Maoism Without The Myths with Black Red Guard

0:00RoundOUR Welcome to Varm Block. Hello and welcome to Varm Block and today I'm here with BRG also known as Black Red Guard.

1:25Other forms of malism particularly the kind of dungest variety that is popular today. Alright, sure thanks for having me on camera at how you camera because you're also a DSM. So, alright so yeah and that's a very common thing that a very common mistake that a lot of comrades make. They think like oh you're a malist, you support Dong Xiaoping, you support Xi Jinping, you support modern day China. Well if you study malism, you realized that malism really was not a thing until after mal died. What people called malism during mal's lifetime, but the Black Panther Party would call malism what the early CPP, the Communist Party, the Philippines would call malism, that was what we call malism thought which is basically Marxism, Leninism applied to the concrete conditions of China. The rule, this application of Marxism, Leninism to the concrete conditions of China, there were several several key discoveries that were made because Marxism is a science.

2:25Like that's why I really don't go in much for left communism or other stuff because it really hasn't been tried. So people are always talking about oh the line is correct, I have the correct line. Okay, first of all an individual cannot be said to really have a line. A line is something that is developed through social practice, right? Scientific experiment, scientific experiment in social practice. That's how we determine what is right and what is wrong. So if your theory really hasn't been tested in the grand laboratory of social practice, it really can have you said carry on that much weight. It may be an interesting intellectual experiment, but it really can have you said to be correct or incorrect because it hasn't been tested. So Marxism, Leninism, I was in developed out of the laboratory not just of the Chinese revolution and the socialist construction process, but also through the experience of other revolutions. For example, the treasury of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism can be said to include the struggle that was waged by the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army in the United States. You have the new communist movement.

3:25That was where groups like the Revolutionary Union eventually become the Revolutionary Communist Party cut their teeth. You had a variety of different groups that existed in the 70s. They were all basically splinter groups of SDS and splinter groups of the splinter groups. So you had the weather underground. You had the October League. You had a variety of pro-Turran Unileek. Unileek, you had a variety of New African and Chicano formations that were influenced by Maoism and Unil thought. You had the original red guards around China. So you had not a China in California that were influenced by the red guards that were in China. So you had a lot of nationally oppressed groups that were influenced by the fact that hey, you don't have to adhere to old Staggi Soviet Marxist Leninist dogmatism. You could actually hear you have a thriving revolutionary experiment. You have the cultural revolution. You have the Vietnam, the struggle against the imperialist and Vietnam. You have a variety of experiences that are being waged by non-white people that are taking Marxism Leninism as their guide, as their blueprint.

4:28They are dogmatically adhering to everything that the Soviets said. If you read Mao, who is very explicit that no, the Soviets did not run us. Even going back to the common-turn era, he literally wrote an article stating that we do not intend to turn China over to Moscow. And he was pretty happy when the common-turn eventually fell apart because he was like, yeah, these people give us bad advice. They don't know what the fuck we're doing, what the fuck they're going. And it's up to Chinese people to make our own revolution. So going back to what exactly is Maoism. When people ask me, I give them a, like there's a variety of important things that the Chinese experiment taught us. But what I would say is probably the most important thing about Maoism is that it teaches that class struggle continues during the socialist construction process. If you neglect the class struggle during the socialist construction process, you end up basically either imploding, like the USSR, way down the Soviet Union. Or way down under a myriad of contradictions that went all the way back to Stalin.

5:30Or you end up, you end up with a new social imperialist capitalist order, like unfortunately existing in the modern day people's Republic of China. So to forestall that process, it's necessary to make cultural revolutionist. It's necessary to realize that by controlling the commanding heights of the state and the economy, it is very possible that a new bourgeoisie can arise from within. The Communist Party that made the revolution and it's very possible for them to be a, for there to be a reversion to capitalism. Because if you look at it, like both me and you, if say we make a revolution tomorrow, okay, both you and both myself and you came up in an old capitalist imperialist America. So we still have that, that garbage, you know, both of us are Marxists. We still have that garbage at our heads. So necessary for the new generation to which hasn't necessarily been contaminated by all that garbage to take charge. And it's up to us, for us old heads, to encourage them. So that's part of what, and like people think that the cultural revolution was just, oh yeah, smash the four olds, destroy everything from the old to side.

6:35No, that was, that was a major part of it. But the cultural revolution was never intended to be violent. The cultural revolution was never intended to be about like hanging the desiccated bodies of old empires, or anything like that. In many cases, a lot of that stuff was promoted by writers who sought to throw shade at the cultural revolution. So, yeah, probably the most important thing about Marxism and Leninism, I wasn't to realize is that class struggle is something that is going to continue even during even all the way up to communism. So, do you have a variety of other things that were developed that we uphold, the universality of protracting peoples war? I already mentioned the cultural revolution, the universality of contradiction, and a variety of other things that are necessary. For for being a thoroughly well rounded Marxist, Marxist, Leninist, now as we understand. So, one thing that immediately comes to mind when I think about Marxist Leninism, Maoism as opposed to Mao Zedong thought are.

7:36Socialism and Chinese characteristics, I guess, is what we refer to. We call it modern revisionism. Yeah, PRC today, which I would agree with you is pretty revigious. I do want to ask your opinion though on a specific development when I came up in the 90s and odds, every malice I met was either MLM or MIM that Marxist internationalist Maoist, if they're world list or they're Marxist linearist Maoist. So, sometime about 15 years ago, I woke up and everyone was dung at all of a sudden. How did that happen? Well, 15 years ago, I'm 31 now. So, 15 years ago, I was, let me see if I can math. I think I was 4 to get probably 14 years old. No, fair. But if you're an answer though, the internet, that's what happens when like you mentioned that like in the 90s and early 2000s when you were coming up,

8:37I mean, I was a kid back then. But like you were like the internet was a thing you mentioned MIM. They were actually one of the first communist organizations to actually like use the internet as a tool. So, back in the day, even going back to the 60s and 70s, you were actually expected to read this stuff. There were no memes. There were no like, there were no TikTok videos where people could just like spout whatever nonsense they wanted to spout. You actually had to know your shit. Stamping with organizing back in the day. Like you actually had to go to the meetings. There was no, oh, I'm an organizer because I'm going to because I'm going to discord server. No, you actually had to go to meetings. You actually had to meet people face to face. You actually had to say this. You actually had to say whatever stupid shit came to your mind in person. And if it was wrong or if it was stupid or if it was a friend, so if you got your ASP, that's how it was back then. So, why is it about why was it why do you have people who are dumb guides calling themselves Maoists? Why do you have people who are in modern revisionist calling themselves Maoists?

9:37Because Maoism is it's still like it still attracts people's attention. It's still it's still it's still popular. It's popular, especially in a third world in the Philippines and India in the various third world countries. It's extremely popular. And I think a lot of these younger comrades who got their political education not in a formalized setting, like say if you were in the Black Panther Party and like it's just a matter of like the amateurishness that pervades a movement today. Like if you were in the Black Panther Party and you were leadership, if you were an actual cadre, you expected to not only know the ideology that was represented in quotations from Chairman Mao, Kamalin, known as the Little Red Book, but you were expected to read something for Hampton, got up in the morning reading before he breathes his teeth before he had breakfast and then had already read two hours a day. That's what you expected to do is leadership in the in the Black Panther Party. You were not just a lot to run around calling yourself a cadre because you you passed muster in a discord group.

10:37There was none of that shit back then. You actually had to show your work as they used to say in school. So for Hampton, all the leadership of the Black Panther Party, you had to read you had to be up on the news. There was no such thing as oh, I don't know. I don't know how to catch the bus. I don't know why the police killed such a such. I don't know. I don't know who such a such person is. That's in the news. You were not allowed to do that. Codray means you are a cut above rank and file. You are a cut above the average person on the street. And with that comes responsibility. You have to educate yourself. You have to know what you're talking about because how are you going to teach other people if you don't know what you're talking about? So back to why everybody is done guy because a lot of people get there. They get their political education from unaccountable people. They don't get their political education through a formation like DSA. They get their political education of people who are not accountable to anybody. Certainly not to a movement. And many of these may have these big, I think part of the reason why I'm so popular. I hate calling myself this as a communist influence or whatever is because I actually read this shit.

11:40And you have a lot of people. They just run on vives. A communist can I live on vives alone? You actually have to study. You see the huge fucking stack of books behind me. Right on top is meaning to give a re-read to Sakai's Malzvi's revolutionary library in a dangerous class. So like I read a lot. I'm a chair for political education coach here. So part of that is a study, constant study. Because how am I going to educate my comrades or help to educate my comrades? How am I going to be able to facilitate if I don't study, if I don't read constantly. And like I myself like I see like my role as a leader in my local DSH app there is is to actually like a feel responsible. Because leadership that's what leadership is. Leadership means responsibility. It's not just, oh, your name is on such a such your coach, your such a no. Leadership means responsibility. Leadership means work, leadership means sitting in meetings when you would rather be gaming. Yeah, yeah, and a lot of people, a lot of people and I ready for that.

12:42A lot of people they have leadership positions that they're not, that they're not ready for, that they're not competent for. And that leads, that leads to people suffering and that leads to the spread of amateurishness and misinformation regarding theory. That's why you have people who are objectively done guides or modern revisionists calling themselves Maoists. Because they they have not studied Maoism, they don't know what Maoism is. So you have of course you have people that are that think that Maoism is whatever Mao did or whatever don't shopping that it would have a modern day China is doing because they don't know any better. I do think that that part about in person accountability is actually huge. Because you know, as I have often said, it to be somewhat blunt, a lot of people on the internet would be a lot more careful if whenever they said something really dumb or really offensive, I could just hit them. Which is a real possibility in person, which you know, I'm not encouraging small scale penny violence, but like there is something to that as a disciplinary factor.

13:43Yeah, this is what happens when you're when you're like when you're actually among the people, like a lot of these people that are talking shit on Twitter. Like I saw somebody say earlier like all Afro pessimists should be shot. I'm like, okay, this is not like I advise comrades. Like if you especially if you're in an organization, like things that you say reflect on your organization. So before you say like I could tell if somebody's organized or not, because like if you're saying stupid school shooter type shit like that, like what first of all do you even know what Afro pessimism is? And do you like ironically statements like that made by non black people it helps fuel Afro pessimism. And like it's just going back to vibes base like you cannot you cannot say shit like that to people you cannot say things like that about people like. Yeah, I get it like I get into shit post larpy bullshit sometimes like I mean I came up on the fucking internet.

14:44But at the same time you have to look at we have to look around at the situation in which we live. Like are we serious about actually toppling over throwing the shit and furthermore and most importantly, if you want to say this to your grandmother or to your coworker or to somebody that you're trying to organize. And like say you had like in the like in the Sims say you had like a little thought bubble or a little halo above your head. And they could read the shit that you wrote like what they believe this fuckers nuts. We don't want him. We don't want him or her them having power. Like you have to be conscientious of where we are as a movement. And if we want the communist movement to grow, we have to be really serious about the things that we say and things that we do. Because Americans in particular, we respond more to actions. You can say whatever the fuck you want. You can have whatever line of program. You want all day long. But if people affiliate and associate communism with edge lord shit or this motherfucker said all black people should be shot.

15:49Fuck you. Then that's a you can do you can do more damage with your mouth. They would do anything else. Yeah, I definitely agree with you. It does lead does lead me to this kind of deep irony though that we have, but you know, I am content creator afraid to hate my considering myself a political educator, but you know, whatever. And I engage on on X slash Twitter because that's where the conversation really is whether I like it or not. But I do wonder like is there a tension in using the internet this way? I think of, yeah, Miam. I think a Kassama project being some of the first groups actually use the internet. That's a blast from the past. I ever thought about Kassama like three years. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, they've been disbanded for like over a decade now, but whatever. I think they had a kind of horrifying realization about my age the other day when I was like my relationship to Kassama projects is Kassama projects relationship to the SDS, let's RCP.

16:54Like, but it was a it was fairly useful for political education. I would not say political organizing, but it was fairly useful for a political education. I do wonder today though if the incentive structures of like social media are are something that communist have to engage in very carefully. I try to myself for the reasons that you talk about I I represent an organization. I also represent ideology, whether I want to or not, because people know that I believe that you're right. I don't think I can have a line. I'm not, you know, a person can't be a line. Definitely can't be a mass line. But how do you think how do you feel that we should navigate this world where like, you know, certainly in all political groups, there's been a certain amount of edgel artism, but it happened off off the books. Today, we can't assume anything is off the books. So what kind of pressures do you think that puts on an organizer.

18:00Yeah. And like I have I have like this type of cross like I'm before I joined DS have was known as a communist content creator. But like now that I'm in DS say like I have several I have several positions that I hold local and national. I'm coach here if I'm coach here of national Afro talk. I'm on the steering committee for our national security commission. I'm on local red raven subcommittee leader and I'm our political education coach here. So I've got four roles that I'm responsible for. I've got people that are I've got people that I have to be accountable to. I've got people that that looked up to me like a lot of people have told me that I was I was influential in their decision to join the S.A. So it's that's a lot of pressure like I feel like okay. I can't say like the stupid shit that I used to say during the cracker control era. Well, I'm always in my cracker control era, but hey, but like part of being in a part of being leadership part of being an organization openly affiliated with the organization is responsibility. And I'm glad that I have comrades who are not afraid to call me in like hey Chris.

19:00You have like you that thing that you said that was that was misinformation. You shouldn't have shared that there was from a bad actor. You shouldn't have engaged with that person. So this is having comrades is necessary. You're not a comrade. I mean, you're not a communist. If you don't have comrades because if I did not have people in the international commission if I don't have people in Afro talk of that I'd have people in my local chapter. If I did not have comrades from across the country who I met a convention who I've worked with and who I've talked to and who feel comfortable calling me in. If I did not have that like a lot of people don't have that. And you can tell about a stupid shit that they say I'm like so like who taught these people who these people like what chapter you in and you're like oh, I'm not I don't have a chapter. I'm not in D.S.A. Like a lot of people even think don't even know that you can't be in D.S.A unless you pay dues or you have a dues waiver. So like it's it's it's like a double edged sword like being being thoroughly dialectical and realizing the universality of contradiction.

20:00The conditions under which we live in the United States and in the world at large have made communists are more popular among people in the United States and I would say ever before. So you have a lot of you have a lot of younger comrades who are who are basically full fledged like who are to the left of me. Which is good I'm happy. But at the same time like they have to join in education you have to join an organization. You're a little education cannot solely come from memes it cannot solely come from people like me and you want because like we have our own biases we have our own like we we have our own like we can be wrong on shit. And it also like it's sort of sort of continues to build up like this type of like great man type thing great person type thing. Like the same dynamic exists with the guards D.S.A. is elected. Like oh, he'll see can ever do anything wrong or X Y Z and like that's a manifestation of futile ideology not even bush wide ideology but futile ideology like okay.

21:03The king is going to take care of everything or the priest can never be wrong and like it. And like if we call ourselves adherence of the mass line if we call ourselves. Mauis or Marxist Lenin so whatever part of that is realizing that it's the masses who make history not me not you not Hassan not any streamer or influencer or politician not a LC not Bernie. It's the masses in their millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions and that's what I consistently try to try to convey to comrades. Like sure it's good that we have people that are capable of spreading socialist ideology and like helping to put all of these ideas together in people's heads. But at the same time do not just stop there get involved in your local chapter of an organization whether it be D.S.A. whether it be PSL whether it be whatever. Get off the fucking internet the internet is it's good for all three political education.

22:04But at the same time your real political education comes through the work that you do it comes through organizing it comes through having people even regular as people to bounce ideas off of. You need somebody to tell you hey man that's that that ain't it or like what are you talking about this is wrong this is not meshing square enough with reality. What I'm saying so you have to to to be a well rounded communist of any type you have to be in constant community with the people you have to be in community with your organization and you have to be in community with your community with your neighbors with your co workers with with with people in general you cannot be an anti social socialist. The internet I think has developed that tendency for people to have to think that all you have to do all you can do is sit online and do and scroll and share shit and contribute to fundraisers and that's organizing sit and discord servers all day complaining about your rivals in the organization or complain about what the capital is doing.

23:06The capital is so the enemy they are going to do enemy shit never fault the enemy for being the enemy they do not want you to thrive they do not want you to take their stuff. They do not want you to seize power they want you to suffer so if you know you're going up against people with whom you haven't antagonist to contradiction when you have an antagonist to contradiction that means that one aspect or the other of that contradiction must be destroyed. That's the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat the proletariat must eventually eat up the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie cannot thoroughly wipe out the proletariat even though I think that this AI and robotics should might might change the game plan a little bit but there's still going to be people to run that shit they are still going to need the proletariat without the proletariat the bourgeoisie cannot exist. So you have one class that is feeding off another class. And you know this you know that these people are your enemies you know that they live as your expense you know that landlords obey so you have to take some action against that otherwise you want to continue to suffer complaining on the internet is not a substitute for organizing.

24:14That's a really key point like I have I often listen to people complain about what capitalist during calling it on fair and I'm like well even Mark said that it was fair because we're under their system and by their rules they're playing by them but also did you expect your enemy to be nice. I think a lot of people do a lot of people do a lot of people they they personalize this stuff like they they haven't really thoroughly grasped Marxism because Marxism is at root it's a science that rewards those who actually investigated and study it Marx was in major part in economic and economist capital is an economics textbook like capitalist read copy top it is a perfect explanation of the world. So the question of how capitalism worked and Marx's day of course there've also been like there's been like developments on it because we're not in we're not in 1868 no more we're in the big 2026 I don't think Marx predicted AI and computerization and globalization anyways so going back to that yeah a lot of people have like they've done the reading but they failed to fully grasped they failed the fully grasped implications and further more they failed to do it.

25:32They failed to supplement it and go on to study linen and they fail to understand the nature of the state why do we have so much reformism in DSA why do we have people thinking that you can reform that we can elect ALC president and the contradictions will not tear this organization apart because even though they may have skimmed linen even though they may even call themselves lininess of some type or another they have failed to grasp linen thesis that you cannot just lay hold to the state and they're not going to be able to do it. So you can turn it towards your will. That's like saying that you can go live in a sand castle it's not going to work you're too big to live in a sand castle what if the tide comes and washes the sand castle away then you also have to realize that in many cases the bourgeoisie at least philosophically are nihilists that they will literally they will literally set the world on fire to stop us from taking power they are not going to let you take their system over and bend it towards social assistance and I think a lot of people are scared of the implications of the implications of the world.

26:32The implications of that realization of this truth so they bury their heads in the sand and they engage in other engage in delusion itself delusion and actually get mad at you because you do not engage with their delusion or you because you say that they're deluded. And this is a consequence of individualism is a consequence of too much time on the internet and it's also a consequence of postmodernism I would even say like oh if everybody is correct. If there is no objective right or an objective and objective wrong then how dare you say that there is how dare you say that this isn't going to work. And that's why so much of this discourse is poison people really don't have any overarching ideology they pick up from various ideologies what they think is useful. They don't have anybody to bounce it off of they don't have any teacher to check their work and as a result they make constant mistakes in both line and practice and some of these people are leadership and socialist organizations and that's bad.

27:36This brings me actually you know thinking about aOC leaves me naturally to the question of mom Donnie because he's the current darling and I am also I am as much as it matters because I don't live in New York. I can get vote for him a critical supporter of mom Donnie but but critical and I find it fascinating how when you do make these criticisms are when you point out problems that are not about mom Donnie's character there. Like he's going to hit Rawls with austerity almost inevitably there's going to be no way around that or there's no way the police are ever going to really be on a side no matter how much he could visualize to teach or you know whatever honestly I would go so far so say that NYC DSA. I kind of set my money up to fail because like okay. Like if you're an elected okay you did DSA or Zoran is probably more involved in DSA affairs then that an average DSA elected I mean the folks like the guy stacked at a forum.

28:47Like he literally stood in line with everybody else and stacked for for against aOC which I'm pretty sure he's now convinced is a mistake so. He's keyed but he also sees DSA especially like this is why I'm kind of a supporter of mugs line of capturing the legislative apparatus before you try to take over the executive because okay. Like if you put a DSA member say a DSA cadre which mom Donnie is not if you put a DSA member in a position in an in an executive position say I become mayor of St. Louis tomorrow yet. The board of all of them and well we have two DSA members on board of all of them in St. Louis one of the president of the board of all of them in a mech and green and the others Alicia Sonnier who I want to who I want to college with so good comrades but. If the rest of that board of all of them is is hostile to me and I'll say the state control police department yes St. Louis is basically a colony of the state of Missouri we do not even have control of our own police department here so.

29:49I'm in this sort of I'm it's my grandma say rap tied and tangled I've got the hospital police that is not even controlled by my city on over here I've got a hospital board of all of them over here I've got greater St. Louis over here basically like the people that. Gentrifiers and shit I've got the county over here riding my ass say a tornado comes through again now I've got that to deal with I've got all these people mad at me I've got a juggle all these interests and I have a friend I have no friends nowhere. So that's probably what my money is feeling and like he has and he has to like balance all these like he has to keep the governor happy he has to try to appease Trump in his way otherwise like people understand like how dependent NYC is on both the state and the feds they can literally they can literally what what Zerana think is afraid of is the city being plummeted back into a fucking into a fucking crisis like they had in the city. And I think that like you already have people are talking about capital flight and all types of other stuff before even took office so what thing that the bush was he is is long cited.

31:01And they like they plan for every fucking thing. So they figured okay we've got this guy who's calling himself a socialist he's about to take over New York. So we're going to do this this this we're going to threaten them with this this this making play ball. And I think that's something that's socialist and communist need to begin doing like we react to shit. We react to shit like okay this stuff happens now we have to go out there emergency protest every other day that type of thing. The bush was he doesn't have to react to should they make us react to shit so they have us bouncing from here to there to there to there to there to there to there to everybody putting on all these fires. And there's no time to really sit down and do a proper self criticism do a proper analysis do a proper summing up because here comes the next crisis that you have to respond to they want us like that. They did not want us to have a reprieve where we can actually sit and analyze and work out a broad strategy to topple them.

32:02It's like if you're at a it's like if you're in a war right you're not going to sit and let your enemy get their shit together. No you're going to keep if you have the capacity and you have the power and you know your enemy is weak like the American left is you're going to keep hitting and hitting and hitting and hitting and hitting and not letting them breathe until they eventually surrender or until they eventually all die. That's what the bush was he wants to do to us. Yeah, I think it's interesting that it's hard to get people to look at prior socialist mayor. So he ran into this problem. I think about mayor Lemumba and Jackson Mississippi who was only recently recently left office but worked with Operation Jackson and Malcolm X grassroots organization and also was not endorsed by but worked with the local DSA. And we had the same problems. Most municipal functions got stripped of of local oversight by by the Republican legislature.

33:09The city was basically deliberately left to go to pot. And to make it you know even more pronounced in Mississippi you're dealing with more explicit racialized politics and you are. And you're talking about the local GOP which might as well be the clan you're talking about people who actively are hoping to undo this the Civil War amendments you know what they're trying to do what they're trying to do with Zeran and all these other like socialist executives is what they're trying to do is because they they know what the people think is important to. Yeah, I'll look at the socialist whoop the fucking do you know what we're going to do we're going to fuck shit up on purpose that's what I think Tisha is trying to do with the Zeran like Tisha is literally trying to make Zeran look like and like he's like she's literally undermining this man publicly. Like she knows that Zeran is an anti Zionist right yet here she is marching at the Israel Day Parade.

34:11So like she's trying to be like okay you don't run this fucking city Z I do. And if Zeran is not careful and if he doesn't realize who his friends and who his enemies are he's going to end up being a one-term male like dinkins and Tisha is going to be sitting in his seat in four years. So again like that's why I laugh at all these like suppose a DSA electoral bald knowers because you really don't know shit y'all suddenly don't know how power works because like if you if you bust your ass to get somebody elected. And people are bragging about DSA being part of the governing coalition and yet if we don't have the juice to get our guy to fire and outright enemy of the people not just a Zionist but a whole as Zionist cadre from a position of power which you can use to spy on and hurt people. Then that makes us look real weak like who runs DSA the hundred and five thousand members or electives like electives are an important part of DSA but they cannot be part and parcel of DSA they cannot be the entire fucking they cannot be the entire fucking what DSA is in the minds of the masses because when these people be when these people make mistakes and they always make mistakes they always will make mistakes.

35:27When they make mistakes they're going to be blamed by people like me and you like if I'm in if I'm in my old neighborhood trying to get people to join DSA vote for DSA candidate they're going to be like if people watch news they'll be like oh yeah you're boring New York police still beat people upside the head. Is that's what's going to happen to say Lewis to like y'all full of shit I don't like people calling me full of shit that was a mean things to say. But if we don't want people saying mean things about us then we have to actually hold our elected accountable like NYC DSA literally let this man do whatever the fuck he wanted to for months. And now all of a sudden certain people in leadership because he did not endorse the fool NYC electoral slate now they criticize you didn't criticize him when he was doing homeless sweeps you didn't criticize him after they damn near killed a Bangladeshi kid. I don't know if he died and I put him in a hospital something like that but anyways bad shit happened you didn't criticize him after tishess cops literally smashed to do it to a fucking display of wine you didn't criticize him after he fucked working class Chinese and Filipino women who work literal fucking slave ships no more 24.

36:34You didn't criticize him like within our lifetime a Palestinian mass organization had a letter regarding tish all the way back in November if I recall correctly after he won the election holding him accountable during as leftist or supposed to do during as revolutionaries or supposed to do holding feet to the fire. I saw no I saw like why didn't NYC DSA sign that letter now you want to criticize him because he fucks over people that are because he fucks over some candidates candidates that I like that at the same time people are not dumb people can see hypocrisy and people are going to be like okay so y'all then y'all then we're y'all when talking about the shit months ago like we cannot afford to keep being being called be in the tag tale. I was going to ask you because structurally the DSA does have a NYC issue I'm in it I can speak to it too but that NYC the chapter is one of the least democratically accountable but also the largest by the next the next chapter down is is not even half of NYC DSA.

37:47A lot of people have paid for members out that's true at risk of giving away too much from organization or really I'm proud to be a part of I would say in my chapter and we're a medium-sized chapter we're over 500 maybe one fifth of the org even votes and I don't even talk about the votes they require you to come into the meetings I mean the votes just require you to respond to an email. And I've been talking about that like are we really all that meaningful if we're basically a donation organization that like you know anywhere between a half and a fifth of the organization is actually active in and knows what's going on. That's why I like I'm a big advocate of we have to do if people are not actively engaging with the organization and that's a problem because like the Black Panther Party like their members were always like you literally had to be active.

38:50You could not just be there was no such thing as a paper member of the Black Panther Party you're either a Panther or you were not a Panther. If if you were not seeing help it is sell the paper or staff the office there was a problem. And of course like DSA is a mass organization the Black Panther Party was was a was a cadre organization so it's a difference but at the same time yeah there's no reason why well there are many reasons reasons why half a chapter or third of the chapter is as an active it's because the chapter is not active. It's because the chapters not doing stuff that people care about. Especially the more electoral heavy chapters like a lot of people just think that DSA is something that you perform something that you do when I'm when every two years when it's time to vote. And so they know nothing about political education they know nothing about if you have like my chapter recently implemented a street organizing committee. That's where we have our red rabbit says we have our mutual aid subcommittee that's we have our neighborhood organizing subcommittee and I would dare say that that is probably the main reason why a lot of our new members have joined the CS throwing brick like clinics actually made a video of one of our brick like clinics back in December.

39:58With it in mind that hey people need to know what we're doing this now people need to know that we're doing this all the time. And so that's why like I highly encourage comrades and chapters in which large numbers of people are inactive either they've lapsed or they're just paper members like you have to you have to look at establishing a committee like streets mutual aid is what's bringing a lot of people in red rabbits. Excuse me I would dare say it's probably our most popular subcommittee now like everybody see us standing around on a fucking red band and so I thought what are you guys doing I call DSA security team like people like that's cool yeah so like especially a lot of younger comrades like they like that shit oh yeah they like that they like that DSA is actually taking a step seriously because the notion among especially among a lot of the hard left is that DSA is soft. And that we're all basically all we do is canvas for Bernie and Medicare for all and stuff like that and 10 years ago that was definitely true I know because I was a leftist 10 years ago and like yeah we didn't back them back in the mouse moving back that we didn't take DSA seriously we were never like the my wing of the mouse movement in say 2016 to 70 we were never like the fucking red guards.

41:14They were going around putting pig heads and people's meeting places are leaving dead rats on their front doors but like we didn't we didn't we didn't take the assay seriously we saw DSA is being a soft and weak and and a wing of the Democratic party but people being undiallectical they still think that DSA is like that they fail to account for the contradictions that rose out of many of those Bernie people that joined DSA because of Bernie becoming full fledged communists because of Bernie's betrayal of them and because of Democratic parties betrayal of Bernie's Sanders there is no better way to educate in American than to fuck them over and a lot of people were fucked over by Bernie and by the Democrats so a lot of these people like you know what I'm never voting for him I'm never voting for one of these people ever getting my fucking life and I definitely think that the if ALC chooses to run for president I definitely think that the struggle will sharpen and our 2027 convention which I hope to see you as a delegate will definitely be will definitely be very interesting. But that's that's part of partial of being in an organization with 105,000 members and yes this DSA have problems yes with what I'd be at any other or no like what's the what's the next largest organization after DSA in left in the United States.

42:28Either PSL the CPSA and even then a I don't really know what their numbers is and no one will tell me. In the hundreds is not one of them not one of the maybe CPSA I would say but like most of those people either old in the crepit or on the way to joining BSA. Yeah, so it's so in terms of active like CPUSA cadre I would probably say hundreds PSL who are the I have like DSA and PSL and STO were very well together we marched together with rallies and stuff like that like I consider many of them close comrades and friends. We have we have a different opinions on certain things they are they are MLs I'm MLM but at the same time like they're still up the left there's still communist and I have not like a theoretical left unity guy because it's never going to happen. But at the same time like our enemies are for all the types of purposes united against communist and we need to have some some sort of tactical unity but I yeah I would dare say that PSL's active coders are maybe in the high hundreds too.

43:30No other Oregon United States and Proves are numbers we have 100 to 5000 members that may not all be active but it's good knowing that if I go to Philly or if I go to Tampa or if I go to Orlando or if I go to San Antonio or Los Angeles or Tacoma or Seattle or Washington DC or anywhere else in this country Chicago I have I have comrades that hey I want to meet somebody that at least agrees that that is united around the same program as I am that I can drive. Do I'm doing local DSA drop-in social events up to let that go to one of their poly and I have people that I can bounce ideas off of that is extremely useful especially like you need comrades you have to have comrades you have to have people that hey if I'm in a fucking bind if I'm in a if I get into a situation when I'm out of town I know that somebody can hit up a group chat or hit up a discord server or put a bug in somebody say hey BRG's in trouble can you do XYZ yeah that that that that

44:30type of like that's that's what the old communist head like back in this back in the 30s and 20s if you are if you were out of town and you were a wobbly or you were CP were same member and you needed to place the crash for the night you could go down you can go out to the party office or you could go out to the I.W. Hall and get a room for the night like that that's the type of community that we need to build back again we can just be itemized from each other and bounce off of each other because you can build a movement like that. Yeah I think that's that's important we've been trying to establish offices here for that reason and I was trying to point out to somebody I was like yeah even with microkicks about the paper members if the ratios are similar to here that still means that we have 30,000 active members which is still an order of magnitude above anything. No better could touch us when it comes to membership numbers. The other thing is like when I first engage with DSA my impressions of it were similar to you when I when I was exploring socialist groups back in the bad days in the arts.

45:43I was a kid I was probably more focused on watching Samurai Jack if anybody remembers that Samurai Jack and fucking whatever else was on to Nami I was an adult swim kid I would watch all that weird shit. Maybe that's why I'm so fucked up now. We can talk about the media of the off that's a special health. That's why like that's why like people like I don't get like like I don't say offensive shit but like I don't really get offended by like oh you call me a racial slur when I'm supposed to do go school like I like I'm like I grew up with fucking Carl Smancia and fucking Andy Milo Nakis and Dave Chappelle in his pride. I grew up watching a deaf comedy jam that type of shit like some more all those types of my mom having watched this you never mind early Tyler Perry. He was actually still doing a place so I'm like bruh come the fuck off.

46:46Yeah so that's my world and I'm in my I'm in my in my 40s now so I I very much remember that as my young adulthood but to put the difference in like the social organization in this country and perspective though I was in Atlanta which major city lots of lots of working class people lots people color tons and people when I went up when I'm people of color we are black people. But yeah I hate to turn. That's comforting actually lots of lots of black people Asian people Latin people out in Atlanta and there was not a single socialist organization other than like an I. W. W. Basically historical read at Mcgroup because most of them because most of those people that you just mentioned most of those by pop people black and indigenous people of color. They knew that most of these organizations are white run and they just solely to parasitize the struggle in our community like most of these people most of most of our communities never see these people listen police kill somebody and they're trying to recruit us into one or another type of opportunism.

47:57That's why they were no yeah that's why there was no socialist move back then because I see these they correctly see most of these little small browning groups as as parasites like y'all only come into police kill somebody y'all need to come because you give a fuck about us y'all come because you want to recruit us and take money from us for do's and you all really serve our community. That's why that's why there was no that's why there was no movement at that arguably itself is a true poor white communities too. That's what it's like if you i'm pretty sure you've read quite me too. Also not a stoically car Michael every black organized i don't know what it is with white leftist and they're seeming inability inability to talk to their own working class. But like i look at it like this if you're all working class does it listen to you. If you can't organize the trailer projects and apple latch like why the fuck the all keep trying to move into black neighborhoods apple latch and need you you all are always talking about john brown. John brown was it fucking shit posting well i guess back then it would have been shit mimio graphing from Connecticut where he was trumping like he was actually moving around he was actually going where the enemy was at the enemy was in Kansas.

49:06There's a struggle in Kansas he was there he was martyred at heart first for every jr. trying to help liberate my people that's what a white ally does a white ally does not sit on the internet or come to our neighborhoods after the police kill one of us were already pissed off try to tell us what a revolution is we know what a revolution is. You keep in mind that we produce the Malcolm. Who is the white map who is the white counterprote to Malcolm X like y'all are going through some shit too not as much shit as we go as we're going through but as there's less goodies and shit to give to y'all y'all are going to start y'all are going to start being treated more and more like us in our Latino and indigenous brothers and sisters. So you all are always try to offer us organizing advice why have you not tried to organize advice in your own communities why they're not thriving dsa or psl whatever chapters in an apple at you anywhere outside of fucking ash field North Carolina. Like where are you in the fucking not like you all are always talking about Blair mountain have you visited Blair mountain there's still poor shit down there.

50:08Yeah, I mean I make a big deal out of this because I'm from making Georgia city that's 6% black 30% poor white 10% rich white and other. Yeah, and now there is finally a dsa working group there so that's good but like with all I'd be like I don't see any of you down here I don't see union movements down here. You know how I could tell you were a southerner though what's that because only a only southerners black people do this to only southerners used that first initial middle name last name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, name you have a name like a fucking governor. Yeah, I mean people like that reads high class and like just read southern we all we all use our middle names for some fucking or like or first to initials like EF or C JB.

51:11Yeah, both black and white like for first as much as black people and white people in South fucking hate each other are cultures are basically mirror images of each other. Oh yeah, like white people up north they basically talk about red next like you like they talk about black people like me. Yeah, it that that's just fascinating to me too because because not that I want to like portray like like the southern experiences some kind of like kumbai ashi because like I was barely white enough to be counted as white in certain circles and I'm pretty fucking pale. And they consider you white because I have non white ancestry that's immediately available and my family's intermarried into black families but but not as I said intermarried not descended from. So but yeah, I was always like I was like okay and it's weird because there's all this leftist culture very much has like an north east.

52:17And north eastern educated elite register even when it's not that. And you know I find it like hilarious like people can't to use a word that has been ruined by liberals but use you know when it was found a best you were all how to meet and code switch appropriately. And by code switch we do not mean I don't you know I'm never going to fucking adopt like black vernacular speech patterns as that's ridiculous like but but I do know that like there's certain shit that I would say to white academics that I'm not going to say to you know someone on the stoop of the street from me where grew up. See I don't call switch I talk the exact same way I talk the exact same way to everybody I refuse to go switch. I guess that makes sense. Yeah like well I'm not going to let anybody change the way I fucking talk. This is exactly how I this is exactly how I talk when I was presenting my senior thesis in college.

53:18I don't change my accent or anything or anybody. If I do I do it subconsciously but I like some people intentionally do that shit it is weird. Yeah it's interesting to think about your socialization my case I have a southern accent but it now only comes out unconsciously when I'm talking to people from about where you live south. Whereas I was pretty much educated to eradicate that as and now I see it is very class coded. And when I talk to yeah like nobody wants yeah then nobody wants to talk like a hillbilly or redneck no more and like when I like when I talk to southern comrades especially zoomers is really bad with them because they don't just have like teaching in schools to not talk like that. But they also have like the internet which is basically flattening everybody's accent into either Midwestern or like Cali because that's where a lot of these influencers are shit come from. And like back in the day like they used to teach in schools like everybody especially in journalism school they wanted everybody to talk like Walter Cronkite.

54:24Walter Cronkite was from Missouri so like everybody wanted to have like this flat Midwestern accent. And like and that was like it southerners in particular not black southerners we're going to hold on to that shit forever but like white southerners in particular especially if you go away to college like that shit is gradually going away. I know they're trying to beat it out of you although it's interesting because I can still it's not just out here southern accent I can be like I know where you're from you're from this county in Alabama. Yeah so it's still kind of so people tell me I have a southern accent do you think so. You have that accent of the borderlands between the Midwest and the South. Yeah no that's literally where I live. Yeah yeah people like like the thing is like people on it's like basically like unless you're like from like an old black family from like New York or somewhere or Philly that's been free a long time.

55:26Basically all of us are like at the very like three or four generations move from the South black people like my family was at the like ask end of the great migration my family like my maternal grandma didn't get to say who was until 1960. So like I basically like I basically one generation out of a cotton patch and in a beat of Mississippi. I grew up like I grew up around thousand people like I grew up not hearing people say Hank and doe and like my grad like I used to I used to call myself trying to cook my grandmother. Why are you later on my kid you like I ain't and like yeah so like yeah that's my inner monologue actually my inner monologue is an angry angry 70 something your old black lady from it a beat of Mississippi. Well it's the one thing about like trying to explain this to to Northern comrades about like the relationship between my black culture and even if you're relatively poor white you had like your babysitter was probably I knew most of us had like if you weren't if it wasn't the local teenager it was like a 70 year old black woman.

56:38I probably didn't even have a Social Security number because she's like from before they gave black people Social Security numbers and shit like that and so there's this like I have a lot of critiques of like spiky but there is this thing where like Southern. Southern my people have to some they have to make a decision about how they're going to feel about this explicitly like when I'm out here and and Utah in the mountain west and there's like you know I think are like 5% of our population's black or something. I just talked to you and up in Utah long story I got here from Egypt. Egypt Egypt Egypt Egypt Egypt yes. Oh this is fall. Yeah. What ex wife got cancer and ended up having to come back here she was from Wyoming I ended up stuck in in Salt Lake but I used to I used to teach in private schools abroad of I used to be like I'm a laptop of the of the Comfort or petite bourgeoisie basically and I'm always downstream of the state department unfortunately.

57:45So you were like so you're all so you were like Saudi all those places not so much Saudi I was in South Korea then the Mexico then Egypt and I was going to places that paid well because I had hazard pay so I would see it was I already consider myself a Socialist but it's where I became a diehard and prime peerless because like when you see that shit up close. You know you can't deny it anymore. You know we look at you see a little see a little kids going through the fucking trash looking for something. Like that's what like I like I'm certainly not a third worldest but like I worked at home with shelters in the United States and like I know comrades who come from the Philippines who come from India like not just like not upper class I mean like trash mountain vanilla like slums and Mumbai. Mexico Brazil like the fucking frovellis those neighborhoods that are literally run by gangs like and like that are literally like just sex stacked on top of mountains outside of Rio and like.

58:47Like the poverty and yes there are still poor people you know there are still desperately poor people in the United States but it's radically different than if you're in Brazil. And you literally have to go to the garbage or if you're fucking manila and you have to go to the garbage for something to eat whereas here like I've met people who are literally homeless who like if you're a manila if you're Brazil if you're real and you're in your homeless you don't have no car. You don't have no multiple changes of outfits you don't have you don't have food delivered to you every day you got the trash can you wear whatever whatever they fucking missionaries saw fit to give you and you don't go to school and you don't have no car you walk everywhere you can't even afford to take the fucking train. Matter of fact you can't take the train because the cops will drag you off of it if you look a certain way. So like it's it's amazing like the stark difference between the poverty in the imperial core and and what goes on in the global south because of us.

59:52Yeah this this is shit it gets to me when I hear people like America is becoming a third world country like no no shut the fuck up wine you're not as resilient as as the peasants and the proletariat. Americans Americans Americans are fucking soft like I see it like I see the shit that's a I see the shit people be talking about on Twitter and like it's like oh I was made to speak to the meeting and I'm so I'm having like right you don't know what anxiety is my mom was locked up when I was when I was in high school that was anxiety like that was the anxiety inducing trauma inducing shit and like I don't make light of peoples because like we're all we all have we all have different spectra. We all have a different baseline but like just seeing the types of shit that white people complain about it's just stuck. Like I was I was talking about I'm in a Mexican company and I want to be basically say the same fucking thing like yeah these people it even the socialist is like these people are ready for no fucking revolution man they can't even they can't even order a fucking pizza without having an anxiety attack like I'm like bro I'm coming from where if you put like he's like company or like dude I'm from the city.

1:01:02You know like dude I'm from where like if you pissed the wrong people off you go missing and they never find you again and like these people are here and they're winding about like we're medium shit they were mind about shit that we would be happy to have to go through back home but like my cousins disappeared all the like the horrible shit and like it's just like that's why like like I'm not like I said I'm not a third worldest I'm not an accelerationist but like these a lot of these people have to tough it up man a lot of these people have to tough it up. And they have to realize that this should ain't no fucking game like you are not just going to have revolution delivered to your doorstep like a fucking grub hub or like you're going to have to actually it's in a way it's show finest it is show finest like what makes you think that you should go through your college unscathed those kids who literally throw away six figure careers at Columbia to stand with Palestine. Fred Hampton was murdered when he was 21 years old 21 years old a lot of these people Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Marlotte King they didn't live to see 40 that's sacrifice what makes you think white person in the imperial court that you deserve to reap the fruits of other people's sacrifice that you deserve to

1:02:23experience socialism and communism without bleeding for it. How many people did the Chinese have to sacrifice how many people did the Russians have to sacrifice. How many people did the Angolans the Mozambicans the the Azanians is out the blacks out Africans how many people had to die so that my people will be free of slavery and we still are free of slavery. So what makes you think that you're so special is a white American that you don't have to shed blood like everybody else it's a it's a form of show but it's a form of exceptionalism. It's it's it's amazing to honestly when you when like I got in trouble once it was it was right before I joined the ASA I was working with a worker center. And we were talking about repressions of unions and I was like okay I'm going to be quite clear where they were in this room. Yes organizing now is a lot harder than it was in the middle of the 20th century you're not wrong. But a bunch of comrades that I knew in an Egypt during the sugar riots who were trying to organize labor during the sugar riots and if you like the sugar riots happened under I'll CC before he reinstated the emergency security order and it was because China of all places pressured I'll CC to float is to float the Egyptian currency which caused an immediate economic crisis.

1:03:47And I was in a media economic clash blah blah there's all kinds of disruptions and these labor organizers were just disappearing I do not know if they were if they are alive or dead today I'm pretty sure they're dead but I don't know that I don't know what happened to the deserts holds the deserts have them you know the deserts are vast. And and and and people are like oh well you must have felt safe and I was like no dude European students got a little cocky and started studying the wrong things when I was in Egypt and we found this Italian kid tortured to death with all of his all of his fingernails of shit pulled out and yeah and I'm like and if you if they'll do that to to a year to a European. Another one is a accidentally bomb the mex the mexican attaches party even killing a couple of americans because I got too close to what was going on in the white desert and i'm like if you if you think for a moment like that they won't do that to you when it comes like this you particularly sinus and you're like oh you know I have some Jewish ancestry but so I talk about this a lot because I can I can I can go a little harder than so many people.

1:05:08Because I people can't really call me an anti-Semite very easily me the can but it's a little bit harder. But I'm like dude when I was in Egypt and particularly in Egypt I taught a bunch of a bunch of kids who who were they were privileged kids they were they were upper upper middle class Middle Eastern kids who are still completely shell shock because they saw their Palestinian cousins shot in the head during the silent into fodder not even one of the the big one. And I thought several of those kids and I thought I would come into people who were missing limbs who were stuck in the Egyptian airport for fucking years. The energy years because they couldn't get back in because of that because of whatever was happening. So then so they're just stuck limited to fucking airport in Cairo. Yeah yeah absolutely and waiting for this this like one month period where they might be able to get back into Gaza and then also not being totally sure they want to go back because you know they do they want to be back with their families they want to be back with their comrades but like also are going home to get killed.

1:06:21And also you want to talk about American fucking shut up like I lived in total Mexico for two years at the end of the Zeta's in a lower cartel war. And the thing about the Zetas with people don't really know they were they're basically they basically Mexican feds that were armed and trained by the United States and they decided you know what let's be a cartel. Yep. They started out as they started out as hitmen for the cartels and then they started their own. Yeah they were they were people who were trained at Fort binning Georgia named after a Confederate general man at. Uh America's yeah and the school the Americas they went there to do anti-narcos stuff they then became your assassins for the narcos and then they just decided to be their own gang and they did shit that would horrify the other narcos like they would go through and kill every local male in a village in a ranch arrow just all of them because. And they did something and like the chapeau cart the son of a cartel they were more like the mob they did not they did horrible shit i'm not I don't want to defend like yeah but it was like it was like if you were in the game right like they like they were they didn't just go around fuck you with random people Zeta's did.

1:07:39Yeah exactly like you said they would they would do shit like they would do shit like what i'm like what the fuck an America's did a Vietnam with the Zionist doing in Palestine like they would just like you said they would go through like okay say such a search got something on credit and didn't pay. They kill your whole fucking family right down to little baby and then they would cut everybody's head off and put them on stakes on the side of the road that shit the green berets did a Vietnam that's what they learned that shit from. I try to tell people this is like well why do you feel this way about about the American military i'm like look i i will tell you i actually trust soldiers ever cops but. All that said. I just you know that one of the things that I still i mean like i have to learn to deal with which is seeing bodies hanging from bridges be headed at statements. And go like holy fuck no it's the real fucking world down there man and like the Americans are so sheltered like sure we see that shit if we watch narcos or like.

1:08:39And narcos sanitizes a lot of shit like I have comrades from down that are like actually from narco turf and they say like yeah we saw it and they cleaned up a lot of shit. And because it's for TV like if you actually watch Mexican documentaries like I speak Spanish like if you actually like the Mexicans they show it as it actually is. And so. Americans are just we're just so fucking sanitized like unless you come like i'm from like well i grew up half and half in north county say Lewis like around i grew up in Ferguson. And then like in the inner city but like this shit goes on in the third world that makes all that shit like yeah i saw like i've seen. See dead bodies before what if there was one dude mark booker was his name he had a limp he's going around cutting everybody's grass is a crack he had in a drum. So he cut your grass for a 12 pack of stag or whatever go up the store get him something to drink. Cut your grass happy dude and i come home fucking pigs i get off the school bus cops every fucking where. The body laying on a vacant lot covered in a blue tarp all the uh all the older people my grandma on them standing on the front porch

1:09:45I say what happened he said mark booker guy shot apparently he had fuck somebody over or something and they killed his ass but even then like imagine that happening. Every day day after day after day after day and like even even type of violence that i experience as a black person grow up in the imperial core. In in the hood like it's it's nothing compared to what these comrades in the third world experience and like just seeing people in dsa who are like. Oh you can't say by any means necessary it makes it makes people think that we're violent and unlike. A bra. The whole fucking the fact that you're able to stand up and say this shit is backed up by violence the fact that you can get up and get in your car and get on the bus without worrying about the fucking bus blowing up it's because America is prepared to do in northern amounts of violence to people. After 9-11 this country literally destabilized the whole man leased he stabilized hundreds of thousands of people dead in afghanistan who did nothing wrong who had never seen a son of a lot.

1:10:50Why as vengeance as revenge for fucking with the United States we destabilized and destroyed the whole fucking middle east because of that terrorist because of those attacks which were blowback because we had been fucking around where we shouldn't have been fucking around. And now after the demise of the Soviet Union now these people decided to turn on us because now America is the great Satan. America's always been the great Satan but back then they were fighting with this always as the decrepit Satan and now we're the big Satan. So the fact that you can say this stupid gondian bullshit is backed up by violence. Like people don't understand that like how easy if in places like Nigeria and Burundi and Rwanda, Uganda all these places like these are abstractions to the typical American white liberal mind. But talk to refugees from these places.

1:11:52Talk to these refugees if they open up to you like I used to work in a homeless shelter. I met Congolese. I met Burmese. I met all types of people who are homeless because they were refugees. So talking to these people interacting with these people that they most yeah they chop my their they chop my brother's head off for no reason. Like this is these are places where I'm not like being orientalist or anything but the rest of the world. This is real life for the majority of people in this world. This is real life. Life is shitty for the majority of the people in this world because of the United States. You ask I remember dealing with so many comrades from Guatemala and just realizing that like their village just doesn't exist anymore. And there's only like 10 people who remember it because everybody got killed in one of the who does the civil wars. And why was that happening probably for a fruit access for the United States?

1:12:52If you read if you read if you read if you read a psychiatrist literally says like the fact that you're able to get out of season fruit in the winter time. Somebody bled for that. Mangals oranges all this shit like you ain't supposed to be nation of wintertime bananas all the all year round oranges app of shit all year round. Look at the fucking look at where it's peck Chile. Government socialist government overthrown by the United States 1973 Guatemala overthrown 1954. All this shit Latin America. There's literally a book by Eduardo Haleano open veins of Latin America actually showed it to a dude who was uh he was home with he had a he had a mental break and uh he was uh Latin American. He's he's come up. You know he's come to me. He's come to me. He's come to me. El Comunista. El Comunista. Que estas leyendo. Oh, what are you reading today? I show them. I show them. Que sabes de la Eduardo Galeano. It's the mean square.

1:13:53I've read this in school. And he's like yeah like it's um like they they know what was done to their country. And it's it's infuriating to a lot of people. To a lot of comrades from the Global South that we just go moseying about our day to day lives. And people are dying back home. And a lot of people in this country do not seem to give a shit. I'd be pissed too. I'm already pissed because like black people like black people die every day in this country and the left doesn't seem to give a shit. They go arguing over the cow for your election or what what the celebrity said or who who who was endorsed by who was stupid shit. Shit that it's not ultimately does not have any bearing are changing this world. People are dying. People are dying. Little kids are dying. And there's nothing being done. That's why a lot of younger comrades and a lot of comrades from overseas and they're becoming nihilists. They're like you know these people are never going to make a revolution. They're hopeless. They're useless. And I honestly I it's like ideological steal in my spine that prevents me from being like that.

1:14:56But I see why a lot of people end up like that. Because just from talking to an average American liberal or even a sock them, these people do not even talk about anybody about themselves and they're all trifling air standard of living. Living. It's a Philistine mode of life as a guy I would say. Yeah, I have. I think one thing I will tell you you worked in homeless shelter. I worked I've worked in homeless shelter. I've been homeless. I also unfortunately the most rat the most radicalizing thing that that happened to me was before I graduated college I got shunted into how or a lot of barely not lumpenized white people go, which is in the correctional services. So if you don't end up in the prison, they try to get you to work for it. And I will tell you that that was the first step of really opening my goddamn eyes. Were you there's an inmate or is it guard? I was there as a guard. My brother wasn't inmate. So that was awkward.

1:15:57Yeah, I was fucking weird. I didn't make it very long. There's this whole town of Missouri where like everybody works for prisons like Bonter Patosi. Like a lot of those towns wouldn't even like a lot of those towns would be ghost towns. Like this is also why like a lot of rural people they are fundamentally against prison abolition. And like they're big supporters of the prison lobby. Like all these small towns in Missouri, mobily Bonter Patosi, Pacific, Vandalia. They have there would be nothing there. And like there's whole industries that that revolve around prisons. Like okay, you build a prison there. So that employers say 1500 to 2000 people. That's basically the whole fucking town. If you're not a guard, you're a nurse, you're a janitor, you're something everybody works with the goddamn prison. And then okay, here comes the other stuff. Okay, let's build a hotel because people are becoming a visitor families. Let's build McDonald's, Burger King, all these shit because people don't want something to eat. Okay, so you have all this money that's pouring into this town.

1:16:57And these people are never going to vote that shit away. If they be like, deathlight, I'll tell you, yeah, it's fucked up that they're locking people up. But look, my kid's got to eat. This is the only place to work. And I don't want to move away. My family lost our farm back in 1978. So there's really nothing going there. And yeah, it's just a downward spiral. And the ruling class being the ruling class was taking advantage of it. Yep. I mean, in my hotel making, and it was surrounded by Millageville, you either work for the school system, or a university, the prison, are you into the military? That was pretty much it. There had been industry in the area, although as you know, a lot of the southeast was never really properly industrialized anyway. All they have was, yeah, textile mills and textile mills and like low grade shit, like logging, like basically resources direction. If it wasn't, if it wasn't plantations, like in Florida, it was big. They'd go out there and they'd tap them pine trees.

1:17:57Yeah, sugar, orange, grow, shit like that. But yeah, the only, really the only industry in the south was in New Orleans around the ports. You had Charleston on New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, which is basically the like the steel center of the south. And like all that shit came after the Civil War. Because northern capital, they basically saw the south edge as its periphery. And so yeah, you had Northern and also in some cases, the Irish capital that was investing down there. Yep. And, and when I try to explain like, okay, well, why this, why is the South Sub-Reactionary and so racist? And I'm like, well, the racism should be fucking obvious. But the reactionaryness is because the economy has never really been completely modernized. It kind of has now, but it kind of skipped the industrial phase. And I do think that people need to understand this. And the other thing people need to understand, I try to talk a lot about the, about, I say the lump and eyes because I don't like the stigma of the lump and,

1:18:57but I think a lot of people are in and out of that position a lot more than it's realized it's not particularly. I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought that up. Like people don't realize that class is fluid. Like in the looped proletariat, it literally means broken proletariat. So basically it's, Marx would say it's the refuse of all classes, although I'm not a big fan of calling people refuse or trash. But it's basically people that have fallen out of all classes. It's very easy to be lumped in this country. For example, some people would argue that as that twitch streamers are lumped. I don't fucking know. But like, I guess, I guess you could say that like conflict creators are like, more than grinders, like, yeah. Like we're basically, yeah, like we're basically the modern day equivalent of boosters or people who would like come through. Like we would get paid to talk for living essentially. So the argument could be made. But anyways, like the looped proletariat is basically like it's people that have fallen out of classes. Like if you're say you're a proletarian, you work in a factory, you work in a factory for 16 years,

1:19:57say you're one of the, you're one of the auto workers up in Detroit. Okay, fucking thing falls stuck, fucking piece of equipment. Shears, you're right arm off. Okay, boom, you're looping. Because you obviously can't go back, you can't go back and work with the machines. The more you're fucking, you're disabled. And so now you're on, you're on so security. So technically you're looping now. And it's, that's very easy. Like people don't understand how easy it is to be disabled in this country. Like you're especially because our main modicum of transportation is hopping in cars, which are basically several thousand pound deaf machines. Like, okay, you look down at your phone at the wrong time. And if you don't die now, you are disabled, aka, a looping for life. So a lot of people are realizes, like do not take your health for granted. Do not take being able for granted. That's why disability justice is something that people need to pay more attention to, because even out of naked self interest, it is something that can easily happen to you.

1:20:57Yeah, that's actually huge. I've been looking at the statistics on the amount of blue collar workers who can't work anymore. It's one eighth and if you're black or Latin, it's like one sixth. Yeah, because we do the cause we do the dangerous shit. Right. Like you got Latino, yeah, like you got Latino comrades that they sweat our fucking rules in middle of July and August. Okay, you take a wrong fucking, you take a wrong fucking move. You fall off that fucking and break your back. You're the wheelchair for the rest of your life at the very best. Yeah, if you survive it and people don't, it's become more and more invisible. And the United States in a lot of ways, but I'm like, it's massive. It's a massive issue here. And you know, you and I both will sound the virtues of being in a DSA. And because if nothing else, you're in a mass socialist organization, whether you know, even if it's very, very imperfect. But I do cast as a DSA for being to. To metropole urban.

1:22:00Not care enough. Thankfully, we have a rural organizing committee now. But yeah, like, it is funny because like people, they have a very, they have a very bourgeois notion of how what rural areas are like. It's like people always talking, oh, we used to live in a fresh air. Let's return to greenness. That's a walkable urban areas. And I'm like, walk for what? Even if the air, even if the urban areas were walkable, you're lazy ass when I walk a bike, nowhere. Like, it's just like romanticizing. It's bourgeois romanticizing. Like, my family comes from a rural area just like yours says. These areas fucking suck. My family left because they got tired of picking cotton and moon shining for a living. And they also got tired of like, they also got tired of like being in a place where if you looked at a white person wrong, they would do horrible. Yeah, they would do horrible things to you. Like, I have never said my family who were lynched. It was not a happy experience. That's why we left rural areas. But white people whose experience in these areas was like maybe two centuries past, they're

1:23:00like, oh, I wish we could do that in like, bro, let's be real. You are thoroughly domesticated and came. You are not growing shit on no fucking far. It's like a mirror image of this whole cottage core bullshit. Yeah, that's it's frustrating to me. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. Like, I just listen to the, like, when I hear the elders in my family talk about growing up on the front, I just, I'm like, this is fucking ass. Like, you got to get back five in the morning. You got to deal with stink ass animals. You got to deal with stink ass white folks. You got to go out, okay, yeah, you're in the field. You might have a corn piece of corn bread for breakfast in cold ass milk. And okay, you go out bust of cotton out. You have to, like, you carry these big ass sacks around your neck and you got a thotish shit in there. And then the, my grandma still has cars. People understand, like, the balls that brown part of that cotton, that shit's sharp. Yeah, you got to know you, so you got to reach that and pluck that shit, you cutting yourself up. She has, she lost the tooth because she was like 12 because of pump kicker in the

1:24:00mouth, like those old school pumps that she's up to. You like that thing jumped up and knocked the fucking tooth out of the mouth. One time a cow chased her on the fucking porch because she had a red dress on. Another time a pecker would a white dude trying to rape her into cotton. She was fucking horrible down south. And that's what you want. It's, it's some mounts. It's, it's, it's, it's amazing to me that people don't want to deal with the real contradictions of like, I mean, this is one thing the DSA is both good and terrible at simultaneously because we have our jacket in factions that is like, well, if we all just got along and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's a reason the original jack up in the original jack up is what have a lot to say and I'm going to talk to you about that. A lot of people would get haircuts. Yeah. Well, when I'm mad, I call Jack, but magazine, Geroncian or Alinas, but that's a joke a lot of people don't get. I just call it, I just call it crack up. That's a joke a lot of people do get.

1:25:00Yeah, they get that one. I do find it very funny that you don't love. Even though they're, even though they like, they're even though like their main guys like, it's like Trinidadian, I think. He's like Indian Trinidadian, it's a basketball, some kind of. I think I cursed him out on Facebook once I can't remember. Yeah. Back in the back in the bad old left book days. It's amazing. Like I'm constantly running into people in DSA that I know from like left book years ago. Like Bascar, San Cara, a lot of these people that are like, that are that have gone on to like start like left magazine. Like I remember when Jack and was first fucking started out. Yeah, I mean, yeah. And yeah, and it's like like so like I used to run across these people at random Facebook groups before they were who they were. And it was just like, we were all just fucking fucking millennials arguing and shouting at each other. Now like here we are like 10 years later. And now we've all got I guess the leftist equivalent of jobs.

1:26:00I'm a DSA cadre. And Bascar, San Cara is a liberal, well, he was a liberal back then too. Yeah, it's funny how we got famous out because if you look at his first writing for DSA, he was complaining about anarcho liberalism. And he was dropping names in that article is from like 2007 that he would later work with. And so just like, you got to be careful if you don't deal with your own contradictions because you'll just embody them. But yeah, it's, it's wild of those left book days. And I mean, Amber Frost have called each other some pretty choice names. And I feel bad about it. Yeah, it's, it's a made it's, it's, it's, I'm pretty good at staying out of like, it's amazing. Like most of my hatred doesn't come from other leftist like, I guess ideas people are influencers. I keep hating calling myself that the other people call me.

1:27:00I don't know like I call myself a bad influence. I'm like, you need to find better influences. But anyways, like, I'm actually pretty good. Like other than the dude from Australia. Pretty good. Like most people seem to like me. But like most of my, most of the drama that I get comes from random people on Twitter who misinterpret things that I say. But yeah, I'm pretty good at staying out of, I'm pretty good. I do catch strays a lot for some reason. But yeah, it's funny watching people like, I'll give you an example of where you cost raise when you were trying to talk about Malice as the answer. Malice as the anarchist of the Marxist movement and how people got mad at you. And I'm like, no, but he's right though. In that, in that, Mal was literally an anarchist for like the, for the like, of course, he eventually developed a way from it. But like you can see the anarchism in Malice him though. Like you can see like the hatred of bureaucratism. You can see the like the play that I mean, we still believe in the state, of course. We still uphold the state is our proletarian weapon.

1:28:02But we have a radically shifted view of the role of the state in a more, there I say anarchist view of the masses as the main makers of history as opposed to Stalin era, Marxism, Linus, which relied more on the overarching state and on a sort of a stratum of people who would eventually end up becoming the Nomenclature Technicians who were highly paid. And this is what laid the foundations for the restoration of a bourgeois class in the Soviet Union. Like Stalin literally laid the foundations for that because he really didn't believe in the mass line all that much. He basically thought that if you had a grievance, you were a spy or a trotsky-eyed record and he had you shot. That was how Stalin dealt with contradictions and technistically. So in Malice, we would say that Stalin really did not, really did not determine the contradiction between, was that able to correctly ascertain the difference between antagonistic contradiction, a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy and a contradiction between the people.

1:29:04So that's what helped laid the foundations for the return of capitalism in the Soviet Union because it okayed after all Stalin did the safeguard the revolution. They eventually ended up telling them to go fuck himself anyway after he passed, of course, because they was all of them, Christian and Brezhner, but all those other ebbs and eitz were afraid of him while he was alive. So his biggest ass kissers ended up becoming the same people who disregarded his spat on his legacy. And ironically, ironically for the critiques that Mao had of Stalin, basically the same process happened. But now we know better. I do find it funny that people ignore, I mean, including some Maoist today that Mao had pretty developed critiques of Stalin and also. They hate each other. He also criticized the violence of the use of China, the purges he was like, you, I mean, one thing I always tell people about the cultural revolution is you guys think it was like the purges in the USSR, it was not.

1:30:04Like they did not actually execute all that many people. Yeah, Mao's very. Yeah, Mao is, yeah, they died as a result of what happens when you empower a bunch of middle and high school kids, but yeah, like if you tell a dude, like if you tell, if you told me a 15 year old, 15 years old, that I get to struggle against my principal, I probably would have beat him to death, dude, but anyways. Yeah, it takes a few years to make an omelet, but yeah, and this is what happens when like I, like I keep saying, you have to actually study. If you don't study, then you are going to, you're going to make those types of mistakes mistakes and you're going to, if you're in a position of leadership, you're going to be miseducating people, if you're not, you're just going to be wrong all the time. And nobody wants to be wrong all the time. I have to go in like five minutes by the way. No problem. We get in here. Well, where can people find your work, B.O.G.? You can find my work in STL DSA. Oh, my personal work. Well, I have a Twitch. It is OG Black Red Guard. My YouTube is Black Red Guard.

1:31:07Let me chip them. And I'm pretty sure most of you all are familiar with my Twitter if you're reading this. Well, watching this. And my Twitter is at OG Black Red Guard. Yeah, my YouTube is at Black Red Guard. But yeah, thanks for having me on, Var. Thank you so much. Have a good rest of your evening. You as well, Cumbery. Bye, bye, Cumbery. Do ch ch ch ch ch. Do ch ch ch ch ch. Thank you for listening to Var and Bog. For more, you can find us on YouTube at Farmblock or under my name, C. Derivon. We also have a Patreon under Farmblock where you can find additional shows, audio of everything on both this channel without ads and audio from all the solos on the YouTube channel.

1:32:11Music was provided by Bitter Lake with permission. Thank you. And I hope you enjoyed it. Music