Landlord bears, the natural enemy of the Hexbear.

I’m guessing CBC

This is a good point.

I think there are probably a lot of things wrong with them. By example, I know of groups that use land acknowledgements and are also Zionist, which should say a few things about how land acknowledgements are understood (performative) and what impact they really have (a spirit of virtue signaling and whitewashing). Basically… these are people that would happily give land acknowledgments for a (hypothetical) future ethnically cleansed Palestine but will actively promote the ethnic cleansing when it’s right in front of them.

The only good ones I’ve seen throw some very serious Land Back claims in there along with other demands.

This isn’t an iron law it just describes 1 or 2 generations that were bought off by higher pay, housing as a cheap investment + guaranteed retirement, and frothing-at-the-mouth nationalism.

Time for our rulers to roll the dice on our cabal of boring wizards again! Hope it doesn’t result in misery for millions.

All commies like an international proletariat and world revolution! The devil is in the details on how one wants to build a practicable movement to achieve it, and one with a solid base in both theory and material conditions. I would recommend that anyone reading Trotsky also read widely so as to have a solid ground for critique in many directions - and to compare how well theories from 100+ years ago bore out re: the history from which we can now all benefit in our analyses. One of the things that makes toxic Trots end up toxic is that they don’t actually challenge themselves or leave their bubble. They only trust other Trots when it comes to international analysis, for example, which is why they’re pretty much always wrong about Israel - they’re getting all of their takes from like 7 trade unionists that are trying their best to wish a radical Israeli working class into existence.

Ruthless criticism of all that exists!

If you ask a Trot what should be done with a Western labor union, they will tell you that you need to kick out the labor aristocrats at the top of that staff food chain and make it accountable to the workers. Every time. No other answers will ever be given outside of maybe trying to drive union demands from below.

In theory these are usually good ideas. In practice they fail to actually accomplish these things because the answer they gave is actually their praxis. They said the thing, they are done. Or maybe they even got 1-3 people in the union on their side. But still, their praxis is to have those 2-3 people say the line and call it a day.

Then their org writes about it in their paper saying that you’ve gotta kick out the union bosses at X union or Y workplace. This is usually the nail in the coffin for gaining the trust of people involved with the union, staff or not.

In contrast, there are folks that do the actual work of building reform causes and kicking out leadership, etc. These are usually multi-tendency, inducing anarchists, commies, SocDems, etc. Part of the Trot stereotype is to take credit for that work in their little papers and to tell them what they should really be doing… again in their little papers.

Now imagine that you wanted to do something much more radical, like building independent unions or at least something different from the large, mostly captured spaces. They become entirely useless or even a distraction. One particular Trot group I know of even does little fake photo ops where they talk about the workers rising up and it’s literally just 3 salts (people that get themselves hired with the goal of unionizing a shop) from their org and it fails to achieve results. They have convinced zero (0) existing employees at that shop to join them. It’s been 9 months. If that place ever had any potential, it’s now been squandered.

100%

They tend to be ultras (and, in contradiction, sometimes obsessed with electoralist approaches) and fairly disruptive to others’ organizing. Discussing Trotsky himself or permanent revolution can be a good exercise and a way to develop theory but that’s usually not what is actually happening.

Examples:

• Notorious for trying to enter other left spaces and take them over. Especially if those spaces seem “ascendant”. A lot of this weird tendency of self-congratulation and appointing themselves as the vanguard or whatever even though all they did was show up to something that someone else organized and then take a picture of themselves.

• So critical of the USSR, historically, that there was a serious pipeline from Trots to neocons. The USSR is gone but terrible international takes are still the norm. These are the people telling you to believe in the Israeli working class rather than criticize settler culture in the Zionist entity. Not all, but it’s dominant.

• A belief in leading through publications that nobody reads that say a lot about what should happen according to them. Kind of harmless I guess but it does waste people’s time when they could be doing useful things or becoming educated. It’s also a funny contrast to how they usually characterize themselves as (the only true Marxists).

• A dogmatic subscription to certain approaches to labor that simultaneously alienate everyone else in the space while also supporting labor imperialism. This is annoying to deal with because when other socialists enter the space it will already be hostile to them. I’ve dealt with this A LOT.

• A cynicism that I don’t want to overgeneralize about and can’t perfectly explain. Maybe it’s just that a lot of them are older. But their approach to issues relating to gender, race, sexuality, etc is often only a way to relate to their target audience rather than a principled position. This really shows in how they use language, incorporate others into their processes, etc. Everything is working class this, working class that, and then some token words so they can pass for “progressive”. This does not apply to all Trots but it’s very common. I’ve had to have many talks with Trot orgs’ leaders about not being transphobic it casually racist when they want to have a speaker at a rally or something.

A lot of what I’m describing are also behaviors common to the reactionary Western leftist stereotype and is not necessarily about Trotsky or a lot of what constitutes Trotskyism. Think of them as the only acceptable Marxists allowed to survive the Red Scare because of their hypercritical approach to other leftists and the fact that they are usually dependent on the approaches to “organizing” handed down by American and British cishet white dudes in the 1950s and 1960s.

Anyways I should mention again, “not all Trots”. I know plenty of Trots I can work with and bring into coalition etc. But I know way more that will basics ruin the space lol. Some of the issues are attributable to Trosky in the sense that he created a narrative for himself as the anti-Stalin and a hypercritic of the USSR. But a lot of it is also just that “which way, Western leftist man?” thing I’ve harped on.

The Manga is much longer but keeps the vibes going I highly recommend it

While the bourgeoisie are of course the ruling class, and this includes power over the state, the mechanisms they use allow for someone like Biden to easily do what I mentioned. His rabid Zionism is a major factor in how this is playing out. Biden the rabid Zionist is in office because of the bourgeoisie, as an example for how they exert power. But he could withhold much from the Israeli project and only a minority of the ruling class would whine about it - those with major investments in Israel.

I don’t really follow Shea but his links and statements are sounding pretty ultra, which actually tends to mean being equally (or even more) useless for opposing and surviving oppression, as instead of doing any actual organizing to build a movement and prepare it, you end up picking pointless fights with your closest potential allies and then sitting back and deciding your work is done.

Examples:

• Citing a Trot statement as the “united front” group that PSL should’ve joined with.

• Citing the more or less useless Uhuru group’s irrational criticisms of ANSWER for scheduling a march for Palestine on the same day as their own poorly-attended march. The tone and logic is actually ironically reminiscent of every “white leftist with a chip on their shoulder and one (1) oppressed identity” faux-defensive attack letter I’ve ever read.

• Implying, sans evidence, that PSL’s actions are somehow at odds with opposing the feds’ attacks on Uhuru.

• Vaguely gesturing at the Bad Guys without providing any definitions or meaning or how to actually do anything. Shea says to fight the “deep state” by going the “revolutionary” path.

Someone tell Shea to touch grass.

The name means scythe lizard which I remember because hammers and sickles are awesome. Therizo!

Yusssss

Step 1: vote third party

Step 2: pay someone $100 to vote for Trump

Step 3: Collect $1 mil that you definitely have

Nope you aren’t wrong to hate your job ha. You may just be more aware of what is terrible about it than your coworkers or have a lower tolerance for putting up with bullshit or feeling like your time is being wasted.

Obviously when it comes to figuring out how to handle it there are options that are about strategies to make it more bearable and strategies for finding a different job. I’m not going to recommend any because you didn’t ask and I don’t want to burden you, just wanted to say that both are valid options based on what you determine is important and valuable to you. And coming here to tell us how much it sucks is 100% one of those options and we know working can suck and can commiserate with you.

Biden can just force a ceasefire any time he wants by just telling Israel he’ll cut off funding and arms and intel.

And if they don’t listen and try to do their thing (genocide) anyways while being completely cut off for months and months, well that will be when it might be okay to say “genocide Joe did eventually try to rein it in a little”.

This works for all ruling class vs. underclass divides, though of course we live under the capitalist class divide.

Yugoslavia, Libya, arguably some LatAm countries though the latter also always had coordinated coup leaders and armies/death squads directed and/or trained and supplied by the US.

Therizinosaurus or a close relative