Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

Dmitry is really swinging a wrecking ball today! Representing the Left wing of the Global Authoritarian Detente. And here we thought it was only the far right that would be gasllighting us this week.

On Jan 11, 2021, at 14:18 , dk@telekommunisten.net wrote:

I have great respect for Frank. I trust he wont mistake spirited writing with insult.

This is like Trump saying he was "only being sarcastic." It’s a lie. It’s gaslighting.

You dismiss his life experience living in one of the regimes you worship

"I lived in east Germany, blah blah,”

... even as you later demand that those living outside these regimes have no right to so much as comment on them. You are using hypocritical doublespeak. And to be clear: insulting him. Your response to him is NOT respectful. If you think otherwise, you need some therapy.

And of course, you can cry “tone policing” as an excuse for your behaviour, because you’ve appropriated a few key catchphrases to stay one step ahead of the people who call you out.

I hesitate to join a war of words with someone who seems to buy ink by the barrel, but Dmitry’s whole argument is sophistic and wrong.

He tells us that the CCP is doing the will of the Chinese worker but then tells us we have no right or ability to analyze the very topic he’s making such bold assertions about. It’s Prima Facie nonsense. Doublespeak.

Bullying people with long diatribes that explicitly deny their right to any thoughts of their own, while laying down page after page after page of his own thoughts. All the while insisting that none of the work any of us is doing in our communities has any value, because we aren’t… what? Falling in line blindly behind Dmitry, without having any opinions?

It’s just a terrible thing to do in a discussion. It’s in terrible bad faith.

On Jan 11, 2021, at 12:35 , Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net> wrote:

MST is certainly not, MST is a direct movement of the oppressed, and firmly rooted in improving their material conditions. It is you that seeks to instrumentalize them as a third party to "prove" that your judgments of China are somehow interesting.

This sounds a lot like your analysis and judgment! Which you keep saying are not interesting!

On Jan 11, 2021, at 12:35 , Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net> wrote:

so trust them to overcome their contradictions there, while we focus on the ones here, and that we do not judge them, but defer their affairs to their leadership with respect and solidarity.

Trust them! Don’t judge them! Defer their affairs to their leadership!

How are we to trust them and defer to them if we are intrinsically incapable of even basic understanding? How the hell do you know who represents whose interests?

Do you pretend that no one in China rejects the communist party? While withholding your judgment, your opinions, have you somehow formed an immaculate conception of who are the “good guys” all while refusing to even look in their direction, lest you form a judgmental heretical thought? Did this happen by magic?

There’s a lot to slam in Dmitry’s tub-thumper of a thread, but let me also hit with this:

On Jan 11, 2021, at 07:55 , Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net> wrote:

blah blah both sides

Right here we have such a profound failure of analysis and imagination that it should be embarrassing. And again with the childish, bullying non-rebuttal.

There’s more than two sides! And as usual, the Marxist take discards race, gender and any other form of identity as a distraction. Or should I say “Blah blah blah racism,” as Dmitry puts it. Ask the Uighurs, happily marching into boxcars!

"Did we say death camps? We meant happy camps!”

I see a number of factions that don’t fit into the 2-node “us and them” form that makes it so easy to shut off your brain and just start pounding the faces of the people facing you.

On the one side, we have post-capitalist authoritarianism, as represented by Trump and co., by AfD, by Brexit and Farage, by Putin, by Bolsonaro, by Xi, the House of Saud, and by others. Using the state monopoly on borders and violence to impose one-culture rule. Destruction of the planet is a problem for future leaders.

On the other side, we have neoliberal capitalist imperialism, as represented by Bush, Reagan, in my country by O’Toole and Co., Boris Johnson, etc. Using Democracy as a safety valve to solve social problems before they get too big to handle with force, but of course, using force when it’s the easiest.

On the other side, we have liberal capitalist democracy, as represented by Biden, Clinton, Trudeau, Macron, Merkel, et al. Where mass movements can be organized and weaponized to keep core safely exploiting periphery while maximizing the return on human resource investment. Antiracism and Feminism as methods of expanding the talent pool for core leadership and reduce friction in the economic equilibrium and growth.

On the other side (that’s four so far!) we have Social Democracy (like the NDP here, Bernie’s more pragmatic supporters), true believers in identity-based social justice and socio-economic redistribution who just want to get there without heads on spikes in the village square, perhaps fatally naive in believing their opponents subscribe to the same gentle doctrine.

And then we get (while still oversimplifying and skipping steps) to Communism, Democratic Socialism etc…

But to the hard-boiled communist there’s only two sides: Communists, and the Bad Guys.

- Flick