Victims testimony in the link. Left the Party a few months ago but refrained from posting about it out of “discipline/not wanting to hurt the movement” on hexbear dot net but this shit is simply beyond the pale. anyone thinking about joining a socialist org deserves to know about this horrific garbage.
Obviously there’s no quick fix to patriarchy orremoved culture but the rotten, misogynistic, apologist, opportunist Becker clique has got to go if this org is going to be anything more than a hotbed of abuse and exploitation. I genuinely loved and respected my rank and file comrades, this shit makes my blood boil.
Also, “cult” is not a binary. It’s a spectrum of social and economic control.
My local (anarchist, for the record) organizing scene had a proto-cult that was emerging within it a few years ago, centered around 1 person who would triangulate and adulate and do information control and targeted callouts until they had a loyal following. It took us several months to reflect on what was going on, and expelling this person caused a schism locally, where maybe about 10-20 of the people closest to them broke off.
If cults can organically emerge outside of formal hierarchies, you’d better believe they can emerge within them.
That’s also a good point! Hence the terms “cult-y” and “high control group” when the shoe doesn’t fit exactly.
Sorry to hear you went through that in your local political scene, comrade.
It was a learning experience, those can’t be avoided altogether. In the long run we were better off for having kicked them out.
Also it reinforced my conviction against pure anarchism, in favor of having a minimal formal hierarchy for the purpose of flattening out informal/emergent hierarchies.