I am going to lose my mind. I’m living through fascism and I’m watching everybody just live. And I do that, too. I put it out of my mind sometimes. But when is the time when people get serious about this stuff? When is it that people really think hard, really try to figure out a way past this nightmare of oppression?
After a long session screaming about the left (which you all deserved, I do not apologize), an idea popped into my head to look at the websites that represent some major tendencies on the left and see how they were handling this moment. Because if my issue here is that the left is effectively ignoring fascism, basically hoping that someone else is going to save them, then I should try and substantiate that. This is just a blog post, not a research project, so I’m going to basically take a look at their websites, check out a few articles, and give you my general impression.
Did I miss your website? Tell me about it! I’m not gonna update this list, but I am still starving for outlets which might actually give half a shit about the collapse of this government into outright tyranny.
Jacobin
If you took a look at this front page, these lead articles, you would almost believe that Biden is still in office (CROWD: laughs). But seriously folks, this is October, 10 months into the fascist regime, and you’d easily be able to forget that fact looking down all these beats. Now, obviously, Jacobin is at the mercy of the current events cycle. You could give them a pass for things floating out of their current range of topics. But we’ve got things like “Democrats Are Already ‘Moderate’. It’s Not Working.” Is that the kind of article we need right now? The Democrats have, by and large, proven to be our enemies. Even AOC only sticks her head out when it’s going to get her a bit of shine. Even Pritzker allows his cops to collaborate with ICE, allows his hospitals to choose to deny people care. But we’re still primarily critiquing genocide?
The Gaza article, “Gaza and the Economy of Genocide”, is a fine article, as I’m sure its Sumud Flotilla article “The Sumud Flotilla Has Succeeded In Making Israel a Pariah” is fine as well. But is that what we need? Any of us? While the article on Gaza does break down facts about the current situation, it doesn’t give us any new critical insights: it doesn’t help us find out what to do more than we likely have before. Again, that’s not a heavy knock on this article, but the critique I am leveling is at Jacobin as a whole.
In a time such as this, I think attempting to operate “business as usual” shows self-blinded cowardice. Those who run Jacobin know the state that this country and the world is in, and they know that they, having taken on the branding of left revolutionaries (as in their publication’s name, not their personal affect), are expected to show some fire in exchange. We can’t even get a Drudge-style “FASCISM ON THE MARCH” in big bold and underlined Arial, blazing on every page? Instead, you’re going to try and bury any idea of agitation. You’ll “report” on fascism, sure, but you won’t use the magazine to do anything about it.
The left-wing has been cowed and shamed into avoiding the use of agitating opinion pieces. This is probably the greatest weakness that left-wing publishing has to bear. As the Democrats are finding out, being mealy-mouthed about your ideas is not a path to saving yourself. If the publishers of Jacobin believe that they’ll save themselves by not really ringing the bell, you will at best just buy yourself a few more months, a few more years. You are already on the list. Believe me.
If this is the standard-bearer for the American left-wing, I have to conclude already that the whole project is toast. We can’t even get our left-wing magazine, named after the people who killed the king of France, to be forthright about organizing, about agitation, about truly opposing the government. Capitalism will sell your resistance back to you, or however it goes. I’d be embarrassed to subscribe to this paper in 2025.
Democratic Socialists of America
DSA, DSA. Look, I’m glad their brand is stronger than it ever has been but… I find it a bit rich whenever the DSA claims politicians. I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s a place to find people to work on campaigns and stuff like that, but I don’t believe either Zohran Mamdani or Rashida Tlaib (in the image above) would not be where they are without the DSA. I just don’t buy it. And why is that? Because while the DSA puts these guys front and center when they want people to join, these guys never lead with their DSA membership. It’s almost as if being a member of the DSA still doesn’t actually mean anything.
This section is going to take a sharp turn thanks to an article I read for this from The Nation, “How DSA Built Mamdani’s Election Campaign” by Hadas Thier. As the first paragraph probably tells you, I am highly skeptical of the DSA and its effectiveness. I have heard for many years about DSA, I have known people in DSA, but I don’t see what DSA wants. As an example of what I mean, look at the different major DSA figures right now: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Zohran Mamdani, Jasmine Crockett, there’s a few others. Is there any real cohesion between them? Is there a sense that they’re all pushing for something? To me, they read as Democrats; not only that, Democrats who are consistently coerced into kowtowing to the traditional set.
I want to say that they are organizationally ineffective because obviously a complete critique makes them easier to dismiss. But, as the article shows, they are not without dynamism and efficiency. They can get things done. I do not think their website shows this fact about them at all, but this is the kind of thing I am more interested in hearing about. I don’t care about bland descriptions of the national convention, but that’s what they lead with.
My overall concern with the DSA is that they aren’t prepared for fascism. And while I have given them some grudging praise here on their operations, the major thing I’m investigating with this survey is how these groups are responding to fascism. Like Jacobin, DSA’s website doesn’t give any indication that anything is wrong. If there is any level of agitation within the organization, any desire to raise the alarm, it’s not on one of their largest platforms.
World Socialist Web Site
This is the kind of shit I wanted to see. This is what I was hoping to see. When I got to this site, I clicked that first article: “Trump’s fascist conspiracy and how to fight it: A socialist strategy”. I read it. Perfectly fine socialist extrapolation of the current situation, nothing fancy, but also a specific plan outside of “let’s win elections”. Was it the best plan I’ve ever seen? Well, it’s not much different than a usual soviet strategy: workplace committees, federation, etc. What stuck out to me is that after everyone else that I’ve read, both now and in times past, this was someone willing to say “here is what we need to implement”. Even at the level of a rehash, it’s something I don’t see people sharing in Jacobin, it’s not something I see promoted by your Zohrans or your Tlaibs.
I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that if they hadn’t asked me for my phone number, they would probably have my email. I’m not ashamed because “they got me”. They wouldn’t be the first people who I started getting messages from and then lost interest in (supposing that happened). I’m a little ashamed because the group turns out to be a kind of political cult, a group which I would not want to be associated with for interpersonal reasons. I would have eventually discovered this about them in any case, but I am glad that they don’t have my information; just another hassle avoided.
I don’t agree that the answers are all out there already, but I think we need something more than just “we want nice things for people, vote for us”. I was hopeful to find people who were at least willing to emblazon the problem on their website. But when someone tells you the message you want to hear, you’ve got to be careful about diving too deep too fast.
An excessively sober mind would say that this is a sign that you should only trust people who are willing to be cagey about the things they think. But is that what people want? Because when I talk to people, online or off, everyone is begging for people to call it fascism. So is that desire from everyone wrong, or should someone with credibility find the bravery to call this government what it is, and act as if these are not normal times?
Party for Socialism and Liberation
At first glance, this group appears to be in the middle of the DSA and the Socialist Equality Party (behind the WSWS): it gives us a clear problem that we should be concerned about – capitalism – as well as even mentioning the ICE threat in small letters at the top. We can put capitalism and ICE together and get fascism. In any case, that’s pretty much what needs to be dealt with, right?
Well, really, the PSL’s site is much more like the DSA’s site than the WSWS. Where WSWS dared to put actual agitprop on their website, the PSL takes on the agitation aesthetic but is not doing anything more than the DSA’s join banner. We do get a clearer idea of what motivates the PSL’s ideology than the DSA one, but if you know about the DSA’s mission, the ground that separates them is much smaller. Now, like the SEP, I have heard unsavory stories (let’s put it that way) about PSL; though, to be fair, it’s not like the DSA or the national Democrats are clean, either. I just want to say this so people don’t think I’ve missed it.
None of the articles on the front page grabbed me, as none seemed of the kind of agitprop that I’m looking for. No clear mention of fascism, etc. I’m going to forgo that to talk about two operations which I’ve seen from the PSL and which deserve to be noted. The first is their counter Summit of the Americas which I have made fun of before. The second is the early protests against ICE.
Really, I should have done the Summit thing last, but I wanted to end on a higher note. I respect and support internationalism. The idea of having an international conference is not something I have any problem with. But the reason I said that it would be best to end with this point is that this particular Summit is a perfect example of my issue with the American left. Was anything of note achieved at this Summit? It was convened to oppose the Summit of the Americas convened by Joe Biden. Great. How many foreign leaders attended? What major foreign partnerships were started? There might be some. I’m willing to look foolish. But I can’t remember anything ever being announced.
The PSL decided to have a big meeting which felt international and set it opposite to Biden’s Summit of the Americas as a protest. Okay, great. Who covered it? Did it derail the Summit of the Americas? Was it mentioned? From what I can recall, the major coup of the PSL People’s Summit was a letter of thanks from a South American head of state (I can’t remember who it was and am not finding it quickly). An international summit is all well and good, but why pitch it as a kind of counter Summit to the one done by Biden? Why not just hold a protest?
It seems to me that, at times, PSL does things just to do them. They’re trying things, and that’s commendable, but I feel like it should have been pretty obvious that this would not achieve much relative to the level of attention received. I think it made PSL, and the international socialist movement in general, seem small and insignificant. Now, I am aware there are other considerations here, and there may be elements of this that I need to be educated on. But when I read about this summit, I see what is at best a waste of resources that apparently couldn’t even draw in fellow parties from these pan-American countries. I don’t understand what was gained and it put a bad taste in my mouth regarding PSL for some time.
But then we have to remember that the PSL was so effective in its early opposition of the Trumpist enforcement campaign that it was directly targeted for suppression. I have to assume that suppression was decently successful because reports of PSL being front-and-center on resistance actions have dropped a lot. But like with the DSA, though I have serious misgivings about their long-term strategy, there is a degree of operational effectiveness that is impossible to ignore. Not only that, the PSL has shown a courage to organize confrontations when warranted which I have not seen out of the DSA. They are still around so they must have weathered the storm to some degree, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they remain a viable organization, but obviously having the DoJ’s eyes on you is not going to make their lives easy.
Regardless, though I have a healthy respect for the PSL’s effort, I still don’t believe that they have enough direction for the current moment. I believe that there needs to be more confrontation. People need to be willing to stand up and delay acts, to use tactics which may seem unsavory such as gerrymandering, to do the things necessary in order to combat fascism. The DSA still appears to hope that the polls will remain open and that all they’ll have to do is win the election. I don’t know the future but I strongly fear that it won’t be that easy.
The Intercept
The Intercept is one that I include just kind of for the sake of balance. My feelings on The Intercept are mixed. Originally, it seemed as though it would be the savior of American news, when I still believed in any kind of messianism. Now it’s just… another news outlet. Generally better than others, but as you can see, its content isn’t wildly different from Jacobin’s. We have mentions of this. We are noticing fascism. Are we using our audience to help do anything about that? Well.
And look, I get that some people just want to sell newspapers (or just subscriptions, I guess). But everyone can’t be doing that. Not now. Not at a time like this. An outlet like Jacobin or like The Intercept would be most useful as a place to really gather sentiment against the government, to organize that anger, and I just don’t feel like they’re doing that.
Conclusion
These are the most prominent left outlets that came to mind: three parties, three news sites (one of them was both, SEP/WSWS). Only one, the most culty, was run as an agitprop organization. But like I said above: while you might act as though this is evidence against agitprop, the agitation and the cultishness are separate. This is only evidence that political agitation is a motivating force. At a certain point, we do need motivation.
The fact that these groups are by-and-large still unwilling to talk about fascism as an active danger among us is the most obvious reason why I am mistrustful of the more mainstream groups. The feeling that they are not interested in a full revolution (as in, a reordering of society) and instead are primarily interested in reformism is a feeling that I have difficulty getting over.
I am not against reform. However, many groups decide that what they will do is aim for reforms, that all that is needed is reform, and this I disagree with. This is, I’m afraid, the ultimate conclusion of the DSA; that’s what democratic socialism is, isn’t it? Because here is the issue: they know what you’re doing. Winning without a revolution means that the controllers of value have not truly changed. The idea that you can keep reforming and eventually end up with everything you want is a fallacy. There will be some kind of confrontation. I am not certain that anyone is committed to winning that confrontation when it comes down to it. I see the DSA folding and I see PSL being shut out with no recourse.
Does this mean I will never join any of these groups? Provided that my writings don’t disqualify me, no. I’ve never put it completely off the table. As I’ve talked about, these groups have their merits. This is a particularly dangerous time but it is something I will be thinking about. But the concern I have about fascism has always been strong enough that I haven’t wanted to put myself on a members’ list unless I really believed in the group, and no one has gotten me to really believe.
Kwame Ture said join an organization, you have to join an organization. But if every group was the No Getting Mad Black Respectability Club, is that an organization you’re eager to join? I’m in a culture here where recriminations between these socialist groups (DSA, PSL, and the various communist sections) are heavy enough that joining any of these groups seems like a serious stink. If you join PSL, you are condoning sexual assault (an accusation that’s been made by others), you are part of a group which always condones that. If you join DSA, you are part of the bureaucratic trust funds with under-the-radar sex pests (another accusation made). The communist parties are all cults. What’s the right group where I can be sure we’re fighting for socialism and not some egotist’s violations?
In that kind of situation, why wouldn’t a person wait and see if they could make something new? That’s what I thought might be possible. But sometime soon, you might find out what sort of criminal I’m okay with people accusing me of being based on the group I choose to join.