Morning Comrades and welcome back to the second patreon-only dispatch of this week. No pitch to sign up for this today other than the offer to jump on board with a free 2 trial week today.
While I was away from this place last week I spent very little time online, wonderful in on itself, however, the few times I was online a very specific thought was prompted by reading through my various commie / anarcho / leftie bubbles online, almost exclusively the “Western” bubble to be clear. As always, the first premise of any and all work I do is still aligned to punching up and never down and whilst I am going to talk about an activity that I am increasingly witnessing on- and offline this is by no means meant to discourage let alone belittle anyone engaged in this behaviour. The identity political obsessed act of punching down within circles of like-minded individuals is deeply unserious and again, to be absolutely clear, this is not what this is.
It all started with this brain fart I put down on twitter in that moment:
To elaborate, I realized that within my world(s) I was witnessing an increasing move to argue about seemingly minute ideological differences between people essentially working towards a very similar goal- be it anti-capitalistic, anti-racist / fascist etc. this goes from projecting niche biases on historical figures, their work to their interpretations of theory- rarely praxis, because no one has time for that when the cops start shooting you. I know I am not alone on this thought process and my curiosity led me to ask the question why individuals and even groups in times of genuine material danger traversed towards demanding ideological purity instead of a broader level of unity? In case you are wondering, we are and have been living in genuine threatening times, this is isn’t some hypothetical that could happen at some point, we’re here, now.
So let’s get into it.
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