It seems most cross tendency engagement devolves in to fights between leftcoms/anarchists vs AES supporters or “Dengists” vs Maoists. Anyone can point at each other and say “they started it” and avoid responsibilities. We agree on 90% of stuff but Anarchists decide to randomly call us tankies and we feel the need to defend ourselves or else look like we lost without an argument. Likewise we make memes about Anarkiddies and write texts denouncing them and they feel the same. Among scientific socialists we see China as an ally and an example to learn from while Maoists want to call out “revisionism.” There seems to be a contradiction between the history of different socialist experiments and disagreements not really mattering to our own conditions and those experiments also being vital learning experiences for us.
It’s strange to think about how we pretty much agree with Patsocs on more than almost any other tendency yet they are almost useless because they don’t understand the basic dialectical method and why have our positions beyond aesthetics and thus cannot understand the basic material conditions of this country.
We can keep trying to bring more people into our own sects and hope they do work for our own type of socialism irl, but if we’re so divided how can this happen. Of course we should all just log off and do things irl, but then some will fall into the trap of either larping or just helping their own friends without the wider goal of revolution.
We all need to remember that the feds let us speak because we spend all our time bickering. How can we unify as a revolutionary left? There are projects irl for trying to find unity as scientific socialists like ChunkaLuta, but it would be nice to be able to do the same online. In a way I’m just wishing everyone could just listen to revleft and everything could work out, but what can Lemmygrad and hexbear do for this vision?
Sure, we try to out propagandize other tendencies and deviations. I notice another contradiction, though. If we are trying to draw those who aren’t already against us into our ranks then many of those people will be “apolitical” or only mildly interested, considering many with a great interest in politics (in the west) have dived into anti-communist lore. The most politically active may be already against us while those intactive may not “activate.” I guess we shouldn’t be arguing with the most committed online anticoms at the least. Maybe the best target is disaffected liberals irl.