My cousins cats are named potato and carrot

I don’t think these stories often leave the inner circles of the scouting groups where this happens since they know it’s not socially accepted in broader society. I just happen to have been at the wrong places to learn about it.

These anecdotes are from Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark

Sorry I don’t, I just know from experience and talking to other people in different regions with the same experience.

If you want personal anecdotes, these are things that I know happen at scouting groups (not all, but enough for it to be a systemic issue): sharing hitler memes and memes about jews or other minorities, social acceptance of making jokes about jews or other minorities, collecting nazi memorabilia and roleplaying with them, doing roleplay games where the younger kids are put in pretent internment camps. Everyone I’ve talked to who’s been in scouting has been a nightmare to talk to about social issues because they actually believe in racist tropes.

Yes but not only that. Today you will see many scouting groups being places where right extremist ideology is being spread without any supervision or intervention by governments.

Scouting in Western Europe has close associations with national socialists. In a way all children programs serve a propagandist purpose and I think a socialist scouting-like program could be beneficial for children and society.

I agree with all of the criticisms and I don’t have a stake in it since I don’t live in the US. But I will criticise any comment that does not offer any actual analysis and just functions to demotivate people who are trying build a movement.

Very insightful commentary

Yes but he’s also DSA, if the democratic party is the vessel that DSA wants to use to get people elected, then DSA elects must still be accountable to the DSA.

I saw an interview with I think Finkelstein when Mamdani was just elected. He said that a true socialist elect would be accountable to its socialist party. They would have to have regular meetings where the elected is fully transparent over their activities and lets the democratic process of the party decide over major decisions. Instead Mamdani is doing backroom deals and not being transparent about the pressure he is facing from either side thus making decisions that no one understands which is killing the movement that got him elected.

I know too little about Russian history. I’m now wondering what happened to the communist movement in Russia after the coup. Were communists repressed in a similar way as in Europe? And what is the potential for a revolution nowadays?

The people there didn’t hate communism though, it was western liberals who warned me that they would.

When I went to live in a formerly communist country I got warned beforehand that the people there hate their communist past but I met mostly people who were super nostalgic about it.

I don’t think you read my comment

I’m getting a bit tired of leftists fighting over differences in messaging. Hasan’s framing around Palestine has always been that there is currently 1 state (isntrael) because the isntraelis rule over all of Palestine. Therefore his demands are for Palestinians to get equal rights in addition to the right to return to their ancestral home and that all war criminals get put to justice. This means the destruction of isntrael, because it would make the Palestinians a majority who can decide over their own land (including its name and flag). Hasan says that latter part often enough that it’s ridiculous to pretend that he wants to preserve isntrael.

He’s just using a different messaging strategy. You can (and should) scrutinise his messaging strategy, but you’re just making things up if you imply that he’s not on our side on Palestine.