Nick French
@nickfrenchnyc
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Editor @jacobin . Words also @inthesetimesmag @dollars_sense @catalyst_theory @socialistcall and elsewhere. Opinions my own. 🌹 Subscribe to my Substack 👇
Brooklyn, NY
Joined August 2019
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Left Notes, the Substack I cowrite with
@nealmeyer
, recently passed 1000 subscribers!
We're asking folks to become monthly or yearly donors if they feel so inclined. All our posts will continue to be free for now, but we appreciate contributions :)
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To people pointing out that this is normal in other countries: true, but in the SF Bay Area we expect our toilets to flush solid waste. Not too much to ask from a landlord in one of the richest areas in the world, who makes money from doing nothing.
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Why did progressives/Squad members vote to force the agreement on railworkers with no guarantees paid sick leave will end up in there? Am I missing something?
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Some of these replies are wild. The landlord didn't tell us about this when we moved in. I've lived on septic and it can handle toilet paper. No, it's not on me to ask whether it's ok to flush TP (which I've done without issue across the US and many countries around the world!)
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It is journalistic malpractice to report on this controversy without mentioning once that DSA's main claim about NATO — that its expansion east has fueled Russian aggression — was a mainstream foreign policy prediction for the past two decades.
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My latest: With the UAW strike, Bernie Sanders's "political revolution" is passing the torch to workers fighting on the shop floor. The revival of militancy at major unions like UAW is essential to winning the transformative changes Bernie has championed.
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Lots of leftists dunking on this as too late or unserious for whatever reason, but to my mind the left's inability to cohere around a plausible challenger to Biden is a pretty big failure on our part
A real left wing presidential campaign launched today could effectively hold Biden's ability to win hostage as a point of negotiating leverage, and it's not too late to seriously consider it.
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Some things in life are morally complicated.
Opposing Israel's massacre of civilians in Gaza isn't one of them.
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Few socialist electeds take their role in pushing class struggle as seriously as
@cmkshama
.
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The Right is dismantling what little democracy we have in the US, through the courts and otherwise.
The Democratic Party is, as usual, useless.
It will be up to the Left to force them to do anything.
My latest for
@jacobin
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Biden just became the first sitting president in US history to walk a picket line. Why?
Because the UAW strike is forcing people to take sides — and most Americans are on the side of the workers. Let's hope for more moments like this!
My latest
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I hope that the Grayzone Bros blowup and the Code Pink / MTG thing this week might encourage some self-reflection among leftists about reflexively supporting anyone who is critical of US foreign policy
The war in Ukraine must END!
Today, I met brave
@codepink
activists who protested for peace in Bernie Sanders’ office. He had 11 of them arrested!
Peace & free speech shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
We don’t agree on most things, but we do agree Congress should STOP fueling the
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Some hospitals faced severe shortages of basic protective equipment and staff *before the coronavirus.*
We need a federally funded and directed WWII-style economic mobilization to deal with this crisis.
In the richest country on earth, our health care workers are facing shortages of the basic tools they need to fight this pandemic.
We must immediately ramp up American manufacturing to make the testing kits, ventilators, protective gear, and other lifesaving equipment we need.
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I wrote about the important contributions of analytic philosophy and analytic Marxism to clear thinking on the Left
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I'm begging people to learn how to think sociologically
This is like saying "Poverty doesn't cause crime, it's people choosing to commit crimes that causes crime." A false and unhelpful dichotomy
Here's the thing that liberals did not understand about fascism when Trump took over and too many still seem to not understand about fascism: it's doesn't come from economic conditions or social conditions, it's a product of fascists recruiting too many new fascists.
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What's funny about some of the discourse I'm seeing on here is that the early, hugely successful social democratic movements were built around bars and social clubs.
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A bit of old socialist jargon that's changed meaning in DSA: "Electoralism" used to be a pejorative to refer to the (bad) strategy of trying to simply "elect our way to socialism," as opposed to using elections strategically to help build worker organization and consciousness
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The popular front is going great. The Left is at the table too, just out of frame
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I wrote about why socialists love public parks, and some of the history of socialists building parks and rec centers, from the New Deal to Milwaukee's "sewer socialists" to the "Folkets parker" of the Swedish social democrats
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I wrote about the crucial role radicals played as workplace organizers during labor's peak years. The upshot: if we want to rebuild the labor movement, socialists need to organize strategic sectors and companies.
With socialism again a prominent current in American life and the need for a strong labor movement clearer than ever, it’s time for the Left to go to work.
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I wrote about how Bernie Sanders overcame fierce opposition from the political establishment as mayor of Burlington, and potential lessons for Brandon Johnson's mayoralty in Chicago
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DSA should not be phonebanking or canvassing for neoliberal Democrats. One would think that wouldn't need to be said, but here we are
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I won't speak for everyone, but some of us who introduced this phrase into the DSA lexicon have lived to regret it!
If anyone in this video is running a "class struggle campaign," it's the UAW and Shawn Fain striking the Big Three
President Biden running a class struggle campaign 🫡
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Very encouraging to see public sector unions supporting the demand to
#DefundThePolice
. This is the kind of solidarity we need to end police brutality and austerity
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It looks like we're headed for mass unemployment. I wrote about some lessons we might learn from Depression-era workers' struggles.
During the Great Depression, radicals played key roles in helping organize the worker upsurges that led to the New Deal’s pro-worker policies. We can do the same today by fighting against the economic misery and unsafe working conditions of the pandemic.
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So when do we get an apology from the left-wing folks who criticized one-member-one vote in the UAW / UAWD / Shawn Fain, or who defended the Admin Caucus?
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Pretty disgusting stuff. Lesser evil-ism is all well and good, but way too many progressives and socialists have been doing apologetics for this president
@DSANorthStar
come get your boy
Biden just approved adding miles onto Trump's border wall.
To build quickly, the Biden administration is disregarding about two dozen laws on clean air, safe drinking water, endangered species, environment, etc.
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My latest for Jacobin, on how Sweden's labor movement and Social Democratic Party built the welfare state
Swedish social democracy produced one of the most humane societies in history. That wouldn’t have happened without a militant labor movement and a working-class political party.
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I don't know who needs to hear this, but: if we want to build a socialist party (or "party surrogate"), there are some basic principles you have to respect.
1. Our candidates must endorse each other
2. Don't vote for budgets that're giveaways to billionaires + pennies 4 workers
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🧵on the rank-and-file strategy and why it still matters.
Labor and the Left have two big problems. We need to solve both of them to have any hope of a revival of mass socialist politics:
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I interviewed railworker reform caucus Railroad Workers United cochair
@RossGrooters
about the group's demand to nationalize the railroads
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I better not hear another liberal tell me that Biden is trying to "restrain" Israel
#BREAKING
United States vetoes Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and immediate and unconditional release of all hostages
VOTE
In Favour: 13
Against: 1 (US)
Abstain: 1 (UK)
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The attempt by Rubio, Romney etc to pass themselves off as "pro-worker" is a joke. But if voters’ only alternative is a neoliberal Dem Party offering scant material benefits to workers, they might opt for right-wingers pretending to be pro-labor. My latest
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Actually, in the 20th century, Red Scare politics helped marginalize progressive economic reformers and drastically narrowed US political horizons
M4A, free college & vocational school, a living wage, universal childcare, are not only just, but are key to economic development, worker mobility and growth in a free enterprise economy. Let’s not cede the economic case for progressive policies to build a governing majority.
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Had the great pleasure of collaborating with
@meaganmday
on this one for
@jacobinmag
. Thank you
@AOC
! 🙏🙌 💯
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Pretty cold take: I think caucuses are good because (ideally) they make political disagreements formal and public and thereby "normalize" them
One of the biggest problems on the US left and politics more broadly is the inability to handle political disagreements in a healthy way
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Socialists aren't motivated by envy of the rich. We want workers to have what's rightfully theirs, and we want to build a world where antisocial motivations like envy are less central to human life. New by me
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I wrote about the success of the BLM protests in beating back the curfew laws in California, and in making defunding the police an increasingly popular demand, for
@jacobinmag
:
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Pretty crazy that UPS wants to install video cameras in their trucks but not fans during a deadly heat wave!
Good to see
@mattleichenger
and Chris Williamson
@804_local
VP informing the public about
@UPS
' unsafe work conditions on
@fox5ny
#SafetyNotSurveillance
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To clarify: you can say all you want that there's no one who could mount a serious challenge to Biden etc. But it's a major retreat from 2016-20 to not have a presidential candidate agitating for a left-wing vision, especially given Biden'a egregious failures, on Gaza most of all
Lots of leftists dunking on this as too late or unserious for whatever reason, but to my mind the left's inability to cohere around a plausible challenger to Biden is a pretty big failure on our part
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Needlessly cruel and politically stupid to boot
Joe Biden ran for president promising student debt relief. His administration now appears to be doing the opposite, trying to overturn a recent ruling that helps those bankrupted by student loans.
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Despite the boosterism, Biden's "Climate Corps" is nothing like either FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps or the federal green jobs program the Left has long demanded. We should be clear eyed about that.
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There seems to be an assumption on the electoral left that policy wins translate to increased popularity for a politician / movement, and failing to deliver policy means less popularity or electoral success. 🧵
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It's clear that some DSA leaders, including comrades running on the
@DsaRenewal
slate, equate anti-imperialism and international solidarity with support of authoritarian regimes that call themselves 'socialist'.
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Liberals and even some further left often fall for the "rotating villain" shtick: the idea that a particular individual (e.g, Manchin in Senate, Cuomo in NY) is the main obstacle to progressive policy. Hochul's tenure as NY guv so far seems to be another case of this being wrong.
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Idk man... it's probably just because it makes way more political sense to lead with something like a green jobs program rather than talking about how people need to go vegetarian or whatever
I think a lot of people are scared of sounding weird or gay and so they treat these social planning questions as consumer questions and write them off. Very unfortunate!
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Haven't we seen this one before?
My latest for
@jacobin
The Democrats are boosting Trumpian candidates in GOP primaries with the hope that they’ll be easier to beat in the general election. It’s an incredibly dangerous and stupid political gambit.
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I have a list of terms that I think the US activist left should probably retire for the sake of clarity (mea culpa, I've used and loved them all)
"cadre"
"mass politics"
"building power"
"materialist"/"idealist"
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This is the kind of shit we're talking about when we say "an injury to one is an injury to all"
New research find that mass incarceration has a significant chilling effect on the labor movement, making decarceration a critical undertaking for a renewed socialist movement that recognizes the necessity of workplace organization. I wrote about that here
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"Discipline" is a red herring IMO. The problem is that too often DSA leaders refuse to even formulate clear expectations of elected officials or criticize them when they act contrary to our principles.
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Happy to see the NYC Socialists in Office rolling out endorsements this morning, but I'm confused as to why they're not endorsing
@nycDSA
candidates as a bloc this time around?
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Biden basically admitting his agenda is dead in the water and casually dissing Bernie has me thinking of this great
@meaganmday
piece from 2019.
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Giving voters material reasons to vote for you isn't "corruption" — it's good politics and the path to building a more equal society
New by me
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the UK Labour leadership’s efforts to quash left-wing antiwar voices within its ranks. To summarize: Labour threatened to effectively expel 11 members of Parliament from its party for signing a letter by the Stop the War Coalition.
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I think it's good that Twitter flags things as "Russia state-affiliated media." We should just do that for all media, including governments but also private individuals. "Jeff Bezos affiliated media, "Rupert Murdoch affiliated media," "Charles Koch," etc
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Even as we use the Democratic ballot line, the Left's long-term goals demand we build an organization and political identity independent of the Democrats
My response to Chris Maisano's recent case for the realignment strategy for
@jacobin
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The Right loves to claim that they are the real believers in "personal responsibility." But socialists are the ones who think that the rich shouldn't be able to live large by parasitically mooching off their workers. My latest
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I interviewed Joselyn, a Starbucks employee of seven years who was fired for trying to organize her store in Great Neck, NY
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Now "electoralism" is mostly used as a neutral term for "doing elections." I wonder what happened...
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Wrote about how the Second Red Scare deformed the New Deal and some possible upshots for the Left today
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.
@TRAILSANDWAYS
and I wrote a letter to the boomers in our life. Hear us out: we need your help to elect Bernie Sanders so that we can have a livable future.
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Jacobin has been central to my political development and that a lot of other leftists. We're having a huge promotion this week, subscribe and support this important socialist institution!
To celebrate May Day and the important struggles to come, we're offering solidarity subscriptions to our print and digital magazine starting at $1.
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@_ericblanc
I'm no Leninist, but isn't the appropriate unit of analysis the state as a whole vs individual agencies or officials within the state?
Indiv. officials, agencies might do some good things even w/o militancy from below
But do we have a pro-worker state? (See e.g. Fed rate hikes)
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Potentially hot take: DSA members' justified reactions to unwarranted criticism from Force the Vote/People's Party folks is leading them to downplay the limitations and contradictions of using the Dem Party ballot line.
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We should staunchly oppose U.S. imperialism while also supporting the the struggles of workers abroad for freedom and democracy.
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The Democrats' increasingly reliance on white college-educated voters is only going to make it harder for them to build the broad-based coalition that can beat back the GOP. Essential reading from
@BMarchetich
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Not to mention the striking teachers of 2018-19, Starbucks organizers, and others across the labor movement who have been inspired by Bernie's campaigns...
There are 80,000+ members of the Democratic Socialists of America because Bernie ran for president. Almost the entire Squad is currently in office because Bernie ran for president. This is like calling Jesse Jackson's campaigns "dumb and pointless."
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How many seats in the Senate would Democrats need to pick up to have enough votes to pass federal legislation codifying Roe and (more to the point) abolish the filibuster? Is such a thing remotely feasible? Do Dem leaders even support abolishing the filibuster?
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I wrote about the Right's confused conflation of Marxism with everything it doesn't like. But if you do care about ending oppression, you should be a Marxist.
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There are (real and important!) divisions of identity and interest among workers in the workplace and across society broadly. Marxists think it's possible to unite people across those divisions, because they still have important common interests as members of the working class.
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But democratic socialists shouldn't support governments just because they're nominally left-wing, and they should reject the false logic of the "the enemy of my enemy" is my friend.
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Sources here:
I don't agree with everything in the DSA statements or their rhetorical framing. But to report on criticism of NATO expansionism in the way this NYT article does is deeply irresponsible.
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In the '30s, left militants helped transform the labor movement when they moved away from building socialist-only "red unions" to the much more successful strategy of "boring from within" broader trade unions. 1/4
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condemning the workers of another country because they live under a government you like isn't based anti-imperialism, it's just opportunism at the international level
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If the rail carriers refuse to run the railroads maybe the government should take them off their hands
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1. The socialist left is largely disconnected from the working class. Most activists in DSA come from professional-class backgrounds, even if they are downwardly mobile. We are not part of organizations or communities with a significant working-class membership or leadership.
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Good to see New York's socialist legislators speaking as one voice to drag our shitty governor and her neoliberal budget
NY is the most unequal state in the US. If ever there was a time to tax the rich, it is now.
Yet Gov. Hochul refused, advancing an austerity budget that stands with the wealthiest at the expense of the neediest NYers.
That’s why I stood with my
@nycDSA
colleagues to vote no.
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"Without a working-class movement leading the way, the corporate-backed Democratic Party lacks both the will and the power to defend our rights or combat economic inequality. Only mass action by ordinary people can force the government to act."
@jergong
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To expand on the last tweet a little: Having a strong layer of respected, committed, class-conscious organizers in the workplace is crucial to having a strong labor movement. Socialists should do everything they can to rebuild that layer. (1/3)
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They have taken untold billions that they never toiled to earn
Tonight, I stood on a stage with a group of politicians.
They talked, because that’s what they’re good at.
They went on and on about what they could and should do.
I have built. I have created actual change. I have gotten it done.
That’s what I’ll do for America.
#DemDebate
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If you're going to argue that voting harder is going to fix things, you need to explain who, exactly, we should vote for and what exactly they are going to do to protect abortion rights.
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Unite All Workers for Democracy, the reform group that fought for democracy in UAW and helpetd elect Shawn Fain, is having a fundraiser tomorrow night in Brooklyn.
Hope to see you there! Donate/RSVP for address
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Begging my friend to stop shooting people as I hand him a rifle
Wild to me that Biden is calling for a humanitarian pause (and getting totally rebuffed by Netanyahu), but is taking massive political damage because he won't slightly alter his language to call for a ceasefire, in practice the exact same thing, which would also be rebuffed
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Wrote and published over 12 articles, finished my PhD, and worked as comms director on my first political campaign (we won!). Proud, b/c this year I also went through two really rough breakups, had my car stolen, and fought attempted eviction / retaliation from my last landlord.
this year was rough - brag on yourself a bit :)! what did you accomplish this year?
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It's a real problem. I've known many (not necessarily online) people from working-class backgrounds who have been drawn to reactionary politics because they equate liberalism and leftism with discourse policing
my college students are all terrified of saying the wrong thing and being cancelled. they hate liberals and liberal discourse. they feel like they are constantly policed, discourse-wise. and they're all communist-leaning, not conservatives. we have a real problem !!!!
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Did Lenin make some big mistakes? Yes
Is it wrong to try to import his perspective wholesale from early 20th-c. Russia to contemporary democracies? Also yes
Does Lenin have important positive political and strategic lessons for us today? Yes, again, clearly
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Wrote up some personal reflections, talking Kierkegaard vs. Martin Hägglund on faith, Christmas in Bethlehem this year, and the rationality of our hopes for socialism.
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Some more thoughts on the history of the NY Working Families Party and problems with the “insider” approach to advancing left politics, a thread 🧵(w/links)
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I wrote this article, and a lot of ppl got mad!
But the argument is just that when it comes to dating apps (like many other things)
(1) profit motive bad
(2) more democracy good
(3) publicly funded, democratically controlled platforms seem like a good idea
More and more people are using apps like Tinder and Hinge to date and meet life partners. Dating apps are increasingly a key aspect of our lives — they shouldn’t be under the control of unaccountable, for-profit companies.
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The owners fear threats to their control of the workplace more than harm to their bottom line
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Great article!
Some lessons for DSA rn to my mind:
1) Don't lose focus on organizing the working class, which requires
2) avoiding extreme internal factional fights, which in turn means
3) Facilitating open political discussion & democratic deliberation
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I agree with this, though maybe not for the reasons the OP meant:
Because DSA and the congressional left doesn't take itself seriously as a political force independent of the Dems on the national stage, people like MPP are the ones left to take up the mantle of challenging Biden
This might be a bit of a hot take, but I view this moment as a consequence of DSA not having the confidence to take itself seriously and pursue its own goals following the end of Bernie 2020. Not that *elements* of the org haven’t done this, but we’ve failed to consolidate.
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