Admitting that they had been working for several years without any discernible success, FBI agents confirmed Wednesday that a local left-wing political group was too disorganized to infiltrate. “We’ve had a few guys in there posing as members and trying to manipulate them into committing acts of violence we can arrest them for, but these people don’t ever do anything violent—they don’t ever do anything at all,” an undercover FBI agent told reporters, adding that the agency believed they’d made headway with turning the leader of the Liberation Socialists group into an informant until the guy didn’t show up to a meeting for months. “These people are incredibly disorganized. We try to attend their meetings to get them to unwittingly work on our behalf, but half the time no one shows up but the undercover agents, and the other half of the time the meetings are so confusing it’s impossible to follow what they’re actually trying to do. We also tried to sow division in their ranks to ensure that they couldn’t become powerful, but that didn’t work because these people already all fucking hate each other. They spend all their time arguing about minutiae, and most of the time when we try to talk them into doing something violent to the communal spaces in their community, they don’t even know where to go. They’re just a mess.” The FBI agent added that he was worried the left-wing organization was on to him, as he’d already aroused suspicion by interrupting a meandering discussion of principles with a straightforward plan of action.
Left wing groups are either this or theyre like the CPC and the most organized and competent group youll ever see.
this or “FBI agent can’t keep up with all the reading he has to do”
Wasn’t there an actual internal report from the CIA or FBI about infiltrators complaining that communist orgs have too much reading or something?
i can’t remember if that’s real or an onion story from 15 years ago
Let’s be honest, neither can the actual communists. Show of hands, who here actually reads any theory?
How do you find the time? Or understand all that complicated stuff?
I’ve got nothing but time, I work a bullshit job
Understanding the complicated stuff just comes from layering understandings of less complicated stuff. It only feels complicated when you’re reading shit that you haven’t built up the proper context for.
i’m not sure what “the complicated stuff” is, other than our modern expectations of language and literature being different than they were 50 or 100 or more years ago. Older stuff usually being harder to slog through because of how it’s written or translated, rather than the concepts being the problem.
we need something like those bibles with the pictures of skateboarders on the cover
Yeah, we do. The Soviet secularist version of “youth group bibles”, lol.
There is actually something to the constant moaning about “hundred year old academic treatises treated as basic introductory material” from people who “just don’t want to read their theory”.
i’ve been (really) slowly working my way through some of the readings in this post; so far it’s been good
Ah. So it must just be that when a lot of leftists say “read your theory” and direct you to the classic stuff everyone recommends, there’s a bit of reverse Dunning-Kruger involved in terms of the proper context? D’ya think?
I started as a teenager, I had a lot of time back then. Once you get the basis of it, the rest is - usually - not as complicated as it sounds. And it always helps to be in contact with people who already know about the subject and guide you, so look for reading groups.
we have bookclubs here. i’m too distractible to participate, i’d rather just blast a whole audio book over a couple weekends than do a chapter a week.
I will say, theory on tape makes a lot of things a lot more tolerable.
🖐️
Where do you even find the time?
When the kid is at swim class, when the kid is at dance class, on my lunch, during flights (not that I’m on them often), long car rides (if I’m not driving).
I make the time where I can. Its a priority for me above other things I would enjoy but not learn anything from. I have an eReader that is stacked from top to bottom with theory that I’ll probably never finish. Some theory though, like the works of Lenin are not that long.
I haven’t finished Left Wing Communism yet only because were between seasons on swim and dance. That gets me at least 1.5 hours of reading a week.
If you can try to read an hour a day you’ll get through more then you might tink.
You sound just like my mom. Reading through that felt just like talking to her about her week on the drive home from school back when I was like 13.
(Tbf, this is a commie site that seems to skew closer to her age than mine, and she is the most communist adjacent liberal I’ve ever known IRL, so. That kinda tracks.)
I wish there was a communist group around me who were actually organised like that. All we’ve got is a complete joke of a political party that have done sweet fuck all since the damn 1950s.
Where I live we have like four communist parties. They are all small and completely politically irrelevant. Three of them are full of boomers, speak like a 1970’s pamphlet and haven’t said a single word about racism, homophobia or transphobia. It seems like all they do is hoovering meetings and writing articles nobody outside the party well ever read. The last one is full of young energetic people, they seem pretty intersectionalist, they know how to communicate on social media and engage people outside the party, they are also a bunch of Trots who are still publicly butthurt over Stalin.
There are no good options.
Socialist Alternative is everywhere man
I think they call themselves the Revolutionary Communist Party around here. It seems well-intentioned and I’m sure there’s lots of good people in that org but it is really sad to see so much energy and talent being pissed up the wall.
I get the appeal of Trotskyism in the west, it allows you to align with the communist politics that are obviously just and rational without having to confront the internalised anti-communism that you have been spoon-fed all your life.
i went to a socialist alternative meeting a few years ago (before covid) and they spent the entire time talking about the “revolution” in catalonia and then auctioned off a newspaper for $100 as a way of supporting said catalonian independence movement. basically a parody of a pointless trot org
oh my god that’s amazing
Trots are so completely useless. I say I’d rather go to a Trot meeting than not organise at all, but let’s be honest, the minute someone brings up Stalin, I’ll manage to get myself thrown out.
All you need for an organization is 2 people. If there’s no good ones someone has to start a new one eventually. Either you, or someone else.
Yeah, but I don’t know even one other commie IRL, and I’d be shit at running anything, let alone a properly organized party.