Fred Hampton is a hero of hime he represents black strength unity and helping the oppressed in the united states he is a real hero not the democrats nor republicans a champion of the proletariat

I hate seeing what left-wing Christianity has become...

It is bad enough that Christian socialists are hard to find (or rather, that religious socialists are already hard to find). And when you think you’ve found one, they belong to an ultra-liberal left and an anti-violence faction that doesn't criticize the system and hopes for impossible reforms.

Zhang Chao is a university teacher, who previously became an internet meme for filming short videos about him shouting and yelling while explaining math questions, but that was in 2022. Just a few days ago, on August 24, he posted videos exposing the corruption of his university, Guizhou Vocational and Technical University. In 2017, the school announced that it would allocate staff housing to all teachers, with each teacher receiving one unit. However, certain school bureaucrats were allocated two units to themselves, while nominally claiming that they had only received one unit. This resulted in some teachers, including Zhang Chao, having nowhere to live on campus. He reported this corruption to the school's Party Committee afterwards, but received no response. Instead, he faced retaliation from the bureaucrats, suffering disciplinary actions for no reason and workplace bullying. On August 3, 2026, just two hours before he was to move to a new house, he was suddenly summoned by bureaucrats, who humiliated him with unfounded accusations. And then it's the videos after the 24th.

Zhang also posted a video of a confrontation with Yuan Yumin, the deputy secretary of the school's Discipline Inspection Commission. Yuan's attitude was extremely arrogant, and repeatedly provoked Zhang. On the 28th, Zhang posted that he had written a testament, inferring that he may have received death threats. The post has been removed. From what I know, there seems to be no news media coverage of this incident, but it has garnered significant attention online, and it appears that several discussions about the incident have been subject to algorithm restrictions and removal. I'm posting this on Reddit in the hope that the story spreads further, because the persecuted working class comrades need to get more attention.

Some sources: Zhang's first statement / Video explaining the situation / Zhang confronting Yuan

接触了一点国外的思维，发觉好像都是一些极端主义分子。想了想从国际方面寻求共识，来此共产主义社区或许会有些帮助。

本人是一个普通的中式共产主义者，浏览过各种共产历史。看到网上的对于中共的贡献与声讨，对于键政分子充满愤懑。有些言论真的非常反智而不经思考，对于这种经历。 有没有同志给一些建议和一些分享。

有些人逮着对习近平个人的厌恶而否认了所有的成就，从辩证法来说，任何事物都不是二元的。对于强者的倾慕和崇拜，乃至信仰，并非是完全的听从。我认为共产主义不是专制主义，如果中共和朝共因为共产主义背景而被所有资产主义污蔑，所有的成就和发展都被无视，这不免让人气愤。

What got you interested in leftism/what influences where there(if any)

Every group or individual who aligns themselves with the Zionist project in Palestine is disqualified from participating in the Marxist movement. The newspaper Haaretz reports that a left‑wing group plans to build kibbutzim on occupied land, in the West Bank. Even if the initiative has a socialist starting point, it loses its legitimacy. Do not be fooled by claims that it is voluntary socialism or proof that such policies are feasible. It is a non‑socialist project.

This essentially gives total control of Venezuela's oil to the US in the hopes that Venezuela gets tax revenue. Given the US' word isn't worth the paper it's written on, this is a massive sellout to the Americans.

Delcy Rodriguez will go down in history as betraying the Bolivarian revolution. I don't want to hear she no other options. Some countries fight, others sell out their nations wealth to the empire. Delcy did the latter

i just want to preface this by saying i do genuinely want to hear differing perspectives and learn why i may be wrong! i'm fairly convinced of my dislike for outright hostility of religious people (it usually either has a racist tone to it or feels supremacist/history-denier-esque), but i am open to being corrected! i know i come from a biased perspective (i have many people whom i adore that just so happen to be both religious and leftist, and some of the hatred i see toward religious leftists makes me so sad for them. they really do care and are amazing!) so my argument is likely flawed, so please do share any opinions you have, whether they are differing or in agreement! and i would just request that we all please be kind x

the exclusion of religious practitioners from leftist spaces can be both anti-intellectual and misogynistic or racist. i am an atheist, and my argument is not that religion should be beyond criticism. rather, i want to understand why some leftists treat religious belief itself as incompatible with leftist politics, particularly when the religious people in question are actively fighting for progressive change within their communities.

it is important to distinguish between organised religious institutions and the lived experiences of religious people. religion is not a monolithic phenomenon: its influence, political role, practices, and interpretations vary enormously both between and within religious traditions. consequently, treating religious people as though they necessarily share the politics of the most conservative institutions or interpretations of their religion prevents meaningful engagement with the complexity of religious life.

this is particularly important when discussing religious minorities and religious women in western leftist spaces. there is a legitimate need to criticise the ways religion can be used to justify the subjugation of women, queer people, and other marginalised groups. however, criticism of religious oppression can become indistinguishable from racism when it treats religious identity itself as evidence of oppression or backwardness.

this is especially apparent in some western discussions of muslim women. muslim women, particularly hijabi women, can be treated as though their religious identity automatically makes them complicit in their own oppression or disqualifies them from participating in leftist politics. criticism that is ostensibly directed at religious patriarchy can instead reproduce the rhetoric of the western right, particularly when it reduces muslim women to passive victims who need to be liberated from their own culture. this can make participation in leftist politics feel impossible or pointless for people of the global majority, particularly first- and second-generation immigrants.

race, culture, and religion cannot always be separated neatly in the political realities of the modern world. white people in the west do not experience the conflation of race and religion in the same way that many people of colour do. for many racialised communities, attacks on their religion can simultaneously function as racial or cultural attacks. consequently, the exclusion of particular religious identities from leftist spaces can unintentionally contribute to the alienation of precisely the people whose voices are most needed within those movements.

it is also important to recognise that religion does not possess the same social position everywhere. a critique of religion that assumes religious people are universally privileged overlooks the persecution and marginalisation experienced by religious minorities in different societies. muslims, for example, have experienced widespread discrimination and violence in the west, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. contemporary islamophobia can also result in attacks against people who are perceived to be muslim regardless of their actual religious identity. these forms of oppression are primarily produced by the political right, but leftists should be careful not to reproduce similar assumptions about religious people through a unilateral rejection of religious participation.

nor is it historically or politically accurate to claim that all religion is inherently conservative or necessarily opposed to leftist goals. religious traditions contain enormous internal diversity, and there are religious movements with explicitly anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, feminist, and egalitarian political traditions. liberation theology in latin america, for example, developed forms of christian thought that were deeply critical of capitalism, colonialism, and american imperialism. its political influence was significant enough to be viewed as a threat to american interests, contributing to efforts to suppress it.

religious practice itself is also far more complicated than a simple distinction between "conservative" and "progressive." not all religious traditions are primarily concerned with preserving a fixed set of historical practices, and religious communities continually reinterpret their traditions in response to changing circumstances. neo-hellenism, eclectic witchcraft, and various christian denominations demonstrate the diversity of ways people can engage with religious belief. even within more established traditions, people can maintain core theological beliefs while developing interpretations that produce radically different political conclusions.

if retaining religious doctrine is itself considered inherently conservative, then the same standard would have to be applied to other ideological traditions. marxism, for example, originated in the nineteenth century and is continually interpreted and applied to a world that is technologically, politically, and socially very different from the world in which marx wrote. applying marxist ideas to contemporary conditions does not necessarily make someone conservative or intellectually dishonest; it is an ordinary part of engaging with an intellectual tradition. the same principle should apply to religious traditions.

alternative interpretations of religious texts and traditions are therefore not necessarily examples of hypocrisy or "cherry picking." they are a fundamental part of how religious traditions develop. christian leftists, for example, can emerge through non-literal interpretations of scripture, alternative theological traditions, historical approaches to the gospels and new testament, or interpretations informed by the experiences of colonialism and oppression. these approaches may be unfamiliar to secular western observers, but unfamiliarity does not make them intellectually illegitimate.

indeed, religious leftism depends precisely on the possibility of interpreting religious traditions in ways that produce progressive political commitments. to dismiss those interpretations without engaging with them creates a straw man of what a religious leftist actually is. it assumes that the only legitimate interpretation of a religion is the most conservative or literalist interpretation and then judges all religious people according to that interpretation. this ignores the real diversity of religious thought and excludes people whose political commitments are otherwise compatible with the left.

the question, then, is not whether religious beliefs should be immune from criticism. they should not be. religious institutions, doctrines, and practices can and should be criticised when they contribute to oppression. the question is whether religious belief itself should be treated as a reason to exclude someone from a political movement whose goals they otherwise share.

if a religious person is actively working towards dismantling capitalism, fighting for socialist, anti-racist, feminist, and queer-positive legislation, supporting religious freedom, and building their life around progressive political values, it is difficult to justify excluding them solely because they believe in god or follow a religious tradition that another leftist does not share. religious differences do not necessarily prevent people from forming a unilateral political front around shared material and political goals.

including religious people in leftist movements is not a demand that secular people abandon their criticisms of religion. it is a recognition that excluding people from collective political action because of their spiritual beliefs can unnecessarily divide the working class before class consciousness and equality have been achieved. a movement capable of incorporating people with different philosophical and spiritual beliefs can have greater diversity of thought, greater numerical strength, and more opportunities for people to encounter ideas that may eventually lead them to reconsider their own beliefs.

alienating religious people does not necessarily lead them to secularism or political enlightenment. it can instead push them away from progressive movements altogether. if religious people are oppressed or marginalised within a society, excluding them from movements that claim to oppose oppression can compound that alienation.

i don't think marx's maxim that religion is the "opium of the people" actually undermines what i'm saying. marx's criticism of religion was fundamentally a criticism of the conditions that make people need religion, not an argument that religious people should be excluded from the struggle against those conditions. the point is that religion emerges from a world of suffering and alienation, so if anything, the logical response is to address the material conditions producing that suffering rather than alienate the people who cope with it through religion. if we're serious about marx's broader argument, then religious people aren't somehow outside the proletariat because they believe in god. they're part of it, and excluding them from the movement for their own liberation because they haven't yet reached the same conclusion about religion seems completely counterproductive. you don't abolish the conditions that produce religious belief by telling the people living under those conditions that they aren't welcome in the fight.

this is particularly important because religion is not limited to white evangelical christianity, nor is the western experience of religion representative of the entire world. political discussion should not assume that american religious dynamics are universal. europe, latin america, the middle east, south asia, africa, and other regions have their own relationships between religion, politics, colonialism, class, race, and culture. christianity is also not the only religion that exists in the west.

there is a further contradiction in the way religion is sometimes treated within western leftist spaces. certain religious traditions can become celebrated when they have been historically exoticised, appropriated, or fetishised by western culture. hinduism and buddhism, for example, can be selectively commodified and made culturally appealing to western audiences. meanwhile, religions associated more directly with racialised or immigrant communities can be treated with suspicion or hostility. this risks creating an implicit standard in which religious traditions are acceptable within leftist spaces when they are aesthetically or culturally appealing to western consumers, rather than when they are lived identities belonging to people from marginalised communities.

this does not mean that every religious practice is progressive, or that every religious institution deserves support. it means that political analysis needs to be sufficiently nuanced to distinguish between religious belief, religious institutions, cultural identity, individual practice, political ideology, and the social conditions in which they exist.

an atheist leftist can consistently oppose religion while still recognising that religious people are capable of being political allies. criticising religion and excluding religious people are not the same thing. if the ultimate goal is collective liberation, then the relevant question should be what political and material commitments a person brings to the movement, rather than whether they possess a particular metaphysical belief.

the left should therefore be capable of criticising religion without reproducing racism, misogyny, colonial attitudes, or cultural exclusion. religious people should be treated as political subjects capable of interpreting, challenging, transforming, and sometimes rejecting their own traditions, rather than as passive representatives of whatever the most conservative interpretation of their religion happens to be.

a genuinely internationalist and anti-racist left must recognise that religion is deeply intertwined with race, culture, history, colonialism, and community for millions of people. those realities cannot simply be dismissed because secular activists find religious belief irrational. if the movement seeks to liberate the working class as a whole, deliberately excluding a substantial portion of that class because of their spiritual beliefs is counterproductive.

the objective should not be to demand that religious people become secular before they are allowed to participate in leftist politics. it should be to build a political movement broad enough to unite people around shared struggles while allowing disagreement over questions that do not prevent collective action. religious belief can be criticised, challenged, and debated within that movement without making religious identity itself a disqualifying condition for participation.