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Thanks for the great post! This line in particular struck me:

"the left easily falls into the trap of misidentifying the primary enemy"

I think this is such an important point. From what I've observed, the greater one understands the primary enemy, the sharper and more coherent their political views will be--which is to say, the more they will align with real-word conditions. The more detailed and specific the better. That's why I think Michael Hudson is one of the best in the business (e.g., he doesn't refer only to the "ruling class" but rather to subgroups within it, like the FIRE sector and big oil).

For example...

Liberals (of the NYT/NPR ilk) have the least understanding of the primary enemy. They are so smug and self-righteous in their own correctness that they have zero interest in pursuing such a question. As such, they have the worst political analysis and end up defending positions that serve the primary enemy.

Compared to liberals, leftists, including nominal Marxist-Leninists groups, have a much better understanding of the primary enemy, which allows them to arrive at principled (if inconsistent) anti-imperialist positions. But their understanding of the primary enemy is superficial and dogmatic, and they too seem uninterested in the inquiry (perhaps a vestige of their latent liberalism). They call out "capitalists" and the "bourgeoise" but hardly ever mention the CIA, MI6, Soros, Gates, or the WEF. This is why so many of the left (again, even the faux ML) have taken the wrong position on hugely important issues like the C19 response and mandates, the trucker and farmer movements, Russia, the "climate crisis," to name a few. Any why they get so easily distracted by woke identity politics.

MAGA and certain libertarians seem to have a solid, almost intuitive understanding of the primary enemy (notwithstanding their often irrational views on China and communism). For the most part, they see who's pulling the strings and are interested in the pursuit of the truth.

Of all the groups in the US, I've found that those in the LaRouche movement have some of the sharpest and most impressive understanding of the primary enemy--which I think is why they have some of the best, most concrete policy proposals, and why they currently seem to make such good allies with American Communists.

Sorry for the rant. I could be off-base with this and am happy to be shown my errors. I just wanted to say I really agree with your quote above and think it could be a useful tool for political education and analysis.

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Sep 23, 2022Liked by Hassan Ali

I appreciate your thoughts on this topic immensely! My concerns with MAGA communism are less that it’s appealing to the “wrong” working class demographic, and more that it’s still falling into the culture war trap that makes leftist “marxists” so unpalatable and dogmatic. There are many people within the working class that find MAGA aesthetics repulsive, and their reason for feeling that way is largely driven by liberal propaganda, but not entirely so. I also think a marxist movement that downplays the importance of women’s liberation is going to be destined for failure. Women are half the population, and our relegation to the sidelines by both the cultural right and left leaves both movements open to mk-ultra style violent capitalist propaganda in the form of porn and prostitution. Patriarchy in the form of male chauvinism is a very useful way to exploit vulnerabilities within movements— to derail them with abuse scandals, alienate the women who have historically served as the backbone for national liberation struggles and union drives, and leverage extreme porn addiction as blackmail. I believe that’s why CPI imploded, and we’ll keep having problems like that until we as marxists reckon with the extensive damage porn has don’t to our psyches and ability to reconcile our differences as men and women.

That said, I still see this as a positive development in the movement away from liberal leftism. It’s good we’re seeing more marxists wake up to the fact that our job isn’t to be “further left than the democrats” and accept that leftists are often on the wrong side of the culture war. I’m hoping if this does ultimately fail it will lead to a synthesis between left and right and allow us to bridge the divisions within the working class. When we break out of the neverending culture war dichotomy that serves as the primary function of neoliberal democracy (ie, to paralyze the political system so we spend all our time fighting and never get anything substantial done), that’s when marxists will be able to start making some serious in-roads

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I believe your hopes are right. Maybe the whole adaptation of this “maga” slogan can be discussed, but at this point, who cares. if it can be possible to bring people to the realisation that trump isn’t the only one out there who is aware of the “facts”. He simply just says what everyone thinks and then people who are sick of all the lying follows along. This could be a path, most people just want change, and right ow trump is being thrown in their face as some fake saviour. The anti-movement against this development are arrogant and short sighted. Anyone who really believes in and defends the values of communism, will see this as a chance to spread the message, anyone confident in communism being the correct path for humanity, will see this as a opportunity to spread the awareness to a huge new crowd. Only by showing them open arms can they see and understand our true intentions.

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deletedSep 22, 2022Liked by Hassan Ali
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