/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

"Normality", like with everything else, is a result of material conditions. Isolation, screentime, lack of community resources outside of bought and paid experiences, and just the weirdness of communism in 21st century America contribute to weirdos being attracted to the movement. This is why you see LGBT, furries, wannabe tough guys, fatcels, feminists, abortion activists, white sakaists, etc when you try to get into this stuff. Young adults and teenagers think that this is normal for the movement and emulate it lol. Another thing is that once you break with liberalism, a lot more breaks become possible/probable which is why you see so many revolutionaries just end up become crazies and homeless or burning out and become shells of their former selves.

>fix the material conditions first and worry about the politics after.

Don't think that's something exclusive to the far left honestly

What do you mean by normal though? I know you listed some vague things but elaborate please

>>2591160
>How can communists in the imperial core be normal? Not really sure how to explain the problem.
It comes from being unmoored from a social base. Communists don't usually come to it anymore in many places via real-world places like a factory job and their union, but online "radicalization" pipelines, memes, Discord, whatever. It operates more like a highly moralized aesthetic subculture and then they go out and try to do real-world stuff. Soviet posters, red-and-black or red-and-yellow color palettes, hammers and sickles, tactical LARP language, whatever. Do any of them know the words to The Internationale? Have they ever sung it together in an IRL group?

The answer is, I dunno, but the most "normal" ones I've encountered were always heavily involved in labor which was their main thing. A lot of things that get rewarded online will actually hurt you there. People have different aesthetic preferences or values but what they have in common is they have to wear the same dumb uniform at work and they hate the management for the same reason.

>>2591198
>Don't think that's something exclusive to the far left honestly
It isn't.

I (and others) hypothesize that alienated people tend towards politics more strongly than the rest of the population. They generally have more grievances with the present state of things.

So, therefore, they will be over-represented in non-liberalist politics, including neo-Nazism (anywhere, ever), and socialism within the imperialist core.

In fact, we've seen a massive recruiting effort in politics through online media, and video games. The neo-Nazis in Australia have explicitly and proudly targeted boys with autism, including applying for jobs in the disability support system and saying they only want to work with young boys.

Most of those traits you mentioned, such as lack of empathy and social interpersonal skills, strongly collateral with those who are alienated from society. As for pragmatism, well, that's necessary for effective politics. Marxism, at least, isn't an idealist ideology, and we're fighting against a mode of production which constantly causes mass death, so I'd expect some form of pragmatism from those associating with it.

___

But on the other hand, there are plenty of normal, everyday people in communist orgs too (well, apart from the mere fact that being an activist isn't normal). And the more these political ideas can become normalized, the more normal people will be included.

>How can communists in the imperial core be normal?

By observing and learning. It's not hard for most people.

But, why do you want us to be normal?

>>2591235
Can't say for sure of course but when I see people like OP asking why communists aren't normal it's usually about LGBT stuff. Not saying I'm against LGBT of course but that's usually what I see people complain about in regards to "normality".

>>2591221
>Soviet posters, red-and-black or red-and-yellow color palettes, hammers and sickles, tactical LARP language, whatever.
Ausfag here, luckily this has been (mostly) absent from my city, apart from a general tendency towards red. The trot orgs don't even advertise themselves as communist or use the word on their website, simply 'revolutionary', despite clearly being communists.

In fact, one of our comrades wanted a ushanka when travelling to Europe and intentionally made sure not to get one with a hammer and sickle, because that's "treating revolution as an aesthetic", or something (I was very tired that day).

Exception: There was some chinese guy who showed up holding signs for a trivial splinter org decked out in a hat with an NK flag and a red-yellow shirt saying Viet Nam, all while flyering for an org called Trotskyist Platform btw, but they looked like a fuckwit and I think they've stopped doing it now.

There was also a Chinese exchange student who showed up to a trot org meeting on halloween in a PLA uniform. Shit was so cash.

>>2591189
>>fix the material conditions first and worry about the politics after.
It's amazing how hegemony has made people believe that politics is a distinct thing from politics.

>>2591274
you can fix individuals' material conditions without politics - this is possible. Get a squad of people and get to work. You can't fix society's material conditions without politics.

>>2591267
>Ausfag here, luckily this has been (mostly) absent from my city, apart from a general tendency towards red.
There are some groups that will wear matching shirts and I am constitutionally or temperamentally hard-wired to recoil from it. I just can't do it. You will never get me to wear one of those shirts with a group like that. But I don't feel like that when I see a union on strike and people are wearing union shirts, but it feels functional and participatory as opposed to devotional / religious.

>Not really sure how to explain the problem. It just seems in general like there's an extreme lack of interpersonal skills, patience, pragmatism and empathy for others. IDK just seems very dysfunctional.

You get the movement you recruit from.

A genuinely working class or communist movement in the United States or other nations in the imperial core would have to necessarily be born from everyday workers both engaging with Marxist literature on their own terms and struggling against capitalism on said terms. However since the New Left, Marxism and Socialism increasingly became relegated to niche and academic interests that don't seem to intersect with the daily lives of workers, and in the worst case has become the vehicle for a kind of classism that treats workers as pawns in some great chess game against the bourgeoisie.

1) Deactivate Twitter account
2) Delete Twitter app from phone
3) Make an activitypub account so if you want something twitter shaped you can do so in healthy and normal company
4) Limit phone access, if you have a OnePlus use the zen mode thingy
5) If you understand theory you can explain it to someone without the fancy jargon. Get into writing so you can get better at explaining things in general.

normal is when you make money and have sex but get fat around your 30s

>>2591188
I don't think supporting secret wars is very normal.
>>2591189
I don't think hating women and gay people is very normal.

>>2591385
> don't think supporting secret wars is very normal
Set it off, it’s the fight of the century
KRS and Professor X would battle each other mentally!

>>2591385
where the fuck did I say that you fucking illiterate? Guess what? Being gay isn't normal and that's ok. Some of them even call themselves queer and complain about how being gay is too normal. There are plenty of gay bars where there are signs banning "gay republicans." This retard thinks feminism is normal. News flash retard, the feminists (UK) were terrorists who bombed their way into getting rights. Not normal. Less than a third of women in the US identify as feminists. It's not normal. The communists kicked the feminists out of the international. Did they hate women?

>>2591391
I'm not sure why you're crashing out like this.

>>2591160
Let me let you into a little secret, nobody around you is 'normal', not your parents, not your mates, not your coworkers, not your neighbours. It's all just putting on appearances.

>>2591416
Even if this weren't true, the "normal" stuff that "normal" people do is fucked up on its own.

>>2591416
I think you're exaggerating the scale of people being non-normal or confusing it with being fucked up. It's normal to be fucked up but not all fucked up people are normal.
>>2591426
I agree but I need normal peoples help anyhow.

Normal according to what axioms ? (inb4 the normal ones)

>>2591160
The practical answer is to have experience organizing locally. Normality will be circumscribed by your local subjective circumstances

>>2591441
Any kind of normal which helps organize a revolution.
>>2591450
Makes sense.

I'm not sure avatarfagging is very normal.

>>2591221
>It comes from being unmoored from a social base. Communists don't usually come to it anymore in many places via real-world places like a factory job and their union, but online "radicalization" pipelines, memes, Discord

this times infinity

>>2591160
yeah no one is normal, averages are for statistics, glad you get it

When some of you guys actually start working, you're going to discover that while people are more "normal" then the internet, they are way less "normal" then you think they are. Working class people are way, way weirder then the social standard of what "normal" is. There's stories and characters you will only ever encounter while working in the trenches, and most media is entirely unable to replicate it.

>>2591160
>>2591385
"normal" isn't a good word for what you're asking for. the term in this context has connotations of (ultimately) hating woman and gays (because a communist talking about being "normal" is itself abnormal), but it seems that your real problem is that the left is not coherently organized, cannot set a goal and work towards it, etc, and that if it could do that you'd be fine with its aesthetic and subcultural mish-mashing.

the starbucks unionization drive furry is a better model for the future of the left than every LARPer who thinks the future in the left lies in relitigating lysenkoism… but in a suit and tie and with a firm handshake so Hank Rutherford Hill will fall for it.

>>2591775
Why the fuck is unionizing starbucks a good idea? Starbucks isn’t an actual pillar of the economy? Where’s your leverage?
>we’re on strike
Everyone gets coffee at home, work, or somewhere else and you lose your job, all for being part of an Eichmann style machine that puts peasants through the grinder

>>2591927
32 billion dollars in revenue plus 95 billion dollars in market cap, that's your leverage.
Hold to your line of thinking long enough and you'll find that farmers are the only revolutionary class.

>>2591950
They’re the only ones capable of feeding themselves during an insurgency, every revolution in history had a huge peasant base. Workers have way more to lose than their chains, for one their jobs, their homes, any comforts they have.

Why the fuck would normal, successful people under capitalism be attracted to a dissenting, often illegal ideology? This is like asking why people wear leather to punk shows

>>2591927
>Why the fuck is unionizing starbucks a good idea?
The Starbucks workers might think it's a good idea.

>>2592041
How about for literally anyone else?

>>2591953
>They’re the only ones capable of feeding themselves during an insurgency, every revolution in history had a huge peasant base.
Got some bad news, in my country the population involved in farming is like 1% of the population.

>>2592042
>”Erm, have you considered how your union drive affects ME?!?!”
They don’t need your permission to unionize.

>>2592044
And they’re treatlerite, the same as unions in the third reich, all their gains will mean increased exploitation of farmers, of packagers

>>2592045
you are an ADVENTURIST BEAST that will be DEMOTED from all party positions by a UNANIMOUS VOTE in the CENTRAL COMMITTEE.

>>2592054
Dog the position I’m gunning for is white Kapo
>>2592055
You’re either dishonest or ignorant about the history of organized labor here

>>2592064
You’re an ultra leftist preaching destruction of the socialist movement and fundamentally agreeing with nationalist premises.

>>2592074
The socialist movement in NATO+ countries is about as extant as it was in Germany by 1943, the whole working class in Germany was placated by drinking beer from the skulls of slavs, they relished seeing their jewish neighbors robbed and the property confiscated. That’s America, that’s you