Why has CPUSA been so mythologized in the past two years when they were a massive failure and sucked even in their “good days?”
American communists tried to follow the Bolshevik strategy and failed. They didn’t originally give a shit about Black people either, they only adopted the Black Belt thesis because Stalin told them to. They were way too close to the Comintern and that bit them in the ass later on. Foster was power-hungry and mad because his steel strike failed while Browder was a clout demon. The whole thing was a mess from the start. I’m kind of relieved the feds took them down.
548 posts and 102 image replies omitted.>>576088>Why do American socialists never ever wave red or party flags like in every other country?Socialism has been taboo in the U.S. for many years but the taboo has been broken so it's starting to become more common.
>>576094>being mad at wisconsinites for something they did in 1867Well this is the CPUSA thread so some party members might have first-hand experience with what happened in Wisconsin in 1867
>>576100Kek, Bill Foster’s mother had 23 children, only ten of whom survived.
I bet “Ava” thinks mama Foster was a good Catholic woman.
>>576116>Why not use gunsBecause rocking up to a demonstration wih gun will quickly escelate the situation and see you arested in minutes
retard.
>>576117Just keep a gun in your pocket. If you need a baseball bat just use a fucking gun
Retard
>>576118>Just keep a gun in your pocket. If you need a baseball bat just use a fucking gunIf you new just how fucking dumb this sounded you would not have ended your sentence with 'retard'.
Do us all a favour and actually develop an offline antifascist praxis for no other reason than ridding the rest of us of this infantile understanding of the world you subject us to.
You thalidomide cuck.
>>576116I am not in any way opposed to guns. I am just saying how easily an organized people can beat back fascism with crude tools.
The point being do not believe for a second the demonrats that tell you that you NEED them to save you from the scary ski-sunglasses guys.
>>576122Bethesda really must have used Browder as an inspiration.
I was reading some of his "People's Front" (I have no idea why they went with this pic of him smiling like a Cheshire cat) and admittedly LOL'd at parts where he was pressing his case for FDR in '36 as hard as he could without explicitly endorsing him. He had some rhetorical skills.
He's like "oh no, the Communist Party doesn't depend on Roosevelt to check the power of Wall Street, we don't accept any responsibility for Roosevelt, but the question on the ballot isn't socialism or capitalism, it's democracy or Alf-Landon-Ku Klux Klan-Black Legion fascism and Hearst lurking in the background, and the confusionists in the Socialist Party, who have made common cause with counter-revolutionary Trotskyites, whether wittingly or unwittingly, are disarming themselves and attempting to spread panic among the mighty forces of progress and the masses until their mistake ends with them inside a concentration camp! I'm talking about you, Norman Thomas!"
Given the conversation turned towards guns and how to fight the ultra right, I figure I’d mention a few things regarding that topic.
As far as guns in the CPUSA goes, I think there’s a generational divide. Among older folks they’re used to the guys advocating the loudest for guns being feds or otherwise useful idiots for them. The “hey kid wanna blow up a federal building” glow meme is something they had to live through.
Additionally, a lot of them are grandparents. Like to us, we have a different view on guns because mass shootings is just something we’ve had to live through. I think that can normalize guns—especially given we’ve been told they’re here to stay—in a way that doesn’t exist for older folks. They’re terrified about their grandkids being shot up in school or some psychotic mass shooter gunning down their family at a park or what have you.
I think younger people have come to be more pessimistic, for us, we’ve determined that mass shootings are just a thing that happens so would you rather be armed just in case, or would you rather be unarmed. Older folks aren’t as cynical. Or maybe it’d make more sense to say, mass shootings are still something abnormal and viscerally horrifying to them, and there’s still some chance it can be bucked.
Now as for my perspective. I’m a gun owner. And I do worry sometimes that firearms can create the illusion of action without really engaging in it. The Chapos did a reading once on American gun culture. It highlighted some guy that suffered from a ton of medical issues who suddenly became some gun freak to cultivate a sense of security or power over his own life. And I think to some extent there’s a similar subconscious drive among leftists. It’s a reaction to the broad disorganization and powerlessness of the post-Cold War Left.
>”Yeah we’re split and far from power but at least I have the power of life and death over people!”
Let’s say you demand your entire party get armed: how many of those people have the resources and means to do it? Of those with the means, how many have the will? Of those with the means and will, what then? Do you just stand outside a courthouse one day, armed?
I’m sure someone will share the Mao quote, but what goes unsaid in that quote is that Mao expects you to actually use the guns, not just hold them. How many of your comrades are willing to bring guns to a protest? How many are willing to fire them? When they fire them, are you prepared to face life in prison or death? Because for as much as America is in decline, it’s not so broken that it can’t hunt down some adventurous leftist bank robbers.
Of your comrades that aren’t in jail, will they stand by you after you do something monumentally stupid? Are you prepared to put their lives at risk as the feds raid their homes and put them all on terror watch lists? And do you think the masses are gonna say “Damn straight! I’m glad they did it!” Or think you’re just lunatics?
I think there’s a strong desire for action of some kind amongst radicals, but that action is either tempered by a fear of the state or a fear that people will find it futile.
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