Political bloodsports debate

politics and that's really the problem we are committing to something uh you know what guys i'm not i'm not doing this i'm not doing this.

Yeah, it's not happening. The problem that you'll find consistently with Second Thought or J.T.

It's not understood by communist movements.

Since even... by communist movements since even That's great. No, I mean, that's great.

Um.

No, I mean, that's great.

No, I mean, that's great.

That's great.

This stream is not going to be sustainable.

There's clearly a deep underlying problem, because this is the second time it's happened this stream is not going to be

and uh deep underlying problem this is the second time this has happened so it will happen again

and uh based on the goals i've set about to accomplish here, it is just fundamentally unsustainable.

It's just unsustainable.

I'm trying to create an uninterrupted Vod as well to be edited.

I could just make one manually instead of the stream, you know.

Um... you know so

yeah I mean uh this is this is pretty outrageous you know this is ridiculous

this is some bullshit problem.

Hold on.

Let me just wait and see if it's gonna...

Let me see how many people are still here.

But if it's just...

It's gotten so bad, then we're probably just gonna, you know'll see let me check something this is pretty

ridiculous you know I don't know why it says 900 viewers

not on the front page

I don't know what the hell this is

I'm going to give this time

but um

yeah at I'm going to give this time, but, um, yeah, this format at least, you know, it's kind of difficult to fucking do when the recording is, it's done, it's dead. It's like there's no way to recover it there's no way to

do anything so we're gonna wait and see but um okay uh Okay, well, the JT video, I'm not going to be able to respond to it, guys.

I'm sorry, because I have to redo everything I just did, because I don't know where it fucking cut off which is so fucking frustrating.

Should I just start from scratch one more time?

Ones if I should start from scratch one more time.

Should I start from scratch one more time?

Okay, I'm going to start from scratch one more time.

But if this happens again,

we are going to

call it a night.

All right.

It's bugging again or what

buffering still

that's so great

I don't know why you guys are saying Twitch

Twitch I can't monetize Twitch, you know.

There's no, you know, I can't just do it on Twitch.

If I'm not gonna, if the stream isn't gonna be monetized,

I may as well just do it offline because it'll be a Vod.

If there, It's not like

we're having a debate right now, you know?

It's fine.

Okay.

Well...

All right.

All right. I'm going to respond to this again in a more concise way, I guess.

We're starting for scratch. Let's go.

Do you believe in the kind of vision of like a more, like there is a model?

I'm just crashing out

because I know it's going to be really fucking

hard for me to fucking explain

to the editors how

to fucking deal with this like

I know for a fact they're going to be too confused

to know how to fucking deal with this

right so it's pissing me off. I have to be like,

no, include the introduction. Oh, what's the introduction? What's the? Fuck my life. Literally

fuck my life, right? I'm going to record this on my end, and we're going to just start from scratch.

All right.

So, KFM 42.

What's up?

Okay, I'm going to end recording and start again. KFM 42. What's up?

Okay, I'm going to end recording and start again.

All right. So recently,

second thought or J.T. chimed in to comment about our party,

the American Communist Party. Now, I

have a past

beefing, I guess, with

second thought. I made a

stream criticizing him. He made a

tweet attacking us.

And I don't

care about any of that. I'm willing to put all of that aside. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. I'm interested in what it takes to build a strong, independent, left-wing socialist, communist, communist movement in this country.

And to be honest, I think that I'm pleasantly surprised by the conversation between J.T. and this podcast host, because they do delve into some of the nuances concerning the challenges that face socialist patriotism in the United States.

Now, one of the problems you'll find in the video is that it kind of seems like he's just trying to distance himself from us while getting the right to

participate in and raising the same questions we do he just wants to make sure that nobody will

accuse him of being associated with us which is is a shame because this individual, I think,

if they didn't have that social pressure on them from these larger streamers, I think they would

probably not really find any reason not to just join the American Communist Party.

Second thought is a, I think he's a member of the CPUSA.

And from what I know about the internal discussions that were happening, which he was party

to in the CPUSA, he kind of was kind of on, like, shared our position, basically, you know?

I don't think he fundamentally disagrees with us. I think he, as a large influencer, probably doesn't like the toxicity

that is associated with

our

when I say are

I mean infrared

not the party

the community

the movement

but

let's just see

what he has to say

I'll react to it

for every country you should follow or will like different countries follow their own let's just see what he has to say. I'll react to it.

For every country you should follow or will like different countries follow their own path to socialism? And if so, like what is uniquely American about American socialism?

Like, do you think we'll have to be done that's different from past socialisms?

That's a good question. I mean, it's tough because the United States is so big,

geographically diverse and stuff. China is too, but they manage. But it's like you have groups like the ACP, and I'm going to get flack for this now, that are trying to do the whole patriotic socialism thing, which wraps up ideology of, you know, westward expansion, of manifest destiny into the socialism thing, takes the 50s

aesthetic of the dad and the boy grilling in the backyard,

white picket fence dog, you know, that sort of thing,

and tries to marry that

to vague socialist ideals, which generally

just ends up being Mussolini light.

That is not.

So a few things. One, the term patriotic socialism has no, the term patriotic socialism was not invented by our movement. It was invented by bad faith actors who were trying to stick a label onto us that sounded like national socialism. I notice a lot of commenters online and on Reddit and elsewhere are like, oh, patriotic

socialism sounds a lot like

national socialism. Well,

that's why our enemies

invented that term and

labeled us that term. Instead

of the actual

canonical, to use a word that I guess would be contentious, but it's just the truth within Orthodox Marxism, Leninism, meaning what is a truism for every communist party on earth that has origins in the common turn and whose principles are founded upon Marxism, Leninism, Socialist Patriotism is the default position.

Now, mind you, socialist patriotism isn't just for ruling communist parties that are already in power and are building socialism in their country.

For non-governing communist parties, socialist patriotism was also the norm and the the the the socialist patriotism is outlined and elucidated upon in soviet introductory textbooks like fundamentals of marxisminism, where they literally use the examples of Britain and France and Italy, of the necessity of communist parties to be at the vanguard of their nation's history and of the common sense of national belonging and national history and champion all of the progressive forces of their nations past in the Marxist sense of

progressive, which means all of the actual decisive things that moved the history of a nation forward. So the very foundation of a nation's existence and its history, communists need to seize and lay hold of that

or else the bourgeoisie will

and the fascist will.

So this is proletarian patriotism

and socialist patriotism.

It is the default

Marxist-Leninist position.

For one reason or another, the, I guess, new left, which I'm not going to dismiss

wholesale.

I think there were good things that came out of the new left.

But nonetheless, it became a trend to go toward anarchism and

individualism

and this

kind of

petty bourgeois

radicalism

which led

a lot of

leftists

to just

consider it

not vogue

or consider

it more

interesting

and punk

rock to

just say you, all nations burn down, screw my nation,

I hate my country, whatever. I mean, that's not the traditional Marxist-Leninist view on the matter.

Square one is socialist patriotism if you're a Marxist-Leninist view on the matter. Square one is socialist patriotism if you're a Marxist Leninist.

You may disagree and you may have criticisms of that.

I'll even entertain your ability to say, hey, you know what?

Things have changed.

Here's why I'm going to push back on it. But to accuse us of being this new thing called patriotic socialism, when all we've done is uphold the Orthodox Marxist-Leninist position on the matter just goes to show

and again this is a common theme in these

response videos I do

how widespread illiteracy

about the basics of Marxism

Leninism is contributing people

to inadvertently

aid and abet the rise of actual far-right and neo-fascist ideologies.

Because traditional Marxism, Leninism, by itself, actually speaks to the discontent among the masses, and it makes a sense of things in a way that's better and superior to the right. But if you are stripping us of the ability to have those tools at our disposal to make sense of our nation's history,

to lead that history, to be at the forefront of being the leaders of the country and so on and so on.

Other people are going to fill that niche and who's going to do it.

It's going to be the far right.

So, and finally, look, this thing about Mussolini Light, once again, it's irresponsible to make those kinds of accusations when we're dealing with an environment in which when we're dealing with an environment. When we're dealing with an environment in which um hold on Hold on. okay sorry when we're dealing with an environment sorry sorry what was i even saying okay it's extremely

irresponsible to call people musulini light that are just espousing traditional

marxism leninism when you're you're engaging in a kind of historical revisionism that removes the context of fascism being a reaction to a very strong already existing socialist communist, left-wing movement.

And there would be no Mussolini, there would be no fascism if it wasn't a a anti-communist response to an existing powerful communist movement that doesn't exist in America stop throwing around these accusations of fascism, especially against us, when there is no

left or communist movement that is even strong enough to incur such a response like fascism

right now.

Fascism was a reaction in the fullest sense of the word to the October Revolution and its aftermath and its effects.

We have no similar such zeitgeist, and we have no similar such movement in America right now. So fascism had to hijack a lot of the things that were actually from the

Bolsheviks. So, for example, the bolsheviks had a very strong militant

collective spirit that was part of the whole proletarian revolutionary um uh aesthetic and and attitude

and temperament and fascists stole that explicitly stole it as a form of and weaponized it as a form of anti-communism now like a hundred years later a lot of people associate the thing that originates with communism with fascism that's why you get a lot of left

liberals accusing tankies of being fascists not knowing that fascism was actually a opportunistic

reaction to communism.

If you want to accuse us of that, you need to demonstrate what our today's equivalent of communism is.

In America, for example, what are we hijacking?

What are we stealing?

Again, it's a ridiculous and silly argument.

Finally, the third thing, this thing about the 50s and white pick and senses and families,

the American Communist Party

hasn't utilized such

aesthetics, but if

you want to talk about the kind of retro

futurism that the infrared community

likes to experiment with

in the American context,

I think you're just over-reading into it.

Okay.

That time period, of course, was very problematic.

And there were, this was before the civil rights movement.

And, you know, there were all sorts of

it's nothing to idealize

I agree but

it is the most recent

memory we have as a country

of any kind of sense of shared community

by invoking

those aesthetics shared community. By invoking those aesthetics, shared community, shared community that's

compatible with family, that's just a genuine sense of belonging and so on and so on. By invoking

those aesthetics, we're not detailing a 4K picture of what we want the future to be.

We're just trying to invoke something that makes sense to ordinary Americans about a sense of shared community as a bare minimum.

And I think for a lot of Americans, that is what it invokes. Not necessarily all of them, and we understand that. But you can't make something that's going to appeal to everyone simultaneously. And you have to have a sense of good faith about what our intentions are here and who exactly

we're trying to reach sometimes. Most of the country, I think, associates that time period with

the bare minimum of a sense of a shared community and shared belonging.

That also happens to be the time in which the power of the labor movement was the strongest.

The working class was the strongest.

There was the strongest social welfare programs being implemented at that time. You had like an over 90% tax rate on the wealthy. The New Deal institutions were still pretty fresh and had not been dismantled by neoliberalism. There was a strong sense of social obligation and so on and so on.

It's not a socialist past.

It's not a communist past.

But as far as the pendulum of class struggle is concerned,

the working class by and large had it a lot better back then.

And that's just the fact.

Notwithstanding all of the structural issues and the

oppression of marginalized people,

which never ended, by the way,

overall,

for the working class, it was

better.

And they had more power.

They had more leverage and they had more power.

So by attempting to read into it and say that we literally want to return to that past,

you're being extremely bad faith and uncharitable as far as what our intentions are and what these memes by the infrared community actually mean.

And also, you know, I'd also like to point out the fact that it's also a silly accusation given the fact that it's a kind

of surreal retrofuturism.

It's not a

blanket endorsement of the 50s.

It's a kind of fascinating

strange lost timeline

where it's like it's a communist America that retains certain aspects of what we associate America, American community with, but still definitely kind of strange and alien in its own ways.

And that was also a quality shared by socialist realism, which was also a very conservative

form of artistic expression. So we're not trying to return to it.

We're not creating pictures of what we want the future to be or what the past should be,

because it's clearly a more of an artistic kind of statement.

It's not a four k picture of

what we're fighting for it's just the underlying essence and content of what

we're fighting for

is

uh... uh... uh... a country ruled by the american working class that reflects the values of

the american working class whatever they so happen to be, by the way, where people can exist in some kind of shared community and have some kind of shared belonging. There's nothing wrong with that. You're being extremely bad faith when you say, oh, that means you want to retain all of these racism and all these

aspects of the 50s. And that's not true. You're just looking, you're, you're looking at it

in a one-sided way is the problem.

Not the correct approach, you know, coming from some YouTuber, but

I don't, I think socialism has to develop on its

own time, on its own terms, depending on the

specific material conditions of the country in which it arises.

So like Thomas Sankara's socialism looks different than

Castro socialism, which looked different from Mao's socialism.

So the American socialism, if

the United States exists as a, as an entity, the way that it does today will look different from those the American socialism, if the United States exists as an

entity, the way that it does today will look different

from those, I think, if we can achieve it. Some people think the U.S.

will have to balkanize in order to have, you know, socialist

mini-states like, what they call it, Pascadia or something, where you've got

the California. Let's not try to scare the Norwees. So let's say if there isn't a U.S.S.A.

A united socialist states of America.

Let's just a bunch of socialist republics because like it was.

I mean, America just was a bunch of states.

Yeah.

So that's not like too far off, right?

Not unheard of.

Yeah, sure.

Let's say, you live in the one which is most likely to be in some state, Texas. I mean, like the Texas socialist...

So, look, we, if you read our program, have at least a bare minimum of a sense of America's future and what socialist America could potentially look like maybe.

And hold on. Give me one second.

Give me one fucking second. second Sorry.

My phone is being blown up by my comrades.

And they don't know that I'm...

I literally just said,

I'm in the middle of a fucking stream.

Holy shit.

Yeah, I'm in the middle of a fucking stream. Holy shit. Yeah, I mean, okay.

So, like, literally, holy fuck.

Anyway, sorry, guys.

Trying to make it easy for the editors.

And, you know, it's just yeah all right So, anyway, while we in our party program do provide the bare minimum of a sense of our response to the national question in this country. We're committed to one. And J.T. and second thought doesn't seem to be committed to one. But that's

fine. But when asked about what possibly would the, you know, what could it possibly look like, he kind of floats balkanization, which, okay, the only thing he floats or entertains as a reasonable possibility is blanketly reactionary from the Marxist perspective. If you read the various polemics and debates that were happening within the Bolshevik party and toward other factions of the Russian socialist movement, like the Bundis, for example, and also the Zionists. You will find a complete critique of this kind of notion of nationalistic separatism and bourgeois separatism.

Now, the nationalities policy, which was formulated by Stalin, with, well, with the great help of Stalin at least, in terms of defining what a nation actually is when it was implemented, by those standards of what a nation is, America is one nation. Now, national differences are blind to the dimension of race.

Race is a kind of uniquely American category. They were dealing with questions of different

peoples who had different histories and had different languages primarily and also had different traditions of statehood historically.

So these were fundamental factors. We have new challenges, I agree, because of things like race, which are factors here and which, you know, in our view, have always played a role in obstructing and obscuring the acquisition of a unique American national existence.

Because America is torn between this future-oriented civilization or nation that is in the process of becoming

versus the vestiges of the old world and also of vestiges of groups that were already here as well.

And this is what led to a kind of process of racialization, where people were lumped into these huge continental categories that ultimately came from the prejudices and from the conceits of the old world but

those have consistently been a barrier to the

national unity that was in visit envisioned at least that the foundation of

america as a nation

or at least not even necessarily just the vision as some grand ideology, but even the overall

zeitgeist of the American Revolution, just this notion that we're just going to build a

unified state together here.

That is our purport. I mean, mean sure there are a lot of flaws and there are a lot of

imperfections right at the beginning but there is this kind of i would argue irreducibly

genuine and sincere purport at the foundation of the USA. That is pretty open-ended,

which says we want to build a republic by, for and of the people, a United States of America,

where we the people are in charge, where there's a principle of popular sovereignty that is, you know, that is, that prevails and reigns supreme. That was a very radical and genuinely revolutionary thing at the time.

Genuinely revolutionary, you know, how should I say, development of history, you know, and it's in contrast to Zionism, for example, which, however way you look at it, I mean, constitutionally, Zionism is a state only for Jewish people. Now, America may have begun as a state only for wealthy white landowners, sure, in practice, yes, but constitutionally, and the overall essence of what America is as a nation doesn't necessarily have to be that.

So it's a really fundamental distinction we're dealing with there.

And, you know, this whole thing about Balkanization, it reminds me of this movement in Germany called the anti-Deutsch movement.

And these are these people, they're called the anti-Germans, and they hate Germany and they're Germans themselves and so on.

But they ended up being the worst national chauvinists.

They ended up being racist and Islamophobic and so on and so on or whatever.

I hate that term Islamophobia, but, you know, I guess I'm speaking to second thoughts audience, I hope.

Maybe, maybe they will give me a pass. But in any case, this is just an inverse type of jingoism. Inverse jingoism is qualitatively and dialectically pretty equivalent to jingoism it still stems from this

same kind of refusal to accept the objectivity of national existence neither super great

neither super terrible,

just something objectively

that exists that we have to take responsibility for.

Okay, let's continue.

The Texan Socialist Republic

or the Socialist Republic of Texas.

I mean, I take the kind of disposition that, like, you're going to have to adapt to the cultural conditions, not just the socioeconomic, the social cultural of that area.

I mean, like, you're not for the Pat, so the, well, I get the ACP approach.

Yeah.

I mean, what would you think is necessary to, like, have socialism in these areas?

Because, like, clearly you don't, like, do you don't think, just asking that you can just be like,

Soviet-style communism?

Let's do that here.

Come on.

Yeah, no.

No, absolutely not. We got Texas. We got y'all la we got yolidarity. Yolidarity is what it is. No, you got to, there's, you know, the common tired phrase is meet people where they are, which to an extent, sure, you can't be like, oh, you're racist. Cool. That works. Yeah. We can fold that into our socialism. No. It doesn't work like that.

But there is, like you have to, to some extent, respect where people are coming from.

Like if you're coming from a deeply religious part of the South, for example, yeah, so what's probably

going to be part of your, that group's conception of socialism. You want to fold in, what's called,

something theology. Help me. Thank you. Liberation theology. Yeah, fold that in. That's cool.

You know, in good faith, I'm going to

respond to this, because at the outset,

you'd be pretty confused about

how is this being

contrasted to the ACP's position?

I mean, what qualitatively is the distinction between what he just said in our position,

meeting people where they're at?

He said, well, if someone's racist, you shouldn't just acquiesce to them, but that's not what meeting where people where they're at means. Meeting people where they're at basically means understanding that if there is a notion of shared national existence or shared, you know

having a shared country or a shared community

or something like that

it's the people who are going to be decisive

in defining that if you

think you have wisdom the people

do not have and you're smarter and you know

better than them even if that's true,

that is still something that has to be proven through a dialogue with the masses. That is successful,

that you can successfully relate to them. I see so many leftists that fail to talk to ordinary

people and then write them off and say

they're irredeemable. Rather than

critique themselves and critique the way

that they themselves are approaching it.

They just give up.

I think that's wrong.

But in good faith, I think where JT is coming from in his understanding of the national

question is that it seems like he's saying at extremely local levels, what ACP does is fine.

I mean, if you want to relate to Southerners when it comes to their religiosity, that's totally fine.

Each community in America requires its own different special, you know, conditions to analyze.

It requires its own special strategies and tactics and so on for the construction of a socialist

movement. And I think that is actually a position that is consistent with his overall view,

although it seems like he's contradicting himself. It's not because it's all in line with what he just said about

Balkanization. His problem is the notion of any kind of unified shared national existence

across all of those differences. So he's very much okay with socialist patriotism for the south he's okay for that

with cascadia he's okay with it for all these localities but the notion of a shared unified

national existence a principle that raises itself above the various particular

localities and represents a real unifying national principle. I think that is what he's having

the most trouble with accepting and

comprehending. It would be like if you were in the Bolshevik party and you were trying to derive

a sense of Russia, and I'm talking about just the, not the other republics of the Soviet Union,

just Russia, right?

And, you know, the Bolsheviks were, there was such a diversity of tactics and strategies across so many different villages and locales and geographies and even groups that did require special consideration of people's circumstances.

But they were still able to comprehend that this was an all-Russian movement, not exclusively Russian, of course, but encompassing at least that scale of things.

I mean, it was the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, right?

So it's the inability to have a sense of common unified national existence that he finds to be difficult to reconcile with socialism and i think that mistake stems and I'm going to criticize second thought here, and I'll criticize in good faith, because I genuinely believe this. I'm not even taking it as a dig. I think he's too wedded to a specific version of America as a nation, which is institutionalized by the Democratic Party

and its hegemony. Now, he's going to disagree with that very strongly. I doubt he endorses the

Democratic Party. I doubt he tells people to vote for Biden or Kamala. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt he does.

He kind of seems like a person who would agree with the criticism against, because I know from

his position in CP USA, at least. But in practice, I think he takes for granted a specific version of the institutionalized

America, and that's why he's hesitant to accept the need for a new principle of unified national existence, because that would require

really fundamentally and radically breaking from the imperial hegemony in such a way that would

take you back to the basics of trying to derive a new sense of political authority.

And that's an ugly process.

It's an ugly process because it's inherently one that comes at the expense of existing political powers that be in a really aggressive, toxic, and radical way.

But that is what is necessary to have the foundation of a socialist movement in this country.

And a lot of people are not going to like this, or my audience will

like it, but his audience will not like it. That's where we were coming from with MAGA communism.

It wasn't about supporting Trump. It wasn't about supporting Republicans even. It was just about our recognition of the fact that in a lot of ways, the MAGA movement did radically break with the dominant institutions of the United States in really fundamental ways.

And anyone in good faith should accept that. Media, academia, even political institutions,

you know, with storming of the Capitol, you know, clearly these events are radical break

with the prevailing institutions of the United States of America.

And just a bare minimum of the commitment

to an alternative unifying principle of what this nation is,

rather than the one that dominates and prevails today

in the form of the imperial hegemony a lot of people point out that well

maga you know that they're inherently wedded to a reactionary one one that is worse that might be true but it also might not be true.

That's the thing.

All we were insisting upon was this is an opportunity.

If we don't go in and propose a communist alternative, because it's an open door, you're probably right, the far right that are already well established and well connected

and well resourced will go in and do it. But the whole point was that we should compete with

them. We should fight for that radical break with the system. We should fight for it. We should fight

for

the ability to

initiate that dialogue with the masses

to have a shared sense

of national existence

in general.

And again, all that is required is just a common purport that, and I think that's what really

distinguishes the United States probably, right, is that our nation is founded upon a practical commitment and a purport to actually build a united state and a united nation we don't know what that will look like necessarily we're not claiming that it will be perfect or we will be perfect at it. But the bare

minimum of a commitment to that is a very profound thing. It's a very profound dream. It's a very

profound idea, you know, that we do, we are full of differences, just which J.T. is very strongly emphasizing here.

There are so many differences, geographically even, that constitute what the USA is.

But through these differences, not even necessarily at their expense, by the way,

but even through them, we can derive a common unifying principle. And I think it's not possible

to even understand the differences within America as a nation without also comprehending how those differences form in response to that unifying principle itself, meaning even the peculiarities of the Pacific Northwest and the South and the East Coast and the Midwest.

Sure, though, these all represent different locales, but are they different nations?

No, because all of them are forming as unique responses to a shared sense of national existence.

They're just responding to it in a different way.

And one of the great things about our country is exactly that. We have this very blank check of a unified state. And we open that to interpretation for a lot of different peoples to interpret that in their own way

and figure it out in their own way

and that could be very

bad but it's not necessarily the case

and I think there are things

there are worth salvaging for a socialist

cause or project in this country.

Like I think the Soviet suppression of religion was a big old mistake.

And I think somewhere like the United States, especially in the South, it will have to be folded in in some capacity.

And frankly, there are a lot of churches that I've seen that do the socialism thing kind of well.

There are a lot that are. I always tell us my the socialism thing kind of well. There are a lot that are...

I always tell my leftist friends, like, especially the Catholics, actually.

Yeah, not these, not that like the Gen Alpha, like, Crusader fan cam ones, but like the actual, yeah,

I've known Catholics that are like...

Back in the day, the Catholics were more opposed to socialism and the Protestants were more warmer,

but now it's like the opposite.

It's funny how it pops. They're super reactionary, and it's like, have the Pope is saying, like, well, maybe capitalism is not the best.

Maybe just a little, certainly, yeah.

But it's like Christianity.

He is socialists.

It's not Marxist, but it's socially.

Yeah, this brown guy beat the shit out of the money lenders, and then, then like he's told me to sell my stuff and follow him and he's feeding the poor.

Like that's why I'm like yeah, they would,

conservatives would execute Jesus on the spot if he came back.

But it's like, yeah, there's no, whatever it takes to get people to the point where they are

caring for their fellow man.

Fine.

Like, well, whatever.

We can, we can,

it's not like there's going to be a magic switch that flips and now we go from,

all right, we're socialist now. It's a constantly evolving process where like, we're grappling with how things were before. We're grappling with what people think now.

We're grappling with faith. We're grappling with the, the mindset shift of moving to a

different, perhaps different mode of production or at least having some form of or we're grappling with the mindset shift of moving to a different

perhaps different mode of production or at least

having some form of economic democracy in the

workplace where that hasn't been that hasn't really existed

before in the United States and that will be a tremendous mindset shift for people

it's like wait who who do I report to

stuff like that like of course you know I elect this guy

I don't like

this guy can we so it's like again the if you are unable to have a sense of a common

um unifying national form of socialism, not just the various different locales and communities, but a unified nation, and that be part of your socialist movement and project. The problem is you'll end up just having to acquiesce to the existing dominant institutions of your state that are unified, right?

And that's why it's part of the class struggle. The class struggle also extends not only to the form of the nation itself,

but also the nation's history. The class struggle extends even into how we interpret the past

and how we make meaningful sense of it.

And that should not be readily given to the far right and to the bourgeoisie.

You know, the proletariat needs to fight and rest control over that.

And that's really all we're saying. You know, JT seems to have the idea down, which is very good, that, you know, you shouldn't hate your neighbors and you should love your

communities and fight for your communities. But you do need a unifying political principle. And that political

principle has to be national and form because you cannot, for example, impose that upon

Mexico or other countries that have separate impose that upon Mexico

or other countries that

have separate revolutionary traditions

and do have a actually

separate national existence.

As a Michigander, I have no problem

setting out

to impose

a common sense of national

existence upon someone

who lives in the West or in the East

Coast or whatever. Because I know

we're all part of the same nation, and we're

all part of the same nation because

we all share this sense of history that is founded upon a revolutionary change and development, right?

And revolutions are the locomotive of history and of nations. All nations are founded upon revolutionary beginnings.

Revolutions are the sole locomotive of historical development.

And that should put into perspective what the meaning of a nation even is.

It's a nation is a shared community that forms in response to a shared revolutionary lineage.

That's really just true.

Even, for example, in feudalism, where you had the monarchical form of state power in a lot of

cases, in a lot of cases what you had was a revolutionary beginning for a lot of those.

Maybe it was a thousand years ago or so, but, you know, there was a peasant revolt and some guy led that revolt and I guess became king because of that.

And especially when you really start seeing the nation state take form in early

modernity you have the english civil war you have the french revolution revolutions are at the

foundation of every sense of shared national existence.

I think people really underestimate that.

Can we boot them?

There's probably all sorts of problems with it,

but it's a work in progress.

So like socialism in Texas will look way different from socialism in Vermont or whatever in California.

California's never called socialist.

I'll tell you that right now. They're more reactionary than Texas.

But yeah, I don't know. I agree with you, but that's not a, that's not a popular take,

actually. I think left would find that odd. But what do you think that? I agree with you, by the way, but I want to see if we have the same reason why. Yeah. So the only, I've, I've been to California a number of times and the Pacific Northwest.

And without exception, the kinds of racists and reactionaries I find there are far more gross and rabid than the ones in, say, Texas or Alabama or South Carolina.

And that's, of course, anecdotal.

But I've found that there is a particular kind of nastiness in a place where you get to where,

you get to put the laurel on yourself of progressive, where you say what you are doing is for the

good of XYZ, like a group of people.

You pat yourself on the back for being so forward thinking,

forward thinking.

But if this, I don't know,

in Texas, for example,

a racist is still a racist,

but at least they're like not sneaky and vindictive

about it, which is similar to the gripe.

Yeah, once again,

look, if you actually

listen to this guy,

it's baffling that he's

not already a member of our party,

and I mean that. If you can say that, if you can, if he can just say what he said, which is that Texas has more revolutionary potential than California, you know, I, I don't know why he hasn't joined us. Why not? I mean, what is holding him back? I don't understand. He already sees it the same way we do. He already understands that liberals, that it is at, and this is what he wants to say, which is true, rule people in the South have

way more revolutionary potential than urban liberals. Just say it. Now, nobody's dog whistling

anything, okay? Because sometimes when I say urban liberals,

people are like, oh, you mean Jewish people.

And then I'm like, that's what you said.

Maybe that's a you problem,

that you think all urban liberals are Jewish

when the majority are not.

But to be clear, that's just what it is.

That's just what we've been saying.

I mean, he's literally just saying what we believe.

And why he doesn't just join us makes no sense.

Well, it does kind of make sense.

And again, this is a shame.

I don't want to have to say it.

I don't want it to be true.

I'm not even necessarily saying it has to be true.

I'm just saying there seems to be some evidence that points in the direction that he is just

worried about the consequences on social media. I think in terms of principle, he aligns with us. I think if he knew what our party does and he met our party members, he would really like us. I just think that he would get in a lot of trouble for it. He would probably lose a lot of the connections he has. There would be smear campaigns against him.

He would be attacked pretty relentlessly.

He would really start feeling the heat.

He would literally get harassed so much.

And maybe he just doesn't want to deal with that.

And I would be sympathetic, but like, look, dude, if you're going to rep

these revolutionary traditions, you got to kind of be ready for the heat. I'm not telling

you to be an insane adventurist, but you at least have enough have to have enough

thick skin to risk getting the kind of backlash that you will inevitably get by associating

with us. It's just a fact.

But you know what's even ironic?

It's like you'll get backlash, but in the long run,

you will be so much more able to reach the masses than you were before you will be so much more effective at it you will get more i mean even economically even if you're an opportunist i hate to say that we don't want opportunists, but we are the future.

We have the ability to tap into masses and masses of people that these gatekeepers that try to hold second thought by a leash and prevent him from reaching, they're limiting him

severely and they're limiting his potential big time, you know? And it's a shame.

I have with the liberals.

It's like, I'm not saying liberals are worse than conservatives.

Like Malcolm X said, you know what the conservative is up to.

That's what keeps him left and wedded to the Democrats.

It's like, oh, we don't like the Democrats.

That's part of it.

It's like, America, they've switched sides all the time.

Yeah. There's a, I mean,'ve switched sides all the time. Yeah.

I mean, the lesser evil thing is just a tremendous roadblock and it needs to be destroyed.

There is no lesser evil.

But like the point is, I know a conservative racist.

I know what they're about.

A liberal racist, like, that's, that's scarier to me a lot of times because say you've got you know say you're Hispanic and

you know your brother is is undocumented or whatever and what do I like you're you have to be on

tenterhooks with the liberal because you they'll smile at you but then they're going to call ice

whereas you know okay I'm just going to avoid these Republicans because they're out about their

their racism it's like and it's just different

flavors of the same social ill. I think

generally speaking, it's a nasty or more insidious form

of reaction that has taken root in places

like California. There's also a lot of wealth there

like the Silicon Valley stuff. I'm curious

to hear your thoughts. Well,

people think progressive means left and that left means socialist. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Well, I don't, people think progressive means

left and that left means socialist.

And I think that's a very dangerous way to think.

I mean,

yeah.

Isn't it, isn't it crazy?

Like, look,

what, what's,

what's the point of all these divisions? I mean, it kind of just seems like we're all on the same page here. If you can agree that in terms of what it means in America, that the liberal, progressive is not the left, that they're not the same thing,

what are we being crucified over?

I mean, I understand Jackson has said

inflammatory things.

I know that I have, but

you know,

99% of americans have said in crazy offensive jokes okay you have to on a practical level we are not a force of hate we're not a force of hate. We're not a force of like, we're not targeting marginalized groups. We're not going after them in practice. If we tell jokes and we, whatever, it's like, okay, it may not be your cup of tea, it's like why does that have to hold

socialist construction

back why does that have to hold back

the possibility of like building

a strong powerful

left wing independent left wing

politics and movement

it's like you don't have to join our party, although I kind of don't see why you wouldn't.

But even if you don't join our party, at least form a coalition with us.

I mean, what is actually the point of this division if we can

agree on things as fundamental as this

I don't understand it

the California is so

incredibly capitalistic like and I think

a lot of this sort of woke progressivism is often more

capitalistic. It's better. Smarter capitalism.

Capitalism adapted for the 21st century.

You know, like...

Oh, 100%.

The techno-libertarian thing?

Yeah.

Like, if you're a racial capitalist,

you're just going to screw your business.

Like, you want to hire people of, like, different groups,

and you also want to appeal to people of different groups.

You want to expand your market.

Like, this is a nice, hard date to be, you know, believe in, like, the old, but it's also the phoniness, you know, like the phoniness of Silicon

Valley capitalists is that when they try them. So, we're so

yeah, it's like, no, man, no. But yeah,

it's like the whole techno-libertarian thing, the Musk thing, the teal thing.

It's all deeply, you know, it's a pretty metropolitan place. I mean, in Texas, like,

give one generation

here,

yeah, yeah.

You know,

like,

I know that rules like to say

like that means like,

oh, it's not,

yeah, yeah.

It does say something.

Like, you're not

like,

you're not going to have Algey president in France.

No, absolutely not.

No.

I know you, it's a kind of, because like, well, you mentioned them. I was expecting you to more mention in the back room. Because this thing, like, I also am with you that the way they do it is cringe.

Like, it's ridiculous. Like, it seems like this like, here's a bunch of things reactionaries like, let's put it and then put socialism and then package it. But I'm not against inherently the idea of patriotic socialism because you can be patriotic about some things and be very against other things because America has simultaneously a legacy of

So, you know, he's, I know everyone seems to do this where they're like ACP does this or that when they're probably talking about the infrared

movement and you know I would just say why don't you reevaluate what terms like reactionary

even mean anymore because reactionary is a political term.

I think it's been turned into this cultural term where it's referring to people who have a sense of grounded traditional values and are skeptical of, you know, cultural liberalism.

But reactionary is a political term.

And what that means is it is with respect to the, to a matrix of political differences that is formed by revolutionary change at the level of politics and political power.

So as time goes on, we start to see things like LGBT acceptance in the media, for example, increase.

I'm not going to even comment or say good or bad. I'm just going to say, we witness changes like that at the level of structural hegemony.

And it's change. definitely it's a change

but

within the traditional sense

of what reactionary or progressive

means within Marxism

those kinds of changes

are not meaningful they are not meaningfully progressive and it is meaningless

to call someone reactionary based on their attitude toward things like that if someone is

being a man-child about video games and complaining about them and saying, I am so sick of the how much feminists have ruined all of our video games, I think it's pretty cringe.

I think it's pretty childish, and I think it's pretty immature.

But from a Marxist perspective, it is meaningless to call that reactionary.

Because reactionary is about political power and where you stand toward that. If you are trying to resist revolutionary change at the level of political power and be a counter-revolutionary and that makes you a reactionary. But for example, the terms progressive and reactionary don't mean anything at the level of

culture wars or Kylie Jenner's Pepsi commercial. That does not in frame or define in any kind of way

the meaningfulness of terms like conservative reactionary or progressive, at least from a Marxist perspective.

So that's why people often overlook that oftentimes progressive liberals are the most reactionary, the most trying to resist and turn back politically the wheels of time.

Trump's MAGA movement caused a lot of disruption in politics.

Biden's presidency was objectively a reactionary regime in the strict sense that

it was trying to return to politically the era of neoliberalism, and it was a political change that had happened that they were trying to reverse.

Now, this vague notion of like evoking the imagery of the past in your ideology,

that does not necessarily equate to anything reactionary. And I'll give you a few examples from the revolutionary movement of that.

The Bolsheviks venerated and idolized the Paris Commune and the French Revolution,

and they constantly utilized imagery evoking those events and those periods of time.

The Chinese Revolution did the same with the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Soviet Union, throughout the duration of its existence, constantly drew from the past and from history as a source of legitimation for its sense of what the future should be, right?

You see this repeatedly through movies, through art, through cinema, I already said movies through paintings and so on, through literature.

Today in China, Xi Jinping is evoking our kind of retro-futuristic nostalgia for the Mao era.

That is not reactionary inherently.

Reactionary is something very specific to politics. You should not use it blanketly toward every kind of, you know, sense of longing or nostalgia for the past in general. That's too vague and it's too nebulous to qualify as what reactionary actually means in the real sense of the term.

The past, the present, and the future are all part of one integral totality of historical existence.

There is nothing wrong with drawing from the imagery of the past, necessarily.

To do so exclusively, of course, as Mark said, this is the province of the bourgeoisie,

specifically in its attempt to farcically repeat. I mean, you see this today. What is the

epitome of bourgeois politics today? Trying to larp the civil rights movement in 2025 with the Kylie Jenner Pepsi thing and trying to pretend that, you know, that the protesters today against Trump are the reincarnation of MLK.

That's the bourgeois politics quintessentially, right?

So, you know, you have to understand that the past is a dynamic reality.

And not every not every kind of vague

evocation of it is reactionary.

Imperialism, expansionism, but also

legacy of isolationism. You know, for a very long time,

America differentiated itself from Europe on the basis that

is not warlike.

Like isolationism was a strong force and it's kind of returning.

In fact, I think it's the big reason why Trump wins is because he pretends to be an isolationist

when he's very much not.

But like that works with both sides of the spectrum.

Like Americans I actually think are much less pro war than people really give them credit

for like traditionally. And there's many things to be proud of an American tradition. Like, you know, civil liberties, free speech,

like being in the first country to be founded on ideas, not a race, right? There's a lot of

things to embrace in an effective way. I mean, like Martin Luther King, he says, you know, he cites

the Jefferson speech. All men are created equal. And his thing is not to say like, oh, yeah,

that's why America's perfect. His thing is like, no, we were supposed to be fulfilling these ideals. We need to actually fulfill them. We need to fulfill the ideals of American Revolution. We're hypocrites if we don't. So it's patriotic from a sense of not what your country is, but what it could be. That's, like, I think patriotism is fine. And it's good, actually. All socialist movements are patriotic. Yeah.

One caveat

I might offer is that there's a difference of patriotism

in somewhere that has been colonized or oppressed.

Say, you know, Ireland under the British, something like that,

for example, to be a patriotic Irishman

is different than being a patriotic,

you know, apartheid era, South African, or an Israeli, for example, that, anything founded

on the core principles of, even if it's not spoken, genocide, replacement, something like that,

extermination of the locals, the indigenous populations, then it's harder, I think, to justify

patriotism as a critical component of your socialist. So you should be... I think that would, I would

agree with that if the examples are Israel or apartheid, South Africa, but I think that second thought misses the point. The reason why that would apply to Israel and South and apartheid South Africa is because you are talking about nations, supposedly they're not really nations, but at least a shared political community that is founded upon an explicit principle of racial exclusion.

That is not necessarily true for the USA, Essentially, there are multiple different versions of what the USA can be. There's a degree of ambiguity there, right at the founding, where the founding fathers could have had the intention of creating an all-white state. That could have been

implicit for them, sure. But it is not necessarily the case that the common principle of shared

political community and existence that lies at the foundation of what this country is

has to be that.

You can have in America, a USA, that is devoid of racial exclusion.

Don't take it from me. This is what Martin Luther King Jr. believed. Okay?

This is what the civil rights movement believed

and you know

okay one person's pointing out that in the first

naturalization act it was explicit that's true

that was a particular law

that

could that the already that the already, that the institution already had in place mechanisms for

amending or changing in the future or revising, it wasn't like this fundamental, inceptual

principle of what the USA necessarily must be. That was the policy they

definitely chose, among many others, of course, but you don't have to discard the idea, I guess, I would call it, at the foundation of the USA and that entire revolutionary tradition just because of the specific circumstances and conditions at the time let it to take on a specific form.

You don't have to discard it wholesale.

There is already a kind of framework that is vague enough, I guess I would say, to allow for other interpretations of what America can be. That's not true for Israel. That's not true for the apartheid system. The apartheid system literally means apartheid separateness. It's baked into the

beginning explicitly and constitutionally. Israel, inceptually and constitutionally, is a Jewish

state that in its own way necessarily excludes non-Jewish people.

You know, plenty of states were founded upon horrific acts and crimes committed against other people.

But that doesn't mean they necessarily are illegitimate if within a constitutional framework, for

example, and I mean constitutional, not only in the formalist sense of the word but like in terms of

what historically and qualitatively this state is defined as that doesn't always mean that uh that that

that framework uh excludes the possibility of justice or excludes the possibility of reconciliation

between groups sometimes the opposite is the case so you know that that's very important to keep in mind

not proud of you should be

like your country sucks

no not necessarily i think like i said with tex like i'll defend texas right because it's not

it's not the shit whole people think it is. Texas, I think the Texas Revolution

has way more baggage than the American Revolution.

Yeah, but all that, what I'm...

Texas Revolution is what people leftists think the American Revolution is.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we've had our bourgeois

revolution, yeah. I think it's perfectly

fine to be like, you know, I'm proud of this town that I live in. We've got some

cool history here. We had the first

soda factory in Minnesota or whatever, you know, something like that

at that level. But like to

enshrine in your movement

visuals that are inherently

tied to the exterminatory practices

of the earliest periods of your country.

So, for example, like the Western expansion, Manifest Destiny, stuff like that, which is often used as kind of the symbolism of these patriotic socialist movements in the United States.

There's separate areas I just want to add, though.

Like the founding and the Manif's destiny are very separate eras.

By all that today we speak of them as part of the same thing,

but they're very separate era.

Yeah, there was some different things happen to be,

to put it lightly.

The whole conception of, like, scientific racism, like,

got invented in the 1800s.

Like, it's there before, you know,

there wasn't this conception of that, you know.

Yeah.

But the, so I think the...

Lowdy, thank you so much.

Core issue is that

how do we, if we do

believe it is important enough, you know, patriotism as an idea,

to marry that to our revolutionary

project or our socialist project if you don't want to use

the term revolutionary. I think it's fine.

I just mean, like, you know, that stuff we were talking about that.

People are like, yeah, we...

Storm the White House.

Yeah, I'm sure that'll go well. But how do we differentiate?

How do we... Not distance because you need to grapple with it,

but how do you make sure you're not valorizing the elements of, say, American

history, American symbolism that are

inextricably tied to racism, brutality, genocide? And is it worth it?

That is the calculus. Which parts? What do you mean?

Like, what is unacceptable? What are you tied to that?

So I think the whole, there's a strong might-might makes a right component to the more gung-ho patriotic socialist movements in the United States, you know, a strong tendency.

I don't know. I don't like the way they agree with you there. But I mean, like, like I said,

I think the way they do it sucks balls

I also don't I mean also like all the socialists

that have succeeded ever managed to kind of

with a rare exception

So I'm going to respond

in the following way

Firstly he says there's nothing wrong

With being proud of your

your community and your town, but when you have this overarching sense of a unified, shared, national

historical existence, what about all of the problematic aspects of that history?

What about all of the things that are inherently problematic or, let's just say,

incompatible with the values of a contemporary socialist movement for our for simplification's sake and you know it's interesting because this was actually a debate that happened in the early days of the Soviet Union, where people were raising the

following question. How can we associate with Russia's shameful, backward feudal past when it is so mired with problematic events and circumstances and practices that are fundamentally incompatible with our contemporary revolutionary socialist values and principles.

How do we reconcile ourselves with that past? How do we endorse, so to speak, the past? And that was a big debate that they had in the Soviet Union. And it resolved itself

in the following way. If we don't lay hold of the past, if we don't seize the past, if we don't show how

there's a rational kernel in the development of the past, regardless of all of the horrific and terrible things that had happened that eventually led to the possibility of the culmination into our contemporary revolutionary present the enemy will seize the past.

And Dmitrov, in the 1930s when he was describing that this was the most crucial guide for progressive and communist forces to combat fascism, he said

if we don't lay hold

of the past, the fascist will. We cannot

allow the fascists to

have a monopoly on the past.

Your past may be problematic.

There may be problems and so

on and so on, but you cannot discard it wholesale and entirely. So JT. is asking the question, well, how do we do that while avoiding the inherently problematic or, let's just say, irreconcilable aspects aspects of it which is not an unintelligent question

i think i think it's an intelligent question and my basic response would be very simple

first of all we need to understand what inherently means.

If it were possible that socialists could take a time machine back to the founding of the United States of America, I think it would very much be possible for the rational kernel of America's inceptual revolutionary ideal to be mired with socialist values i think things like uh you know manifest destiny corresponded to genocide

it corresponded to crimes against humanity um horrific violence, all manner of avarice and just naked greed and plunder

that is so tied to just the history of modern capitalism in general maybe even extraordinarily

so in that case

however

I think to reduce

I think to reduce the, this is, there's no way this is going to sound good because it's like it kind of sounds idealistic almost right

but if if you understand the the kind of logic at play in the idea very vaguely of manifest destiny

and and how you

see that not just manifest

itself in terms of

the horrific crimes

of the westward expansion

which were crimes of capitalism

but also in something like Martin Luther

King's, I have a dream speech.

There is a similar kind of logic and structure as far as how our nation uniquely relates to the future. There is something about that

that I think

socialism should

draw upon and must draw upon

and communism does draw upon.

And that is the only sense in which

anyone in infrared has ever

talked about manifest destiny. I think Jackson

made a tweet about Canada,

but I don't know if you're worried

about Justin Trudeau being a victim of

genocide. Canada is

you know, Canada already committed a genocide

against its indigenous population.

And Jackson's tweet was before the party.

But in any case, I don't think that you have to downplay the crimes and horrors and ugliness of your nation's past.

But I also think you're misunderstanding what patriotism is if you're reducing it to a sense of fanatical enthusiasm and jingoism,

which depicts a myth of your nation as somehow a pure ideology that has no flaws or imperfections or problems

or contradictions or or whatever this I think it's kind of like what Parenti described is super patriotism, right?

Where you just have this blank.

It's like team sports where just like someone is cheering for a sport, you're cheering for your flag and your country in that same way. I actually don't think

that is the most profound form of patriotism. I don't think that's even the form of patriotism

that was at the founding of America in the beginning. I don't think it's the form of patriotism that even

what characterized the majority of American patriotism throughout history. I think it's a pretty

modern thing, actually. Since neoliberalism and Ronald Reagan, we've had that kind of patriotism, right?

Which is a kind of jingoism in a lot of ways.

Patriotism is not about deciding that your country is ideal.

It's the opposite.

It's accepting the objectivity and material reality of your national existence.

And taking full responsibility for it.

And that responsibility as the square one and the subject in a way of socialist

construction. Class struggle begins not from the premise of individual subjectivity and conceit,

but a collective principle of class, the unity of the proletarian

class. Well, when you extend that same principle to the national question, when you accept

the class struggle has national form, you have to understand that the subject of class struggle or the form of class struggle is the nation. That's what you're fighting over. The proletariat and bourgeoisie are fighting over the nation. They're fighting over supremacy within a given nation that is our

nation for better or for worse that's what it is all of the imperfections all of the flaws

all of the problems all of the good all of the bad all of the struggles all of the pain all of the good, all of the bad, all of the struggles, all of the pain, all of the suffering, all of the joy, all of the injustice, all of the justice, all of the progressive aspects, the reactionary aspects, that forms one integrity and totality of history

that is internally characterized by class contradictions. And the fight is not finished. It's a fight

between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The crimes of America are the crimes of capitalism and the capitalist class. But do the crimes of the capitalist class give them the right to define and characterized essentially and fundamentally what our shared nation is,

why should we cede to them that right? Why not insist upon the truth? Which is that for all of the

crimes of the capitalist class in the history of

America, there were

also lost and suppressed

revolutionary movements.

There were plenty,

plenty of truly

revolutionary,

proletarian and working class, even spontaneous movements in the 19th century of poor whites and poor black people coming together and fighting the system. And they lost and they were suppressed and they were martyred.

But why should we forget them?

Why should we spit on their memory by saying that our nation is fundamentally irredeemable?

By neglecting and discarding that our nation is a history of struggle.

It's not a one-sided pure dominance of the ruling class and the pure dominance of the capitalist system.

It was a struggle.

Sure, the working class and the proletariat was on the losing side of that struggle nine times out of ten, just like throughout almost all of history, the oppressed and the exploited were on the losing side of things. The revolutionary forces throughout history were more often than not on the losing side of things.

But what did Lenin say about what made the Soviet Union unique?

For the first time, the oppressed, the exploited, the masses were in charge for the first time ever.

So if we believe that's possible for our country,

we have to accept that there's a people's history of the United States. It's not just the history of the United States presided over by the ruling

capitalist class. There's also

a lot of lost potentials,

lost futures, lost

struggles. There's a lot of dead

martyrs who fought for that

and dreamed for that and took

bullets and died for it and why should their memory be

desecrated just because they lost that means we lose today that means we throw in the towel here and

now if we believe that just because the martyrs of the progressive national history of this country

that we're fighting for justice, that we're fighting for humanity, that we're fighting for morality,

and so on and so on, if we believe that they are discredited because they lost, why are we fighting right now when we haven't won yet?

The whole point of Marxism is to take the lessons of past failures and learn from them, build

on them, and scientifically improve.

That's what the American

Communist Party is committed to.

That's what we're committed to. That's what we're

trying to do.

We are not trying to say

that there are no contradictions in America's history. We're saying the opposite. We're saying thus far we have had a history presided over by the ruling capitalist class. But what about the forgotten history? What about the people's history? What about the

history of the working class? What about the history of the poor peoples? What about the history

of the enslaved fighting for freedom? What about the history of the poor whites and poor blacks

coming together and how much they were suppressed and manipulated to turn against each other

by the landowners and by the capitalists? You know, we have our own version of what America is. We have our own

nation. And yes, you're goddamn fucking right that we are patriotic for our American history, our own proletarian, working class, history of the United States of America.

We have our own. It doesn't just belong to the bourgeoisie and the ruling class.

That is all we're trying to say.

I'm not trying to get emotional and get angry.

But why is this so hard to comprehend?

I don't get it.

If you don't accept that history is a battleground littered with the bodies of martyrs of our struggle, you're disrespecting and spitting on them.

It's disgusting. It's national nihilism.

Rare exception of the October Revolution, but that's also a civil war in which the government-selected continues a war. And that's just about the only time you can be like,

fuck my country. It's in the middle of a war. I'm, like, no but, but, like,

you know what I'm saying? I'm very skeptical of this

kind of idea that, like, you can't

be proud of anything in your country or be patriotic just because

they did, it was like genocide and that there were all kinds of

things. Because, like, if we're being perfectly honest,

all of Latin America is found on a certain degree of genocide. Sure.

Again, this host is incredible.

Like, what they're saying is literally like what we would say.

It's pretty incredible, you know?

I know he criticizes us or whatever, but it's like he's, what he's saying is

exactly what we would say, you know?

And some of them were founded in far

worse ways, actually. Like, you look at Argentina,

they exterminate all of them, where you get, like,

Bolivia, you get apartheid told them pretty, very recently.

And still, I mean... Amila, thank you so

much. Appreciate it.

Appreciate it a lot. Thank you.

I was shocked just going to Mexico. Mexico is supposed to be like the least racist.

The least rape is an American country.

You know, and I, you can see class is literally black and white.

It's like the poor people, you can tell, you can tell by how rich someone is by their skin color.

It's like so night and day, the structural racism there.

You know? I think one of them. Yeah.

But like there's also much things to be proud of in the Mexican tradition.

Like, you know, you can be part of the Mexican revolution.

Even though there's all kind of weird stuff, like they had conflicts with indigenous

people and you had all the revolutions have their contradictions.

Like stuff. Like, they had conflicts with the indigenous people and you had, like, all the revolutions, especially the Bolsheviks. Sure. It's like, oh, the Russian revolution or even October.

Takeover's all bad because of like what they did to the peasantry later. Yeah, we're getting back to like the nuanced stuff. Is this bad revolution or a good revolution? Like to be new or

all revolutions. Yeah, and I think that's important. But I think one thing about the whole patriotic socialism thing, at least in the United States, is like we have to, I think, analyze the premise a little bit.

And the premise is that Americans are patriotic.

And I don't know that that's necessarily the case, at least for a plurality of Americans these days.

I don't think patriotism is a core component of being an American.

I think it certainly was up until like Vietnam, maybe, something like that,

where it's just like, yeah, I'm proud of my country.

You know, I stand for the flag.

You know, it's better than whatever country.

But these days, you ask anyone under the age of like 35.

Do you believe America is the greatest country on Earth?

What?

No.

I just paid...

Comrade Thomas.

Thank you so much.

$6,000 to have a baby.

No, my job.

It sucks. stuff like that.

So I think it's important that we take a look at whether that claim that it's important to be patriotic

necessarily applies to places like the United States

before we go all in in the branding

and the terminology

and stuff. You have what I think here, right?

So I think

so second thought is basically

making the argument that

you know, if you're just being

patriotic to appeal to people's

sensibilities,

what about the fact that young people seem to be,

have,

seem to have lost touch with any kind of sense of national belonging?

And they don't really care,

and they're indifferent to their nation and its history.

And I would retort by saying that, well, it's complex.

First of all, among America's blue-collar working classes that are still definitely enmeshed with the history of the labor struggles and the labor movement and the union movement,

they are still definitely patriotic in that way.

But second of all, the principle of socialist patriotism is not a cynical strategy to manipulate people by appealing to their sensibilities.

It is a principle in its own right, which is based on reclaiming and standing by

your nation's revolutionary and progressive historical existence and claiming that and claiming ownership over it and having a sense of shared existence collective common existence based on that and and understanding that is the context of class struggle.

Now, in a circumstance where young people have lost touch with their national be cut it is not because they are

becoming more connected

with the entire globe and they're

becoming global citizens and they're

transcending their national

existence. They very much

still do have a national

existence that is very much still do have a national existence that is very much still american it's just that

they've become alienated from it much like they've become alienated from their communities

from their families from their life in general, from themselves even.

And that is not necessarily...

That's not something socialists should encourage or play up or even accelerate.

A socialist movement should

restore a sense of community,

restore a sense of patriotism

in its own unique way.

And the things that J.T. are talking about are consequences of not even just capitalism, because capitalism is very old, but a very specific type of nihilism that is taking root in the whole country.

I mean, that is being expressed at every level, a lack of purpose and meaningfulness in general.

People still objectively have an objectively American national

existence. They are just not taking responsibility for it, and they've lost touch with it.

Socialist patriotism is about reestablishing that relationship, or at least establishing it objectively,

not necessarily just appealing to people's existing sensibilities.

I'm not saying,

I don't care very much about like the proudness.

It's like,

why do you be proud of a country?

It's like,

just aesthetically like trying to make something seem familiar.

Because if you bring in,

in general,

at the very limbic psychological level,

people are just very resistant

to anything

to things too neat. You know, and especially something that seems pretty bad legacy in their brain,

right? And no amount of like trying to say, well, actually, it was only this many people died and not

this many. It was, you know, less than what the numbers say, like, the fact, people are still going to be

kind of at a distance. But when you blend stuff with what is familiar, what is familiar,

it's a very powerful thing,

you know?

Like, I really like your socialism

video, actually.

Socialism in America

because I actually think you very much

overstate the degree to which socialism

existed in America,

but it was very well done.

That I damn all this sake,

I'm like,

damn,

social is really good?

It was really good as a piece of just convincing because you're like, they've been here.

You know, we've had social.

You know, if I was anyone else,

I'd be super bitter and, like, upset about this

because it's like, wow, we got so much flack for doing exactly that.

And, but, you know, again, I'm not taking it personally because, again, I don't know any of these people.

They don't know me.

And, you know, everything is like high school in life, I guess.

It's all high school micro-social politics where, you know, you can't sit at that lunch table i guess because it's bad

and you know you could literally one for one espouse our position and it's okay but if if you do it as

us it's a problem because we have taken a principled political stance that is just like

way too radical uh in terms of how severely we insist upon breaking from established politics

so i mean there's and that's an element of truth there.

A lot of elements of truth there.

You know, it's like, if I was trying to say to Canadians, right, about socialism, I'd say,

you know, did you know, the conservative party at one point with, you know, adopted aspects

of socialism?

They're called Red Tories.

Yeah, yeah.

At one point, we have our guy Tommy Douglas.

He's our socialist icon.

You got to have your icons. Like China, what they did before the, you know, one way the communists legitimized themselves is they would be very big on valorizing Suniatzen.

Like Matt would always say, you know, they're trying to go a step, you know, beyond that,

but they would all galarize Sun Yatzen.

And it's like in Canada, I think we have much less to be proud of honesty than the American, even though America did more like imperialism and stuff.

We don't have a revolutionary legacy. We just don't.

We got Tommy Douglas.

You guys have plenty of revolutionary symbols to co-op.

You have MLK.

MLK, that's a great socialist icon.

But even like, look, this one is a little maybe,

maybe they can't do this one anymore because of the way this reputation's been a little tarnished by certain types of thinking. But like Jefferson used to be the one that left it.

Because Jefferson was the radical of the founders.

He was only him in pain, Thomas Payne.

He can still be.

Again, like second thought is being perfectly conciliatory to someone who's espousing a position that has

gotten us crucified multiple times

on the D program Reddit.

It's just pretty incredible to witness.

Yeah, you can still use pain.

Yeah, I mean, you still, to an extent,

even if it's just because he's a little bit lesser known,

but like his writings were pretty radical for the time.

Very, yeah, yeah, and that's for the time. Very. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's like the whole, I'm just, I'm, I'm very hesitant to go all in on an, on, on us, any

given aesthetic, which I think is my, my knee-jerk reaction to, to the patriotic stuff.

I think we need to cast a wider net than that.

Because if you, if you go all in for the patriotic stuff, you're going to end up with... You're going to alienate a bunch of people. You're going to alienate people, like, for example, the most marginalized

who do not see, say, the American flag.

So, like, I had a knee-jerk reaction to this

where I was like...

Okay, but...

And then the host actually just says what's on my mind.

And I just... It's incredible. I want you to witness it.

I'm like fathers as things that are good.

You know, you're going to have people who identify...

I wouldn't assume that, actually.

I wouldn't assume that, actually. I think that's a trap also.

Marginalized.

In my experience, the proudest people of America and Canada are immigrants.

This is always where I tell anti-immigrant people.

I just really believe that as a fact.

It's from my experience.

People who come from a poor country are so proud to be there.

And when they're raising them together, like they, they, you know, they like actually, you know,

like they understand struggle in a way in a certain sense. And they'll be, they like actually, you know, like they understand struggle in a certain sense.

And like they'll be, they'll be probably trying to adapt.

They'll be very eager to, because like people do, immigrants really do want to embrace American values.

Because for a lot of American values is like freedom.

You know, and that's the thing for, I think we should like on the left, the purpose is to, like, actually have those ideals mean something, because, like,

in the time we are now in a corporate oligarchy, it's like...

Yeah, what do these words mean? Yeah.

I would...

I would add to that, okay? It's not just immigrants.

Indigenous people

rural indigenous people in America tend to be more patriotic than college-educated

urban liberals, okay? And you know what? Black people in America are extremely patriotic, especially today, where they are trying to distinguish themselves from other African immigrants and assert their own particularities and peculiarities. I think it's a real hallmark of being

out of touch with black people in general in America. When you make these statements like,

oh, black people feel uncomfortable when they see the American flag

and they see symbols of America

and they don't feel like that's

justifiable because they associated with all the crimes

committed against them.

And it really just really overlooks how much there is strong patriotic sentiment

among black Americans.

And by black Americans, I mean black Americans who were descendants of slavery, not immigrants who have come here more recently. And I'm only making that distinction because black Americans who have been kind of indigenous in this country feel a very strong attachment to this country and they understand of course that how unjust the history has been and so on and so on, but they very much feel like they are Americans, at least in comparison. This is a generalization. Generalizations are never 100% accurate.

But I would say in the majority,

they are definitely, on average, pretty patriotic for America.

And by for America, I mean, a sense of belonging to this country and being a part of this country. Obviously, that has failed them and they often feel that, you know, that this country has failed them and they are feeling excluded and alienated but the reason for those feelings is because they have an expectation a reasonable expectation that they should be treated as Americans that this country should be looking out for them and treating them as a citizen instead of some kind of foreigner or alien, you know? And that's one of the reasons why you had things like the civil rights struggle.

The civil rights struggle was not black people saying that, you know, we hate everything this country.

No, it was people saying that we

are American citizens. This is

our country. We helped

build this country and we

want a piece of it just like everybody else. Just like

what Paul Robson said, you know?

Because Paul Robson was asked, why don't you leave and go to Russia?

He said, well, because my father was a slave, my great-grandfather, my grandfather was a slave, his father was a slave, and generations passed by of my people building this country up. And he said, I'm here and I'm going to have a piece of it just like anyone else. This is my country.

And, you know, I feel like

it's really just kind of like

a white liberal thing to just assume

all or even most

black people do not

have patriotic sentiment. Now, I'm not saying that there are no black

people who don't espouse views that condemn fully the U.S. or America as a nation and say it should

be balkanized.

I'm plenty, but to say that it's the majority or even the only type representative, you know,

view of marginalized black people, it's just extremely wrong, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the base of the Statue of Liberty

and all that. Yeah, stuff I've talked about in videos in the past. I was like,

these words don't mean anything if you don't live up to them. But when I'm

talking about marginalized, I'm thinking more specifically like underserved

black communities and stuff over-policed black communities. Like, there's a reason that

Black Panthers existed and we're probably the most successful

socialist organization

in the United States history.

It's because they...

Yeah, let me talk about

the Black Panthers.

Now, we uphold the Black Panthers

as part of America's

revolutionary history

and we think that the Black Panthers genuinely contributed to the history of

socialist, communist organization in this country.

However, we should also analyze and think critically about why the Black Panthers failed.

The Black Panthers did not articulate a very coherent or fleshed-out strategy for the national question.

They did a very good job organizing their communities and creating an organization, but they ultimately fell victim to the realization, which is true, that in order to take it to the next level, they are going to have to form a coalition

that is unified with other groups. And that was, for example, the Rainbow Coalition.

And from there, they had a semblance of a beginning, right,

for the creation of a much larger thing that was going to actually be in fact national in scale.

And by national and scale, I mean not just encompassing black people, but a bunch of other different groups, including white people.

But the reason that strategy failed, I think, is because they just tried to unite a bunch of different particulars.

They could not discover an irreducibly insexual, unifying national principle that really was about national unity and not just the sum total of various different

groups. And I think that is where they fell short. And it's because of their failed national strategy that they were able to fall victim so easily to the FBI, to Quintel Pro.

Now, that's a really harsh criticism on my part, and I accept that.

You know, I understand that the FBI and

the CIA, they were using new methods

against the Black Panthers to target

and destroy them that were pretty unprecedented.

So I'm not

necessarily blaming

them wholesale,

but I am saying it would have helped to offset that to have a larger national strategy. Because for the very simple reason that if you confine yourself to a minority population and as a

marginal group, it's easier for the U.S. government to isolate you and target you and get

away with it.

And that is the sad truth, you know?

Just like if you're an individual by yourself,

it's easier for you to be targeted

and for you to be neutralized

and for the culprits to get away with it.

So the Black Panthers, we regard them as an authentic part of genuine America's national history.

They are an all-American phenomenon in our view, you know, and we have a lot to learn from that.

But we also have a lot to learn when it comes to not only building from the particular,

but unifying the particular with a kind of sense, and a universal in the strict sense of a shared

common existence that is irreducible to the sum of its parts.

And that is what a nation is. It's just that that principle itself

acquires particular determination

historically in the form of nations and unifying political traditions in general

they were brutalized by the police, over police.

The kids were thrown in jail at massively overinflated rates.

So they had to take matters into their own hands.

They had to do their own educating, their own health stuff, their own food programs, stuff like that.

So that's, those people would not have seen the American flag, American police,

you know, all these icons of, you know, whatever you want to call it, American service,

civic duty, stuff like that. They would not see those the same

way that, like, a white person.

I would actually

I think that

we, um,

I think there's also

a big misunderstanding when it comes to Pat Sox that they accuse the ACP of or whatever.

Our socialist patriotism is not an institutional civic patriotism.

It is not the patriotism of America's state institutions. It is a patriotism rooted in the revolutionary history of the American people. It is not rooted in some kind of slavish acquiescence or or or or kind of bootlicking toward you know the ruling authorities and institutions uh civic civic society institutions like police and you know um and even firefighters are not bad i'm not saying

these things are inherent firefighters are inherently bad but it's like that is the civic institutional

bourgeois patriotism that is not our patriotism our patriotism is rooted in the revolutionary

history of the USA proletarian patriotism is not civic institutionalized version of what patriotism is.

In an institutionalized version of patriotism, a shared sense of existence comes from having shared institutions and which are impersonal of course

but which are bureaucracy so it's a kind of bureaucratic patriotism that he's talking about which we are are often accused of being characterized by.

We don't have a bureaucratic sense of patriotism.

Our patriotism is not rooted in the bureaucracies created by the New Deal.

Our patriotism is rooted very authentically in a sense of shared unified national existence that comes from the three

revolutions of America's history as formulated by the Midwestern Marxist. First was the American Revolution of 76, the American Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Those revolutions have not culminated in any kind of institution, which we can say we are loyal to we are loyal to our party our party is that institution

that's going to carry the fourth revolution which is about class struggle um so there is a profound difference

As far as our understanding of what patriotism is

Versus the kind he's talking about

Which is associated with the police and so on and so on

She very much push back on.

MLK very much like drew on all that.

MLK was not the Black Panthers though.

Black Panthers exist because MLK got shot.

It's incredible that this guy is pushing back

in like ways that, again, we

would. Nobody would have went that route

if it wasn't for MLK getting shot. That route was

unthinkable. It was because they decided to make

MLK's approach to shut that down.

But people were like, well, okay, we're going to take up arms.

And I don't know who's to blame them? They're right.

No, they're absolutely right. We have to look at the context because look, this is the thing that leftists, many liberals

to forget and get involved.

This is the kind of thing we forget about the American Revolution. It's easy to look at

slavery and stuff like that and like racism.

Because it's like, oh, how could they be so revolutionary if they still had in the South, because they did, in the North, abolished slavery before everybody did. You know, most countries did. But there's a South who took

so long to abolish it. And after you fight a revolutionary war, it's pretty damn hard to now

force the whole South to abolish slavery. I mean, it didn't take like, it took 100 years for that.

Not quite, but like, took another generation. Sure. Yeah, quite a while for that to happen, right? I mean, that's a very Jefferson's reason for why you can't force the South to get rid of

slavery to provoke a civil war.

I mean, that's what happened.

Like, because in people still say, well, they're still like racism, right?

Of course.

And I just want to add, you know, they say all men are treated equal.

Well, that didn't include black people.

Look, in England, white people weren't equal at the same time. In most countries, where aristocracy still existed.

White people were considered, like, people of different classes.

I can't even believe what I'm hearing.

I mean, it's like, I don't know how this guy is not getting canceled and having tomatoes pelted on them because this is just straight up our position.

Like, it's incredible.

We're different species.

Aristocracy was seen to be a blood-related thing.

If a handsome kid was picked up off the street and was poor,

they would assume he was a bastard child.

Like this is, so like when we look at that historical

context, it is extraordinary. It's why like the French

revolution is made possible. And then I see all of them, like the French

revolution, Haitian revolution, Russian revolution. These are all kind of

progressions, right? And it's like the goal is to

move forward. But it's like, that's why I'm very against kind of like saying. Like when this guy says that he just finds us cringe,

I kind of feel like that could just be a constructive criticism.

Like,

why don't you join our movement and pioneer better aesthetics?

And if they work better,

we will probably follow suit and start adopting them.

I feel like people really underestimate how open source and pragmatic we are. We go with what works and what is effective and what also is compelling to us as well. And we, of course, in our own taste, find good. We don't sit here and as a consequence of some pathology, just utilize a specific

aesthetic direction because

you know, we're asserting

dogmatically some ideology

or something. It's like

I feel like people don't

understand how dynamic our community

is. I'm talking about infrared here.

Moving it back, like Frederick Douglass,

he also praises the American Revolution,

but he,

you know,

much earlier civil rights activists,

of course,

famously.

He says,

you know,

well,

this is,

we're not fulfilling the ideals of the American Revolution

if we have this,

you know,

this extremely racist system,

you know,

all if we have this, you know, this extremely racist system, you know, all men are created equal. And even at the time, he doesn't quite consider women, right?

You know, all the people like Thaddea Stevens, it's so funny.

All of them, they're like, all the people who are, you know, are the anti-slavery.

They're like, yeah, slavery is stupid, but like freedom for women, no, no, I mean, it's like, progress takes time.

It's like what I tell these liberals who criticize Palestinians saying, oh, they're, you know, Palestine's homophobic. Look at Israel. They're more pro-gay. And I say like, they'll get to gay. Okay, right now, they're fighting. They're fighting. It's the primary contradictions. It takes a while for like progress to develop, you know. I think we disagree with this guy about what constitutes progress. You know, alternative sexualities are not necessarily progressive, okay? Because I don't want to be problematic here, but it kind of seems like if we're

going to go with a vulgar linear

view of history, the opposite is actually

true. Modernity

is what created a rigid sense

of, you know, culture and stuff

like that. Before then,

you had the practices

of the aristocracies of feudal societies were by no means

conservative okay so you know i don't know what where where this idea came from that like

it's somehow

progressive to have these

bohemian trends or whatever

it's really not

I really think Americans be less harsh

on your revolutionary tradition like really I think this is a Canadian

with some Native American ancestry

funny enough I don't think a lot of new, I don't think anybody

who's native sees a Jefferson statue. It's like, well,

but they would be critical, I think, which is where I agree

with you fully in your ACP criticism, is that they uncritically

praise all these things. They act like, oh,

you're saying you said, that is not

true. We don't uncritically

praise anything. It's just that we don't always apologize for our utilization of national imagery. We don't always add caveats and constantly explain ourselves over it. That's what you're referring to as lack of critical awareness. We have the critical awareness, okay? We know that the crimes of capitalism at the founding of the USA and throughout the course of its history are very real.

No one's been denied those.

The sense of uncriticalness you're referring to is the fact that we are a mass online movement.

I'm not saying that to say that we're huge in number, but we operate as a mass movement in the

sense that like all mass movements, we share memes and slogans and imagery that are not just pre-packaged

discrete forms of theoretical contemplation they are characteristic of a movement, okay?

You're confusing that with a lack of critical, you know, of critical thinking, but you're confusing two different things.

On the plane of intellectual, reflective and contemplative criticism,

there's so much nuance that's possible

and there's so much meticulous theoretical reflection.

Theoretical reflection is not the sole form of discourse or sloganeering or agitation that is possible.

In order to agitate, you don't need to qualify every form of expression with academically precise, meticulously wrought out theoretical explanations and reflections.

Guys, you may be frustrated by how I'm talking right now.

I am not asking you to replicate this form of talking.

I am going to try to talk to this guy's audience and these Redditors.

Because, you know, maybe 5% of them will see this video and be like, you know what,

these guys are pretty reasonable.

So I'm speaking the language of them, the PMC, in order to basically, you know, we have our own sense of progressivism, right?

The lack of glasses wearing in our community is more progressive than the petty bourgeois academicism,

pseudo-intellectualism

that prevails on Reddit.

Unironically,

unironically,

Sun Gorilla, everyone do a Sun Gorilla March

right the fuck now, just to prove it.

This is more progressive.

But we are being patient with these backward elements and reactionary elements and trying to

bring them on a pipeline where they can acquiesce and submit to the proletarian comprehension

of subjectivity and expression. proletarian comprehension of

subjectivity and

expression which is collective

in nature

uh you know

devoid of this

soy nonsense

bullshit

glasses wearing overly contemplative overly reflexive uh you know

basically like it's like it reminds me of like you're at the gym and you're unable to lift a weight because you're thinking too

much about the meaning of lifting weights which is something i'm guilty of and i'm critical of

myself because of it when i get get started, when I'm lifting, I don't have that problem.

But sometimes I have this one exercise I do, which takes me a long time to do Spartan curls.

Because I think a lot about lifting the water. do Spartan Curls because I

think a lot

about lifting

the weight

before I lift

it and I'm

thinking too

much

but you

got to just

fucking do it

and once

you do it

you can't stop

right

you just got to fucking do it.

And that's what our movement is online.

We're just fucking doing it.

We know what we're doing.

We're not apologizing for it all the time.

The risks of valorizing, I totally agree.

If you are patriotic and just to like appeal to people, well, like, how do you,

if you're just so proud of how everything is, why would you want people to change it?

Right.

The point is the legacy, right?

Claiming the legacy saying, oh.

Well, again, uh, the sense of pride comes from a sense of confidence that together as a people, we can reach the highest mountaintops. We can reach the summits. We can move mountains. You know, we can overcome and prevail over our common obstacles. That's where the pride comes from. It's a pride in what we can do and in our abilities and what we have done so far. It is not a pride in the existing state of affairs, which are changing rapidly

anyway, by the way. We, the socialist, we're the legacy of freedom. What do the Republicans do?

What are the Democrats doing for freedom? Nothing. That's the kind of approach, I think, you know?

Yeah, myth-building. Yeah. Everyone does it, especially. Yeah, oh, yeah, I'm not moralizing there for sure. It's the kind of approach, I think. Yeah, myth-building, yeah. Everyone does it,

especially. Yeah, oh yeah, I'm not moralizing there for sure.

Myths have to be largely true to work.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you need a story

to tell people, like, without a story, like, why wouldn't anyone follow you?

But I think, just to see if I can get this a little bit, we have to assess whether the patriotism thing is really so important. Is that the most important thing? Is that the core of our message? Is that the core of how we want to present ourselves? Or is it? And maybe this is the sticking point. Maybe the sticking point is that for the right in the United States, patriotism is just decking yourself out in the flag.

It is, you know, crying at the national anthem. It is saluting

and saying thank you for your service or whatever. You know, all the things that you're

not supposed to do, right? You're not supposed to wear the flag as a garment.

That's one of the things. You're not supposed to salute. If you're not, you know,

if you're not in the military, all've chosen. And that is the kind of patriotism that I see being applied to patriotic socialist movements.

We're getting to the definition thing here.

It's like, is it the aesthetic of the flag and the national anthem and all that stuff?

Or is it a radical care for your fellow man

within the boundaries of your country?

Like that, if that's patriotism,

okay.

If the patriotism is the aesthetic,

we're tre on on thin ice there. 100%. Yeah. Because if you have... I don't know if this is going to be the conclusion

because we're going to watch more to see if there's more.

But to that, I would say very simply that, well, the qualities he is talking about as far as the vulgarization of patriotism, which admittedly does come from the neoliberal era. But it also comes from an era where mass movements started to become, started to take the form of mass media.

And there started to be a symbiosis

between the emerging information systems

and information age culture with mass movements and therefore forms of cultural self-expression started taking on a mass form.

And that kind of patriotism, although it's vulgar and it's trashy and you're not supposed to wear it and so on and so on.

I think it's fair to say

that we definitely

can be characterized, not

ACP, but the infrared

movement, for example,

we do have this sense of

patriotic of of patriotism but that is just patriotism as it takes the form of any kind of mass movement mass movements are by nature vulgar well what does vulgar even mean etymologically? Look it up. Think about it.

Vulgarians

are, it's

the opposite of the aristocratic

taste. I'm looking

that up in case I'm stupid. I don't actually know

the etymology of Volga.

Yes, I knew it. Common people.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure.

Anyway, just wanted to make sure.

Yes, it's Volga, but that's in the etymology of vulgar is the common people.

Okay? That's the origin. So I think, look, I'm not going to call names. I'm going to make a good faith criticism of second thought.

I think he has a lot of petty bourgeois hangups that are a consequence of a petty bourgeois attitude toward things.

He has this kind of, and he has this

thank you Nazcats so much

I think second thought has

this kind of almost

elitist

disdain for

the vulgarian sentiments of the masses

and there is an uneasiness he feels toward mass movements in general

that are not apparently wholesome chungis in every kind of way

and I think it's easy to be in America

and laud and approve of mass movements in Venezuela

or like the South Africa's EFF

but when it's your own country

the class dimension of your position,

not necessarily saying your personal

class background, but the class dimension

of your politics starts to be

put to the test in much more

fundamental ways. I think

if second thought lived in Venezuela,

I think he would have the same attitudes toward the Chavismo. They're too vulgar. They're too rowdy. They're too unreflective. If he lived in South Africa, I'm sure he would have the same attitude to the EFF. He approves mass movements abroad because those do not subject him to confront the class dimension of his politics. I am not saying this to attack him. I think that everyone has different levels of how much they're learning about Marxism and adjusting to a Marxist worldview. But part of that process is a proletarian...

You have to submit to the proletarian discipline of a kind of collective subjectivity.

And you do have to discard a lot of petty bourgeois sentiments and, you know, forms of

elitism and, and, you know, this whole thing about how, oh, we live in idiocracy and everyone's

just dumb and so on. It's like, you do have to kind of discern the wisdom and the rational kernels that are given expression by the masses.

You have to have the intellect to do that.

It's one thing to be snobbish and say, I know better than everyone else.

Everyone's so dumb.

I wish everyone was as intellectual and as smart as me in advance.

It's another thing to start comprehending phenomena on a social and collective level

and understand that these forms of expression, though they seem vulgar and stupid at an individual level,

are quite profound and meaningful at a shared collective social level.

And that, I think, is the difference between the petty bourgeois and the proletarian attitude.

The proletariat can see things, proletarian

intellectuals, I should rather say, can see things in a collective social way. They don't just

reduce every social phenomena to some kind of position of the individual intellect.

I have the same aesthetic as like right-wingers, but without very clearly different substance.

I mean, what's the point of that?

You're going to end with right-wingers, which is why we see on the cesspool that is Twitter,

a particular type of person associating with

the quote unquote patriotic socialist movements in the United States.

I just call mega-communists because it's like they're

televised, I don't think we should stigmatize that as a term.

I think that's, I think that ship has sailed.

I think it's gone.

I think all itself patriotic socialists.

I just, I'm talking about the description of how it is.

Like, what I think has killed the left

is this kind of,

like, no one comes to power

being like,

my country is all bullshit.

Like, it just doesn't happen

like nowhere.

Like,

so what I mean is that

it's your government's bullshit.

I think when second thought says

that we espouse a lot of the positions of the right, so we're going to end up looking like the right, I want to know what notion of political difference he's coming from.

And granted, the one he's operating off of does seem to be the dominant one.

I'm not saying he's saying something outlandish, but I am criticizing him for not being critical enough toward that colloquial and conventional sense of political difference, which I think is changing before our eyes. Yeah, there are a lot of things that make, I guess, make us sound like the right in America,

but there's also a lot of things that make us sound similar to the left.

And what you're really talking about are democrat and republican voters and you're saying

republicans are the right and democrats are the left and i think that's not really true

anymore i think there are a lot of cases where you have a stronger right-wing position among the Democrats. You have

cases where Republicans can be more left-wing than Democrats, especially on foreign policy,

and on issues like, you know, even domestic policy, like civil liberties and the FBI and so on and so on.

On the other hand, you have Democrats who can also be more left than the right, sorry, more left than the Republicans.

So I'm not saying it's one, I'm not saying the Republicans are the new left and the Democrats are the new right. I'm just saying there is such a strong degree of overlap that categorizing one or the other as right wing is wrong. When you categorize our actual positions as right-wing, you should take a step back and think about the following question. Would these positions be considered right-wing in countries that actually have strong communist movements and strong communist politics,

or would they be considered normal?

What you'll find is that our position is pretty left-wing consistently by the standard of communist politics as it exists in other countries.

Yes. I think this is the difference between a socialist patriotism as opposed to a kind of like status quo patriotism or a reactionary patriotism.

Like status quo and reactionary patriotism

loves the country and is part of the country for what it is.

Socialist patriotism is part of the country

for what it could be.

You know, like

To push back on that though,

the problem, of course, is the fact that we do have a country that objectively exists.

And it's not necessarily just about being proud of it in the sense of acting like your farts don't stink, so to speak.

But it's a sense of taking responsibility and acknowledging a shared national existence as the context for class and socialist politics.

A somber realism of accepting soberly your nation as yours, regardless of how perfect or good or bad it is, it's still yours, objectively, is not the same thing as just defending the status quo

and saying that history itself doesn't exist. Because again, what is a nation? It is a totality,

a specific integration and totality of a shared and common history. And history is in a process of

continual motion and development. Like, and what it could be has to be based in reality.

And, like, I think, is America prime for socialism in material conditions?

Material conditions, very much.

I don't know. I don't know what I do deserve this shit.

YouTube fucking up like this.

Like, what do I do to deserve?

Because people also say, oh, they're still like racism, right?

And I just want to add,

you know, they say all men are treated.

They're very simplified.

Rather than America not being prone to socialism

because it's too reaction or too racist,

America had an aversion to socialism

partially because it was too progressive.

My progressiveness is that America is one of the countries that it was felt that the revolution was already achieved. Whereas in France, the revolution was

what happened. There's truth to what he's saying

here, by the way.

This guy's not like a total retard.

Then there's like the five republics. I mean, but like, you know, the third

republic is an attempt to kind of actually rekindle the ideas after you had fucking the proletean and all that shit.

You have so many errors in France and in Europe. Like, it's the proletariat that takes the

battle of democracy in America. You didn't even need the proletariat to do that. So it's like,

they have a sense in which it's achieved already. That's the kind than everywhere else. It really was the place that gave suffrage before everybody else.

So, like, this is the trick here. It's a dialectic.

You know, America's both very progressive and also very not.

And it's because it's so found on liberal ideas, he was able to frame collectivist communism. It's not just, like, bad or, you know, whatever, but anti-American.

Didn't even have to co-opt it.

Didn't have to really co-opt socialism the way that, like, Europe. You know, at the bottom point,

put it with, like, socializing liberal ideology

in America that does not exist in most other countries.

Like, in France, there's a reason they harp on socialism

with Chinese characteristics, yeah.

All right, that was my full response to their thing.

So let me find...

Okay. Start from scratch, okay?

Uh-oh.

I did not save that correctly, apparently. Fuck. correctly apparently

Fuck Start from scratch

Okay

I'm gonna end

Hold on then why did it

Oh it is here

Perfect

Alright So recently Why did it? Oh, it is here. Perfect.

All right.

So recently, second thought or J.T. chimed in to comment about our party.

From the White House.

Perfect.

All right.

I have what I need.

All right, guys.

Great stream.

We will... We're going to wrap it up there.

I'll see you guys Sunday.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Space.

We're not doing a fucking space.

All right.

There's one thing they put in space's content,

which I'll even respond to now.

Have him state his opinion on Dugan and Lyndon LaRouche.

Comrade Kid with the five

Thank you.

Okay, I'll state my opinion on Dugan.

My opinion on Dugan is that he is a great philosopher

and he is a profound thinker, one of the mightiest philosophers of the current age, and that for more, you should read my substacks and my interviews with him, more specifically my pinned thread, you know, just read that if you want my view on Dugan.

Lyndon LaRouche, I have no high opinion of.

I think upon examination, he stole everything worthwhile from Michael Hudson.

His philosophy, though coherent and consistent, is fundamentally wrong and idealist in the most fundamental sense.

I think LaRouche was a terrible organizer as well, and he had no conception of political strategy.

I heard he had many reactionary stances in the 80s on many different foreign issues,

and if that's the case, I condemn that fully.

But LaRouche is just, I have no high opinion of him.

Let's see. Have him state his position on, I have to click it, have him state his position on baristas and other workers in the service industry and all wage jobs who are mobilizing for Palestine against ice and doze.

I think those are very different things.

But I think most – you're going to shoot me?

Most baristas and other workers in the service industry are part of America's working class.

It was always been our position, by the way.

We just thought, we had some criticism over the notion that the labor movement needs to be led by baristas and that and that that was see we don't

regard that as productive proletarian labor uh when reduced to the relationships to production that exist on the shop floor.

But I have said very, very consistently and very, very tirelessly that they are overall working class because at the end of the day they are just

ordinary Americans trying to get by and trying to make a living however they can according to

what's available to them. We just don't consider that to be the most advanced section of the working class.

First of all, second of all, we don't consider them to be traditional proletarians, or at the very least, the relationships to production, if we reduce them and confine them to the relations on the shop floor of Starbucks, those are not, that's not a form of proletarian labor. It's not. Now, if we expand beyond the shop floor, are there interesting class

relationships going on when it comes to rents and monopoly capital in terms of that, in terms of

having to work other jobs to pay for their basic necessities,

in terms of how their relationship toward the payment of rents toward financial capital in the form of mortgages and interest payments

and so on and so on does this at least make them working class in some kind of way? I think yes. I just think that it was such a very specific argument. I just think a lot of people lost their shit because we just rejected the idea that baristas are qualitatively workers in the same sense that, you know, the labor movement of minors in the 20s were.

And it's just a fundamentally different thing, not just because it's aesthetics, not just because it's gendered in a different way, but because they are not a proletarian movement.

The Starbucks movement's not a proletarian movement.

It's a petty bourgeois movement.

The Starbucks United movement. It's a petty bourgeois movement. The Starbucks United movement. It's a petty

bourgeois movement. Now, we're not trying to get in their way. We're not trying to sabotage

them or stop them. But that's our view. Or that's my view. It's not an official ACP view,

by the way. It's my view.

It's a petty bourgeois movement,

which is

disunited with the general cause of labor.

Other wage jobs,

you don't have to fit the standard of a productive proletarian laborer to be considered part of the working class it's a matter of strategy and what segments of the working class need to be prioritized it It's also a question of, should we be patting ourselves?

This is, I'm going to sum up really simply the barista gate again for the last time.

I'm going to, like, you clip this, it'd be so simple.

The problem we had was not with baristas themselves. Most baristas are probably just ordinary working class Americans.

We had a problem with liberal leftists opportunistically patting themselves on the back and congratulating themselves

because they help pioneer self-serving opportunistic petty bourgeois movements like Starbucks United,

which fundamentally distract from the elephant in the room, which is why is it that they have fundamentally failed to actually tap in to the cause of general labor and the blue-collar working classes in this country?

Failing to reach the majority of the traditional proletariat, they congratulate

themselves and pat themselves on the back because they manage to actually get headwinds going

or get something going when it comes to groups and demographics that just so happen to

share their own backgrounds, which not always in every case, but tend to be heavily professionalized,

petty bourgeois, you know, elite, at least compared to geographically

the rest of the country, living in extremely expensive, you know, New York City, Los Angeles,

and so on and so on, coasts.

And we thought this was just opportunistic and self-serving and self-congratulatory

and a way of detracting from and avoiding the more difficult question of why there has been a more fundamental

failure to actually reach general labor right uh yeah industry agriculture transportation

mining why have you failed to penetrate these crucial sectors of the working class, right?

Why do you give yourself so many brownie points for unionizing graduate

students and stuff that is

just so like

so much just not a threat

to the system at all, to be honest.

You know? So, yeah.

I mean, that's really where we were coming from. And you can

scream and cry, and that's why you scream and cry and lose your shit. Because it's easier for

you to just say that all we're doing is just shitting on baristas and attacking them. But our criticism is so much more

nuanced and meticulous and incisive. And it just hurts way more what we say. Because you know

it's true. You create this straw man that we just hate baristas because gendered

violence or something

the truth is you're just avoiding

confrontation with our actual argument

and you're going to continue doing it forever

because for psychological reasons you can't

accept the truth which is that we're just

correct you know?

Who are angry about the attacks on abortion rights and trans people.

I don't know.

I mean, can you point to examples of all of the workers in the service industry and wage jobs who are leading the vanguard of this, you know, protesting doge and stuff?

I don't know.

I haven't really seen it.

What is this strategy to win them away from reformism, anarchism, nihilism, and away from

Bernie and AOC?

What is this pitch on why they should support ACP and revolutionary Marxism?

Well, our pitch is very simple.

If the working class is not united, if there is not one united working class, and one general cause of labor, one politics based on the independent cause of labor,

there won't be leverage to keep any kind of

principled politics in check.

Bernie and AOC

will always

be beholden to the moneyed interest because they don't have a base in the mass

movement of labor to keep them in check so they don't have a foundation in that lady midwestern

thank you so much. Now regarding anarchism, that is a non-starter.

I don't know if we can disoade people from anarchism because I think a lot of the people attracted to that ideology are mentally going insane.

And I don't think they can be really reasoned with a lot of the time.

But I would say it's a non-starter. I mean, that's not a form of politics. That's just a

dev, it's just a form of declass lumpinization. Regarding reformism, I think that anyone who wants to defend the current system, which is what reformists do of the variety you're talking about, which are Democrats, are just the bourgeoisie and the upper crusts of the petty bourgeoisie, who we probably will not be making any

inroads among, to be honest.

So that's my answer.

Pretty simple.

All right, guys, we are actually

going to wrap it up for real

this time.

And I will see you guys Sunday. Hope you had a great

time. I hope

it was a great stream guys. Bye-bye.