Hell yeah, another border agent down. It’s a tragedy that the person they were trying to arrest also died, though.

Makes sense, and thank you for the clarification!

They’re between 20 and ~40 years old, and about 25 people in total in my close circles

Actually, most of the people who’d normally be described as tankies (Stalinists, Marxist-Leninists, CPUSA members, other flavors of communist that want to seize state power and use it against the capitalist class) that I’ve met are some variety of queer themselves. In my organizing circles usually the queer folks outnumber the few token cis-het people, so again, it could just be that my IRL circles don’t represent the norm.

For context, I’m usually organizing at the local level. I know that things suck at the national level in a lot of orgs like IWW and CPUSA, there’s toxic leadership in there that have seized power in order to keep their own positions and are really ruining the image and functioning of both orgs. Yeah, CPUSA leadership might suck, but your local communists that you might write off as tankies might actually be really caring people.

I’m sure it’ll be hilarious when I explain to my co-organizers that the Stalinist in our group isn’t a tankie because they support LGBTQ+ rights

Maybe this is just an online thing? IRL I hang out with quite a few Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, and other folks who’d usually get categorized as tankies and I don’t think I’ve heard them be bigoted towards queer people during the years I’ve known them. I’m also openly queer so it’s not like I’m just an “ally” saying that they don’t see bigotry happening just because they ignore it.

These same folks are also organizing most of the pride events around here and running volunteer security for protests and drag shows, so I’d have a hard time believing that they’re secretly bigoted while spending a lot of their time, money, and taking personal risks to foster a queer community and keep it safe.

Okay, I just finished up reading Anti-Duhring after a few months and that’s kind of a misrepresentation. Things had to be centralized in order to wield effective power against the bourgeoisie. The whole “The Bolsheviks betrayed the revolution” thing is also a bit off, since IIRC the biggest difference between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was that the Bolsheviks believed that collaboration with the economic ruling class was futile and worked against winning the class war.

Y’all… without some sort of “authoritarian” element, how can the working class enforce its will upon the ruling class? I want the working class to be in charge and for the means of production (factories and shit like that) to be owned by the workers who use those machines for the benefit of themselves and the rest of the working class. We aren’t gonna get those factories, land, etc without being “authoritarian” and dictating terms to our oppressors. And since we can’t peacefully force these oligarchs to give up their assets we’ll have to use force, and force means that we really need tanks and people who are more militaristically minded.

Maybe instead of shitting on “tankies” maybe understand that they’re working towards the same goal of the empowerment of the working class, and try to ally with them? You might not agree with their ideology but if we can work together towards a better future for the working class, then why shit on them?

Idk. Maybe this is too nuanced for a community that seems to be focused on dunking on “tankies” (I’m still not really sure what that exactly means, I’d appreciate comments with people’s personal definition of what they consider a “tankie”), but I genuinely think we’d be better off trying to reconcile and work together.

Hi! I’m one of those people who has sympathy for Luigi because he did it. I think the deaths of CEOs like Thompson, billionaires, etc are necessary to create any sort of systemic change that will alleviate the suffering of the working class. It’s not because he’s hot like mainstream news seems to think, but because I’m tired of being the punching bag of the rich in this class war that we’ve all been thrust into, and because Luigi fought back.

It’s also interesting that the news is saying Luigi is hot and that’s why people support him, when it’s more the other way around and people find him hot because he shot Thompson.

He could be a union supporter though - in my experience of doing labor organizing, the younger folks are usually more pro-union, then there’s a dead zone of support from the Boomers, and then the really old folks are much more supportive because they grew up when unions were more of an active force.

If Wallace is down to organize, then I’d pick him and just take the risk that he’s got some shitty opinions that I’ll have to work through and re-educate him on.

It’s going to continue to be a problem for moderators, because people genuinely want the death of billionaires and CEOs. Every for-profit platform is going to ban calling for the deaths of CEOs, because the owners of the company don’t want that kind of speech around.

This is why decentralized pseudo-platforms like the Fediverse are so important, so people can make their actual thoughts, feelings and desires known, and speak to each other about it. When Luigi capped Thompson, we all got this amazing moment where our pain hurt and rage were validated through knowing we weren’t alone in our desire to kill the ruling class. That’s genuinely dangerous to people like Thompson.

I’d start testing to see what the restrictions are on the note - for example, could you get Thiel to give all his money away and then end himself? If there aren’t many restrictions you could say “Netanyahu, by nuclear weapon, at the Davos summit in 2025” in order to take out a whole bunch of the ruling class at once.

The other thing I’d try is writing “Elon Musk, guillotined by a revolutionary communist government made from the population of the former United States” to see if I could get regime change to happen.

Give it to a group like Just Stop Oil or other direct action / sabotage focused climate activism group - they’re perpetually broke and could do a lot of good with that money.

A lot of times you can’t avoid bringing up politics. For example, let’s say you’re a person whose rights are under attack in the US, like a trans person. Talking about the threats to your existence and how you’re worried that it’ll become legal to discriminate against you is “politics”, so you’re stuck in the position of “let these attacks happen and don’t speak up about it, thus ensuring things get worse” or speak up and risk your job.

Definitely talking about unions if you’re in the US. I single-handedly saved the company I worked for from a $10M+ data breach, got top performance reviews, and then got screamed at by my boss after I sent an article to a coworker about how UPS drivers had gotten massive raises by unionizing. I was fired a month later for “unprofessional conduct” with zero examples given and despite the protests of the rest of the team I worked with.

Or maybe when you reach $1B we take away all your money, maybe name a park after you, and put a little gold star on your ID and license plate so everyone can know you’re on New Game+ and are super good at capitalism. Then they can show everyone how it’s done by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and proving they got rich through hard work and talent rather than luck and exploitation.

I’ve said both. I’m a professional pentester / red teamer, and yeah, we send each other “I’m in” memes when we pop a box.

Seems like the board of Starbucks needs to be deposed as well.

Just remember, in the past when companies didn’t negotiate with unions and stonewalled, workers would go burn their boss’s house down. Starbucks is doing the first part, are they prepared for the possibility of the second?

Chris Pappas is a piece of shit. He’s the kind of gay guy who hits on other gay guys behind closed doors and when.they reject him, he’s bigoted towards them. Very much Mr Respectability Politics and a spineless pick-me.

I’m glad she broke her hip. Genuinely, she deserves worse for constantly sabotaging any efforts to actually represent the working class in the Democratic Party.

This report completely missed why many Marxists refer to China as the CPC vs the colloquial CCP. They say CPC because the “Communist Party” part of it comes before the nation, as a symbolic way to reject nationalism in favor of internationalism.

I think the author of this paper would have benefited from talking to the hardline leftists and asking them their thoughts rather than trying to analyze them from the outside. Most of the time, if you ask someone in good faith why they believe what they believe, they’ll honestly answer out of a desire to be understood.