Edit2: the ratio is amazing. I’m exhausted. This has quadrupled my hexbear time for the day and I will be limiting myself for a bit lol. I feel like we got somewhere in a couple of good threads thanks to Hellinkilla and ratboy. Good luck, comrades.
Edit: the rant wasn’t clear enough. In Previous struggles users have expressed frustrations with how mods/admin decisions are made. I would like to discuss how they are made and hear from them. Mods have also stated before that they wish we could be better, I’d like to hear how and know how they think this should be approached.
Rant/effort post coming:
What’s the follow up to the recent problems with how mods/admins have handled recent issues? Did I miss something? Can we get some explanations about how this site is structured and what roles we see for admins/mods generally?
history of struggle session, not necessary but gives context
We had a fairly large and fairly one-sided struggle session a couple weeks ago. Z_Poster was banned (and still is, as far as I know) and the emoji was added. Some users (thinking of @hellinkella, smong others) did some effort to really parse out where the pain points were and who was involved (largely Zionism inherent in some positions, Jewish exceptionalism). Only the emoji and banning occurred with no other promises/ideas from mods/admins.
There then followed a leak of mod logs where opinions were still very different than the userbase. I would encourage people not to open it or ask for it, please, and especially not to share it. But I think a significant amount of us did see messages that, regardless of context, gave an image of admins/mods that think the userbase hates them, disagreed with the userbase in significant ways, and which wants to steer us in a better direction. The mod chat was also absurdly active at the time, but there’s been little talk about what WAS discussed, only discussions about what was missed, where more context is needed, and things that were not done in a timely manner. This was not further discussed. (Personally I’m super appreciative of you all, doing work I don’t want to do on a website I enjoy thoroughly, and don’t hate any of you–including previous ones I’ve argued with, but would like to see some changes which will follow below and hopefully other comrades will add to it/change it for the better).
We had an EM/POC post which was tangential to that, but where there seemed to be large support for the userbase with regards to the ideological differences between mods/admins and the broader userbase. There was also a banning for which apologies followed quickly, but which indicates the structural failure more generally. There were of course other topics covered, which I won’t speak on here. I didn’t see any solutions proposed and accepted, from any of the topics relevant to this post. (Please correct me if I read this thread wrong, don’t want to speak for you, EM/POC comrades.)
Was there a follow up? Is that coming? Is the discussion behind the curtain of the mod chat? I understand you all have lives, so don’t spend all your time working on this, but some knowledge of how you’re working would be good. Otherwise it feels like purposeful pushing back of feedback/decisions so that we will forget the passionate feelings or give up. If that’s the goal, it’s a horrible strategy and should just be explicitly told. “3 months after a struggle session is the earliest we will make changes in processes” is better than nothing.
I would also recommend we have an open discussion about the direction of the site. It seems the mods/admins have indicated to have better ideas for what we can be (I remember this from the “dunk” discussions too), but have not made clear what their position in that is. Enforcers? A vanguard (with our input as leading determinant)? A different vanguard (against our input for but in our interests)? Theoreticians that have the ideas but want the users to take the lead? Knowing this would make clearer how to interact with you, and how to make our experiences better. Maybe we do need growth and improvement, but we haven’t been clear about how, and talking down is how most have experienced that. I already love this place, so when I’m frustrated I don’t think of leaving. But that’s not universal
The part where I have to listen to your petulant demands instead of using the disengage option or anything resembling a reasonable approach to talking to people. It’s not surprising you don’t have a good grasp of ML theory since you are incapable of respectful communication, the very basic foundation of organizing. A revolutionary theory based on bringing people together doesn’t really work when you are incapable of communicating
My respectful communication ceased at the precise moment you disrespectfully ignored a very clearly communicated desire not to engage in this. Disengage. Clear enough yet?
No because the disengage option means you aren’t trying to get the last word in and have some witty comeback, it’s established to be a standalone word that you use without saying a bunch of other shit. You can’t just say whatever you want and include the word disengage within a greater response and silence the other person from responding. You have to be mature enough to read a response and say disengage without needing to be narcissistic about it
Edit: also you can just not respond at all and I won’t have anything to respond to, it works that way just was easily as saying disengage
To come back to this, and not to stir the pot, I’ve got some points. (Awoo, if you’re reading, just disengage if you don’t want to be involved. I’m not taking bad about you but trying to find the root of the disagreement)
From what I can tell from the article, this may literally be an argument of definitions. When we state that a country is a settler-colony, some read that as having immediate implications all the way to the exact tactics that you must use (read, all violence is justified against the settler class). Others read it as a classification at high abstraction about the general way that 2 groups relate without many immediate implications for tactics. And others somewhere in between, with some implications for an end goal but not tactics, or with some implied basis for certain strategies but the goals aren’t perfectly aligned.
It seems there is a chance that you and Awoo (and the article) are really reading the term “settler colony” with a different view of what that term implies. If it implies that all violence against all settlers is justified, like many here believe for Palestine, then the article wants us to not use the classification. If it only implies a relation to the land question, and some justice can be found and the indigenous class be restored without that universal violence against settlers, then the classification would likely be fine, according to the author.
There is also the question of how a primary contradiction relates to secondary ones, and whether its primary or not. This does immediately have implications, there is no way to play with definitions around that. If I’m reading right, looking at a quick article by Nick Estes and this article, there is a difference between some ML’s about whether or not the settler-indigenous contradiction is the primary contradiction for the revolutionary classes of the US. I would tend to refer to Nick Estes about the other article in this case, but I don’t see a huge gap between the 2 in practice right now. But I will stop talking about it because I am no expert.
In conclusion, I don’t wanna be one of those people always saying “you just aren’t defining your terms, children” like some Wittgensteinian monster. But I do think that discussing the implications alongside the class relation is necessary avoid speaking past one another. Do you agree that this could be happening?
Edit: I didn’t state it, but I’m pretty sure Awoo is saying that there was a subset of Hexbear claiming that the exact tactics of Palestinians against Zionists was justified for all POC against white USians. That would be the extreme set of implications, and I’m pretty sure you’re not saying that? But maybe you are, in which case, yes there is a real disagreement and I also think you’d be drawing an Ultra or Maoist conclusion.
Again, who is saying this? I’ve never seen this position even once and my original question was just asking where the alleged “struggle session” on this topic happened so I could see it myself. If some random people on the internet are allegedly saying such things but literally no one in the real world is, particularly people who actually organize, then it isn’t an actual perspective, political line, or point of unity, it is a random comment from an anonymous Internet person, probably a troll or wrecker.
Why would one assert that a random inernet comment is an actual line struggle when it in fact completely misrepresents the position of Marxist leninists who recognize the ongoing settler colonial nature of the US and similar nations? I can only imagine it is to try and manipulate people into thinking that the US is not a settler colony and that decolonialism doesn’t need to happen here. It is an attempt at swaying baby leftists into thinking the “correct” Marxist position on the subject is the chauvinist position instead of the revolutionary position.
The people who the objectively racist FRSO article are trying to refute don’t say anything about needing unlimited death to all settlers, even the FRSO article isn’t stating such a thing, so why is there some straw man being built to delude those who aren’t informed on the topic? Even Palestinians aren’t doing “all violence is justified against the settler class,” the only reason violence is happening now is because there is a mass consensus by zionists to exterminate Palestinians and they are actively defending themselves. The idea that colonized people doing violence against the people actively killing them is bad is in fact racist and is precisely the position that zionists maintain. If Leonard Peltier killed those feds or not doesn’t matter. If Hamas kills some off duty IDF soldiers at a rave next to their concentration camp, it doesn’t matter. Marxism Leninism advocates for armed struggle when necessary and it is not against ML thought to kill settlers. Even still, not a single leftist organization, one that organizes not just people posting online, advocates for violence against all settlers.
What article by Nick Estes are you referring to ?
To your edit and the rest in general, I made it clear what my position on this is in the other comments and this comment, but I’d recommend reading the comment I linked in the previous comment on this thread to my original refutation of the FRSO article 9 months ago for a more detailed break down of the problems with that article. The idea that there was some underground struggle session on hexbear that “the MLs won” by firmly rejecting the status of the US as an actively settler colonial project that needs to be completely ended and decolonized is a reactionary one.
I also am not familiar with the hexbear history on this, I am going entirely off of Awoo’s description and the article Awoo linked. I can try to find the one by Nick I was referring to, but I don’t think it matters much for the point here because it just agrees with almost everything you’re saying. I am not party to the conversation, really, but was just observing how the term could be playing a part in the discourse. I think, ideologically, you have said 0 I disagree with.
I personally think calling it a settler colony is correct, but determining afterwards what the implications are is more complex. I also think that the way I used “justified” introduced another way that misinterpretation could arise. Probably should’ve kept out of the “moral” realm and stuck to “is logical”. But in that case I think it’s just “it’s more logical for Palestinians to utilize broad violence against settlers than for POC in America to do so, because of the class struggles around it”. So I’m also going to back out of the convo, I was only trying to be helpful in seeing what seemed like a way that you 2 seemed to possibly be miscommunicating
I appreciate your desire to foster communication here