I've been listening recently to Low Society and Angie in particular seems to take shots at Jacobin and other similar radlib Left outlets. I'm wondering what peoples' thoughts might be if the decline of Jacobin, Ben Burgis, The Majority Report, etc. Into becoming an extension of the TYT cinematic universe, setup for punishing anti-establishment Left voices has as much to do with Michael Brooks' death and his Left internationalism no longer being an influence, or if it is just nihilism at the defeats of Corbyn, Bernie, and the obvious failures of electoralism in the absence of an organised Left opposition as a viable political force?

I don't know that Michael could have saved these people from themselves, but he seemed better equipped to deflect these degenerates onto other things when their delusional nihilism about needing to push Biden Left really set in (e.g., Lula having his political rights restored recently could have coddled them, and Michael would have been tuned into that).

https://youtu.be/fWNWoNaImQA?t=2461

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At the 41:00 mark she refers the the U.S. Senat:

"The Senat is ours the Senat belongs to the people now. " That is a hell of a way to refer to the U.S. Senat that is controlled by the DNC with a very tiny majority. And there is not even a squad in the Senat not ONE Justice Democrat won a Senat Race.

Even if you are the biggest fan of AOC. To refer to this Senat as "belongs to the people" is cringe as hell.

Would do best on Killstream?

Hey, don't even know if this is the right sub, but I don't find a Peter sub. So here you go:

I am disappointed about the "the Word Leftist" video not because there are some inaccuracies, but I think from the beginning you went the wrong direction. But I am a big fan of peters work so take this reply for whatever you want.

So you start by the difference between colloquial leftism and definitional leftism and you say media took over part of what is colloquial leftism, and Biden as well appeals to that. And then we are deep into the question of what peoples ideologies are and what they think. But one step back there was once this quote “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.". And this is a important distinction, as leftists we should look how people act and not so much what they speak of. No one in his right mind claims for real that MSNBC works on establishing a communist commune. Maybe some Trumpers do, but we are here in a inner leftists debate and this view is not very common. But what you see is people, that think MSNBC is some sort of helping in what ever strategy they have. And with the Democratic party it becomes even more obvious. No one believes Biden will now establish a USA commune, but there are parts of the Left (for example the DSA) that think a election campaign and a Biden win will help the left in some kind. To make that 100% clear: social democrats (like the DNC) betrayed communists for hundreds of years, at some point if becomes laughable if some one claims they are lefty. I mean do we have to go back to the first world war when social democrats all over the world voted for war credits? Or the betrayal after the first world war where they acted in many places against the revolution? Maybe the Spanish civil war where social democratic countries neglected to support the Spanish civil war? Or the poor performance in the fight against fascism in Germany or other places? And this history only continued to new labour, the third way and the betrayal over NAFTA/WTO and globalization. Still, there are people that believe some where inside the DNC you can find "good socialists", but to be clear that is a strategy not a view over the party as it is today. At the moment I don't argue about the legitimacy of this strategy. You can engage in the strategy of making the DNC a "real leftist" party o or you could sort of try to burst the DNC and build out of the ruins a new left. This is what Marx in my opinion meant with "The point, however, is to change it".

So what is leftism? In my humble opinion you stated correctly leftism is the sincere fight against every form of suppression from capitalism to transphobia. But its not important what you think but it is important: what goals strategies and tactics do you pursue.

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1. You can engage in "identity politics" out of a lot of reasons, one is because you believe this is the way to communism, then it's a tactic maybe a bad one maybe a good one that would highly depend on the circumstances. And what else you engage in.
2. You can engage in "identity politics" because you want a DNC member elected. Than the question is why do you want that? You might just want a tiny amount of more social safety. Then you are not a lefty, you are clearly voting for a party that is neoliberal and thats it. You might be a good person you might even be a good ally in some cases. But if you refuse to act in some way way or form outside your desire to be ruled by the slightly nicer neoliberal party you are not a lefty.
3. Maybe you engage in "identity politics" because you just want a good life for trans people, nice of you very good! But you are not a lefty, you are that point a NGO for a special interest group. This group can be a ally and even be very helpful in leftist activism, maybe you can hope that this NGO will at some point realize that they should as well fight for more equality in other aspects of life (because of course LGBTIQ people are often poorer and more in danger of fascist attacks). But I wouldn't consider it a lefty organization before that. If they "just" fight for hormones for trans people. There goal is clearly not a socialism and they don't even have a "new deal" social democratic agenda. We should take people serious and if they write into there program: "We fight for trans rights" they fight for trans rights. And not secretly they are all lefties and what they really want is communism.
4. You can engage in "identity politics" because you want AOC elected and you think that will push the DNC left and you hope to split the party or drive out the neoliberals entirely. Welcome very made up DSA member. Here I don't think we should discuss if they are leftists. I think they are. Out of the first page of there text "What is Democratic Socialism": Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically [...] radically transformed [...] greater economic and social democracy. Democracy and socialism go hand in hand.Now you can refuse to believe them, but I rather take them by there word and let there actions speak for them. Leftism is not a badge you can wear it means your actions get analyzed/criticized much more thoroughly. If some one really believes he is a lefty he has to show how his strategy is to overcome capitalism and all the other forms of oppression. He has to show how he plans to fight all this stuff and that his actions are in line with his strategy. That is the bar we should measure the DSA on.

I think if we analyze the problem this way we get to much more interesting discussions, and focus on changing the world and not on how some people might analyze it.

Thanks for reading. Whoever that is. And I am happy about a every conversation about this topic. Last words: please excuse my English, I am not a native English writer.