chapotraphouse

I interacted with them on Twitter and they just, err, repost a lot of things and say shit without thinking.

Yeah, that tracks.

Look, there are people who I respect for their organising skills, for being principled, for their knowledge of history or theory, and for their efforts in propagandising. It's rare that you find people who are good at more than like two of those things imo. I respect Pamphlets for their skill at propagandising but... not for the rest.

I'm not surprised to hear that they don't carefully and critically analyse what they repost tbh. I get the sense that they're still pretty young or pretty green. I am still affording them the opportunity to develop.

I have no love for S4A 'cause they treated an Autistic friend of mine poorly, but I don't mind you mentioning this stuff.

Ah interesting, I'll circle back around on this in a second.

You don't know how many times discussion has been shut down because it's "rumor-mongering" or "shit-stirring" but we need to say this stuff in order to at least warn people of possible problems about the influencers that we follow on social media, even if they are leftist or communist. Hell, it's not slander, it's your truth, it's what you experienced, it's the truth as you now it; that's not the same as having malevolent intent.

Yeah. But it's also important not to rumour-monger or to be too quick to send brigades of people to denounce someone or any of that. I see that as being pretty corrosive.

For me, given what you've also told me, I'd probably give cautions to people who are receptive to the warning if Pamphlets gets brought up or if a person really like Pamphlets just to be like "Heads up, this may be a situation where they're heading in the wrong path so just be careful not to get led astray if they continue down that path." But I'm not going to shit on Pamphlets or anything like that.

With regards to S4A, full disclosure: I am a Patreon supporter of him because I really appreciate his work with the audiobooks. I get that he's an anti-revisionist and so he's really critical of people who are pro-CPC. It's an important issue for him. For me, I don't really care - I'm more interested in building the movement and an organisation. If a revolution kicks off in my country ultimately we are going to have to establish relations with China for defense and reindustrialisation because we sure as hell ain't gonna get that from the US or Europe. I see the China issue as being pretty tangential to my priorities tbh and I don't know enough about China to definitively stake a position on the matter so I'm more than happy to sit those discussions out.

I'm much more about fostering unity and providing resources and support to movements, where I can, than I am about engaging in line struggle. As I see it, if we're lucky, we can have those line struggles when the movement is big enough. I'm not unprincipled in the sense that I welcome PatSocs or something like that but at the same time as long as there is enough agreement with comrades then idc. One comrade I know well is a Brezhnevite. I'm not convinced that Brezhnev was particularly good but I'm open to hearing more about him and I'm not going to treat this comrade as an enemy just because I'm not so keen on Brezhnev while they're mad keen on him.

That just seems like needless sectarianism when, y'know, there's a genocide in Palestine and the world is barreling towards ecological disaster and all that. I think we need to pick our battles and so that's what I do.

It also means I'm good comrades with a MLM who really dislikes Cuba while also being quite comrades with an Indigenous Peruvian who is anarchist-adjacent. I wouldn't want to put both of them in a room together and mention Gonzalo though, if you get what I mean. But Gonzalo is dead and Biden is alive, and both are far removed from the bourgeoisie of the country I live in so again - my priorities are local and in the present.

Meanwhile S4A is very focused on a fairly strict ideological line. There's importance in this but because of my own circumstances I'm only ever going to be a follower and a contributor but never a leader so I have the luxury of deferring or abstaining from these things mostly. My priorities are not the same has his but his are also valid and a movement requires some heterogeneity to be vital, if only because conflict can be quite productive especially if it's managed well.

I really admire S4A's commitment and his investment in effort. I don't do twitter but I get the sense that he would take his frustrations out on incorrect lines within the radical left. I also get the sense that he's very busy with his committments to the movement and he he feels very deeply concerned about the world. He gives me the impression of a parent who has one too many kids and maybe an unsupportive partner - you know the ones I'm talking about, good people and you have to respect their effort but my god do they have a temper and are they prone to snapping at people, often without any justification.

I'm also autistic and tbh I get pings on my ND-dar for S4A; he is very focused, very passionate, and very... particular, let's say.

I can absolutely imagine him snapping at someone without good cause because he feels as though the other person isn't serious enough or because they said the wrong thing (more on that in a minute). Or because he's hot on the heels of some debate with someone on twitter and he's not managing his own frustrations appropriately.

My assessment is that he is extremely frustrated with how unserious the movement is but he holds his nose and does the work of educating and agitating as much as he can because he has a sense of the urgency of it all.

I'm lucky because I'm doompilled and maybe it's the influence of my Buddhist upbringing or absurdism but I am (mostly) reconciled to my fate where he appears to be railing against it with all his might. I respect that about him but I cannot match that. I am working to keep my foot in the door so that I don't foreclose upon the future, and from what I can tell he is working to deal with the doom by fighting it. So it's natural that my disposition is going to be jaded and patient and ecumenical while his is going to be full of energy and rage.

I wouldn't take that rage too personally though. He's only human. (This is probably just illustrative of my own disposition and my own priorities.)

I think if your friend ever approached him and said "Hey man, you really treated me unfairly and I think you need to reflect on how you engage with people..." I would expect that he'd be reasonable about it. Unless you happen to catch him at a bad moment, anyway.

But yeah, that's not to excuse bad behaviour on his behalf (I don't even know what happened) but I am sympathetic to how he is, even if I do find myself disagreeing with him on him being too brash, too spiteful, and too quick to judge.

One perfect example is that he has high hopes and high expectations for people to put in the effort to figure things out and to be the leaders that the movement and the world needs. And so he absolutely loathes if anyone ever says to him "Thoughts on [topic]" because he's like - you fucken figure it out for yourself, you do some research, and if you can't even be bothered to do any of that then at least put in enough effort to make a proper question and ask something which a little specificity; I think he wants to scream at people to stop looking for leaders and to start acting like them instead. "Thoughts on Brezhnev?" will get a wildly different response out of him than "Do you think that the USSR under Brezhnev was reasonable or was he presiding over the decline and obstructing the efforts to revitalise the USSR and keep it moving forward?" will.

If you look closely at how one of those questions elicits barely-stifled rage and the other one elicits a 10+ minute monologue out of him, potentially with some major tangents, then you know why I get some strong neurodivergent vibes from the guy.

Anyway, that's a long ramble.

Ultimately one of the crucial things to me is a movement that is reluctant to cancel people. I'm going to be wrong about things, you're going to be wrong about things, and our movement will be stronger if we have a culture of extending understanding and compassion towards our comrades so that when we step out of line we aren't going to be immediately denounced for it or whatever. I try to build towards that culture in my own little way because I know that I am counting on that culture for people to be comradely to me when I myself inevitably fuck things up.

9 times out of 10, call-in culture is infinitely more preferable to call-out culture and if there more skilful call-ins that are handled with enough empathy and tact, I believe that there will be less call-outs that occur later on.

I know I am probably making myself sound like a spineless centrist who isn't willing to commit to a particular position but that's not the case. I am very willing to dig my heels in on a matter and people who know me well know that at times I might as well be an immovable object if I'm serious about something but at the same time I'm not quick to pick a fight; I will disagree very gently unless someone else escalates and I'll continue to disagree while matching their tone for as long as it takes, unless they point out to me that I'm being pig-headed or hypocritical in my position. It's just that I don't swing at every ball.

I hope that your friend didn't take it too personally and that S4A wasn't a complete and ruthless shithead to them, whatever it is that happened between them.