Comintern

Prison abolition is often discussed as if prisons are a moral mistake we can simply choose to stop creating. They aren’t. Law and punishment are shaped by how we organize production. You don’t eliminate a system just by disapproving of it.

@RowanGehman4PA @noahpasaran Artificial intelligence did not invent the em dash, rhetorical cascading, or the use of contrasts. Some folks actually write in a polished way because they had to spend their professional lives learning to do so!

@noahpasaran That ending is such a giveaway

You know if you’re going to post this kind of stupid drivel at least have the decency to write it yourself instead of using AI

@noahpasaran Could it be I just write very polished after way too much time in academia? Hey, if you can’t actually win an argument, just accuse them of using AI! The more polished their writing is, the more believable it is!

@HipsterRoberts It’s baffling to me that a DC DSA member can look at the JLG campaign and say, “We need less people putting work in and more paper members doing slacktivism from the comfort of their keyboards.”

@HipsterRoberts 1M1V and “member statements” did not move the needle for JLG. A lot of it was material conditions (housing, affordability, Trump, National Guard). Some of it was McDuffie being so weak. To the extent DSA helped her win, it was through actual work, not clicktivism

This is disgustingly untrue about 1m1v chapter metro dc DSA, where our 1m1v process greatly increases the ability of people to engage. Our Janeese endorsement ballot had member statements from 73 people. There is no world where we can do that in a meeting sorry!

@HipsterRoberts @glitchpoke 1M1V didn’t energize folks for JLG. The cost of living in DC, Trump, the National Guard did. The lesson of JLG was to embrace active participation (canvassing, phone banking), not depending on paper members to do clicktivism

@glitchpoke Actually my caucus’s politics just activated the most people in the chapter’s history to go organize on a single campaign. You are just not dealing with the world as it exists

@hecubian_devil The fact that the DSA right has to depend on paper members who don’t know what socialist principles are, while the DSA left focuses on actually active participation, illustrates who is good at persuasion and who prefers clicktivism

A strong sense I get from these internal DSA debates is that much of the DSA Left is fundamentally averse to *persuasion*. I think this is multiply motivated: they do not enjoy it; they are not very good at it; and their model of the radical is not someone who can *be* persuaded This is why you see majoritarian democracy generally viewed with suspicion, and specific exhortations against vote-whipping, one-on-one organizing conversations, canvassing, phonebanking, outreach lists, etc—the methods and tools of persuasion. I think they resent the DSA Right for being so interested in persuasive work because it forces them to compete—and they dislike what persuasion requires—and because they fundamentally distrust persuasion. It’s not sufficiently authentic; the correct revolutionary is self-created. They come to the works of the revered elders, discover the truth within, and arrive to the vanguard ready to take their place within the formation. They don’t need to be persuaded. Instead, having arrived and accepted their role in a more hierarchical formation, they are “educated”—a fundamentally different task from persuasion. A teacher does not *persuade* a student. A teacher has authority, and the student accepts their lessons. Education is hierarchical. Obedience is a feature of education. Persuasion is peer based; argument is a feature of persuasion. In a persuasive conversation, both parties may object to the other. In education, the pupil who objects is incorrect, and is penalized. That someone *needs to be persuaded* makes them untrustworthy to much of the DSA Left. Why does such a person, with their incorrect line (if they need to be persuaded, it must be incorrect!) have the audacity to object? Why do they not accept their correction and show proper deference to “the community”? What is this arrogance, that they demand to be convinced? This is not someone who models the correct norms. Politics is a settled question; the answers all already exist. It is your job to learn them, not contest them. You are to show deference to “the community” (and, of course, its self-appointed arbiters). You should study the approved texts. You should recite the approved lines. “Everyone already knows” what the truth is; you merely need to receive it obediently. Of course there is no place for persuasion in this moral model of society. Persuasion is, in fact, an affront. If you think you deserve to be convinced, then you’re arrogant, and if you *can* be convinced, you’re unreliable and fatuous. If you would *try to persuade others*, then you are slippery and devious, whereas the truthful educator simply announces the correct lesson and the pupils either obey or do not.

@BadTakeEnjoyer @UtilityCalc “the NPC is withdrawing our conditional endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, although she will remain endorsed by our New York City chapter” dsausa.org/statements/sta…

@thirdintl @UtilityCalc She never had an endorsement revoked

It's so obvious the intention is to distort the member poll by having DSA left chapters only hold in person votes for their polls which will distort the results so they can pretend excitement for AOC isn't as intense as it really is Blatant abstentionist maneuvering

Groundwork members purged 40+ comrades from the Atlanta DSA a few years ago, so I’m probably the only actual ML in the chapter, but sure, I live in a bubble

@BadTakeEnjoyer @UtilityCalc Yes, NYC-DSA kept their endorsement of her even after she failed to meet the conditions of her June 2024 endorsement. Nationally, most of us don’t want to throw Palestine under the bus, which is why she had the national endorsement revoked.

@thirdintl @UtilityCalc

@UtilityCalc I’m literally in a DSA chapter that is 99% Groundwork because they purged everyone else a few years ago lmao

@thirdintl you exist in a bubble

you don’t get to repost this 👍

The occupation and colonization of Palestinian land have continued for decades; an urgent break with Tel Aviv, with sanctions and an arms embargo, is needed. Britain backs the illegal occupation because it’s tied to a U.S.-led imperialist alliance. aljazeera.com/features/2026/…

@UtilityCalc Even Sunkara is skeptical of a AOC/DSA movement and is sober enough to see she is a boilerplate liberal capitalist Democrat, not a socialist.

@UtilityCalc You’re overstating the “excitement” for AOC by a lot. There was a mania about her when she first got elected but that honeymoon ended when she voted for the Iron Dome and to conflate antizionism with antisemitism

@AJentleson You just wish Searchlight had as much influence as DSA instead of being a dime-a-dozen establishment think tank that most people confuse for a film studio that acquires art house movies

That’s a lot of facemasks for July 2026

@WMATASoldier The Searchlight Institute is a joke. And the fact their criticisms are indistinguishable from the right shows why so many voters are sick with establishment Dems and their lackeys

Spotlight doesn’t care about unity lol what a pot shot

@linaposting call the ER vet, get an estimate, and ask about Scratchpay before you walk in.

I'd really like some input, she's been hiding in corners and barely eating anything

@linaposting Payment plans and credit. CareCredit and Scratchpay are the big two. Many emergency vets accept one or both, and Scratchpay does a soft credit check. Ask the clinic directly, too; some will split a bill in-house even if they don't advertise it.

does anyone have any advice on affording emergency vet visits? I don't have anything right now but my cat's sick

it’d be better if SMC/GW would get this angry and indignant when the police kill a Black person or the president of Venezuela gets kidnapped as they do when our organization refuses to coronate someone who carried water for Biden and denounced Palestinian protestors

@_qwertygrl @haydengise @noahpasaran A plebiscite doesn’t engage paper members, it uses them once as votes and returns them to dormancy. Real mass engagement converts contacts into participants.

@haydengise @noahpasaran i’m curious how this guy and everyone else melting down about “organizing doesn’t happen on your phone” think we actually mobilize people and then them into volunteers, organizers and members. i suppose the fine details of mass engagement are for rightists to figure out

the ceo of the ‘we should spend all of our time internally’ is reaping what he sowed