Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory reading group on hiatus, will move to Lemmygrad later this year
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna’s Archive, libgen
At risk of sounding like a lib, I really do feel we are missing some kinda strong and intellectual leader type that goes against the status quo. Unfortunately the only leaders willing to go against the status quo are people like Trump and Milei, who I dont really consider strong. Even the status quo they go against is in more of a backwards cultural way rather than economic, because economically the status quo is already trending towards neoliberalism. This could also just be me being western biased, there are things going on in the Sahel states that I’m not too informed on.
Putin maybe? But he seems to be another capitalist at the end of the day. China is off doing their own thing. The whole Gaza genocide and Syria collapse just made Iran look really weak to me, but idk Im just an amateur looking at the situation from afar. Guess the west is literally just going to collapse through its own contradictions with no one there to pick up the pieces
I feel like we need to prize the proletariat and the common person more often than “another Lenin.”
True. There needs to be some vanguard of the revolution though.
I agree, but Great Man Theory is not vanguardism.
Mélenchon in France and his party is doing a lot of work considering the insanely reactionary politics currently ongoing in his country.
Putin does not only seem to be a capitalist. He’s 100% a capitalist, he just happens to be from a country the US hates. More than a capitalist, putin is a reactionary asshole doing exactly the same kind of shit far right politicians in the rest of the world are trying to do, plunder all they can while blaming minorities for it.
Furthermore, I would argue Milei and Trump are not really going against the status quo, they just removed the veneer of “civility” liberals love to tout while doing the same shit.
Ansar allah, Ibrahim Traoré, Evo Morales (the CIA tried to kill him recently)
A lot of burgers are locked entirely into mainstream media; or the revolving NGOs masquerading as news agencies revolving around it. With a good chunk of the population entirely subsumed into the narratives presented on prime-time, I think it’s really, really hard for anyone “counter-cultural” to either not be coopted or casted out entirely when they don’t follow orders.
I mean, look at Greta.
I thought that Greta was moving in the right direction, lately? I get that she is probably still a neoliberal, but I remember thinking she is becoming more radical. The good kind of radical.
You’re right about Greta’s leanings toward more radicalism. The previous poster’s point is that people like Greta are touted by media when they’re not radical, but get dropped once they do.
Thus you won’t find these excellent leaders by watching mainstream capitalist media.
Having listened to Eugene Puryear of the PSL speak, his ability to connect cross-cultural historical knowledge with today’s struggles make him a great one to follow: https://www.instagram.com/pslbayarea/reel/DGPasWHRf_h/
Eugene is great!