/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

A bunch of Trotskyist intellectuals.

According to this twitter thread I read they're all edgelord crypto-rightist reactionaries, that's why when the revolution comes we'll march all those Plats right to the GULAG XDDD

See the comment by "Barry Lyndon" (that guy also used to post on Revleft) here:
https://louisproyect.org/2010/04/25/q-what-is-a-platypus-a-an-american-eustonite/
<I despise Platypus because I joined their reading/discussion group, being a young Marxist college student interested in intellectual conversation with like-minded individuals. Or, at least, what I thought were like minded individuals.
<What I instead discovered instead nauseated me. At their Chicago citywide meeting, the fare consisted of spending 20 minutes sneering, laughing, and making insulting remarks about the protesters who were occupying NYU at the time. It wasn’t even a helpful criticism of their tactics, it was just derogatory attacks on student activism in general as well as anarchists, even though they knew their was an anarchist in the room. Chris Cutrone, one of the editors of the review, then went on to describe a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which I am active in, as local Hamas cell. When I challenged him, he backed off a little, saying their were not Hamas, but “soft Islamists”(a term he uses in his obsessive articles about Iran). After the meeting broke up, I spent another 20-30 minutes arguing with a rabid Zionist who was defending the Israeli massacre in Gaza, because all Arabs were Nazis to him, he argued. No one contradicted him or intervened on my behalf, but smiled and laughed while he stood there justifying ethnic cleansing. The conversation turned to Latin America, and one member compared Hugo Chavez to Josef Stalin. That was too much for me, I stormed off.
<That is why I hate Platypus. They are not socialists, they are not Marxists, they are not even progressive. They follow a bizarre right-wing inversion of Trotskyism. They have articles extolling the American occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq as progressive, they denounce the Cuban and Bolivarian revolutions and parrot right-wing propaganda about both of them, they dismiss all student activists as idiotic and childish, their editor has lied on camera claiming that there is no hunger in Gaza under the Israeli blockade. They claim that the Russian revolution was worthless, almost a ‘total disaster from the start'(Cutrone). From start to finish, they are anti-socialist, anti-labor, anti-Third World, racist, snobbish elitist liars, who hate the left and everything it stands for because they have convinced themselves that ‘The Left is dead’, which they chant like a religious mantra.

In-depth articles about them:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/865/no-need-for-party/
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/872/divided-by-a-common-language/
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/932/anti-germans-not-part-of-the-left/

>>398167
>attacking student activists and anarchists
oh noooo, that's just terrrrrible

If I make a text defending a new tipe of party that is ultra-modern and capable of making revolution they would change?

>>398167
I'm not surprised at all. I was going to comment earlier but thought I might be mixing them up with the "Marxist Humanist Initiative". After reading that article it seems like the MHI and the Platypus group are two sides of the same coin - both are devout disciples of "Hegelian Marxism" and split off into sub sects, MHI worships Raya Dunayevskaya while the Platypus group proselytizes Adorno / the Frankfurt School. Both are super snooty, denounce any and all real political action, apologize for imperialism and the Democrats (IIRC the MHI called for a Hillary vote against Bernie), and are well read but put all those hours into utterly worthless philosophy tomes, they can find a "dialectical" apology for practically anything.

What kind of a Marxist org would call themselves the Platypus society? Like why in the name of fuck would you do that to yourself?
>>398167
<A bunch of unhinged trots
Every. Fucking. Time.

>>398022
Fucking LOL. These sectarian Downfall parodies are even funnier when you don't know any of the context.

I've embedded another one I found that takes shots at the guy who may have been the "neo-Kautskyan" mentioned in the Cutrone parody, Jack Conrad of the CPGB (PCC). This one's even better IMO.

>>399153
The Downfall memes got played out but we're bringing it back fresh with Hitler as the leader of different bizarro Trot cults

>>399139
>super snooty, denounce any and all real political action, apologize for imperialism
Yes.
>well read
They namedrop, but they don't seem to understand what they are reading. The stuff about them by Mike Macnair in the Weekly Worker shows that.

>>399241
>They namedrop, but they don't seem to understand what they are reading.
I think this brutal quote from Leon Trotsky to describe Victor Chernov fits the bill (I'm paraphrasing): "Well read rather than well educated".

>>398167 >>399139

see this is exactly what I meant. I'm not a leftist, I don't care if they mock student activists and anarchists. At least, not really. I will admit, even I, a Trump supporter, do not rag on certain activists like these people do. Yeah, all the critiques of it being white, and male, (if you're into that identity kindof thing) and even somewhat reactionary, are true. They talk about Tucker Carlson more than I do. They'll rip into Angela Davis because she misinterpreted one line from Adorno. Even after say a panel on Black liberation, a bunch of white kids will retire to dissect how X was too liberal, Y didn't read this, etc etc. Even *I* would take a step back before criticizing someone like Angela Davis (at least from the left) because she probably knows more about the world than I do. (But she said to vote for Biden). Yeah, I know, I don't actually care about this forum's opinion on Davis, it was just an example. (Many people) would say that there is more that just being correct. Personally, I don't even agree with their rabid "old lefti"-ism. I'm a Foucault fan (go ahead, you can laugh).


Despite all that, as I said, I am not a leftist. I am under no obligation to care about any of these things. I don't care about identity, or even Marxism. My interest in Marxism is just as it relates to certain other things. My only real concern is: is it a good place to learn theory? They have reading groups and people who have actually studied these things leading them (generally). If not, what kind of organization should I look at instead? What I like about them is there is no expectation of actually being a leftist.

>>399173 >>399146 >>399241
See all the people on here and twitter comparing them to a cult is making me like them more, as someone who wishes they could've been in ccru.

What similar groups could you recommend? (Just actually go to school) I'm in stem, and I can't change my degree at this point.

I used to be friends with a few people who were in that group. Granted, I haven't spoken to any of them since 2015.

Basically, PAS is a bunch of Hegelian pseuds. They worship Hegel and Adorno. They have VERY sketchy positions on certain issues. Their leader, Chris Cutrone, is a major sketchball. Some Emails of his got leaked back in 2013 which revealed him to be pro-imperialist. For instance, he thinks the Palestinians should accept defeat and allow for their territories to be annexed by Israel, and integrate themselves into the Israeli working class rather than fight for liberation. He also believes the US presence in Afghanistan was progressive, in that it set the conditions for socialism by forcing Afghans out of tribalism and into capitalism. I know some PAS Emails about the early Black Lives Matter movement (post-Ferguson) were VERY damning.

So, they use Hegel and "muh progress" in order to justify western chauvinism and imperialism. They're kind of like Zizek in that way, without the jokes.

>>398167
They'll be Laroucheites in ten years.

>>400085
There was (and likely still is) an Anti-Anglo reading group comprised of leftypolers on Matrix. They weren't just reading Marx either, but stuff like Heidegger. I have feeling you might not be the worst fit. I don't have a link on me, but if you gobsniffing around /edu/ and be polite, they might hook you up.

>>400085
>>400231 (me)
Oh, and I forgot to say the Platypus people aren't good if you're just getting into theory. There's no short cut or substitute to reading original texts yourself, preferably with some friends with whome you can figure out any dumb guy questions you might have. You need to learn this stuff for yourself, because so many of these reading groups and orgs act like Indian gurus who have figured out the truth. Best (Western) Marxists I know are people who rarely quote Marx.

My impression is that Platypus, Marxist Humanist, Zizek cults, and so on (mind the pun) are nothing more than grad students grad-studenting. Of what practical use is reading Hegel to a bunch of proles working in a factory? This shit is mental masturbation.

>>400254
You're right. But it's a problem with various other "communist" trends as well such as the entire school of "Western Marxism", the Frankfurt school, impossiblism, ultralefts. There's a barely disguised air of anti-proletarian elitism and intellectual masturbation in these groups, they're disconnected from the working class and of course they're all fanatically opposed to Leninism and the current and historic socialist states.

>>400202
>For instance, he thinks the Palestinians should accept defeat and allow for their territories to be annexed by Israel, and integrate themselves into the Israeli working class rather than fight for liberation.
If you are born Palestinian, you don't have the same rights. Integration does not exist as an option.

>>400573
These cretins don't care about that, they just deliberately take contrarian positions so they can posture above mass movements.