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US American communists, where do we go from here? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/communism@lemmy.ml
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In the election mega on Hexbear, u/jack was pointing out that some PSL candidates got over 2% yesterday - which is a significant improvement over 2024.

An early exit poll showed 17% of people who voted identified as democratic socialist.

DSA-backed candidates performed really well, especially including the primaries earlier this year. And I’m including Angie Nixon in that, because she performed very well given the characteristics of Florida, possibly the most ideologically anti-socialist state in the union.

Plenty of polls over the last year show young voters in particular are very open the idea of socialism, even if they may not be working with a proper definition of socialism.

Anecdotallly, at a recent event for my union, in some personal conversations, there are quite a few brothers and sisters who are feeling very radical.

So my question is, in terms of tactics and strategy, where do we go from here?

I bring up all that above because I think they are indicators, and even the biggest anti-electoralist I don’t think would say we should ignore indicators. I am admittedly a huge weather station nerd. If I see my barometer drop and the winds start going east to west, I know a storm is coming. Right now our instruments are giving us a lot of useful information, but I’m thinking about how we interpret it and what do we do.

My early opinion is that we need to put more resources into educating and building up those US Americans who are sympathetic to socialism or identify as socialists but aren’t really educated on what that means or are involved in an org. I think we really need to build up leaders - everyone from savvy organizers to Marxist economists to people who can make cool art for their DSA chapter’s Instagram page to lawyers who can find little loopholes that can help us out. Obviously that’s a long term project and something we are already doing. But if you think of this stuff in terms of video game sliders, previously I had my “try and get people to not associate socialism or communism as ‘bad’” tuned all the way. Might pull that one down some and pull up “educating workers who already are down with socialism”.

But I’m just throwing that out there as an example of what I’m thinking, I’d rather hear from you all.

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[–] 1 point 7 hours ago

This sounds like a situation where the club needs to be explicitly neurodivergent and leftist. There is a group that I run into every week when I take my kid to dance. They operate a neurodivergent game night, and it's a very diverse crowd of people (spectrum wise). From what I can tell (and from speaking with the person who runs it), it's a very inclusive space for people all over the spectrum. As a neurodivergent person myself, I get what you're saying. This club is frankly the first space I've seen like it, but to be fair, I also wasn't seeking it out, so maybe there are more. The BPP was Black and Marxist. I would even argue it was Black first and Marxist second. I think what you're talking about could be handled in the same way: Neurodivergent first, and Leftist second. I wouldn't doubt there are people who have neurodivergence who still harbor and act on normative bounds, reinforcing normative social rules in what should be non-normative spaces. Those people shouldn't be running these groups.

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