I guess I mean, not so much that there won’t be state repression, but there is a kind of rhetoric you see mostly online, sometimes in person, where folks will talk like it’s about to be over. That some kind of apocalyptic wave of reaction is imminent that will shut down all hope forever. It’s that kind of rhetoric that I think stems from the same place of wanting finality now instead of living in protracted, liminal struggle.

In addition to the other answer - grant writing and selling newspapers.

I run into this kind of thinking sometimes in my own work. Comrades want the left to “get serious” and start doing “cool shit” like having guns and confronting the police. I want that too, but we aren’t there yet, and I think that kind of talk comes from a place of frustration with the current level of organizing. People don’t want a decades long struggle built on countless conversations and committee meetings, they want a final, dramatic confrontation with capital right now that will decide everything forever. I think it’s the same thing behind doomer-type rhetoric about how the government is about to “really crackdown” or that you’re going to get arrested for being a commie or whatever.

lmao here I am

My understanding is that NYC DSA is captured by “right” caucuses in DSA. Here’s where I hand it to them - they are by far the largest chapter and are poised to win mayor of New York. The organization is impressive. However, I would say most DSA members, including many in NYC, dislike their style of work there. They just now held a general chapter meeting, something that every other DSA chapter does regularly, and during that meeting members were allowed to vote to advise leadership to adopt resolutions written by said leadership.

I could write a much longer thing about my beef with the main caucus behind this kind of buffoonery, but suffice to say we have different visions of the type of org DSA should be.

For Zohran specifically, because of the way DSA is structured, national basically does not have control over his campaign. Zohran’s campaign, at the behest of NYC DSA, did not ever apply for a national endorsement. Structurally, this whole thing is NYC DSA’s ball game, even if national is happy to put Zohran’s face on literature and such.

Shout out to Sid, I met them at convention this year.

For the right flank of DSA, it appears DemCent is unacceptable authoritarianism, except when it comes to criticizing our politicians’ liberalism, Zionism, or anti-communist claptrap, then it seems party discipline is everything. It’s been a frustrating few weeks.

DSA stands for Democrat Supporters of America

lmao i was thinking of SMC

“What is socialism?” (thread full of polite responses + one insane guy writing 5 paragraphs denouncing Marxist-Leninism)

“Moving Towards a Theory of Mass Politics with Socialism at Its Heart and Praxis at Its Soul” (link to the most boring caucus article that has been written yet)

“Has anybody seen this?” (link to article about some bullshit happening in the poster’s city with no other text. 0 replies.)

“FUCK this zohran guy OH MY GOD” (thread closed after 506 replies in two days)

Following on from my previous comment in the other thread about this, I can now confirm this has miraculously not worsened DSA’s standing with our allies in Cuba, whom our delegation is meeting in two weeks.

All glory to my comrades in DSA’s international working group, and all glory to me as I once again morph into an NYC DSA hater I mean seriously the fuck are y’all doing just shut the fuck up

Threads like these are why I made a rule with myself that if I was going to post on this site I would not turn into the DSA defense brigade lol

A way I explain this logic to folks sometimes is that the ideal socialist party (imo) will contend for power on all fronts, both inside and outside of bourgeois government. To me the question of electoralism is always answered with “Yes, and”. It’s insufficient as a sole strategy.

Have you been on a campaign before? There’s a lot of technical stuff to manage that is really easy to miss e.g. verifying signatures, making sure you’re following campaign finance law, etc. I’d also check with your comrades if you haven’t already; good fellow socialists will be real with you about what they can do to help and what they think your chances are. I’d also really recommend tying your campaign directly to whatever local org you’re a part of - failed campaigns can still drive recruitment.

I really don’t want to downplay your fears of reprisals - we live in dangerous times - but in my experience the greatest threats to your campaign are much more likely to be overambition and lack of planning.

Hearing about whatever person got groomed on Discord to do some crime is always wild to me because I just use Discord to like, sit on vc while my friends and I watch anime. I must imagine the other stuff is what you get into if you start hanging out on those servers with like three vent channels.

One month later I can confirm, it was Nino lol. I was told apparently he is in Chicago PSL as part of a rebuild or something similar.

reading this back i might have typed “fuck” too many times into the post text box

Genuinely the policy is deregulation. It is Reagan-type neoliberalism, where “red tape” and regulations need to be removed to allow business to provide aböndance to everyone. It proposes that since we cannot possibly redistribute resources, we must simply somehow unleash market capitalism even further to just make more of everything for everyone.

(I have not watched this video) Basically every Jewish person I know is of the opinion that antisemitism has gotten worse since October 7th, usually for the reasons often discussed on Hexbear that all Jewish people are getting chained to by the media.

pleeeeaaaasee send me the tea

No one at convention had anything nice to say about Zionism or Israel. Main objections I heard on the floor were people worried about the expulsion language e.g. “Can this be abused by leadership?”.

The answer I think is obviously no, DSA just doesn’t purge people - we’ve never done that. Our main criteria for expulsion is already the comically vague language of being “In substantial disagreement” with DSA politics; if people were going to wield expulsion as a weapon in political fights it already would have happened.

Thank you for the writeup fellow Dedicated Sicko of America