I tried Rednote during the last TikTok exodus, I'd only been on TT in the first place for all the cool commies posting on there, but it just triggered my weird panic response at certain types of "not just US hegemony dying but the entire Anglosphere" and it was hard to find and enjoy the neat commie stuff between the persistent reminders of where all the real global geopolitical red forces come from today. Like, other commies stuck in the Great Patriotic War and obsessing over the USSR makes me roll my eyes, but it's preferable to the way a lot of Western commies are about China and this choking feeling of "yeah, of course we're getting all our propaganda and discourse straight from the CPC, that's the only way to get any since the end of the Cold War, if you can't understand it then you're just not a good enough commie and you really should be learning the world's language of communism, dude!" I know the Soviet obsession and the Russian language probably caused this exact feeling for people just like me 100 years ago, but it feels different in this context than the washed up Cold War nutters do, y'know?

It's like, the same people who yell at the Trots over "simultaneous revolution" and extreme internationalism and say "exporting revolution doesn't work" turn around and say "well, China's doing socialism so well, why shouldn't we copy their ideological and cultural playbook?" And sometimes I feel like the only "Western Bolshevik" in a room full of Turtle Island born folks, and like the only sane comrade in the bloody party hall. It's like everyone wants Red Dawn to happen except it's China invading and they win. And here I am, I just want a Comintern that isn't useless and our own homegrown Bolshevik Party here on Turtle Island.

And something as silly as Rednote can set off that horrible choking feeling for me. And I wish I could react more productively to it than just not getting to enjoy the stuff all my comrades are having fun with.

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