Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

This is pure thoughtlording on my part tho, I will never read a book

I'm not talking about individuals, I'm talking about a political organization with formal ties to corporate interests.

That's why a self-described socialist like AOC (who I think I've made clear I have some level of admiration for) can come in and push for reforms and that won't change the party's underlying nature. I'm not suggesting that some iteration of the GND wouldn't be something worthwhile, by all means go for it, but the Democratic Party, barring some fundamental reorganization that effectively transforms them into a totally different creature, are opponents to, ideally, be vanquished.

I know I issue this caveat all the time but: holy fuck I would love to be wrong about this

Right I mean the point I'm making is not that I expect the Democratic Party to fly the red and black, but that using the institution of the Democratic Party to shift the political horizon is possible and (thanks to America's first-past-the-post approach to elections) the most viable option for the existing mechanisms of power to be bent towards radical ends. Which is among the lessons of Chokwe Lumumba and Cooperation Jackson, bearing in mind the latter's self-criticisms of this approach, e.g.

The political dynamics are not the same as they were three or four years ago. Back then, we - specifically the New Afrikan People’s Organization, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and the Jackson People’s Assembly - very much appealed to a broad cross-section of people in Jackson, and so we had a popular-front type of orientation and campaign. You’re talking about a city that is 85% Black, so most of that front was other Black people. We built a multi-class alliance in Jackson to win the election. The thing that was critical for Chokwe’s election for mayor was making sure that there was a significant Black working class turnout; that was the critical thing. That was going to stem the tide and break the normal flow and operation of the traditional Black petit bourgeois forces that had been deciding the electoral outcomes in Jackson. At that time, it was very easy to build a multi-class alliance, based in the Black working class forces in the city. This time around it’s going to be significantly different. For the 2017 Mayoral election we are not going to be able to rely on that same formulation, that multi-class formation, for Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s, Chokwe’s youngest son, campaign. Too many of those forces now have really given their pledges to Hillary, and they’ve bought into the reorganization of the Democratic Party that has happened since 2013 here in Jackson. Chokwe ran within the Democratic primary but from an oppositional place within the party structure which exists here in Mississippi. He ran as a member of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which still exists as a separate entity, and it still has the ballot access it won in the 1960s. But outside of a couple counties close to the Mississippi river, it’s mostly functioned as a political club, and not so much as an organized political force. Chokwe’s election turned it into a political force. O

ne of the things that happened since Chokwe died (and honestly it started happening even while he was alive) was that the Democrats at the national level wanted to cut it off, because it was an organized left political force within the party. So they did a lot of organizing, and they spent more money in Jackson in the last five years than they did in the last fifty years, trying to re-consolidate their power. That’s put some of the traditional forces that were close to us in 2012 - 2013 opposition to us. We’re in a context where it’s easy to be critical of what Obama has been doing over the last couple of years. We’ve been very vocal about that. That’s put us in opposition to some of the established Black petit bourgeois forces that are aligned with him and national Democratic Party. Things may change over the next few weeks and months, we’ll see. But at this point, our movements electoral salvation if you will, depends squarely on the Black working class vote.

http://archive.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/strategylabs/2016-elections/item/1055-can-we-be-a-counter-force?-reflections-from-kali-akuno-on-the-current-moment

The problem is always trying to do something (good) that the system isn't structured for. It takes so much effort to force something against the grain of the existing structure.

^ why i haven't voted green in 14 years

Asked if he’s a progressive, @BetoORourke says, ‘I don’t know.’ He’s not big on labels, he says pic.twitter.com/gDczpTZ2Bb

— David Siders (@davidsiders) December 14, 2018

my guy, lol

cogent thoughts on nationalizing various industries:
- coal
- oil
- steel

(in the US, i should say)

Modernity is weird:

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/12/yellow-vests-pamela-anderson-france-macron

Pamela Anderson on Europe’s Turmoil

AN INTERVIEW WITH
PAMELA ANDERSON SREĆKO HORVAT

Pamela Anderson spoke to Jacobin and philosopher Srećko Horvat about the protests in France, the crisis in the European Union, and her own activism.

This seems like a panel lineup from the Dick Cavett Show

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/47572254_1979948925422356_132817744755163136_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&_nc_ht=scontent.xx&oh=556fe5bb0a5a35e226d9cbea30f606bb&oe=5C93213A

see also the parisian graffiti with this message lol

amazing

how many people do we think Pamela Anderson could feasibly murder

Depends on the place, depends on the time

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/48396256_10212477136994449_6661528588589727744_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-1.xx&oh=e474870b2b45050cd7e0a3e243177c9d&oe=5CAE0290

lmaooooooooo the hits, they keep coming

Bearing in mind my prior comments about the problems of political personality cults, I hope the photo becomes a meme I love it

she's trending!

That’s the closest they could get to her making this facial expression

she just gets more powerful with all these hit pieces

love it

she just gets more powerful with all these hit pieces

^ this is mostly wishful thinking.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez grows in importance in the public mind as a result of all these hit pieces, but in order to counteract all the character assassination and the overwhelmingly negative tone of this propaganda she will have to become identified with effective advocacy for issues that are very popular.

As of now, for the vast majority of the nation, she is merely a name, if that. First impressions do count, and the media who want to take her down are attempting to monopolize those first impressions to the extent they are able. They know their business, treesh. They are busily poisoning the well as fast as they can.

I'm gonna need some evidence that any of that well-poisoning is working tbh, all of the attacks seem super weak to me so far (and not just as a commie)

I suspect that's because of how you consume political media, Simon. God help us, but there are tens of millions of US citizens whose media sophistication is so rudimentary that they thought Benghazi and Hillary's email server were major crimes tatamount to treason because some lame talking head on FOX kept saying they were.

I get that, but I still don't even see anything as (relatively) concrete as "the emails!!" to come from this messaging to date. the old "b-b-but commies!" alarms don't work all that well anymore AFAICT

well, hillary hadn't betrayed the brave soldiers of benghazi for like decades until then, but people were certainly prepped to believe that she would have

People respond more to the alarmed tone, the body language, and the carefully chosen implications that she presents a grave danger, than to any specific facts being communicated. They are consuming impressions, not facts. Even having a 'foreign-sounding' name is going to resonate badly, if the proper framework is built around it.

There's not a lot she can do to halt all that shit hurled in her direction. The best she will be able to do is craft an extremely strong counter-message, so simple and direct it is hard to obscure under the mud flung her way, and practice her camera presence to create a strong positive image to override the negative image being pasted onto her. She seems to understand this and is doing pretty well at it so far.

I would say so. To hat-tip to another ilxor,

*clutches at heart* _team_ pic.twitter.com/LAxew0Jlv7

— justin jacoby smith (@hoosteen) December 18, 2018

the right wing attacks ocasio cortez for being too idealistic and supporting policies most americans like, such as universal healthcare. doesn't have the sting of a seth rich imo

yeah that's a good comparison imo

she's also a young high achieving striver who could've milked her rise to prominence as some horatio alger myth but instead she gets there and shes like "it turns out america kinda sucks, lets do LOTS OF THINGS differently" like she's ungrateful!!!!

i think it's hard to smear someone like her. we'll see what she's like in congress, but right now it seems she is taking the bernie approach of never straying from the basic message. her positions are easily identifiable, unlike hillary's, which was why she could serve as a blank slate for the right to project their paranoia.

not that the right won't project their paranoia on her but i don't think it will stick the same way. i think she'll have more ability to control her own story. or i hope so because we need a hard left turn away from all kinds of nonsense.

the fact that she has yet toe ven take office and yet has seem to have done more to shift the direction of potential future public policy than anyone currently in congress is the greatest endorsement of the inherent appeal of left-spectrum policies (when plainly communicated) I can recall

i mean, not more than bernie or warren

more than anyone in the house yeah

I meant to say *almost* anyone there lol

imo, the greatest weakness of the moderate-left somewhat-progressively-minded politicians of the past three decades has been their habit of vague and generalized rhetoric on behalf of mind-numbingly complex legislation and difference-splitting policies. the more complex the legislation, the more easily it was subverted and manipulated by the wealthy and their lobbyists. they were charmed by a plausible line of rationalizations, when they needed to be resolute for clear, strong, and obvious public benefits.

but, you, the choir, have already heard this sermon I have no doubt.

I think more, honestly. it's the age factor.

As someone pointed out on the Current Affairs podcast, AOC is hard to attack because she does what Trump does: she never gets defensive. Every attempt made to slander her has been met with a "hell yeah I'm socialist" or whatever.

^^^

a fun AOC factoid

This also means @Ocasio2018 will have roughly 8 (!) hours per day more than her colleagues to spend on legislation, at hearings, reading, writing, doing press, meeting with constituents, etc. Her colleagues schedule is more like the following: /1 https://t.co/Y4jqzohzep

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) December 18, 2018

It'd be a bold move if she actually avoids getting roped into call time

maybe this should all go in Democratic (Party) Direction idk

My old org often bandied around the idea of blockading one of the call time buildings but we figured ultimately it was too obscure a target to resonate with most people

Kinda wish we'd done it

Call time is for raising money for the DCCC and stuff like that, right? So is she raising money from small donors still, or is she just not pitching in? I mean, she could probably win that fight, but it's not really the same story.

aiui the DCCC plops you down and gives you a list

what is aiui pls

as i understand it