#new left

[victusinveritas]

I mean, this is literally the thesis of nearly all new left critical theory.

[tobrez]

Why the hell is my account almost exclusively attracting Conservatives? What is this algorithm? Get them out!

[katieberry]

I like to do little projects while I study whatever my brain decides is it's interest of the week - so to my fellow commies in the audience (love you babes ♡) I created this flowchart of socialist/communist parties in the United States!!

I made this over a year ago during the height of having COVID brainfog (please get your vaccinations besties it's not fun!). Please note that the inclusion of a group isn't an endorsement! There's some judgement involved in what exactly should be counted; some groups here are social democrats but have ties to more explicitly socialist parties, but at the same time I excluded reactionary groups that had similar ties, so it all comes down to my judgement that I might not even agree with any more but one-year-ago-covid-brain-me has decided and it. is. final.

I want to do a second revision to include the post-2000s Maoist movement (I have the Red Guards here but even then it's not really accurate to relegate them as an offshoot of the CPUSA), but for now here's revision 1 have funn!!

Excalidraw — Collaborative whiteboarding made easy

Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.

PS this isn't a live link and if you mess it up just reload, it's fine don't panic you didn't ruin it for anyone else

PPS I literally don't care if you use this or add to it or do whatever, I'd love credit because I love attention but go wild with it besties

PPPS if any of this is inaccurate please tell me because I want all the information that exists just be nice to me about it or else I'll cry

[heydocverdant]

FIGHT THE OLIGARCHY WITH BERNIE AND AOC: IDAHO

LIVE from Nampa, Idaho: Tonight we stand up and fight for American democracy, an economy that works for all, and a more just society.

Feeling some hometown pride about this AOC rally because this is in my actual hometown. I recognize people in that audience; those are MY people! I love that town and I want the best for the people in it, and it’s nice to see people from home rally to the cause

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Ribu's anti-imperialist feminist discourse would later manifest in its solidarity protests against kisaeng tourism. This sex tourism involved Japanese businessmen traveling to South Korea to partake in the sexual services of young South Korean women who worked at clubs called kisaengs. Ribu's protests against kisaeng tourism represented how the liberation of sex combined with ribu's anti-imperialism and enabled new kinds of transnational feminist solidarity based on a concept of women's sexual exploitation and sexual oppression. From ribu's perspective, this form of tourism represented the reformation of Japanese economic imperialism in Asia. They were not against sex work by Japanese women, but opposed to the continued sexual exploitation of Korean women as a resurgence of the gendered violence of imperialism: Ribu activists hence connected imperialism and sexual oppression of colonized women to the continuing sexual exploitation of Korean women in the 1970s. In this way, they were able to expand the leftist critique of imperialism and, at the same time, point to the fault lines and inadequacies of the left.

In her critique of the left, Tanaka points to its failure to have a theory of the sexes.

Even in movements that are aiming towards human liberation, by not having a theory of struggle that includes the relation between the sexes. the struggle becomes thoroughly masculinist and male-centered (dansei-chushin shugi].

According to ribu activists, this male-centered condition infected not only the theory of the revolution and delimited its horizon, but it created a gendered concept of revolution that privileged masculinist hierarchies within the culture of the left. Ribu activists decried the hypocrisy of the left and what it deemed to be the all-too-frequent egotistical posturing of the "radical men" who "eloquently talked about solidarity, the inter national proletariat and unified will," but did not really consider women part of human liberation. Ribu activists rebelled against Marxist dogma and rejected these gendered hierarchies that valued knowledge of the proper revolutionary theory over lived experience and relationships. Moreover, ribu activists criticized what they experienced as masculinist forms of militancy that privileged participation in street battles with the riot police as the ultimate sign of an authentic revolutionary. While being trained to use weapons, activists like Mori Setsuko questioned whether engaging in such bodily violence was the way to make revolution. Ribu's rejection and criticism of a hierarchy that privileged violent confrontation forewarned of the impending self-destruction within the New Left.

...

News of URA [United Red Army] lynchings, released in 1972, devastated the reputation of the New Left in Japan, and many across the left condemned these actions. This case of internalized violence within the left marked its demise. Although ribu activists were likewise horrified by such violence expressed against comrades, many ribu activists responded in a profoundly radical manner that I have theorized elsewhere as "critical solidarity." Ribu activists had already refused to lionize the tactics of violence; hence, they in no way supported the violent internal actions of the URA. However, rather than simply condemning the URA leaders and comrades as monsters and nonhumans [hi-ningen), they sought to comprehend the root of the problem. They recognized that every person possesses a capacity for violence, but that society prohibits women from expressing their violent potential. In response to the state's gendered criminalization of Nagata as an insurgent and violent woman, ribu activists practiced what I describe as feminist critical solidarity specifically for the women of the URA. Ribu activists went in support to the court hearings and wrote about their experience and critical observations of how URA members were being treated. By visiting the URA women at the detention centers, consequently, ribu activists came under police surveillance. Ribu activists enacted solidarity in ways that were tot politically pragmatic but instead philosophically motivated. Their response involved a capacity for radical self-recognition in the loathsome actions of the other. Activists wrote extensively about Nagata - for example, Tanaka described Nagata in her book Inochi no onna-tachi e [To Women with Spirit] as a kind of "ordinary" woman whom she could have admired, except for the tragedy of the lynching incidents. In 1973, Tanaka wrote a pamphlet titled "Your Short Cut Suits You, Nagata!" in response to the state's gendered criminalization of the URA's female leader, the deliberate publication of such humanizing discourse evinces ribu's efforts to express solidarity with the women who were arguably the most vilified females of their time. Hence, ribu engaged in actions that supported these criminalized others even when the URA'S misguided pursuit of revolution resulted in the unnecessary deaths of their own comrades. Through ribu's critical solidarity with the URA, they modeled the imperative of imperfect radical alliances, opening up a philosophically motivated relationality with abject subjects and a new horizon of counter-hegemonic alliances against the dominant logic of heteropatriarchal capitalist imperialism.

While the harsh criticism of the left was warranted and urgently needed given the deep sedimentation of pervasive forms of sexist practice, it should be noted that, at the outset of the movement, there were various ways in which ribu's intimate relationship with other leftist formations characterized its emergence. At ribu's first public protest, which was part of the October 21 anti-war day, some women carried bamboo poles and wooden staves as they marched in the street, jostling with the police." Ribu did not advocate pacifism; its newspapers regularly printed articles on topics such as "How to Punch a Man." During ribu protests from 1970-2, some ribu activists-as noted, with Yonezu and Mori - still wore helmets that were markers of one's political sect and a common student movement practice."

- Setsu Shigematsu, “'68 and the Japanese Women’s Liberation Movement,” in Gavin Walker, ed., The Red Years: Theory, Politics and Aesthetics in the Japanese ‘68. London and New York: Verso, 2020. p. 89-90, 91-92

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"I'M NOT COMMITTED TO NON-VIOLENCE IN ANY WAY."

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a film still of Bernadine Dohrn, former SDS member, later turned extreme Left militant in the Weatherman organization, from "The Weather Underground," the 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the aforementioned American radical-political/revolutionary group.

Sources: www.goodreads.com/book/show/22571602-days-of-rage, IMDb, & Wikipedia.

[power-chords]

Evil bastards! No surprise there, but still.