CoolerOpposide [she/her]
news::: spoiler Article text:
Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic congressional nominee endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ousted longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s primary, maintained a since-deleted Twitter account with repeated sympathetic references to communism, Marxist ideology and Soviet figures, including Vladimir Lenin.
Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.
As an undergraduate, Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University, where she organized with Students for Justice in Palestine, and after graduation became involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. She also attended a controversial October 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square — one day after Hamas’ attack on Israel — that featured speeches and rhetoric praising the attack.
She previously told CNN, “I have grown considerably in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community’s future.”
On Thursday, President Donald Trump accused Avila Chevalier of being a communist, a charge that she said she wouldn’t respond to while on MSNOW, saying, “I won’t be reactive.”
A further review of Avila Chevalier’s archived Twitter account from 2020-2022 found repeated references to communism and Marxist ideology. The account, “Darializabonet,” appears to have been deleted in June 2022.
The account’s bio read in 2020, “how communist of you.” Archived posts and retweets during this timeframe included a recommendation that Karl Marx’s Capital was an “essential must-read,” a complaint that public libraries did not carry enough Marxist literature by Lenin and other revolutionary writers, and a retweet from a Communist-identifying account lamenting that bookstore “banned books” displays did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin.
One archived retweet from 2020 quoted Assata Shakur, the former Black Liberation Army member who, in 1977, was convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper before later escaping prison and fleeing to Cuba. In the quote, Shakur said she “preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che, or Fidel (Castro)” before studying Marx and Lenin because the two “white dudes” had made contributions to “revolutionary struggle” that were “too great to be ignored.”
In April 2020, Avila Chevalier shared a post lamenting that people wouldn’t accept communism over a lack of varieties of soup – a reference to the critique that the political system leads to fewer consumer choices.
“I just cannot get over the fact that the universe has foisted upon us the perfect illustration of literally every failing of capitalism and people are still like we can’t be communists cuz there won’t be enough types of soup,” the post she retweeted read.
Other posts critiqued or joked about popular culture she viewed as anti-communist.
In one post, Avila Chevalier described the animated film Anastasia as “an explicitly anti-USSR kid’s movie,” and in another post she linked to she wrote: “Time for me to once again sympathize with the people the Bolsheviks put in the blender for like 90 min 😌.”
Avila Chevalier was responding to a viral false claim that Disney had removed Anastasia from Disney+ streaming service because it was anti-Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
In another post, Avila Chevalier joked that Sheryl Crow’s hit song Soak Up the Sun was “bootstrap capitalist propaganda” after noticing it opens with the lyric “my friend the communist,” quipping that the character was “apparently also a bad organizer lol.”
Another 2020 retweet argued for democratic worker control of wealth, dismissing ideological labels by concluding: “You can call that communism, you can call it socialism, you can call it pancakes.”
And previously, CNN had surfaced an April 2020 post where Avila-Chevalier said that while most of the political theory she had read was communist, “the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me,” punctuating the remark with a laughing emoji. :::
Ok I’ll say it: these posts are hilarious. Our first lefty shitposter congressperson
In one post, Avila Chevalier described the animated film Anastasia as “an explicitly anti-USSR kid’s movie,”
I love her.
Archived posts and retweets during this timeframe included a recommendation that Karl Marx’s Capital was an “essential must-read,” a complaint that public libraries did not carry enough Marxist literature by Lenin and other revolutionary writers, and a retweet from a Communist-identifying account lamenting that bookstore “banned books” displays did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin.
Honestly, same girl, same.
I fucking love this.
But she is a retweeter, she is not even the main poster.
Fuck you don't try to tell us about how terrible Marxism is when we are living and experiencing the absolute worst of capitalism right now in this very moment. We won't be gaslit into believing that things are fine actually, and that things would be much worst under a different economic system. It's like a domestic abuse victim being told by their abuser that at least they have a partner that "provides" for them and that they should put up and shut up.
What's wrong with Lenin? Even by liberal standards he was fine. He was even a free market advocate for all but the most critical industries (raw materials etc).
The NEP was a temporary strategy, Lenin was not a free market advocate. Markets are pretty useful for socializing disconnected and disparate production into a cohesive system, but central planning is better for large industry. The idea for the NEP specifically was a response to the conditions created by War Communism. The long-term goal was always a single, unified, centrally planned economy.
What's wrong with Lenin? Even by liberal standards he was fine
He cancelled "Democratic®™" elections by carrying out the October revolution, and then purged "Political Opponents™®". Definitely not fine by lib standards.
Liberals mad he did a socialist January 6th or something idk
If an elected official in the US did come out and say "yea, I'm a Marxist, fuck you gonna do about it", wouldn't there be red scare-era mechanisms in place to remove such officials and have them sent to Gitmo?
The mechanisms arn't going to be flat out expulsion on ideological grounds. That's not how the red scare ever worked and no one has ever been expelled from congress on ideological reasons. Unless you count joining the confederacy.
That's not to say that they won't jump to those tactics now but I don't think they will while Trump and maga republicans are perceived as the bigger threat.
I think corporate democrats do consider the AOC wing to be a bigger threat than Trump.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Do you wake up and decide "today I will be a total asshole for no reason" or does it just happen organically?
Don't waste your time
edit Or anybody else's for that matter
The House could vote to expel them I think? The respective branches of congress can remove members for cause and they could just call her a traitor or something and kick her out with a proper vote I believe. Easier to just kill them in an encounter with police or have their car just explode or drive off a cliff though if they're actually a problem. To be honest I think Republicans would view a single Marxist as such a great thing to rally against they would be less eager than Democrats (as a party apparatus, individual members would be absolutely chomping at the bit) to kick them out. And there's always the chance of coercing and enticing them to moderate to help redefine socialism and Marxism as social democracy in practice so lots of ways to go about it. A single member isn't really a threat though.
At the end of the day unless she's part of an explicitly Marxist party like PSL and uses her platform to stump for their planks and organization I'm very doubtful she'll accomplish anything but being a sheep-dog for the left flank of the Democrats. It's important in that situation not just to hold views but to be part of something so you can pull staffers from within its ranks, so you have strength to fall back on and a way to hold you to account for holding the party line.
The vote to expel her is the one thing I think they might try. It depends on whether or not the want to let her sit and use her to attempt to constantly scandalize and humiliate the left, both electoral and not.
I don’t think it’d even be hard to get a critical mass of Dems on board with removing her. A decreasing but still large amount of the country identifies with anti-communism, probably enough to pull it off. Way more politically effective for them to use/humiliate her than to kill
This would raise the contradictions. The base would see her be expelled, see John Fetterman not expelled, and start to wonder.
Yes of course, I’m just making commentary on likely ways they’d act against her
For the record, the house has only ever expelled 6 members. Three were for joining the confederacy. The other three were for corruption, eg George Santos.
People are overreacting here more than the right will. Look at how much they Tlaib and Omar. Do you really think Chevalier is going to get that much more flak than them?
Time for me to once again sympathize with the people the Bolsheviks put in the blender for like 90 min 😌.
Excellent bit lmao
Sorry, but unless those Tweets are undeleted I'm going to assume AOCification.
Crypto-communism was made up by red scare propaganda, in reality we can't keep our mouths shut. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims etc etc. If she really still believes these things, she won't try to pretend she doesn't.
I don't think she even deleted individual tweets, she deleted her whole account after Elon bought twitter bc she wanted to get off the nazi platform
If deleting the posts is the difference between a genuine Marxist-Leninist getting elected into a position of power vs not, then deleting posts is good.
Big online-is-not-real-life moment here. Keeping a shitposting Twitter account is not doing more praxis than like… having a meaningful say in whether your state is able to more effectively facilitate a genocide
I'm just going to mass tag everyone here @SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml @Athena5898@hexbear.net @pleiades@lemmy.ml
She's already in power. Now that these posts have been unearthed, there's no benefit in trying to do crypto-communsim (if there ever was). She can either own those posts or denounce/distance/deny, and if she doesn't own them then she's an AOC lib.
Let's see what she does.
She’s already stated she’s not going to comment on the posts at all, which I’d say is an anti-denouncement in its own way
Yeah, good enough for me. I'm not as posting brained as everyone seems to think, I just want people to stand by the things they say.
She's already in power.
She's literally not though. She won a primary and is essentially garunteed to win, being in a safe blue district, but she's not in power yet.
Let's see what she does.
Yeah, I mean, no shit. I don't think any of the people you tagged disagree with this. We are (or I least I am) saying that your litmus test is decidedly posting-brained
Oh for sure.
Didn't Rosa Luxemburg have a quote about socialists being forced to deradicalize when participating in bourgeois governments or something like that? (Sorry I can't seem to find it) I saw it used with regards to Mamdani, I have a feeling the same thing might happen again
She said it a few times but here's an old banger from this work:
On the other hand, the behavior of the socialist ministers in parliament itself is directed exclusively at bringing about the rule of, and keeping alive, the sad and inwardly lifeless remnants of bourgeois democracy. For this purpose the class conflict between proletariat and bourgeois-democratic policy is completely disavowed and socialist opposition abandoned; ultimately the Jaurès socialists’ own parliamentary tactics resemble those of the purely bourgeois democrats. These disguised democrats are distinguishable from the genuine thing only by their socialist label – and their grater moderation.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims etc etc. If she really still believes these things, she won’t try to pretend she doesn’t.
I see your point, but making undeleting her tweets as a sign of her true radicalism is a real "Tell me you think posting is praxis without telling me that you think posting is praxis" kind of cringe.
The reality of the situation is that she's running for elected office, and that requires cleaning up your image, especially in the internet age. And quite frankly, Any ML running for office should be using it as an opportunity to teach the masses. The masses shouldn't be learning about Marxism from a Fox News host frothing at the mouth over your dank Lenin meme.
Who is teaching MLism by running for office? Is this person doing that?
There have been big tent communists doing that to an extent in lower offices. Not necessarily MLs only but folks that put focus square on capitalists and a rejection of bourgeois parties.
Rejection of bourgeois politics without a full explication of another system is what causes our long term failure. It's the exact weakness of non-MLs that forced me to study MLism.
Im still happy with whatever this person is doing because it presents opportunities for marxists to clarify their positions relative to the concrete failures of such endeavors to get the goods. Also whatever this person achieves will likely be material benefits that are nice short term. But im allergic to confusing this with any long term goals
Based on their posting history there's a decent chance they'll at least start out with good agitation. Hard to predict more than that since it's just one person.
Not so much the twitter thing but I do feel the "don't shut up thing". It takes so much energy to measure what I'm saying and make it okay for most people...and I still fail a lot.
Years ago I was reading some "is China really communist?" argument and ran across the following point:
Whatever you think about the current character of the Chinese government, everyone there openly says they're communist, reads a bunch of communist literature, names their main party "communist," etc. If they aren't communist, it's hard to imagine a better not-already-communist place for an actual communist to rise to power.
Something similar applies to the DSA.
In my experience, most critics (not all) are chronically online people who have never organized their community a day in their life.
Most of my chapter is MLs. Please let us know when the revolution is 😎
I said in another post that harcorest marxistest lenisistest maoistest party in my area should have some sort of positive relationship with our local DSA, since if DSA is truly doomed to fuck up at some point due to their electoral tendencies, you'll want to recruit everyone who is ready to step things up at that time. Obviously organize (far) beyond that, but calling people a bit to the right of you "liberal liberal liberal" is cutting off the pipeline that's going to be very useful in the future just to be smug.
You can actually make that kind of thing happen by just doing a joint project where the chapter is likely to fail those involved. For example, launching a police abolition campaign now. I think that's pretty likely to get a response along the lines of "that was a good thing to jump on in 2020 but not now". Focusing on Palestine has a similar effect.
You don't really need a direct relationship with DSA or whoever is on their main local committee, you just need to be known to the membership and get your events attended by them.
Agree!
The purity policing online is indeed very tiresome. I don't witness much of that irl ... people just come together to solve the problems that need to be solved.
I work with PSL and DSA alike. This online shit is so dumb. (honestly my one PSL colleague doesn't even really do much with PSL anymore since the org doesn't do much other than protest marches ... this comrade is is way more active in rapid response groups and immigrant solidarity orgs now)
In my experience most critics are communists with decades of experience running parties and organizing major events.
And I don't mean this to be demeaning but if most of your chapter is MLs I'm guessing it is very small, like it has a small enough number of active members that a single clique of 5-10 people controls the political orientation.
I love the quote but don’t know exactly what your point is.
Do you mean that communists can rise up through the DSA, or that the communists within DSA might as well call themselves communist, or something else?
The point about China is that even if you don't believe they're Real Communists, they at least all act the part, so a Real Communist could rise through the ranks more easily there than in most other places. Say you're a Real Communist in France or Mexico, for example. If you openly talk about Lenin, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, or how labor creates all value, you're going to have big chunks of the political sphere openly call for you to be exiled from political life, if not worse. A Real Communist will not get that pushback in China, because there everyone is at least pretending to endorse those ideas, so Real Communists have comparatively easy paths to power.
In the DSA, everyone is at least pretending to subscribe to socialism. It's right there in the name! So while someone who really believes that might struggle in other parties, or in the broader U.S. political sphere, they're going to get comparatively less attacks from the right in the DSA.
I don't know anything about this lady. I'm saying that if there was a pretty cool politican out there, it would be easier to succeed rising through the DSA than anywhere else in the U.S.
Got it! Then I completely agree
Just about everyone I've met through the DSA has been a self described marxist
The most active cadre tend to be far more often Marxist than paper members
I can introduce you to some DSA anti-Marxists if you'd like lol
Yeah heavily this. I saw a similar post and that point really stuck with me.
DSA? Not from what I'm seeing.
The point is judging them by their initial elected is like looking at chinese markets and saying its capitalism. Rank and file DSA has always been Marxist and have only grown more radical over the years.
It's ridiculous to compare the DSA to the CPC. Even if many members within the DSA claim to be communist, the DSA organization itself claims to be reformist not communist. The DSA does not put any effort in developing an independent working-class party, and they directly claim not to be a party at all. Their endorsed candidates are Democrats. There are communist parties in the US, but the DSA is clearly not one of them.
Aside from the fact being anything other than a reformist party is currently illegal, DSA also is not operating under a parliamentary system, it maintains independence by acting as a insurgent factional party within the two party electoral framework
DSA chapters and cadres don't officially share data, coordinate, or maintain organizational ties with the DNC or even non-DSA candidates they endorse (AOC's people are Warrenites)
DSA maintains an independent infrastructure even if it's candidates borrow the empty label if 'Democrat'
The DSA does not put any effort in developing an independent working-class party
obviously not true at all. DSA is literally developing its own canvassing software as we speak so that it can stop using stuff like NGP VAN.
got me there
Kareem Elrefai, a New York member who was elected to the NPC at the end of the convention, said that resolution was one of his biggest takeaways from the weekend, steering DSA in a power-building direction. He recounted that the body debated whether their 2028 candidate should run as a Democrat or a third-party candidate, but he was happy with the ultimate outcome. “There was an amendment that would have strongly urged us to go independent. I am very excited that it has kept us on the Democratic Party ballot line, not because I’m a proud Democrat, certainty not by any means,” he said. “Third-party agitational campaigns fail pretty consistently.”
https://prospect.org/2025/08/14/2025-08-14-dsa-convenes-argues-and-celebrates/
Oops! All reform!
who cares about some text on a ballot line? The DSA clearly isn't the Democratic Party and it's becoming less so every month. Nobody in DSA likes the Democrats. Focusing on this "break from the Democrats" stuff so closely is akin to saying, "why doesn't China just press the communism button?" as if infrastructure, organizations, and movements are built in a day.
Change happens slowly. This is a mostly volunteer organization. People are contributing their days off and time after work to build these things. Rhetoric will change when material reality changes.
One cannot say "lets immediately break from the Democrats, and we declare war!" while using the fundraising and canvassing infrastructure built for the Democrats.
If posters here want their own party so bad they could take over the Green Party. IDK how people think because their third party has a hammer and sickle that it will somehow magically fix all the barriers third parties have in the US.
At some point we have to realize that capitalism has put us in a "checkmate" in the US. Violent revolution is not possible with all of the surveillance and the most well armed police forces in the world. Plus half the country worships the cops. I see those stupid "thin blue line" stickers on so many trucks here. Soldiers are mostly chuds and fascists who volunteer to kill brown people overseas. Where are you getting the armed masses to fight your civil war?
Union organization has been drilled out of people's heads thanks to billions of $ of "individualism" and propaganda. It can work but not overnight. It's slow work deprogramming people.
I know Hexbear hates electoralism, but I don't see any other options that actually can work.
east turkistan
Opinion discarded
You clearly have no understanding of socialism with Chinese characteristics or basic Leninist principles like democratic centralism. Try learning first instead of spouting nonsense.
Vote blue no matter who.
I only vote red
She sounds good, hopefully she still holds these views. Can't think of anything that could have changed her in that time period tbh.
Whether she can actually use the position to achieve anything is another story though. There's also the issue that no matter what your views are you're constrained in what can be done by what can keep you in the seat too.
yeah one congressperson isn't worth much, you need enough of a caucus to make or break bills passing to have leverage, otherwise it's just talk. and the talk can be good but it's a lot of work to get a congress that might've been able to go somewhere else.
I would expect that the first proper communist in the US House would be like Bernie Sanders but actually cool: isolated, giving long speeches to empty rooms, calling everyone an imperialist, and providing a counternarrative for every major event or policy. And of course reminding everyone to get involved in the necessary organs of revolution.
I'm just going to politely plant my bet here that there is a 0% chance she actually held these views. I bet fifty trillion dollars
Under what reason? Assuming a fed plant or something?
If they're not a plant then i think they held those views at some point or they wouldn't be writing them
She was one of the people who got arrested at Columbia for protesting against the Israeli genocide and then ran for office as a socialist openly. I think it’s pretty safe to say she holds these views genuinely
Do you actually believe any of the things you say on here? How can I be sure?
I hardly have a physical form. At least there are chemical interactions taking place, but we can't be sure of more than that. Chemical interactions are much better understood these days, so that's a good thing to be sure of, isn't it?
Her district is in the Bronx/Manhattan and consistently votes 85-90% Democrat. She won the Dem primary, so she's basically a guaranteed congresswoman at this point
i dunno if this is nominative determinism at play but I formerly welcome our first Shitposting
Knight of the Order of Lenin
Hot damn, I do love the smell of CNN panik!! in the morning.
i hope she pronounces Chevalier with a hardcore francophone accent so the monolingual anglos can be extra mad about how it isn't pronounced Chevrolet nor does it sound like any other word they know like Cheeseburger or Chewable Aspirin.
i'm hoping for Sheh-VAL-yeay but like the "L" is lightly danced over, nearly imperceptible and all the syllables smear into each other.
on the other hand W.E.B. Du Bois rejected the french pronunciation.
synthesis would be something that pisses off both anglos and francos.
i hope she pronounces Chevalier with a hardcore francophone accent
i'm hoping for Sheh-VAL-yeay
???
the french way of saying it would be with a light accent on the last syllable (sheh-val-YEAY, in your notation)
observe: https://forvo.com/word/chevalier/#fr
First Left-twitter poster that may become a congressmember
She’s not losing that district to a Republican in November let’s be real. This issue matters realistically to almost nobody. People already knew they were voting for somebody at least using the label “socialist”
new aoc just dropped
I get the hesitancy but
In one post, Avila Chevalier described the animated film Anastasia as “an explicitly anti-USSR kid’s movie,” and in another post she linked to she wrote: “Time for me to once again sympathize with the people the Bolsheviks put in the blender for like 90 min 😌.”
I’m sorry AOC was NEVER saying this and saying she prefers to read about Juche instead of Marx lmfao
cw mention of self harm ::: spoiler spoiler my point isn't about her in particular but rather that the powers that be will not allow her to actually do anything radical once she gets to washington. some sufficiently high ranking fed will make it clear to her that if she actually threatens capital several members of her family will shoot themselves twice in the back of the head. believing anything else is just pure naïveté or lack of understanding of the history of radical movements in the us :::
I think this is doomerism. I get the desire to be skeptical of elected socialists. It's warranted, as there's a lot of ways for them to stray. But we can't lose hope on the wins we get.
Electoralism won't bring the ultimate changes we need, but this is fantastic for movement building, and spreading agitation. A real party is starting to form, which is a great thing to see.
Also, we live in a decayed society. There are plenty of fascist, reactionary forces, but they too have been hollowed out by neoliberalism. The government still has great force, but it's a shadow of its anti-communist peak.
The main point in participating in elections is to show how much of a sham they are while using the elections as a platform to agitate for socialism. 2016 Sanders was a goodish example, 2020 Sanders less so, and the rest (AOC et al) not at all.
2016 Sanders was cool enough to crash into Clinton's coronation and run as a Democratic nominee despite never once registering as a Democrat up until that point. The most insufferable losers in the world kept on calling him a DINO which only made him even more popular because Democrats ain't shit.
2020 Sanders lost that energy after bending the knee to Clinton. And as for everyone else, it's the same old story.
People were genuinely excited for an independent progressive presidential candidate who at least had a political career where he wasn't beholden to the duopoly. They do not express the same excitement for a bunch of Democratic Congresspeople and mayors from New York.
They do not express the same excitement for a bunch of Democratic Congresspeople and mayors from New York.
This isn't true, DSA holds a national 17 point lead on the DNC dems, Bernie Sanders never came close to that in substantiated polling
In fact "17 points" is the legendary hypothetical polling number between Trump and Bernie in the general that so many chapos here once used as proof the libs are out of touch
And yet here it is manifested in reality on the ground not under one man, but with an entire org full of Marxists
its doomerism to learn from history? lol. i've learned my lesson from bernie 2016, bernie 2020 and aoc that national level electoralism is a dead end and will only ever waste leftists time and energy
this is not a "win" for the left, it's an image of a win projected onto your tv or phone screen. electoral politics is a tv show, pure spectacle. describing what constitutes a real, actual, non-spectacular win for the left is considered fedposting on this site
Zohran got NYC childcare and froze the rent. What has your book club done that comes anywhere close to helping the working class that much?
All I have to say is that it would be really nice in a time where Israel is such a mainstream issue to point to one person in congress voting to not send them weapons to commit genocide and saying “yes, that one is the socialist”
Electoralism in the sense of trying to make large scale meaningful governmental reform is dead yeah, but that doesn't make the real power of the congressional position not exist. It's visibility, it's interviews, it's money to agitate. It's a constant naysayer and contrary voice to the motions of the greater state.
That's a voice with power, and one to use. To ignore the potential of this voice is anti-materialist.
Electoralism in the sense of trying to make large scale meaningful governmental reform is dead yeah
New York City literally just passed a two year rent freeze, in New York City! The heart of American real estate
I was meaning on the national level, the State as a whole. The more local the politics, the more electoral outcomes can drive real, positive change.
ok but that's gonig to be turned into nothing after less than a year exaclty like what happpend with aoc. congresspeople do have a powerful voice, but theres literally no reason to believe theyll be allowed to use it for good without being shot
congress is powerless to help you, not to hurt you
Why do anything then if you will just get shot?
They did not threaten AOC with violence to make her deradicalize. She deradicalized because she was young, new to marxism and surrounded by the same consultant class that advises every other democrat.
Chevalier will be sidelined even harder than AOC and the DCCC will spare no expense to primary her next election but no dark secret threats of violence. They simply don't need to do that.
how could you possibly know what conversation she had (or was forced to have) in private?
You're the one claiming to know that.
If she is personally principled enough she can draw attention to those systemic constraints and agitate for alternative methods. The main limitation is really that these are all individuals beholden to nobody except maybe the bourgeois structures they're entering. It would be much better to have a principled and disciplined organization behind them. One ready to expel and replace if they step too far out of line, for example, and able to provide security and grassroots actions. In the very best case scenario without such an org, she becomes a likely target of bourgeois terrorism.
no one is "drawing attention to systemic constraints" if it means their mother is going to be executed. she's going to be a quiet obedient servant of capital, just like every other radical whos ever gone to washington, by one way or another
also there is absolutely no org in the us that could protect her from bourgeois terrorism, they've got more guns and more money than even the most disciplined leftist org by a factor of 10000:1
black americans will never be able to destroy the masters house with the masters tools
I dunno they might do that even with family threatened. But that's the risk of doing this stuff without a principled and disciplined org, it's way less likely an individual will stand up to the pressure. And I think it could even start more subtle and still break a person. Don't even need to outright threaten, just have security be lax when bourgeois terrorists inevitably try to attack them. I mean we are basically describing revolutionary suicide in one individual and coming from an org that won't be able to support them as well as even a much smaller communist org could someone like Fred Hampton.
I do think orgs that could protect leaders from bourgeois terrorism could be built but I agree they don't exist now. Those that are principled are too small and those that are large aren't principled enough. But I do acknowledge that none will likely every perfectly protect every leader, the violence will come for us the more we succeed and it will force civil war or something similar under the best case scenario.
Don't even need to outright threaten, just have security be lax when bourgeois terrorists inevitably try to attack them.
That's basically what happened to AOC. She's was freaking out how the panic buttons in her office didn't work when 1/6 happened.
Oh interesting was it just hers? Or is this the general context of the capitol police not really giving a shit that 1/6 people were infiltrating?
good grief you people will find a way to whine about anything
the level of ambient doomerism on hexbear of late has been on the rise for sure. even just the ability to enjoy a tiny W for what it is seems to be beyond most posters
I’m a former Hexbear user. I had to (sort of) leave for a while because this sort of knee jerk doomerism towards everything got to be too much for me.
If someone who has in the past identified as a communist (and doesn’t really seem to have disavowed that even if they downplay it for understandable electoral reasons), and your first response is to get angry and slander them as a socdem liberal, idk maybe do some reflection or something and check if you’re not just going to shit on anything remotely good that happens.
Maybe this is over the line but it seems to me too many online leftists here just use their political identity as an excuse to let their own issues take the wheel.
Personally, I'm in "wait and see" mode. Like, cool, I hope they follow through. It's only very recently that the radical factions have gained this amount of influence in the DSA and they have historically been unable to enforce any sort of coherent party line, since they don't really have one as a big tent organization. So while I'm not doomposting, I think it makes sense to be skeptical.
"I hope they follow through, but let's wait and see" is distinct from the tone of "everybody is a succdem liberal and if you even hope that the DSA libs can do one single good thing you're a liberal idiot. I don't have a tangible suggested alternative BTW but definitely don't join, support, or even pay attention to the DSA liberals" that comes up every week.
I've made jokes about DSA aligned people being the vanguard or above criticism, which they aren't. I would like our community to support a balanced analysis of global politics, including US domestic policy, including criticisms of the liberal tendencies of the Democratic Socialist movement.
It is actually very straightforward to recognize that they are not sufficiently radical/revolutionary to make the substantial changes to undermine US imperialism and capitalism. Pointing that out in a snarky sentence is not interesting and is awarded no points by me. I am curious about what it leads to. How can this energy be appropriated into a stronger revolutionary movement? Is it really just sheepdogging people to the Democratic Party line? (show your work!) What alternatives can one suggest to socialists in the United States, if we dont believe the DSA can get the job done?
One element of answering these questions is definitely "wait and see". Someone can set their expectations bases on their knowledge of history, but the conditions of the United States in 2026 are definitely unique to itself.
For alternatives to electoralism, you can find them even in the DSA, getting droned out by electoralists on a regular basis. There is internal struggle in the DSA, a war of attrition between people smiling at each other and calling each other comrades, seeing who can exhaust the other first on driving a political line and making their priorities into org priorities.
Sometimes (often?) people frame actions add purely mutually exclusive. Either you're doing electoralism and nothing else or something else and definitely not electoralism, so it goes. There is an element of truth to this in that an org has finite human hours with which to do work and that limiting focus to a few priorities is a good way to increase impact. And even if you have 4 priorities, there is a tendency for certain kinds to suck up all of the energy or perhaps appeal to people who think it's the only thing that matters and insults everyone that disagrees. This is an long-recognized tendency. Marx called a version of this parliamentary cretinism (apologies for the problematic terminology) and it is a real thing. But with that said, it is possible to do several things at once and do them well, but it requires a willingness to be self-critical and disciplined in exact opposition to the subject of that term from Marx. That is the key that tends to go missing. DSA electoralists tend to stick to electoralism and try to do things every cycle even if they don't have ideas of what to do - it's just the thing to be doing. Sometimes they succeed, usually they fail, and for reasons that are fairly unserious. And the idea of accepting criticism or imposing discipline on "electeds" tends to be rejected by the exact people so invested in electoralism. I believe these are structural, not incidental issues - if discipline and principles are the antidote, the way to create it through structure is the thing to be doing.
Anyways there are DSA groups focused on:
- Disability justice
- Mutual aid
- Labor and unions
- Political education and events/rallies
- Anti-imperialism with various methodologies
- Various "horizontalist" projects like community farms and so on
- much more
But they don't make national news because it isn't flashy. And of course other orgs engage in plenty of alternatives to constant electoralism.
Excellent post comrade!
Thanks! Now give me that aforementioned smile! (lol jk)
also one congresswoman isn't worth much power in the scheme of things, she gets a bigger platform, she might get railroaded out of committee assignments, etc. freshmen congresscritterrs basically never do anything real anyway.
voting against a bunch of shit will be cool but never prevent it.
Nah, most people were celebrating when Iran fucked up those military bases and humiliated the US in front of the world. Just because people aren't celebrating what you personally find worthy of celebration doesn't mean there's "ambient doomerism." Imagine using this standard in real life.
It's all doomerism and assuming bad faith on the part of every other user (except for infamously bad faith users)
wheres the lie
To be fair aoc never represented herself in any way they showed an understanding of Marxism, yet alone referencing any revolutionaries or really saying anything leftist ever. She was only ever doing the "I'm a socialist bc socialism is when the government does stuff" bit
first of all, i will never trust anyone who runs for office and willingly associates themself with the dsa. secondly, somebody in the deep state is going to make it clear to her that she will get fred hampton'd if she doesn't aoc herself
good things will never happen in this country, and they will certainly never happen because of who's in congress
I don't appreciate your negativity
I definitely don't have any hope for any elected official, but she is qualitatively leagues away from AOC in her history in the left and the way she has represented herself as a leftist.
hopefully she will at least try to keep that energy even if it's literally impossible within the system she is operating in
Nah they won't threaten HER. People could be brave and willing to face death for what they believe in. They'll threaten her family. It's much more effective. Risking your own life is easy to justify. Risking the life of your 6 year old cousin isn't.
What an amazingly badass name. Can't wait to see the jimmies she rustles.
Oh no! /s
