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Nathan Robinson most vindicated man alive
(hexbear.net)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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is there a cliff's notes for this incredibly meandering, lengthy article?
tldr as far as I remember:
Nathan Robinson: Guys can we please come up with some kind of structure to this magazine that is my actual full time job so that it ships out on time and our Patreon supporters get their rewards? Also, the person we hired to answer the phones and do basic secretarial work isn't doing the thing we're paying her to do.
Current Affairs writers: ummm idk like we just like doing this cool thing with our friends, um it's like socialist which means anyone does what they want whenever cause it's just like whatever man
Nathan Robinson: Dawg I got my mom doing administrative work for free here because there's no organization, I'm open to anything, maybe a company structure or a co-op or whatever, but shit needs to get done.
CA writers: Umm maybe a co-op because we're epic socialists. Also the secretary we hired can be an artist or some shit, also this other person you refused to hire needs to get another job and we don't like the person you did hire.
Magazine implodes
CA writers: Nathan Robinson fired us for doing co-op socialism :angery:
Damn is this really what happened hahahah
Having read through way too much of that lengthy article (that has plenty of receipts), basically yes. Robinson can be criticized for not being a great manager (though he was in a difficult situation, too), but the stuff about union busting and even simply the accusations of firing people hold zero water.
There's also a fair amount about how the departing staff were informed they would be getting severance pay, and Robinson even suggested more severance pay than they initially asked for, but they were still seeking donations on Venmo and CashApp. If there's a grifter here it's not Robinson.
Yeah this is absolutely embarrassing and sad. I feel petty bad for Nathan here. Tbh I used to listen to the podcast and it was good. I found it actually kinda surprising that Nathan did union busting but I didn't know him so I was just like "damn that sucks". But now this really sucks, because I thought he was a funny little guy and read him as legitimately caring about the left (even if I disagree with him on quite a few things).
stop feeling bad for kautskyites and grow up. politics isn't about the feelings of political figures.
Oh fuck off. No need to be aggressive with me or talk to me like I'm a child. I can have empathetic feelings towards people who are getting death threats because they were lied about. It has nothing to do with my understanding of what politics are
No. Grow up and stop getting parasocial attachments to leftoids that lead you into doing mental gymnastics to excuse social imperialists. I will talk however I want.
Divert your empathy towards the actual oppressed and workers of the world and not rich dandy parasocial mini-celebs who don’t give a shit about them and encourage imperialism against the actual suffering people.
Fascists and libs and Chuds all get death threats too. Doesn’t vindicate any of them or make any of their political positions more correct
No
tyvm
radlibs will shit on Stalin and then follow his exact leadership style for their dogshit rag lol
You already nailed it, it's very repetitive and mostly relies on telling you what conclusion to have rather than laying out a compelliy case. It's also a buddy of Nathan's that, I believe, joined after a lot of this has gone down or was otherwise not personally knowledgeable of it, being someone that wrote very rarely.
Also failed to address the key accusations.
As an example of how it relies on innuendo, it spends a lot of time talking about an alleged harassment campaign and saying someone who wasn't an employee was engaged in it and how this is all terrible. It's even convinced several hexbears in this thread. Of course, badmouthing a conniving employer on Twitter and telling him he sucks in a grocery store when you happen to randomly see him is not exactly a harassment campaign, it's just basic naming and shaming we tend to celebrate here. And that person that wasn't an employee? Well they're the long-time partner of an employee that was in the thick of it and went through this ordeal with them. Nothing strange about that.
Yeah, I read a bit of the italicized intro that started out saying they're definitely not writing this to defend their friend, then sort of smoothly transitions into just defending their friend in a fairly weird, immature way (paragraphs of describing mean things said about their friend) and gave up when I got to the "ackshully he didn't even have the authority to fire the people he told were fired" which is far from a defense of Robinson and more like yet another shitty thing Robinson has done
my conclusion is that probably most of the people involved are a little bit too impressed with themselves and robinson still sucks
Yeah I'm annoyed I have to think about this again lol. Not annoyed at anyone here, lol, just don't think this is worth spending time thinking about but can't help myself
I have a hard time believing we read the same thing.
It shows conversations with and between the people involved and the author viewed Zoom recordings of their meetings (and references them). What other evidence are you looking for?
The key accusation is "he fired employees for unionizing." It makes clear that no one was fired and no unionization was attempted.
Doesn't it make it clear that Robinson told people they were fired, or should resign, when he didn't have the authority to do so?
He asked for a few people to resign, yes, and he didn't have the authority to fire them, yes.
What's the difference between this and firing someone? They knew he couldn't fire them (which makes their "I was fired here's where you can donate" tweets extremely bad in my eyes), so they could and did refuse to resign, and they kept getting paid even as the magazine went on hiatus and they did no work.
Asking people to resign when you don't have the authority to do so isn't really redeeming, to me
Is "Person A fired Person B" at all a fair characterization of that situation? I don't see any way someone who claims they were fired and asks for money while still drawing a paycheck is in the right -- they're just straight-up lying.
There's room to criticize Robinson for not handling a difficult situation particularly well (and for not setting up a better group structure in the first place), but this is wildly different than "he fired employees for unionizing." There's was certainly no effort to unionize, in any case.
This is all based off a single, extremely badly written diatribe, right? I truly don't understand why one screed suddenly has more weight than any other screed, particularly when it's quite clear it's just NJR's friend defending their friend. The best I'm willing to grant is that it sure sounds like every single person involved in the dispute is insufferable and shouldn't be published or paid attention to.
Come on. It posts receipts, names names, and is a conventionally-formatted narrative.
As for who's credible here: I'm sure not going with the people who (at minimum) lied about being fired so they could grift money over twitter. They also declined to be interviewed for the article and never piped up to dispute the key "not actually fired" part despite continuing to tweet about the situation years after the fact.
One reason "only me and my five online friends are True Leftists" is so popular is that being dismissive is easy. Mao and Stalin worked closely with plenty of leftists who didn't have perfect takes on everything, and even allied for a time with reactionaries like the KMT and U.S. That's the reality of a mass movement, not writing off people who are closer to you than probably 95% of the U.S. population.
I guess it's conventionally formatted, in that it's in paragraph format, but it sure spends a huge amount of time listing all the mean things people have said about the author's friend that aren't really relevant, and if it gets to actual receipt-posting it's so far down the narrative that anybody who isn't already fully on board with NJR is not likely to make it that far. Regardless, nobody here is Mao or Stalin, none of us are leading parties with influence or power in our western hellholes. Beyond that, is NJR read by anybody not on the left? Is he bringing people into the left? Does anybody take him seriously, even before the "unionization" flap? Does a left movement need run-of-the-mill western chauvinists speaking for it?
This is a site for shitposting, and even if it were a site for organizing then NJR's influence and utility would be in doubt.
No kidding, the people who are mad at NJR didn't want to be interviewed by NJR's personal friend writing a defense of NJR? Damn, that's wild huh
So you didn't even read it. No investigation, no right to speak.
Like I said, it's a poorly written, way too long screed. Hope the NJR fan club readings of the thing go well though!
It's OK to not read something, it's ridiculous to not read something then write several paragraph or longer comments adamantly insisting you're right about it. Do some self-crit.
Love to read something written by somebody's friend in defense of that friend and immediately assume it's 100% correct and factual and get mad at people who exercise a little bit more discretion
Shut the fuck up. You didn't read it, you don't get to talk about its content. I've spoonfed you some of it (and some signs it's credible) but you ignored that, too, so just shut the fuck up.
Have you read the original Twitter thread + Google doc?
Evidence for what? They didn't even lay out a coherent rationale given the original accusations backed up by the rest of the staff.
No it isn't lol. That isn't even their accusation.
They already had a union. NJR firing them was precipitated by him getting cold feet about collectivizing as a co-op. He then sent out messages asserting his status as The Boss, got pushback for reneging, and then started firing people, and it became a shitshow from there.
Dithering about whether he technically 🤓 had the power to do so isn't particularly relevant unless someone is going to start suing. He used his position of power as the founder and active editor to start telling people they need to go and they reasonably understood he was firing them. Also, being at a small workplace where the main person wants you gone isn't exactly a great environment, especially when they are this incompetent, so I would've doubted anyone was super excited about suing to get their job back.