested is actionable advice
Unionization isn't actionable advice? You yourself admitted that the Anarchists are, more than any other group, offering competent revolutionary action, and what i am advising is that same Anarchist program you praise, taken to its ultimate conclusion, without participation in bourgeois politics as a cornerstone.
>The goal is to get political power so we can build a revolutionary movement.
What you are describing is an impossibility. A revolutionary movement cannot be built while engaging in parliamentarianism, the revolutionary character of the movement will be extinguished immediately. Political separatism exists not only as something imposed by the very structure of bourgeois society, but exists as the only practicable, pragmatic, and moral way to bring about a more just society. This course of action will bear no fruit and the resources you put into it would be better spent building autonomous workers power.
>You have no arguments against my tactics. You have no arguments against my belief system. You have no arguments against how I'm operating.
You are operating in a Marxist manner with a parliamentary strategy, read Sorel so you can see how retarded that is.
>It's literally in the COINTELPRO handbook to argue about semantics and labels to distract from actual discussion.
I wasn't arguing semantics, I was informing you you are severely uneducated about what Anarchism is, as a concept.
>I don't give a fuck if I'm wrong, I give a fuck about winning.
I don't give a fuck about "winning", I give a fuck about taking practicable steps towards the liberation of the proletariat, I don't care about "winning" an election that will do nothing for the working class, that will do nothing to take us closer to revolution. You should give a fuck whether a central tenant of your revolutionary program is actually anti-revolutionary or not.
>But you know what I'mma go do? I'mma go do things
Why are creating this false dichotomy of me being some inactionist who has suggested nothing, I have suggested very concrete actionable advise, I have agreed with you in a ton of your efforts in this thread, I have told you what I am doing personally in real life to further the revolutionary movement, stop putting yourself on a pedestal as the one true actionist.
>>2336043
>Would it not be beneficial to any party organ or organization to have someon who is operating within the regime's system that can then go to bat for the people who are fighting the regime outside of it?
NO! It wouldn't! At all! Please read Reflections on Violence, if you draw anything from this discussion, please read RoV.

sorel anon is based

look who came crawling back.

Mommy daddy please stop fighting

>>2336171
he's a fascist pig

Real anarchism is when the trade union elects to continue to move weapons for the imperialist.

>>2336203
you didnt let me finish
sorel anon is based on hitler

>>2336209
oh well

https://erikhoudini.com/#post?id=779833&title=the-forced-birth-regime-has-succeeded-in-necro-incubation
It is truly impossible to articulate the levels of horrific evil exhibited by the regime. What kind of "pro-life" ideology justifies necrotic gestation? It’s hard to put words to the evil, to the body horror, to something more despicable than anything depicted in a Cronenberg film—whether The Fly, Scanners, or anything else. What the state has done to this woman is in the same league as Josef Mengel's experiments.

These people operate under the belief that they are morally correct—that the horrors they inflict upon women are just, justified by their religion, their financial interests, their innate sadism, or whatever else. This woman was left on life support after brain death. She has been dead for nearly three months. She was not allowed to die. The state deemed her death incompatible with their sadism, their policies, their morals, their profit margins.

Adriana Smith was left to rot in a bed, her skin sloughing off as bedsores grew. Modern medical devices were attached—catheters, feeding tubes, blood-cleansing machines. The visuals of this send shivers down your spine. It is so utterly grotesque that I struggle to describe it, and I’ve written splatterpunk horror many times. I’ve written about death extensively, but this is something beyond. This is not normal death. This is necropolitical control.

The state mandated that she could not die because she was pregnant.

The baby was delivered today.

One pound and thirteen ounces.

1. Pound. 13. Ounces.

The baby has no mother. Born to elder, retired grandparents who are now drowning in medical debt. His entire existence is predicated on cruelty—on the sadism of the state, of the regime, of those who seek to dehumanize women and relegate them to a separate caste.

We must take a moment to consider what happens when a body is kept on life support for months. This was a dead person. This woman was dead, yet she was not allowed to properly die. Her body was used as an incubator against her will, against her family’s will, against her last testament—because the state demanded it.

>“I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child,” he said. “I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital is acting appropriately.” — Republican State Sen. Ed Setzler

Her body was left to rot. Her funeral will almost certainly not be open-casket. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine the funeral after this necrobirth? Can you imagine her condition after months of being a necro-incubator?
For those who support this: Do you have any idea what a body looks like after being forced to stay "alive" on a ventilator? Would you subject your loved one to this same nightmare just so a fetus might live—even without any quality of life?

By the time her family is granted the right to bury her, she will be unrecognizable.

To keep her heart beating, she was likely pumped full of medications. A ventilator forced air into her lungs. Liquid nutrition was fed through a tube. The fluids caused swelling, which made her skin leak and slough off. It became so fragile it practically melted away, hastening the spread of bedsores. Those sores festered, grew, and each carrying potential to infected. Multiple nurses, doctors and medical experts were required to keep her body in this state of incubation.

She required constant care—yet she was already a corpse. She was denied the right to rest. To decay. To return to the earth. To die as all of us will.

Can you imagine her parents burying their daughter after she was forced to rot in a bed for months? Can you imagine the debt they now bear because of the state’s sadism?

We wonder why Luigi Mangione allegedly did what he did.

No—we don’t wonder. We know. We understand. We empathize.

This incident goes beyond the routine cruelty of the system. It enters the territory of deep-seated, intentionally sadistic necropolitical control. This regime is not pro-life. It is anti-human. It worships control. It worships profit. it worships death. It demands necro-incubators. It demands children with no future born into suffering, into debt, into lifelong defects. It demands corpses be turned into factories.

>“Weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of death-worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjugated to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living-dead.” — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics

This is the kind of atrocity that convinces me the only path forward is revolution. There is no reforming this system. There is no reforming the people who enabled this. There is no fixing the sadism inherent in our institutions without destroying them entirely.

>“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches?” — Isaiah 10:1-3 (NIV)

The inhuman treatment of this woman—the use of her corpse as an incubator, the absence of ethics from those who claim divine justification—should disillusion everyone with the regime, with the powers that be, with anyone who allowed this Clive Barker-esque horror to unfold.

Because the fact is: This woman is the first.

She will not be the last.

There will be dozens like her—forced to rot, forced into necro-incubation, their children born with lifelong defects, born to suffer, born to drown in medical debt. Debt that ultimately serves to enrich the richest. Make no mistake, one cannot ignore the class element here. One cannot ignore that her child, should he live, will almost certainly be destined to work a low wage job, destined for prison, destined for hyper exploitation. The medical costs of the state's necro cruelity will be bared by those who are the poorest. Make no mistake, the race of the woman in this cannot be ignored either. Black women have always faced worse outcomes from our medical instition. One can imagine that, if this was a white woman, the political outrage would be much more intense, one can imagine that, if Adriana was a white woman, she wouldn't have been misdiagnosed in the first place. Did you know black women are twice as likely to die during child birth in comparison to white women? This is medical apartheid. This is the intersection of class and race, and black women have always faced the harshest of this intersection.

Think about that. How can these people, in one breath, preach the sanctity of life while, in the next, create literal necro-incubators from human corpses?

This is unprecedented.

But it is now our new normal. This is the death world the capitalist seeks to create.

If you don’t want this to be our future, then we must organize. We must get angry. We must abandon the delusion that this horror can be reformed.
It cannot be reformed.

It must be destroyed.

The last true dirtbag leftist

>>2332534
>Political purity without power is just masturbation, and I'm not interested in gooning.

Nice one, could be a Mao Zedong quote

>>2335781
>"oh, we're the Vanguard Party, we're the ACP, we're the American Communist Party, and it's me and my five fucking sausage-fest friends, and we made that shit up, and now you're going to join us?" That's not how this is supposed to work. It's supposed to be that you get the mandate from the masses so that you being a leader amongst the people or you contributing your infrastructure amongst the masses is the most logical conclusion. If the people aren't asking you to lead because of the work that you've done prior, then you have no right to lead. You have no right to start a Vanguard Party.
Seems a bit idealist Erik, how do you know the masses' mandate has been established for whatever individual or group? At the end of the day a party will or must be established one way or another, metaphysical posturing about rights and mandates is not really a critique of other parties unless you have some practical qualifications that indicate what that "mandate" that you seek actually is on practice. How would it look, what would indicate that the mandate has been established? Etc.

People will establish parties, the parties that seize the revolutionary opportunities afforded to them will be deemed to have mandate, the rest will be swept into the dustbin of history

>>2337060
I think about it like this. Some friends of mine today were talking about how we should start an image board or a forum based around the brand. I shut this down because we are not big enough to do that. We need a critical mass of people to make a forum work. We have about 180 people in our Discord server, and I'm assuming that like 40 of those people are not active, so it really looks like we have 100 active users and lurkers. That is not enough for a forum. Leftypol gets like 3,000 posts from different IPs. That's enough for a forum. The same logic applies to a political party. You need a critical mass of people in order for your political party to have any legitimacy. Otherwise, I mean, anyone could start a political party. Me and you could say, hey, we're starting a political party right now. You want to join? You want to pay 35 bucks a month in dues to me?

If you can't get people to buy into a magazine, if you can't get people to buy into what you're saying in a polemic, if your rhetoric isn't getting support, then your party surely won't either.

Maybe it is idealist and metaphysical to talk about a mandate from the masses, but I go back to the forum example. If people in my audience are asking me, hey, why don't you start an old school internet forum, then that means I already have the mandate to do that. So when push comes to shove and people start asking either myself or people that we're affiliated with, why don't you have a political party? Why don't you take it to that level? Well, then I'll have the mandate. But until then, we're building media infrastructure and we're radicalizing the culture. Both of those things are wide net, and what that means is in order to build a magazine, a lot of the things you have to do are similar to building a political party. The infrastructure transfers over very well. If you can't find people to write for your magazine, how will you find people to write for your party newsletter?

>>2337095
Yeah but how are you so certain other people don't have that mandate you are describing? I'm taking the ACP because that's the example you used, but don't you think people were asking Infrared and them when/if they were going to establish a party? If they had not had such a push from their audience/associates then any attempt at a party would have been dead on arrival no?

Now I'm not saying that they're some super serious and active party, but they're still around, they survived the initial testing phase without disintegrating due to disinterest, that seems exactly like what you're describing in terms of the required mandate for exploring their political capacaties to the extent that they have allowances/public demand to do so

So it's a bit weird to bring them up as an example of exactly the opposite of that, a supposedly madateless group that was only constructed at the whims of a select group. Not saying per say that they aren't that, but they clearly had people other than themselves pushing for the establishment of the party

As a sidenote I see no point in starting a forum, it's not 2005 anymore, forums are basically dead

>>2337118
I think you bring up a good point—I mostly just like to take potshots at those people because I don't like them very much. I can see the argument that getting the mandate—like how do you quantify that?—you can't really. It's a vibe. I get what you're saying.

I think that's why you can't be online—when push comes to shove, political power can't grow directly from the internet. You can get resources from the internet, but you've got to be tapped into the local—and that's why we're really starting to push local politics heavy.

The problem is local shit is a different terrain than online shit. Sometimes on the internet, it can behoove you to say the most extreme thing possible—because that's going to get you attention, and attention on the internet is a resource. In real life, it's the opposite. You sometimes need to tone your opinions down in order to maintain power within the sphere of polite company. So, in my mind, the mandate needs to come from local people—in-person, IRL—and then if we have that internet aspect, we have that global reach too—that is another way we can get the mandate, but it's much less meaningful if it's not local. That's one of the reasons why I recently uprooted my life and moved to Florida. I really think that this city could have a socialist for a city council member—and I'm not saying that's the end-all be-all of what we're trying to do—but if we could make that happen, it would take a lot of political power building to make that happen, and all that infrastructure would be useful for other things later down the line. Or who knows—the way things are going now, it seems like we could have things pop off at any moment. But what would be the point of speaking about a political party if you have no local presence?

If we have a member of the city council who's a comrade, think about how much easier that's going to make the life of people who are trying to start the Food Not Bombs chapter. And think about what level of political power comes from knowing both the person who's on the city council and the people who are running the Food Not Bombs.

>>2338912
>>2337118
I mean, two years ago when I started the website, everyone told me the same thing. There's no point in starting a website or a magazine in 2023 because everyone's on social media. Just start an Instagram page. Now the website has half a million views and we're pulling 20,000 to 30,000 people a week. People are looking for non-social media spaces to congregate online, and I've seen now several forums have popped up in that old-school kind of way. So I think it's a viable concept, but we need more people, because even though we have 20,000 to 30,000 readers a week, how many of those people are actively going to engage with that forum community of those readers? Like 1% of them, and that's not enough people to make a forum work, at least yet. Plus, I like posting on image boards more than I like forums, so that's why I post here a lot.

I just found this forum for example: https://freakscene.us/

>>2335781
>you have no right to lead. You have no right to start a Vanguard Party.
Erik Houdini will restart the American Workers Party inshallah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Workers_Party

>>2337003
>The last true dirtbag leftist
"Neoliberals would rather have sex with a corpse than a living working class person, because someone who is alive and can complain to them about their NAFTA trade deals causing mass unemployment" - Amber Frost's book 'Dirtbag'

the post today was really hard to stomach, that was the goal I suppose. no one else would have talked about it like that "necroincubation"

You know what, I'm just gonna keep it a buck. Y'all are my audience, and if I can't be honest with you guys, then who can I be honest with, right?

The reason I am pushing so hard on these paperbacks, and the reason I'm trying to get this off the ground, is partially because I am in a very, very, very precarious situation.

Let me break it down. I moved to Florida. When I moved to Florida, I had $1,200 to my name. I'm currently sitting at about $650.

You know what's eating my money? Staying at this Motel 6. It's $200 for three days. I had originally got this Motel 6 as a stopgap. I had booked an Airbnb for the day I arrived, but she never responded to me. The Airbnb for a room was $750 a month. She just never responded. She finally responded—and then just never responded again.

That was the cheapest Airbnb in Lakeland, Florida. She has eight different rooms listed. Half of the listings in the city are literally this one woman, and she won't respond.

I got a donation in. What did that donation go to? It went to securing a place to live.

I'm getting the feeling that this paperback push might be ill-timed because I simply am not stable and am not able to sleep, because I'm just up thinking about my current situation.

I don't really know what to do. I'm sorry if this causes any confusion, and I'm sorry I can't power through like I want to. I might need to temporarily put the paperback push on hold. Not because I don't believe in it - GOD knows I want this more than anything, its been the plan since before the move - but because I literally can't create when I'm in pure survival mode. Can't focus on building the future when you're not sure where you're sleeping next week.
.
The only reason I was able to move to Lakeland is because we got a sizable donation in from a private backer. I appreciate that, but I can't live off of one-off donations, as we all know.

I'm just really not sure what I'm supposed to do, and if anyone has any advice, I would be all ears. If anyone has anything that can assist me in solving this problem, that would be great.

I found an Airbnb for $750 for 15 days. It's much better than a motel rate. It has a kitchenette. But again, I'm now short on the funds I need to book this room because I am being forced to stay in a motel that costs me $200 for three days. Do the math.

This is causing a lot of issues for me, and I really, really need advice and support. I don't really know who else to ask but my audience.

>>2338912
>I think you bring up a good point—I mostly just like to take potshots at those people because I don't like them very much
I mean they are pretty easy to make fun of lmao. Im a bit partial to them personally, because I think a lot of their ideas are quite interesting and the American/western left has been so unbelievably ineffective and still anticommunist to be quite honest, in the last few decades, that I think some unorthodox approaches are warrented. But we'll see if it amounts to anything, I never take them too seriously lol.

>Online/offline
It's hard to say, it's a whole new world on the internet. The attention economy, the endless downpour of slop content, it's a constant struggle to be noticed. The whole physical structure and function of the internet seems to be completely divorced from political organization, in depth political analysis or nuance doesn't actually cut it on TikTok, it's not what it's for.

However, people do live perma online lives in the real world. They are constantly connected to their socials and it would be a mistake to dismiss the value of that in terms of political agitation, propaganda, etc. It's just that these things are not like setting up a Pravda, they are completely dependent on these massive global tech megacorps and are only allowed to exist on the platform of the tech giants if it is not so subversive that it no longer generates them money. Idk, it's just a very new world to navigate and there's not really any guidebooks for it so we're all figuring it out as we go along.

Local organizing is of course massively important, but it needs to be integrated into a larger revolutionary organizational structure. Preferably one that extends to the national or global level. Again, the internet can be a tool for this integration and perpetual feedback of various orgs/groups to communicate and organize together, tho I have not seen it used for much more than social media channels so far. Not saying those are bad per say, but it could/should go further maybe. Or maybe it cannot go further as that would defeat the purpose megacorps have for even allowing these channels in the first place.

Use all tools available, exploit the system against itself as much as possible. That said, it's important to not fall into the slacktivist content generator trap y'know, staying active locally in the flesh world should prevent that

>>2338922
>Forum
I did not mean to discourage, obviously if you feel like a forum is possible, useful and desired I would say go for it.

>>2339686
Dude, take care of the money situation first. Make sure you have enough to a least cover your basic safety and shelter. Would you expect a homeless man to go through all the process of published a book or a political polemic? And that they would have success in doing that? If you can't focus on your work/projects because you're under constant threat, that is not going to lend itself to productivity or quality and your work is definitely going to suffer from it. Not saying give up or whatever, but self made projects can wait for serious needs of life stuff

>>2339737
At the very least, the ACP provides a nice jobber. We haven't had a good jobber in the scene in a while. Will they turn heel? It remains to be seen. Perhaps they've always been a heel.

You know, I think the key to where we're at in terms of the internet is, like, they're this super new. Honestly, the internet is super new. If you're in your 20s, you're part of the first generation of people who have lived in a totally post-internet world. Like, I grew up having access to the internet. People older than me had a period where they were like—it was like going from black and white to color TV, you know? If you'd never experienced what black and white TV was like, it's hard to relate to that. If you grew up in color TV, I would imagine, you know?

So the internet is very new, and then we have the social media internet, which is very new, and the post-social media internet is very new, and the post-post-social media internet is basically happening as we speak. That's the present. I think that social media is a tool to reach people to a degree, but there are people who have mastered the algorithm. There are people who have mastered promoting things on Instagram. I have friends who do that, like Nullify. I can have them promote our brand. There's no need for me to have my own Instagram and to be doing that. Ergo, social media kind of feels a little bit corporatized, right? Especially in a post-Palestinian genocide—or a genocide that's currently happening—where people want to get information, and the platforms that be won't allow that information to be put out.

People are starting to look foralternatives, and I think that's why my magazine has had any level of success. I knew that I couldn't compete with YouTubers. I knew that I couldn't compete with Second Thought, because you know how much money probably goes just into his production budget? A lot. And you know how many leftist YouTubers there already are? A lot.

And here's the thing: yes, they make a lot of money. Yeah, they're doing well for themselves. But I don't really care about the money. I care about the money to a degree where I want to be stable. I want to be housed. But I don't care about being rich. I don't want a bunch of material possessions. In fact, I want less of them. I want to live a very minimalist lifestyle. I'm on that Jesus shit. I just need a backpack with some clothes, a laptop, and a place to sleep and my dog. And I'm good. And I think wanting anything more than that is just not my bag.

But the thing is, with those YouTubers, they are going to engage in a form of self-censorship. No one on YouTube could cover the Adriana Smith case with the graphic, grotesque detail, from the angle that I did. I just did, because we are operating our own platform, because we are operating our own network of people, because we have no advertisers to worry about. No worrying about the algorithm. "Oh, well, you know, that's not going to do well with the algorithm, and then I'm not going to make enough money from my video to fund the next one." I don't have to worry about that. I just put it out. Fucking whatever I believe, I'm putting it out.

The downside is that we don't have that infrastructure to fund this. Like, I don't have ad revenue coming in from YouTube every month from all of my legacy content. I would love it if those people would pitch in to, like, help me. I've actually spoken to the Means TV people to see if they had any type of leads or anything that I could do to help them. And we had a long conversation, it was enlightening. But I think that they are not in a revolutionary sort of mindset, at least not in the way I am, where I believe that we can make real change happen this decade. They don't.

When you tell me that you're happy you're going to put your kid through college with your streaming platform's profits, while also your kid is like a baby—well, that tells me that your long-term plans are getting embedded with the system. And you know, I'm not putting that against them. A lot of those guys do good work. I watch the majority of those people to some degree. I am banned from fucking—you got Nick's Discord server still. He banned me personally, as a matter of fact, because I called him out for talking too much about YouTube drama.

Point is, I'm not hating on those people, but I'm operating in a different space. We don't have that cash. We don't have that cash flow. But I think it's important—I think it's really important—to have ways to reach people that aren't tied to social media. Because ultimately, the people who have the social media, who have the most followers, who have, you know, mastered the game of the algorithm, aren't necessarily the people who are the most revolutionary or have the best ideas.

Just because you have created a thousand different accounts under different names—whether it's Answer or PSL or fucking whatever—and boosted yourself a bunch of times, and now you can control the narrative at the campus fucking encampments because your party's there with the megaphone, you got the social media reach, and all the actual activists who actually organized the thing can't get out to anybody because they're shadowbanned—and that really happened, I've written about it.

But then, not so long ago—okay, it was last month—in Rochester, New York, there were university workers who were striking. They planned a direct action. They were going to disrupt the graduation ceremony because, fuck yeah. And the guy came to me and reached out to me and said, “Hey, can you put this on your platform so that way I can use your platform to send this to all the people who are striking?” And I posted the fucking details of that direct action. And that, to me, is the goal. That's really what this is all about.

Houdini magazine has a specific vibe and editorial feel, but we can talk about anything in a culture magazine, the infrastructure behind that is the real important part. So we're in a post-post-social media era. And Houdini Magazine is operating in a blue ocean. We have no competitors. The only website I would think would be competing with me would be Jacobin, and they have a lot of financial structure, backing, and they're also old style media. They're not post-print.

I think we're a post-print magazine. We don't do monthly print issues and never intended to. I can get into that, and I'm not going to get into it here. They also are ivory tower. You're not getting published in Jacobin, you know, if you're having an urgent issue and you're not well-connected, well-off, college-educated PMC-class individual. That's just the facts of it.

I've sent article after article. I've watched these articles get 20,000, 30,000 views and visits. We just hit fucking half a million visitors, with almost half of those being in the last six months since I started doing this full-time. And yet, I still can't get published by any of these legacy media outlets. And maybe though—yeah, I should fucking reach out to Rolling Stone or something that's not specifically leftist, because they might be more open to working with someone who's not a college-educated millennial. Or a token minority. Because, you know, they do be doing that shit too, huh?

The internet—like you said—the internet provides a global reach. I have people who read me in the UK. I have, actually, a really sizable UK audience. And I'm thinking to myself, as a revolutionary, we know that we have to do internationalism. The imperial core extends beyond the concept of traditional borders, but the internet doesn't know borders. Especially in a post-Great Firewall era where I can communicate with actual Chinese comrades on Red Note. And I have. It's powerful.

Now if we want to get into the money thing—man, you want to get into the money thing? Here's the rub with the money thing. I was working at Whataburger. I worked at Whataburger for about three weeks. I made less than $300 working for three weeks. In order to stay alive, you need about $300 a week in this country in order to keep your rent. Ergo, working at Whataburger would end up homeless. Like, it wouldn't have helped me. It would've just given me something to do for four to six hours, three days a week.

And the way that they schedule you is they just call you: “Hey, can you come in?” So you can't go get a job somewhere else, because the other job is doing that shit too. And I had this whole thing where I was like, "okay, well I have a magazine and I'm working at Whataburger to get by. I'm going to turn it into content. I'm going to make it a Patreon exclusive series." You know, I'm on that grine set, bro. But ultimately, it just didn't work out. And then I ended up moving to Florida where I know a lot of folks. So I ended up having to quit that job. There's no Whataburger in Florida. That's a Texas thing.

But the money thing is: this pays my life. I do not make enough money to do it full time, and I'm stuck in a constant state of precariousness. But I would also be stuck in that same constant state of precariousness if I was working a regular wage labor job, but without the contributions I believe deep down I'm making to the movement. Nearly a quarter million new visits in the last 6 months. I started doing it full time 6 months ago.

January 2025, I got fired from a help desk position. I've done sysadmin and help desk work for seven, eight years now. Answering phones, you know, 70+ phone calls a day, dealing with customer issues all fucking day. Account management, email issues, MFA bullshit. Making $17 to $19 an hour. I cannot find a job like that to save my fucking life. I cannot find a job like that. I don't know what the fuck happened to the economy. I cannot find a job like that.

And I was reading, Klarna replaced all their customer service people with AI. And I'm like, that's probably why. It's probably why. Something in myself—I need to be doing this full time. If this is actually—like, but that's the thing. I feel like I'm a grifter. I feel like I'm a grifter, dude. Like, I don't feel like I'm actually contributing anything valuable to the movement. I don't feel like I'm contributing anything valuable to really anything. I feel like I'm a fucking e-begger. I feel like I'm begging for people to send me money on the internet. I feel like I'm a fucking grifter.

Even though I believe everything that I'm telling you, even though I believe everything that I've ever published—you know, if I said that shit, I believed that. I meant that shit. I might have been wrong about it, but I meant it. I have principles I operate on. I've written about them. I have an honor code. I'm not a grifter. I'm not trying to take advantage of anybody.

But I feel like that, because I don't have a physical, tangible object to give you. I don't have a physical product to give you. I got some print-on-demand t-shirts if you want to wear the Houdini logo. That's it. Commidity fetishism? Perhaps.

So I'm thinking to myself, if I don't want to be a grifter, another e-begger—if I want to have people who actually contribute money to me and believe in me—I have to have a physical, tangible object to give to them. To show them proof of my labor. I really, really believe that I could get a publishing wing started and going. I do believe in this paperback shit. And everyone I've spoken to has shown interest. And I totally believe I could get the funding for it. I believe our Kickstarter could be a success. The next Robert E Howard will be published by Houdini.

But I can't make that shit happen if I don't even have a place to mail out the books from, right?

But I feel like a grifter. I feel like, you know, even though I run this magazine, even though it took me literally 12 hours to write that Adriana Smith article—literally sat down and wrote that shit, took me all day—even though actual labor goes into this magazine, I feel like a grifter.

When people call me a grifter, I feel that shit. Like, it really does upset me. It bothers the shit out of me. Because I'm not trying to take advantage of anyone. I don't want a lot of material possessions. I don't want a bunch of shit. I'm not trying to finesse you into helping me buy a Ferrari or some stupid shit. I want stability. I want a place to live. Dog food for the dog. And a community. And the ability to contribute to something bigger than myself. And I believe that the revolutionary movement is that thing. But I still feel like a grifter.

So it is. This voice message is 15 minutes long and I'm posting it. I don't give a fuck.

>>2339783
Bit of a ramble Erik lmao, hard to respond to.

I agree with your assessment of the internet and the post post social media landscape. I think you're doing a good thing using your website/magazine as the core of the online presence. It allows for a different sort of creativity that an Insta or TikTok account just does not allow for. That does not mean it should be ignored or not considered. If you had more time/people working on this you could put someone who knows what they're doing on a Houdini account and spread your presence that way, but for now that doesn't seem like it should be a major priority, your efforts are better spent on what you're already building, the ball is already rolling on that front.

I feel u on the money front, I am like that as well. Shelter, some food and a dog is really all you need, I'd be content with that. Anything beyond that seems like pointless self-gratification to me.

Why do you think you struggle with the feeling of being a grifter? You want to create something, something with a specific revolutionary purpose and mindset, if you had a stable income from that, you could spend more time on it and make it better. It becomes grifty when your purpose for doing this is to make money, where it seems to me more like your purpose for making money is this, Houdini. So you have to ask yourself what is the purpose of your actions? Do you just not want a regular job and you'd rather be a petit boug magazine owner? Or do you want to make the magazine (and be able to fully dedicate yourself to it) because you think it is important beyond your own standard of living? If it's the latter you shouldn't worry about being a grifter, if it's the former then you kind of are a bit of a grifter lol, but even that is not too crazy, pretty much all monetization on the web is a grift of one kind or another.

I get that because of these issues you feel the need to produce a tangible product, as a sort of proof that it's not just ebeggin, but that kind of defeats the purpose of your project no? At least that attitude. In principle you're not doing it to prove anything to anyone, you're doing it because it's a good idea and you believe in it. So why the need to "have to have" proof of your labor?

I'm not saying don't publish, don't make a product, it might be a great idea. But don't do it for moralistic reasons y'know, it's not that you owe people a physical item out of some moral obligation. Stay on the ball, look to your goals, your capabilities, your resources and use a materialist framework to inform what you can and want to do with those things. Which is what you're already doing for the most part from what I can see.

>>2339423
>I found this pamphlet from 1910 from a Chicago socialist magazine on archive.org—I'm going to spend all night, two nights in a row, while also trying to do other shit, to reformat that and publish that and get that out there,
Did you do that, or was that just an example? I'd be curious to know what exactly it was.

Also, this is good motivation for me to finally finish a whole bunch of partially complete work for the Marxists Internet Archive. It's fun up to the point where you have to actually code / upload / bugtest the web pages, which is the most boring but also the most important part for getting ideas out there.

reading the site rn and I see
>If you're looking to get notified when an article drops, when we're doing a crowdfunding push, or when there's a big release—or if you just want to connect with other activists and artists—the Velvet Room has a wide variety of people. Whether it's artists like Shem Shelley or MindApe, content creators like Mark MSX or Kuhb Games, or political activists, we've got all kinds of folks who come in to lurk, hang out, be active participants.

and im thinking to myself "Mark MSX is a comrade?"

Erik, bro, keep doing what you're doing. Don't let the player hating get you down. It really is, like you said, a blue ocean in terms of what you're doing and I see a lot of promise in what you and some other trailblazers in the Web 1.0 New Game Plus renaissance scene are doing. I look forward to DMing and sending some money your way.

>>2341184
if I had cash I would be paying him to write for the mag 100%

>>2340056
I found it on archive.org and reworked it, you can download the pdf free here
https://houdini-magazine.itch.io/little-sermons-in-socialism-by-abraham-lincoln

>>2341681
Blue Ocean is actually one of the few good pieces of "capitalist" theory, it combines well with a historical materialist outlook. Appreciate the support hoss, we're grinding.

>>2341688
I gotta learn to leverage this whole "i'm press" thing better.

>>2341692
>>2341688
Crazy

>>2341681
god i hate paypigs

The system has to come down out of its own contradictions, human activity is superfluous, active opposition to capitalism just gets subsumed by capitalism so why bother?

I really dont see this project lasting more than another three months just based on everything I've read in this thread. I don't know if I should be impressed that you've made it this far or sad that you're not going to go any further.

>>2342851
You wanna know how I feel right now? I feel like I've been here for two weeks, and there's a good community here, and people know me but II feel like I'm gonna wear out my welcome real quick. There's a lot of weird trauma shit resurfacing.I have $200 to my name, and that's just enough money to get three more days at this motel. And then once that money runs out, I'm homeless. I'm not telling a soul about it. I'm really just gonna rough it out, ride it out. I'm gonna go get a tent from Walmart, go pick a spot, and just… See if I can give away more of my shit, and just hope for the best. I'm not gonna be a burden on the people here. I didn't move here to make my problems everyone else's responsibility. Gotta just be a rock with it. Gotta be a boulder. That stresses me out. I'm willing to sacrifice whatever I have to sacrifice? Im not afraid. I guess I'm just tired of running. I'm tired of running, because I don't have family. If the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally kick you out at 18, and treat you the way that my family treats me… What does that say about the people who don't love you unconditionally? Like, if I can't even get the unconditional love, why would anyone want to… Something about me is fundamentally broken. I came out of the box this way. Its innate. I'm worried that the people here are going to find out what that is. Then I'm gonna be excommunicated from this community. I'm just tired of running away. I want to find my place to be. I want to find a place where I can be. To just be, and not have to think about life like this. It's not even about the money. I don't care about getting rich off this. Like, the money is one thing. I probably could social engineer my way into getting the money I need. But maybe I just need to suffer in order to get a picture as to what is wrong with me. Maybe living in a tent behind the Walmart for a few weeks while I scrounge together some money for a down payment on an apartment will teach me a lesson that I need to show me what the fuck is wrong with me. That's really what I'm thinking in my head. I've been thinking about this since last night. I'm like, at the show, just disassociated as hell. Like, just completely disassociated. I'm in another place. I'm supposed to be upbeat and happy, and the vibes are great. But I am just like, I don't belong here. Where do I belong? Do I belong anywhere? What is wrong with me? And these are all things that are floating through the brain. I'm sorry that was super heavy.

Why is it okay for somebody like Second Thought to make Get Rich peddling NordVPN or whatever other sponsor he has for his videos and to get rich having advertisements on each of his videos? But if I just want to make enough money to keep myself from being homeless while making content that is more radical and more revolutionary, I'm a grifter, and he's the respected voice. Knowing damn well that those people came from a higher class position than me, that those people had access to resources that I would never have access to. And do we not believe that this paints the view of the left towards the working class and the only people that we allow to have voices are people who come from a high enough class position to survive the brutality of wage slavery? If you can not only survive but to thrive under that system, now you get to speak about the problems with the system, but the people who are enduring it every day don't get to have a voice because if they were to have a voice, they'd be grifters. It doesn't make sense, and it shows a high level of hypocrisy on the left. Yeah, well, so-and-so, he's a streamer, and he talks about communism, but look, he gave all his money to charity, so it's fine. What charity did he give his money to? Was it just another charity?

Why do you think that they came up with the charity industrial complex in the 1970s? What happened in the 1970s that would predicate the creation of the nonprofit industrial complex?
Was it things like the Black Panthers breakfast program or the mutual aid programs that both communists and anarchists were aspiring to and putting out? Could it be that by these streamers donating the majority of their money not to other radicals or to other actual leftist organizations but to charity, they're, one, getting a tax write-off and, two, allowing themselves to not really give back to the actual movement in a meaningful way? And that the fans of these people will be the first to tell you you're a grifter when you just want to make minimum wage doing what you do enough to keep you housed. And I'm okay with being homeless. People are homeless, and it just is what it is in this society. I'm not afraid of it.

I don't believe that I deserve anything more than anyone else, but it does bother me to see that my allies and my comrades who exist in the same space as me are really only doing this shit to line their pocketbooks. From the outside looking in, and I've asked other people who watch these YouTubers, that is the vibe. Ultimately, these people are not going to bring us a revolutionary party. They're not going to bring us a revolution. They don't even believe that change can happen this decade, and their mindset and their concepts reflect this.

>>2344562
The other thing that's not talked about is a lot of these people are getting seed money. They're getting money from well-off people who donate to their Patreon, or to a span of several accounts. There are whole fucking companies that specialize in making this happen. They don't- you think they're gonna tell their fucking fanbase about that? No. The only reason that you would know that this type of thing happens is if you tried to exist in the same space as them. Yeah, people will seed their Patreon. So, so-and-so's making a thousand bucks a month on Patreon, or two thousand bucks a month on Patreon, but only a hundred and fifty dollars of that are coming from their YouTube audience. Where's the rest of that money coming from, brother? Is it coming from them, where they already had the money and were able to put some of it up front to, like, have the social proof? Is it coming from people like Peter Thiel and his network of folks that fund these podcasters? Because we know the Red Scare people are funded by this fucking billionaire. We know that they're fascists masquerading as leftists. And it is kind of weird that the women went fascist and not the men. I'm not gonna lie, that is kind of strange, but I digress. We know that a lot of these people are from a higher level of class background than me. I'm from fucking a trailer park in South Louisiana where sometimes we didn't have electricity or running water growing up because the bills, we couldn't afford them. That's a lot different than somebody from Southern California who lives in a mansion whose uncle, whose fucking uncle founded the Young Turks. So why does he get to be the guy who voices the, who represents the working class and not someone who's actually from the working class? Why does the guy whose uncle founded the Young Turks get to be the representative of the working class but not the guy whose fucking father ruined both of his knees as a carpenter with no health care, working side jobs? Why does that guy get to be the fucking representative? Why does the guy whose uncle founded the Young Turks get to be the representative of the working class? And from the start have a lot easier time making their voices heard. And when one motherfucker wants to get his voice heard and he's not from that class position, he's gotta beg and plead and do everything he can to get the exposure. I can't go buy Instagram ads, I can't go buy Facebook ads, I can't go buy ads on Twitch, I can't go buy ads on any of these fucking companies. So I can't have my uncle help me to fund my lifestyle for six months while I get my channel off the ground. I can't do any of that shit because I'm not from the same class position as every other goddamn leftist.

Truth is, housing precarity, being borderline homeless, the threat of being on the street versus in a motel for a few more nights, this is not things that are rare to experience. In fact, there are the daily life of many people in the working class. And the fact that me talking about this with openness and honesty from a position where I have a platform makes so many people upset. Oh, you're just a grifter. But they're not upset at the people who have never lived this reality commenting on it. They're not upset at the guy who's from a class background that is literally the exact opposite of mine, being the representative of the working class, being the guy who gets to speak to all the people at 24 hours a day in his nice California fucking mansion. The guy who gets to promote genociders like Bernie Sanders and AOC to the left, to the radicalized youth of this nation. The guy who gets to do that is from a class background that is the exact opposite of mine. And the vast overwhelming majority of people don't call him a grifter. Oh, he does good work. He's bringing people to the left. He does good work. Let him have his – yeah, sure, his opinions aren't radical, but he's doing important work. Yeah, he's doing important work by telling you, the communist, to swallow your pride and go vote for an imperialist because the imperialist party is paying him to fucking promote these people. But that's okay. He's not a grifter. He's not a grifter because he's not directly asking you for money to stay alive, though. But the guy who's actually from the working class, the guy who's experiencing the suffering, not in an anthropological sense, but in a lived reality sense, that guy's the grifter. That guy doesn't have a voice. He can't represent the working class. Explain that to me.

End of the line. Chips on the table. Can you hold your poker face?

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-houdini-magazine

>>2344630
Eric, There's countless activists, agit-prop artists, publishers, distro-kids, whole collectives even, who are going through the same economic problems as you. Precarious economic situations, unemployment, homelessness, marginalization, etc, etc… is becoming every day a more generalized situation. That's what the struggle is about. And the more you struggle authentically, the harder it gets.
You gotta do what you gotta do to get by, I get it. It's great that you're taking the initiative to make zines and other DIY activities and you seem like a smart kid, but the self-promotion and public sulking to guilt people into supporting you economically is pretty cringe tbh. I know it's normalised in influencer culture and also in zine culture, but when you are trying to present your project as a serious political one I think you would do better to make it less about yourself and focusing more on what message you're trying to convey to people and the objectives you want to achieve collectively for social transformation. You're right, there are loads of unapolagetic grifters making bank off of spreading false consciousness, and you seem a lot more grounded in the misery of prole life than them. But as the old saying goes, you can't combat alienation through alienated means. The working class doesn't need another charismatic champion of the cause in the world of the spectacle, it needs to constitute itself as an autonomous force in the real world using self-organization and collective action.