From what I saw he’s a “Orwell is a great socialist author” and “the USSR was fascist” kind of terminally white bourgeois British dude. Did he, like, watched a Hakim or JT video before accepting?? I hope it’s because he’s having a redemption arc or something
He has a big platform, collabing with him is great for the podcast exposure. Its just usual podcast behaviour, heck they have even collabed with ultras like BadEmpanada and the russian guy.
I’d call BE an eclectic Marxist tbh.
He definitely holds his fair share of ultra positions but he’s not actually an ultra; he mentioned that he considered Stalin to be 50/50 good/bad and Mao to be 70/30. An ultra wouldn’t say anything like that (despite my objections that those names at the least need to be swapped around; not to start a struggle session but Stalin made a lot of choices that were either under duress or the best of a bad set of options while Mao made some major fuckups all by himself, although I think both figures need higher ratings tbh.)
What is an ultra? I’ve never really understood that term
Ultra leftism is the ideological dogmatism/idealism of people who consider themselves to the left of ML. In Marxism there is a line struggle between dogmatism and revisionism. Dogmatism means holding onto the word of theorists religiously rather than being pragmatic and studying material conditions. Revisionism/opportunism means unreasonably altering past theory and being pragmatic in terms of self-preservation rather than the furthering of the movement. Ultras are dogmatic. There is a dialectic between theory and practice. For a principled communist theory informs practice and practice informs theory, this is called praxis. Ultras tend to put to much emphasis on theory while revisionists tend to put too much emphasis on practice.
There is another dialectic between adventurism and tailism. The right deviation of Marxism tends to advocate tailing the backward sections of the masses, while adventurists want to ignore the masses and do extreme actions on their own. The principled vanguardist stance is that we should meet the masses where they are but try to bring them up to a higher level of consciousness and organization. Ultras are the adventurists, revisionists are the tailists.
Both sides of the deviation tend to denounce certain past experiments. Ultras will usually say an experiment wasn’t pure enough, while a revisionist might say it went too far. Examples of left deviations include Gonzalism, Hoxhism, Trotskyism, and sometimes anarchism. Examples of right deviations include the reformism, “patriotic socialism,” and economism. To be clear, deviations can have both right and left aspects. Revisionists are often dogmatic too.
A final note is that deviations tend to specifically address those they disagree with as the opposite pole of deviation. I’ve only heard Patsocs derogatorily call people Ultra-leftists, while I’ve only heard Gonzalists speak of revisionism.
Further reading: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Revisionism https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Ultra-leftism https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/
Wow thanks for the effort post. You also explained what praxis was to me which is something I didn’t realize I didn’t understand. Very cool 👍
BadEmpanada has a more “ultra” philosophy but he does a lot of research so his facts are pretty straight. For example his video on the Great Ukrainian Famine under Stalin is a banger. The Russian guy is boring as f so I didn’t really listened, and at least I can relate to his more generic anti-war sentiment.
I think there’s a massive gap between a “the Soviets were fascists” and a “I don’t like war” / “I don’t trust neither US nor Chinese media”.
I think there’s a massive gap between a “the Soviets were fascists” and a “I don’t like war” / “I don’t trust neither US nor Chinese media”.
Reminder that neither Moscow nor Washington was a CIA position pushed by them and their compromised left. Neither Washington nor Beijing is the same weak, nihilistic, arm-chair, false-equivalence garbage designed to fragment the left, prevent a laser-focus of criticism on Washington and the NATO global capitalist hegemony they lead, and all in all be ineffectual. The bourgeoisie are not and never will be threatened by people who have objections to capitalism but also object to all existing socialism and successful methods of attaining it as those people are mere discontents who on some level have accepted the status quo.
Ultimately I agree with you, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that the current propaganda system is really hard to get through and that we can’t expect everybody to grasp all the counterintuitive realities at once.
You rightly shown how reactionary those positions were when analyzed with historical knowledge and within a scientific framework but we need to identify when something stems from genuine ignorance, idealism, and positive core values. If we don’t do that then 90% of the imperial core population are “card-carrying” fascists, when the reality is, a majority genuinely don’t realise how some of their positions are in fact pro capital
One thing that wasn’t mentioned in that post is that BE denied the fact that BA415 faced any credible threat because he wasn’t at risk of being killed after being doxed.
For one thing, I believe it was France that had its demographic data used to aid in identifying the people who were put into concentration camps and/or exterminated; just because your personal information is safe today under the current regime is no assurance that your personal information won’t be used against you tomorrow under different circumstances.
Another thing is that this is just completely false. It’s not a stretch to imagine that he might have been swatted and that during the swatting he could have gotten killed, either through typical Yankee cop negligence or by something more malicious and planned.
Last of all, being doxed can pose a significant threat to your safety and wellbeing without credible threats to your life. Just because nobody is coming around to your address to put a bullet in your head doesn’t mean that they aren’t ordering a barrage of pizzas at all times of the night, that people can’t threaten, intimidate, or harass you, that they can’t interfere with your job, that they can’t get you fired, evicted, or brought up on false charges etc.
I’d love to get BE to respond on stream to a question about why he keeps his identity and residence away from public knowledge because he’d immediately give half a dozen reasons why this is the case without needing a moment to think about it. It would really undermine this shitty hot take of his.
Damn I’m just re-reading all that stuff now, because I did when it was posted but I kinda forgot. I didn’t know much and thought it was just another lib that I didn’t care about.
I still wouldn’t put it on the same level as Nicholas but I admit he’s pretty cringe overall. Well I guess The Deprogram is actually super good at normalizing ML presence
He’s been known to spread American war propaganda though, for example with the Uighur Genocide hoax. He made a very damaging video about it.
they also invited Hasan Piker, a Biden voter 😐
Hasan is great tho, he is a fundamental part of the ML pipeline.
It’s a pipeline of consumerism and wealthy debatebros that is deeply intertwined with tech-media corps and relies on donations from impressionable people. It’s all branding and discourse at the marketplace of ideas.
He’s cringe for multiple reasons, but unlike the “debate bros” he never tries to avoid people moving left.
The man brought useful information in, if you call yourself a marxist and are angry that useful information reached you through “unsanctified hands” idk what to tell you…
I’m all for getting information from the unholiest hands but giving mainstream exposure to propagandists who are committed to sabotage is something else
Yea me as well. I don’t really understand why he was invited on the show but go off I guess. Maybe it was his knowledge about Patreon?
Yeah I guess, I don’t deny that he must have some skills, the thing is, it kinda makes it worse when someone with a PhD publicly states abysmally ignorant shit on anything because it kinda has to be bad faith propaganda
I take it as a credit to Tom Nicholas that he accepted the invite. For all the “he’s not left enough” criticism the boys will get from having him on, Tom’s going to get so much more hassle from people bleating “you appeared on a tankie podcast.”
But they invited him and he accepted, and because of that connection a lot of minds that were closed to are going to be opened at least a little, and whenever that honest, communicative kind of connection happens, people shift left. Nichols is too astute to not have know that.
My optimistic self was thinking that too but you formulated it a lot better which helps me giving it credit. I hope his audience will at least take interest in hearing a more ML point of view and not go for the full liberal hive mind
signifier D once recommended animal farm in one of his videos and still was in an episode
I remember when he said something (in the podcast) like “I was down with socialism, but dang syndicalism is hard core.” He’s obviously not all the way there, but very valuable as a representative of the black left and probably one of the more pipeline-y breadtubers.
