Sean

My New Year's resolution was to be meaner, and to be nice to fewer undeserving people. Grace is to be earned, not given freely. The reactions to the events of the first few days of this year have given me great opportunity to put this resolution into practice.

their way* fuck. Typo ruined my beautiful post.

I'm gonna split the baby here (no real babies were harmed in the making of this tweet). J. and Bret are both right. We're at an inflection point where traditionally suppressed media must be forced into the open air. A mass movement will not be made in the halls of academia (sorry UAW) or on the forums of your DSA chapter. Only by presenting our ideas, and by explaining how they will help the average person, will we build stronger and bring more folks into the mass movement. That said, twitter is a fuckshit place and fuck twitter. Twitter spats and reactionary tweets by chapter leaders throwing their toys out the pram because a vote didn't go there way also isn't creating a mass movement. If you're a chapter leader, you have a duty to practice discipline. If you're a caucus leader (whoops, mea culpa) you have a duty to do the same. Rallying your small army of caucus affiliates or members *against your own org* is not disciplined. We have Fox News and CNN writing think pieces and hit pieces on DSA now. Earned media is indeed earned, and we're only going to get more of it. Get some damn media training and practice comms discipline. Know which fights to hold internally, and which messages to shout from the mountaintops. And if you don't know which is which, keep your mouth shut, because I guarantee you the folks that want to see us crumble under our own weight do.

I would say their level of surveillance at this point is lower than ours (once you consider the enmeshing of private and public, such as w/ Flock, Axon, etc.). Further, unlike in the US, Chinese officers aren't using their surveillance state to track ex-girlfriends to assault them or their new boyfriends, to track women who have abortions across state (or provincial) lines, aren't brutalizing black and brown drivers for false positives, etc. So do they have one? Yes. Have we surpassed them? Also yes. Proportionality and scope of use become the metrics when the whole world is doing it. It's a battle and we're losing it everywhere. London is the city with the highest # of cameras per SqKm. tho, not FYI, so bringing up China as the surveillance boogeyman shows where the bias is. As someone who's actively engaged in anti-Flock (and anti-data center/anti-fusion center) research, advocacy and comms, I'm deeply researched on this lol. I've been busy since we used to hang out in spaces.

@BCTSean @azmadu @CPGBML Sean, would you agree or disagree that China has a massive surveillance state?

@CPGBML Planned economy under strict guidance and cultural collectivisation have brought China to the position it is in. The Western individualism eschewed by neoliberalism cannot compete, and so they complain of unfair advantages. China never enslaved or colonised. 🧐

Australian Parliament sent an independent delegation to Xinjiang. All of the "Uighur genocide" claims came from a single source linked to Radio Free Asia (and other organizations funded through USAID. It's also curious how we stopped hearing about it since USAID got defunded. Investigate your own sources before making *this* claim.

@azmadu @BCTSean @CPGBML May want to look into the Uygher population of Xinjiang in China before making a claim like that.

Want to be part of both conversations? Join DSA. act.dsausa.org/donate/members…

I wholly understand the undercurrent of technopessimism, though. Some of the most *marketed* technologies tend to be harmful and superfluous. They're made to fill voids no one need to be filled until marketing told them they were "less than" for not having them. This absolutely discounts incredible advancements in biotechnology, computing, accessibility, pharma (which is a contentious area, to be sure), and more. It's not the technology making the world worse, it's the politics and the way some tech further atomizes society that sucks. Some folks just have difficulty sorting between the two.

It's so worrying and sad to me that this seems to be the pervasive belief, especially on the left

@cyclops_psyops Hey, wait...

does SMC/GW think that deliberation means the opposite of liberation?

New line just dropped.

It wasn't. It was calling you out for failing to investigate both sides of the issue when the discussion has been rehashed ad nauseum at this point. That's completely valid criticism. Here's what you might call a "real" response, though, since I have the time: "Democracy" is not in the act of merely casting the ballot. Democracy is a process, a series of actions, not a single action like casting the vote. For democracy to be present, the vote must be consensual, informed, and the enactment of whatever is voted on must reflect the will of those voting (which inherently requires consent and information). Yielding to the idea that democracy is simply "voting" explains much of the political disengagement this country has with the political processes, and that gets replicated into DSA as an organization through the US's cultural influence on the process. It also leads to the routine miscategorization of other forms of voting as undemocratic (because they aren't ours) or other forms of democracy as undemocratic (because the voting is federated or representative in ways that are different than ours). With that out of the way, 1M1V bypasses the deliberative process reduces the *process* requirement down to a single action; if it's no longer a process it's inherently no longer democratic (see above). DSA's strengths come from the deliberative and participatory part of democracy, not the "checking a box" part. Any assembly can check a box, that doesn't make it democratic. The reason DSA uses parliamentary processes, which can absolutely seem arcane and at times gatekeeping, is because the final product of deliberation usually becomes some form of consensus decision, agglomerated from multiple amendments and revisions, that actually reaches closer to the median view of the membership. 1M1V also redirects influence to internal formations with deeper whip lists. Something like 7% of DSA is in a caucus, so each caucus is a subdivision of that 7% attempting to influence the direction of the org on behalf of that 93%. No single internal formation has the right (not even mine) to claim a mandate in directing the org, so "our list is bigger" should not be the defining feature of our internal democratic processes. 1M1V also shifts influence to orgs that have been around for longer (as they've had more time to develop lists). An internal formation's age should not be their primary leverage, especially since the arrival of new tendencies is usually indicative of *disagreement* with the older formations, not agreement. This stifles the ability of new ideas and strategies to permeate throughout the org. This is toxic and shuts out principled responses to failing strategies. It would be uncomradely of me to suggest that the caucuses and their affiliates that advocate for 1M1V are doing so for reasons of obtaining internal influence rather than expanding the internal franchise (though some of their members have absolutely admitted to it), but regardless of intent, these are the effects, and the balance of these effects is that it makes the org worse. There are absolutely questions about *how* we can practice deliberative/participatory democracy, especially as our organization grows. We should absolutely be taking steps to lower barriers to attending meetings, we should increase accessibility, and we should embrace hybrid options more readily. Dilution of the participatory process, however, should not be (and is not, imo) the answer. Instead of asking the lazy shortcut question of "how can we get more people to vote" which weakens the strength of an informed assembly, we should instead be asking "how can we get more people to participate so they *can* vote in our more robust deliberative democracy".

@OGBlackRedGuard This is a non-response.

no investigation, speak anyway

I'm extremely critical of using the Democrat Party ballot line and always have been. Calling it "supporting the party" rather than "using the party" is an uncritical framing though. Third party agitation runs have been largely unsuccessful even in agitation; they barely move the needle. Again, one must examine the actual terrain we're working within. Whether I agree with the strategy or not, DSA's electoral wins (many on the Dem ballot line) has shifted the national conversation and raised workers' consciousness against decades of McCarthyist counterprogramming. That's unequivocally a good thing if you're trying to build a mass movement. We have to meet the people where they are, and not impose doctrine on them from above. The issue with electoralism under capitalism is that it is a strictly permissive system, and we are rapidly approaching the line in the sand that where we will be denied that permission. Some of us recognize this, and some of us don't. *That* is the moment we need to start planning for.

@BCTSean @Reik3r @PresGeorgie @FlerperDerp To support the democratic party?

A tale in two tweets. > Liberal joins DSA. > Gets way pissed at a procedural decision. > Call for mass expulsions of the "left" (which includes many independents!). > Quit All in a couple hour span, jfc. If anything's gonna get you accused of wrecking, it's shit like this.

Marx in the Manifesto argued for non-reformist reforms/demands. Speaking of his time writing the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier later in his life (1880), Marx said, “this very brief document in its economic section consists solely of demands that actually have spontaneously arisen out of the labour movement itself.” He recognized the Programme as a "practical means of agitation" that were achievable, though it was not to be final. Many of us do not believe that reforming a hostile system is possible (or in Marx's words as you pointed out, "lay[ing] hold of the ready-made state machinery [for the workers'] own purposes"), but there can be transformational reforms to the system that grant time for education and agitation, such as the ones he demanded in the Manifesto. Transformational reforms that stymie the oppressive forces the state and capital impose on organizing a movement (see: decarceral programs, agitation against ICE and Flock, building tenants' and workers' unions back up, etc.) make room for further transformational development. Marx himself did not have to deal with nearly 100 years of anti-communist indoctrination through a matured system of state education and media. The crises of capital in Marx's era, and the pitting of the global north against the global south had not yet been realized to the extent they are now. Even in Lenin's era, though he predicted it and was by and large correct regarding his assessments of imperialism's relationship to capitalism, was still a product of his own times. There are indeed idealists within DSA who hope that we can just vote our way into socialism, and having read probably too much Poulantzas, I can see why such an idea is appealing. A "bloodless revolution" is indeed most desirable. The fact DSA, at a mere 120k members in a country of over 350 million, dwarfs other revolutionary organizations is indicative in its own way where the class consciousness of the country is at present. Those of us on the DSA "left", as it's often referred, have a duty to simultaneously acknowledge the national-historic moment the US exists within here in 2026 while doing what we can to advance the organization's line toward becoming a truly socialist organization. Raising the class consciousness of those at home and integrating them into the largest mass organization this country has yet seen is an important step toward that goal.

@Reik3r @PresGeorgie @FlerperDerp @BCTSean I got a few specifically about why the DSA is a social democrat organization, heres one fn Karl Marx: "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes." Please read Civil War in France by Marx marxists.org/archive/marx/w…

This is a great thread, and I would add that as much as people joke about "woke 1" I think frantic discourse full of thought terminating cliches and bad faith, where the angriest person wins, were the actual worst part of woke 1 and should be consigned to the dustbin of history

@saoirsefashion @uhshanti I'm not going to weigh in too heavily because I disagree with R33, but what's democratically passed is passed, and I respect the org for doing so. We've got to engage with what's on our plates now.

@BCTSean @uhshanti I think it was a serious error to pass up the opportunity presented by Reform and Revolution for an org-wide compromise on a membership poll, and I hope the NPC majority reconsiders this decision just like the 2021-23 NPC reconsidered their "settled" decision to decharter BDSWG.

I trust it's sincere too, but the turn-it-to-11 reaction over fairly normal parliamentary procedure, and the NYC-uber-alles mentality of (some of the folks in) the chapter has been absolutely criminal. Now is a time for unity in the face of increasing state scrutiny, and we have Fox News and NYT penning articles about org dysfunction because leaders(!!) threw their toys out the pram when they didn't get their way. It's just all so disappointing.

@barbarismcrit Folks shopping at Erewhon wondering why their water costs $14.

In my head canon these people throw every spice they buy for a recipe away after cooking the meal

@Bandit161_ I'm not even a co-chair and this is my life!

Me before becoming a DSA co-chair

Even the DSA's "right" (a term I hate) at least have a theory of change based in dialectical materialism. They may not always apply it... but Democratic Socialism is fundamentally rooted in Marxist theory. Some of the most well-verse Marxists I know are aligned with DSA's right caucuses. This DSA is no longer the Harringtonite DSA.

@BCTSean She's right though. What are supposed Marxists doing in DSA.

@punished_pebble What Winter did was foolish, but lets not call ppl trash for being Libs. This was reactive moment, and one that should serve as a lesson for what not investigating an org does to someone, but let's not call them trash lol.

@BCTSean Hopefully the trash keeps taking itself out

@HankeyLeone @kakazodia We make Constructive Criticism a training in DSA (hell, Liberation *requires* it to join!), but it's all opt-in outside of caucuses that require it. Perhaps being in a leadership position should require it too?

@kakazodia @BCTSean I'm sure there are infiltrators/ provocateurs but they really aren't needed since the most committed members and leaders do it for them! We need deep study and training about how to debate and decide in a productive way and there need to be some consequences for bad behavior.

@jwsherrod @MaxBlumenthal If facts are anti-US propaganda, what does that say about the US?

@MaxBlumenthal You went to an enemy country and did anti-U.S. propaganda there. You’re not anti-war. You’re just anti-Israel and anti-American.

As punishment for my factual journalism, I was subjected to political harassment by the Trump administration upon my return from Iran. This Israeli-influenced criminal cartel is clearly threatened by my reporting from Tehran, where I showed the massive crowds of mourners and ferocious public backlash to the assassination of [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, exposed US and Israeli war crimes against civilians from the ground, and conducted candid interviews with officials, negotiators and influential Iranians. The seizure of my devices was a clear act of intimidation aimed at deterring me and others from doing further critical reporting from Iran, which is likely why my interrogators from CPB demanded to know if I would be returning to Tehran to report any time soon.