The BIGGEST Weak Points of The US Left
The US Left has a few primary weak points besides just sectarianism, individualism, and ideological differences that undermine our work. These main issues are structural in nature.
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Analyzing The Situation:
I’ve been analyzing the situation with the US Left for a very long time, since the 2008 financial crisis. I would never be able to give this conclusion if I didn’t get involved in organizing and seeing the situation on the ground myself. There is many things holding the US Left back, but of them, the largest structural-specific weak points are 5. These 5 areas, no group can be effective without them, especially a revolutionary movement. There is a reason the Left that has succeeded in China, DPRK, and is currently succeeding in Brazil, Venezuela, etc. have focused on these 5 major areas.
-A Centralized Technological Network:
The US Left, all its organizations, propagandists, etc. lack the technological infrastructure and computer literacy necessary to be the most effective. The reason the West (especially the US) maintain their tight grip on dissent is because all the platforms, all the popular news, all normal means used to organize are controlled by the upper class and can easily shut down groups, accounts, chats, or even just round up random people because of their easily farmed data that often times people just casually give over without hesitation. There exists plenty methods to protect against the data issue (for the most part) which I did address lightly in my OPSEC & Cyber Security basics article.
The reality is, the US Left, all its groups, propagandists, etc. need to drastically change course of mobilizing and agitating. We need a group who can spearhead building a technological infrastructure for the Left and centralize the groups and content creators together into the same encrypted and secure communications so we can plan, discuss, agitate digitally and mobilize en masse together with unified strategy. This is something the far-right has been doing since 2017 (largely through their own socials, websites, and Telegram) and even before that in a more disorganized fashion via forums like 4chan - that’s why this network of far-right groups and propagandist acts as if they’re all moving as a single body, because for the most part, they are.
Our current way of organizing, I can speak from experience, most groups are using controlled platforms like Google, Adobe, Discord, Facebook, Slack, etc. to mobilize and plan. Many of these groups aren’t even in contact with other groups or most groups that exist, to plan and mobilize together. Most influencers are either pushing content independently, or working with small groups on the same social media’s that, if they lose their account, they lose most of those they worked with until they make a new account (if they aren’t IP banned). The popular influencers aren’t even connected with or building with a wide network of most other propagandists, they’re often only working with other popular influencers usually within a well known social media agency. We can’t keep operating like this, we must build together with the digital safety to do so uninterrupted, especially as a large mass group.
We live in a hyper-technological era that’s not going to end anytime soon, we need to make full use of the tools & machines we have available. I mean it makes sense if you think about it. No country, military, movement, company or anything can survive without communications. Communications is the key to building anything substantial - and since we live in a new digital age, our communications have become faster and requires Independence from other forces that don’t serve our interests, and requires cyber security to protect from malicious threats.
This issue is something me and my comrades have been working on addressing through our coming agency called Byte Red. An IT & Cyber Security agency we are building that will also provide servers we aim to bring large swaths of the Left into and centralize communications, planning, and mobilization.
-Militancy:
The Left has a certain amount of militancy, but the reality is it’s weak and often ineffective as its usually held to small groups or individuals who realized the necessity in it & willing to sacrifice for it. In the past, US Socialists & Communists part of political parties use to force landlords to accept their demands or some essence of force would disrupt their lives. In the old days, Communist led unions use to force capitalists to concede to their demands or the factory/business would go up in flames or the machines would be beaten to pieces. The most recent sight of increased Left militancy was the activities of Palestine Action US. A group (originating in the UK) that would attack and destroy weapons manufacturers supplying Israel with weapons. This was good, but it was conflict specific. The reality is, the Left as a whole, or at least majority of, must accept some level of militancy. If not directly in violence, should supply those willing to fight. That said, additionally, this militancy must we well coordinated, well strategized, and done in the deepest encrypted channels and under the cover of darkness or deep within large radicalized crowds who knows the game plan. I’m not saying be militant in the same vain as be an absolute menace independently - “individualist terrorism” as us ML’s understand it is useless and easy to manufacture hate against. We need well organized groups that understand their limitations and act professionally and coordinated. Plus, as is the trend of Left-Wing history, most of our form of militancy is largely defensive from other’s who started the violence against us and the masses.
What the Left desperately needs, of the two forms of militancy, is it’s own version of a KGB, it’s own version of a CIA. It needs an agency that operates in the shadows, protected by well vetted systems filtering members, deeply devoted members, encrypted communications, and well studied strategies to fight from the shadows. An agency that recruits the most militant members from socialist & communist organizations. Able to gather intel on almost any and all threats to the working class and protect people under the threat of violence.
The second form of militancy necessary, is a group that provides training to the Left and working class communities. I’m not talking about SRA, they’re weak with their big-tent mentality and their NGO limitations. I am talking about an organization that provides self-defense training as a minimum, and soldier training as a maximum. A group that trains communities to defend themselves, and comrades how to survive the wilderness, how to clear buildings, how to survive combat situations, how to prepp, etc. An organization that can provide security for groups or events unlike SRA. An organization that provides a wide variety of training for all forms of defense, civil and otherwise. This form of defense we’ve been working on through the group Red Rifle Collective.
-Wide Connections:
Most of the Left does not organize or communicate with others outside small communities online - this is a fatal error that limits one’s understanding of situations in the world and limits one’s ability to reach people outside specific echo chambers. It also greatly makes members of the Left easier to manipulate by establishment propaganda.
The first and primary thing someone in the Left should do AFTER they have associated themselves with a specific ideology and/or political party, is they should search for representatives, propagandists, influencers, and organizers associated with that ideology and political party both in and outside (but especially outside) the West. Then, they should network - they should connect with those or attempt to connect with them so they have a direct contact in another part of the world who may have more knowledge on theory, geopolitical conflicts, history, etc. This networking is what every movement, corporation, politicians, and so on does because there is power in building a network that you can make use of to strengthen the objectives at home.
This network also allows them to consume information at a faster rate, making them more knowledgeable and able to explain topics or address misconceptions much sooner than if they was learning alone.
I mean, it’s kinda obvious, we’re internationalists - that means we must strengthen our international network.
-Purity Politics on Finances:
It is no secret that a large part of the Left is either lower middle class or poor. It’s not all that surprising, since Left-Wing ideologies are specifically more popular with that section of the working class as it seeks to empower those areas. However, and I hold back no punches in this statement - the hippie era, Trotskyists, some of the Maoists, and the anarchists have done unspeakable damage on the ability of the Left to finance itself because of the purity politics of “making money” for the cause.
There has never been a single, successful, revolutionary movement that succeeded purely off the donations of the poor they sought to provide for and protect - that’s not realistic. The reality is every successful Communist or Socialist movement had it’s share of class traitors among the upper class in the organizations, along with made money itself from the business owners within the cause or the services and products they provided - even if it wasn’t much, it still helped.
I feel the modern Western Left and their absolute obsessive hate for Dengism, an ideology that doesn’t even exist, has perverted their understanding of the necessities and objectives of whats needed.
China, DPRK, USSR - they all understood that a certain amount of money needs to be generated and circulating for their movements to succeed against the capitalists encircling them economically, but also to provide for the working classes of their respected nations.
Organizing takes money, planning and holding events takes money, building programs to provide for the needy takes money, propaganda (often) takes money. Honestly the Left needs to take a page from the Middle Eastern Muslims when they run their businesses - “Give, what you’re capable to, to the needy. Charge what you can to the rest while making a profit. Charge high to the rich.”
If the Left in America wants to succeed, it must kill its purity politics, and build businesses as groups, provide services and products, and reinvest a certain amount of profit towards the cause.
I mean the Nation of Islam for example (this is not an endorsement of that group) grew so quick and became influential by and part because of their service to the African American communities in America, but also because their members use to sell fake copyrighted brands from overseas, and foreign products to bring funds into the organization. They understood that to build the group they was loyal to, and provide for their communities, funds had to come into the group from various methods.
Even for far-right movements who take over nations, they understand they can’t simply promote the ideals of richer people for funds from them, they have to obtain wealth through their own work to invest in a more extreme cause than the right-wing that may be leading things at that time.
The Left needs to study financial literacy, business building, marketing, sales, and begin pulling money into the cause in various ways. You don’t want poor people and middle class people financing right-wing businesses? You don’t want them benefiting their objectives? You want more money to help people in need, finance a union, or donate to revolutionary organizations? You want money and services that can help people boycott or general strike other dominant brands? Cool, be the alternative. People “vote with their dollars” for businesses they feel represent them. If your values are as partisan as you say they are, there should be no worry that you’ll become like the ruling class, because your values aren’t (or shouldn’t be) dictated by wealth ownership, they’re dictated by humanity for those in need, and hate for those abusing them.
Of the few who have come to understand this, the ones I can think of immediately are Write Brain TV, Means TV, Means Workwear, 3SJ Shop, SeizeTheMeans24, Byte Red (coming soon), and my own store, ISM.
-Over-Dependence on Online-Leftists:
The Left in the West relies way to much on online leftists. I’ve spoke on this before, that political party’s and organizers’ obsession with the online left, to essentially market to them and beg them to join them at least, or appease them at worse, is holding us back. The reality is the majority of the left online is ineffective, purity fetishist & dogmatic, sports-teams look alikes, sectarian and arrogant, and more.
I’ve promoted at length to organizations to stop recruiting from this section because, and as they often admit themselves, only ever 15% actually stay with the group long-term and commit to organizing. The Socialists & Communists of the past, they never prioritized people who already had these ideals to bring them in, they of course welcomed them, but the organizations of the past prioritized union members, impoverished workers with semi-left values, and in general regular people who could be converted to the cause. People in the Left who never belonged to an organization or intend to join one unless specific values meet their hyper specific desires, are drunk on individualism and pseudo-intellectualism. They believe they are somehow smarter and more in-tune with the desires of the masses despite lacking the deep intertwined connections organizations have both in and outside the country - and when this is the conditions of the unorganized Left, it is no surprise why many of them are easily manipulated to repeating the same narratives of the State Department.
Left organizations and organizers should always provide an open door to those who regard themselves as Socialist or Communist already with or without involvement in a group prior, but these organizations need to prioritize recruitment from regular working class members above all. The dependency on the online Left is functionally keeping us weak and killing our momentum.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License