>"I shouldn't be shamed for not living up to capitalist society's expectations of me, I should be allowed to be my authentic self without being criticized and I shouldn't have to change myself based on some arbitrary capitalist standard"
This seems to be the sentiment that dominates the minds of zoomers and most millennials that drives them towards the left whether we want to admit it or not. This is what makes a lot of younger people under 40 embrace anti-capitalist politics, question social norms that are the superstructure of modern capitalism, become anti-eugenics, embrace new identity groups, and so on. Look no further than Tumblr from the mid 2010s or TikTok today. My question is, why haven't any communist or socialist parties been able to gather these types of people up? The DSA's entire strategy is simply economistic "healthcare and unions" babble that they weaponize to push the Democrats further to the left. Yet we shouldn't forget that the millennial left (namely, the people who participated in the anti-war movement in the 2000s and Occupy in 2011-12) all folded into DSA by the end of the 2010s. So why can't the DSA bring in those frustrated zoomers from TikTok, the ones who make videos on queerness and unmasking autism and mental health and why nearly all romantic relationships are inherently predatory or whatever? Maybe if the people on that platform were in a political party they'd have actual pragmatic political goals.
55 posts and 1 image reply omitted.>>2575964It's astonishing how twitter mangled the term individualism to the point where people here probably can't tell you're joking. Like "individualism is when individual does thing" level of mangled.
>>2575836Autistic folks shouldn’t be forced to mask and queer people shouldn’t be forced into the closet. Is that too much to ask?
>>2575981The point of body art is to distinguish yourself from others. That is individualism. We should discourage behaviors like that and work on things we have in common.
>>2575964you are attacking the west not from a place of anti imperialism but from a place of envy, you envy self expression and creative freedom, you are a repressed faggot who wants everyone to dress in grey and never smile, you are a coward.
>>2576030Self expression is liberal thought.
We must elevate the concerns of the collective, not spend lots of money for drawing permanent treats on your skin
>>2576031your specific concern with tattoos instead of broader material subjects is dumb idealism, people with tattoos work for and against communism, therefore it's an irrelevant subject.
you are just envious, what will you do once your ideal society is achieved? will you have fun and be creative then or will you keep scolding everyone until you die?
>>2575896What about mutual aid and community care?
>>2575837The primacy of personal/lived experience is toxic. It accomplishes nothing.
we need a way to explain to these misery peddling uyghurs the difference between being a treatlerite and just having fun, because there is a clear difference and these retards don't see it.
>>2576065They are themselves treatlerites and thus can't distinguish fun from treats.
>>2575466You rely on the community to fight for the marginalized and politics will follow suit.
>>2576023If you’ve ever had the misfortune to interact with an autist or unapologetic fag you’d understand that making them act normal is not only the bare minimum but a kindness
>>2576053I acknowledge experience is the root of all knowledge, but one cannot experience everything. That is why we must read and learn from those that have not only experienced but changed the material world with their thought.
>>2576071White people getting dreamcatchers drawn on them for a thousand bucks is not art, it is a treat
Tattoos are Funko pops for the body
>>2576107>It isn't VRIL so it's not art!!That's where you spill the spaghetti? That didn't even follow from the post you replied to. Did you have a stack of Q-cards with talking points scribbled on them and just draw from the deck?
>>2574004>>2575163Circlejerking over trauma is not and will never be leftism.
>>2576139What if it's working-class people talking about how their shitty workplace experiences gave them trauma?
>>2576259Nobody who goes to university in America is “working class” lmao
>>2576139Because it can't overcome capitalism, the same way that queer politics, gender politics, autistic politics, Islamism, etc. can't overcome capitalism. On what basis can idpol overcome capitalism?
>>2576279Why are you doedging the question with complete non-sequitor? No one mentioned universities, put away your Q-card deck.
>>2575836So what is alienation then?
>>2576289A lot of leftists today just take it for granted that the people on the bottom of the hierarchy are the ones who will transcend or abolish the hierarchy. That's the end conclusion of intersectionality, anyway.
>>2576339Alieanation is not about individual but species or something
>>2576341Happiness is the goal in the struggle for freedom.
>>2576023Freedom to be exactly as you are is an aristocratic ideology.
Freedom to transcend what you currently are is a proletarian ideology.
>>2575848>Muh safe space is le badFound the chud. Kill yourself.
>>2575163>All I hear are stories about how Sally is a CSA survivor who was molested by her stepfather at age eight and can’t work a regular job due to her CPTSD, or how Timmy has all sorts of religious trauma from growing up in an Evangelical household. The problem is, you can’t build a political program around individual trauma. These discussions belong in a therapy session, not a Marxist study group.There's a logic to this though. It's been proven time and time again that people who grew up in abusive households often repeat the cycle of trauma. So for instance, a young woman who was sexually abused as a child by older adult male family members or family friends is a million times more likely to fall into multiple abusive relationships throughout her lifetime, because she associates abuse with love. Queer people who grew up in ultra-religious households are way more likely to fall into drug and alcohol abuse or have suicidal ideation. Same thing with autistic people. Masking is the number one reason autistic people become drug/alcohol addicted and suicidal, or develop eating disorders or some other harmful behaviours. You, as their mentor, are morally required to provide them a safe space to unmark and be their authentic selves, even if it takes away from discussion of "Marxist" things. Hell, there's nothing more anti-Marxist than forcing a marginalized person to be silent about their oppression. You, of all people, should know that Dr. Adjunct.
>>2576397based actual communism understander in this barren hellscape
>>2576418The other irony is that the elephant in the room IS trauma, but the issue is that many people self-diagnose with C-PTSD because they conflate any impression of subjective trauma whatsoever with C-PTSD, even though C-PTSD has discrete biophysical markers in terms of the effect it has on the permanent alteration of your brain structure. I have been formally diagnosed with C-PTSD and I can attest that the nature of it is crippling enough at times that there's a very stark contrast between the histrionic PMC zoomer types claiming to have it and those who really bear the burden of having it. The upsetting and disappointing thing is that when there's an oversaturation of people making this conflation, those who really suffer from the condition are overlooked or assumed to be just like all the rest, when that couldn't be further from the case. I don't believe that we should put the cart before the horse in individualizing the priority of generational trauma, but I do think that a proper communist politics will, in a downstream sense, naturally sublate away some of the sociopolitical barriers which hamstring the people who are authentically suffering. From each according to his ability, to each according to their need… and potentially, these attributes can change in the context of a less atomized/alienated society which is more focused on resources of empowerment.
>>2576422I should add that were it not for my condition and my life's unusual history, I never would have formed any of the political and philosophical positions I hold. I probably would have just ended up like any other autistic 4chan midwit, largely devoid of empathy and overly-technically focused; a perfectly obsequious lapdog to the system. To fall at an internal, ontological level is to see the side of the world that the rest of so-called polite society loves nothing more than to repress and gaslight over, i.e. it is to see the ugly, unjust truth and confront it, to recognize the real conditionality of the proletariat as a point of subjective divestment which overcomes itself in an eschatological way.
>>2576339That's a complicated question with different answers depending on which theorist you consult. Zizek would define it as a topological cut, or a circuitous gap in the process of subjectivity, endemic to the essence of reality itself–the insufficiency of being is alienation, but the problem with capitalism is that it *sells you back the premise of your alienation as comfort*, which in turn distorts the nature of one's relationship to their ever-self-defining (existential) self. This is not the same thing as a kind of prefigured authentic identity taken absolutely. Capitalism's alienation is a particular modal failure which circumvents the issue of confrontation with the void by packaging the void as though it represents fulfillment. Or at least, this is the continental goobeldy-gook approximation of what alienation is, anyways.
>>2576422I don't see the issue with self-diagnosis even when it comes to C-PTSD. Self-identification is always first when it comes to affirmation.
>>2576430Sure, but my point is simply that C-PTSD is a real thing which can be empirically identified based on physiological symptoms, and which can be located in the brain through assessing the structural changes primarily impacted in the Thalamus and the Amagdyla. The reason I bring that up is because the original naysayer kind of came off as fundamentally skeptical of the concept altogether, not just the 'issue' of self-diagnosis. It would be funny to instill this condition in anyone who thinks C-PTSD is illegitimate (even for something temporary, like a month), and try sleeping during a bad flareup of it. They can enjoy their multiple days of zero sleep and their occasional nights of a few shitty hours, feeling the grateful relief of a decent night of rest only very occasionally. Of course, we don't even need to be neurological reductionists, because the host of subjective effects which come with the condition are their own 'fun' can of worms… And hey, that's just the tip of the iceberg ;).
>>2576418>>2576422So you two believe that appealing to trauma is the way to socialism?
>>2576438No, that wasn't what I said at all.
I'll just quote what I already wrote so you can reread it, I guess. My point is simply to acknowledge its existence and not try to admonish people for being in possession of it. That doesn't necessitate some kind of capitulation to it or a primary centering of it. I explicitly made a point which suggest otherwise already.
As stated,
"I do think that a proper communist politics will, *in a downstream sense*, naturally sublate away some of the sociopolitical barriers which hamstring the people who are authentically suffering. From each according to his ability, to each according to their need… and potentially, these attributes can change in the context of a less atomized/alienated society which is more focused on resources of empowerment."
(emphasis on 'in a downstream sense')
>>2576441*not to try and admonish people, typo mb it's late
>>2576441Oh, and my other point was meant to suggest that not all trauma is qualitatively the same. There's a large, qualitative/categorical difference between histrionic people who are trying to leverage their trauma and people who are medically afflicted with C-PTSD.
>>2576443(This is because C-PTSD is a medical condition which occurs as a neurological *reaction* to trauma, it isn't trauma itself, it's what happens inside of the body of people who are particularly effected, usually due to exceptional severity of circumstance and maybe some kind of sensitive predisposition, although that latter point is speculative.)
>>2576430All these disorders have become commodified. Younger people like to collect them like Pokemon cards. I have been diagnosed with mental disorders by medical professionals, I keep it private. Then when I go check my local DSA everyone under 25 is talking about all the self diagnosed disorders they have, how they are have some eccentric sexual orientation, gender identity that I never heard of.
>>2574004>o why can't the DSA bring in those frustrated zoomers from TikTokbecause they do democratic party entrying which results in even well meaning people jining eventually being consumed by the machine, you think a well meaning candidate can compete with the billionaire backed party structure? there needs to be something independent pushing back against the structure not something that is consumed by it
anyways death to amerikkka the great satan
>>2576585
2nd half you were spot on, 1st half the most retarded shit I've seen.
Left coms fuck up organizing too much
>>2576418How do you organize people based on their trauma?
>>2576585
That's just spending energy on playing with semantics like it means anything. Differentiating ourselves from liberals is meaningful, but there comes a point where you're just splitting hairs over minutiae in a way that working people could not give a sick fuck about.
>>2576441You and the other guy derailing the thread with retarded nonsense proves that the the mentor millenial was completely right and the "Sallys" of the world have no place in Marxist study groups because they inevitably make everything about themselves and their trauma
>>2576418>turn le marxist study group into a safespace to traumadump about the time my uncle touched me!!kill yourself
>>2577495>>2577496To be fair, CSA survivors seem to be over represented in leftist spaces. Go to any anarchist space and you'll notice about 2/3rds of the AFAB people there are survivors of sexual assault.
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