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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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As a posted before, Brian Berletic is a hard right source. Please don't post him here. I have a hard enough time trying to decipher what he's saying is true or not because he has no qualms for bs, including vaccine and global warming skepticism.
https://hexbear.net/post/3386336
Hexbear is constantly sharing stuff from Norman Finkelstein and he's a raging transphobe so honestly it probably makes more sense for you to fight this fight in our instance first if I'm being perfectly honest here.
I honestly didn't know about the transphobia stuff, but a quick Google search solved that. Would you be OK if requested that Finkelstein not be posted in Hexbear? Anyhow, there's a blemish over there so let's let a fascist over here seems a weird retort.
With all due respect these are two completely perpendicular axes. His analysis of the Ukraine conflict and the US's new Cold War against China are one thing and his takes on vaccines and global warming are another thing entirely. Obviously we won't post any videos of his on the latter two subjects because as you say it's likely to be BS. There are many anti-imperialists with bad takes on vaccines and global warming, does that mean that everything else they say is also wrong? Conversely, there are countless liberals who are right on vaccines and GW but completely and utterly delusional when it comes to geopolitics.
People can be wrong about one thing and right about another. If a piece of analysis is correct then it is correct regardless who it comes from. Obviously we should be careful to not spread reactionary propaganda, and when it comes to right wing sources that means we need to vet a piece extra carefully before we share it (and possibly add content warnings), but also it's frankly lazy and not very educational to automatically dismiss something without engaging with it simply because it comes from a source we don't agree with on other topics. If something is BS then i'd like to believe that we are smart enough to realize it, or if not to at least have our comrades point it out for us by dissecting the piece and showing how and where it is wrong.
In fact doing this can often be more educational than just engaging with content that we already know we will 100% agree with. It is a good exercise to engage in critical analysis of a piece, understand what the biases of the author are, and identify where their analysis falls short as a result. Obviously this isn't worth doing with just any old reactionary garbage, something has to have at least a minimum level of coherence and connection to reality, else we're just wasting our time, but i don't think this falls in that category. If you think this video gets it totally wrong then let's discuss where and why, i think that would be an excellent opportunity for us all to deepen our understanding of this subject.
You seriously have no qualms sending clicks and fans to a guy who used to write for Infowars? There no one else that we can post??
I would advise you to get off facebook and youtube, like yesterday.
You know how streamers make money, right? You know why they produce content, right? Do I need to explain it to you?
It's a little frustrating that you seem to ignore everything i wrote about engaging with the content of a piece and just keep doing this "attack the messenger" thing. There's this strange way of thinking that i see most often in liberals where you can never engage with or come into contact with anything that is associated with people who have reactionary views on certain issues, almost like they think that by doing so you somehow become morally tainted by association. As a dialectical materialist i think that this kind of puritanical impulse is not helpful.
To answer your question, no, there is not much out there with this level of quality of analysis on these topics. There just isn't a huge amount of content like this coming from progressive channels, i wish there was.
By the way, this channel isn't even the worst offender as far as reactionary sources of good geopolitical analysis that have been shared here. When we do so we assume a certain level of political maturity from our comrades, such that they can engage with the analysis presented and separate that from whatever other reactionary views that source may have. Are you also going to say we should never post anything from Russian or Middle Eastern sources because they almost certainly hold reactionary views on some issue or other?
If someone is uncomfortable with giving a particular channel views they can use one of the alternative links provided, where the video is embedded on a third party website. I'd recommend doing that anyway for privacy reasons.
The advantage of videos like this is that they use the western media's own reporting and publicly available information to show how, when you actually dissect what they are saying, they frequently slip up and admit the truth even while they try to spin it to fit their narrative. That is helpful when trying to deprogram people who would otherwise not trust any non-western source, or who would refuse to listen to any overtly communist channels.
If you think that sharing videos like this should come with a content warning to caution against listening to these sources on other topics, then that is totally valid and we can absolutely do that.
As for who he used to write for, of course that's fair to point out, but to be consistent you should also take issue with any author who used to write for Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, CNN or any other mainstream media. Genocide apologist, warmongering, imperialist bourgeois establishment mouthpieces are no less reactionary than far right conspiracy theory websites. In fact the latter sometimes stumble onto real conspiracies and have occasional flashes of insight into how the covert and overt machinery of the bourgeois state works in ways that liberals never do. Obviously that's wrapped in utterly deranged, delusional reactionary drivel, but still.
My experience with him is that he has been one of the most accurate sources on the conflict, and he does an excellent job of providing sources. It's possible to disagree with the politics of the source and for the source to be informative.
"Disagree on his politics"? Are you not disgusted by polemics that global warming isn't real or that vaccines are dangerous?
I can't believe that I need to have this struggle session every single time someone posts a hard right source.
We're not posting THAT. No one in their right mind would post shit like this, except maybe in "Shit Reactionaries Say".
As for this whole argument... It is incredibly dogmatic (as in "lib purity/moralism") and unhelpful. I do not give a damn about what this guy's chud takes on vaccines are, we're not posting his videos to promote his channel. I for once care about primarily two things: 1) "what effect does a specific article or piece of work have on the people, what sort of message is it trying to propagate?" and 2) "Is it in any way useful for the revolutionary cause?"
If answers to both of these questions satisfy me, I'm probably going to be fine with it. And I don't think MLs should be engaging in this sort of ultra-left purity shit. Information is information, even if a chud presented it. It's everybody's job to critically assess it.
I gotta have this exact same argument when The New Atlas states that some reactionary military government is good actually, and people on Hexbear and Lemmygrad are like "oh no the Myanmar junta is anti-American, that's why we should support them in their bloody civil war".
You ignored my comment on the global warming and vaccine thing. I honestly don't find this to be a productive convo if you're just going to completely ignore everything I'm saying and go to insults of "ultra-left purity shit".
Then no one is going to post that. We're only posting that we deem useful. In any case, most people on this instance are capable of dissecting reactionary bullshit. And, you should not take anyone's word uncritically, even if it's coming from Marxists - no one knows everything, everyone can make mistakes.
Interesting. Multiple people explained it succinctly, but it is us ignoring you and not the other way around. At the very least address the counterpoints presented to you.
I swear to go, it happens all the time.
"and go right to insults". Finish the sentence. "Lib purity" is not being against a guy who's hard right? Like I can get there's a case for disagreement, but come on.
No. "Lib purity" is dismissing all information from a source you disagree with, even if some information coming from them is factual and truthful, specifically because they're a chud. I stress again - we are against the guy, overall. But just because HE said something does not make that something untruthful. We CAN engage with the information critically. We don't live in a world where every source is a ML and we can just consume information without fear of it being compromised. It is no reason to not post good bits. And by the way, I watched the video - there is nothing reactionary in it. If there was - I'm sure there would have been a disclaimer.
Imagine canning Lenin because he supposedly had some socially conservative takes.
We did not ignore completely what you were saying, we addressed your issue with not posting Berletic's takes on Ukraine and explained why this sort of thing is dogmatic.
wtf does my "disgust" have to do with the facts presented? You're just another shrill lib moralist who demands moral purity instead of, y'know, facts. Other people here have already politely pointed out how the facts here line up... how is it not naive to demand that everyone you're getting info from pass your own personal idpol litmus test before accepting the facts? Just debunk the claims with facts or move on.
this isn't a struggle session btw lol none of us are terribly interested in your "struggles" after showing your ass like this.
I think this response is a bit harsh. I can understand where they are coming from, and once upon a time i myself may have had a similar kneejerk reaction. I think that as i matured (politically, though age also helps to put things into perspective) i came to understand that such an emotional reaction was not productive. Criticize what needs to be criticized and learn as much as you can from any source that you can. As Lenin said the most important thing a young revolutionary can do is учиться, учиться и учиться.
I think what the OP of this comment chain needs to ask themselves is this: there are already enough imperialist shills trying to discredit and smear anti-imperialist voices, regardless whether these voices come from the left or the right (and frequently conflating the two anyway); do i really want to help them do that and what does my revolutionary cause gain by doing so?
The problem with saying "X is right wing therefore anything they have to say is automatically suspect and we should not listen to them" is not just that it's superficial moralism, it's that by doing so you also discredit any correct analysis they may have. Then later when communists make the same correct arguments and point out the same factually true things, our own analysis will have already been discredited by association with the objectionable source. According to the "guilt by association" precedent that we ourselves would have already set.
This is obviously a self-defeating strategy for communists which allows the liberal imperialists to successfully smear the anti-imperialist position as a whole as a right wing one. The correct approach is to critically analyze the content of an argument and judge it based on its merits rather than who it came from.
Is it brusque? Sure. But what exactly is factually wrong with what I'm saying? I AM criticizing what they're saying because it's just moralism. They make an emotionally charged statement where the gist is simply that they think the source has had other bad takes (thanks, we'll take that into consideration) and then takes it personally when others point out that the factual essence of what the source is saying is correct so their supposed character is irrelevant.
It really is not my responsibility to spare the feelings of those who charge in with emotionally and morally charged "arguments" and then martyr themselves when there is pushback from people who honestly just want to know what they're getting at. They still have not made a single factual claim here!
Fair enough. You're not wrong and your reaction is valid, but i guess i just don't like seeing strife in communist spaces. I think we can afford to have a little more patience for our comrades than we typically do with others online, make a conscious effort to be charitable and if they are wrong about something first explain rather than rush to condemn and dismiss them.
We could all stand to be a little less judgemental, and we should remind ourselves that most of us were not always communists. We grow and we learn. Not too long ago most of us probably had plenty of bad takes. It's to be expected that some of us still have some liberal impulses that need to be unlearned.
I see your point and will try and exercise a bit more patience in the future, but I do think that part of what helped me develop from a radlib into a leftist was the occasional cold reminder when I stepped out of line without doing any investigation.
If one enters a conversation about a conflict in a leftist space where the stakes are as high as they are (WW3, really) and tries to disprove facts by doing ad hominem stuff, you deserve a bit of ridicule because that's not a real analysis. Acting haughty and doubling down on it and pouting when others besides myself directly ask for some proof is also not really a good look. Nor is tattling to the mods when you're losing the room.
Please just have some facts if you're going to walk directly into a thread and confidently say that it's all bullshit and don't take it personally when people lose patience when you do not. It's not asking much.
Please don't reply to me in this post again
lmao someone's mad
I guess that Lemmygrad has no disengage rule, so I'm blocking
You have to have it until you come to the realization that Marxists are capable of engaging with information in ways that liberals are not. Marxists can, and indeed must, draw information from across the political spectrum in order to meet the requirements of material analysis. Cutting off an information stream due to ideology harms, rather than benefits, the ability of Marxist's to analyze what's going on in the world.
To be honest, I don't understand how some people are arriving at the conclusions they are in this thread. I'd think a warning is a very low bar to ask for w/ regards to the way you're presenting it. Like, "Hey, this is from a source that I find trustworthy on X narrow subject, but on Y, I do not advise listening to them." Then there is at least a baseline established on the why. Because: 1) It is foolish to not guide people at all on what is and isn't trustworthy and 2) It becomes hard to distinguish who is and isn't laundering anti-communist politics if they can post just anything as long as it's agreeable to communism and anti-imperialism some of the time.
In particular, w/ regards to this part:
I can guess what the intent is here, but it can't be approached blindly as an individualist problem of discernment. For this to work, it requires an organized and disciplined approach to information. You wouldn't tell a communist to listen to Fox News for 4 hours each day because they might "miss out on information streams" if they don't. Cutting off information or not requires processing it with care. China didn't cut themselves off from information about the world as a whole, but they did develop their own social media and messaging platforms, making it much harder for the west to come in and astroturf on them and their people.
It's not liberalism to recognize that managing information and how people engage with it is a critical part of developing towards socialism and communism and their goals. We are supposed to approach it from the standpoint of actual truth, not manipulation for selfish gain, but that doesn't mean you let just anything in because it contains a nugget of truth in it. You must have some boundaries, it's just a question of what and when.
Disclaimers are good and useful, not posting anything because chud is dogmatic and unhelpful.
This is a very well reasoned response, and for the most part i would have to agree, particularly with the bit about having an organized and disciplined approach to information (that was excellently put and i will certainly remember that phrase). Disclaimers can and should be added, if only for newer comrades who may not be aware of the biases of a source.
That being said i wonder if we can't just use a bot that would call up a boilerplate disclaimer for sources that are used on a somewhat regular basis which are of dubious political orientation.
I like the idea of a bot for it, for certain domains maybe? That seems feasible, at least for some of it. For youtube links, it might get hairy, since they don't necessarily have channel information in the name (unless there's a way a bot can extract some kind of metadata from where the link leads?). Don't know if the admins would go for it or not though, either way, or who to ask about that kind of thing. But I like the idea.
It's not really a struggle session if it is just you having it. Seems more like a personal grievance that way. If someone who is far right said the sky is blue, would you assume it must be green? Facts are facts, we shouldn't refuse to look at them because someone we despise is saying them. If you're worried about empowering the far right, the worst thing you could do is refuse to look at reality because occasionally some far right nutter talks about it instead of their usual drivel.
Indeed, because once we start doing that then we allow the right to monopolize anti-establishment and anti-imperialist rhetoric. You don't diminish the right by doing that, you diminish the left and drive people toward the right. People, by and large, realize that something is not right and they look to whoever will validate that feeling and give them an explanation. If the left fails to do that then the right will. The surest way to alienate people who are just beginning to have some nascent class consciousness is to give in to the liberal moralizing impulse (of which the ultra-left purity fetish is a manifestation).
If a right wing source presents a correct geopolitical analysis then we need to acknowledge that, otherwise we just discredit ourselves. And then, if and when they go on to state nonsense about other topics we will have the credibility to say "no, actually on this topic they are wrong" and explain why and convince people that we communists have the more correct analysis on the greatest number of issues, because we do not make the idealist errors that the right does.