The is going to be a bit of a controversial take but it’s my own and I’m willing to die on this hill:

I put BadMouse into the same category as BadEmpanada tbh. Both make/tend to make good video essays. That’s all I’m willing to engage with and give them credit for.

They are not people who I look up to as people who I should follow. I neither trust them nor respect them enough for that.

In the case of BadEmpanada, he has some unhinged behaviour on social media and he just has some garbage takes that increase in inverse proportion to the proximity to his main channel. In the case of BadMouse, he is so self-assured that I feel like the only right thing is to make up for his lack of skepticism by having enough skepticism of him for the both of us - he cycled through ideologies like a westerner window-shops for new outfits to wear and I’d argue that he’s more of a convincing speaker than he is a person who has done the reading and put in the effort to enact his politics (I can’t speak for his more recent turn away from being on YouTube to primarily being a grass-toucher but everything that is visible in his YouTube era is representative of him spending his time on creating online hot takes so…)

So I will listen to what each of them have to say, and most of the time I really appreciate what they have to say and the way they formulate their video essays. But the more they start straying out of their lane, the more I start taking them with a pinch of salt; I’m not about to start taking organising advice from BadMouse lol.

With regards to the PSL - they do not operate in my country and I am not personally familiar with them. I have definitely heard about some of the concerns with the organisation and how it deals with matters. This is based on second-hand reports and it should be taken into consideration but it should also be taken with due skepticism because it’s easy for a wrecker to concoct a story to sway sentiment against an organisation baselessly (not saying that this is the case here but we should always have a healthy skepticism about these claims against organisations and comrades unless we have good cause to believe it.)

As the PSL matters are internal and they are contended, I am happy to sit this one out - it’s not my place, it’s not my organisation, it’s not my struggle.

If I were considering the PSL personally, I would observe the organisation for a while and read their statements etc. while engaging with the local branch and its members as a fellow traveller. Very often with large or national organisations, the people on leadership are not reflective of the people in your branch and there are questions about organising and strategy that people need to hash out with themselves like whether they think the org itself is good enough on sufficient matters that you can deal with disagreements etc., whether you want to be part of driving a cultural change within the organisation, if you are satisfied with how the organisation resolves conflict and how the leadership addresses their own flaws and fuck ups etc. etc.

Ultimately, this is my position: I am not perfect, organisations are not perfect, and whatever party I’m in or associated with is not perfect either.

I have a hierarchy of things that are most important to me and I seek alignment with enough of the most important issues. With the lower priority matters, I’m interested in seeing if or how the organisation’s line has developed on that and how/if it has managed to develop on other issues where it has had a bad line; an organisation that is willing to change and admit past errors is more important to me than perfect ideological alignment because I see that as a crucial sign of a healthy org.

Idk where I’m going with this ramble but it’s just some of my thoughts.