Why are ML parties in the west always creepy ass cults?

Why are ML parties in the west always creepy ass cults?

And people here think they can lead a revolution, smh tbh fam.

The west especially in murica is the largest source of population fooled into believing capitalism is the only source of good government. They are too far gone, and by extension leftwingism is a reactionary position here, it has a history of mass disdain and hatred.

And MLism itself isn't? Even Nazis don't call themselves Hitlerists.

"Stalinism" is a post-stalinism word, no one called themselves that.

wait sorry I'm blazed

as opposed to all those countries where there's pictures of [insert leader] everywhere?

Trips of truth.

Who the hell is Bob Avakian and why is he considered a cult leader ?

At least that's after the revolution when one dude pushes a cult of himself in order to stay in power. Pre-revolutionary ML parties were often lucid in their thinking, even if shitty in general.

look him up

google Bob Avakian

BOB "THE AWAKENED" AVAKIAN IS MY WAIFU

He's a New York City meme. Like Larouche but a communist. Vague talk of revolution on posters. Irritating and highly committed supporters.

...

Wrong tbh fam, esoteric hitlerists walk among us

First of all, I'll note that the cultishness isn't limited to western MLs specifically, it's also a feature of western Trot groups (orthodox and Cliffite) and anarchists too.

As far as I can tell, the core of the problem lies in the fact that these are revolutionary groups operating in a pretty objectively poor environment for revolutionary ideas. The ambient societal pressure to give up and drift away from any political engagement is pretty strong, so these groups basically have to exert an equal amount of pressure on their members to keep them engaged. Unfortunately the only way to actually exert that much pressure in a small group is to adopt cult tactics. Say what you will about cults, they are objectively fanastic at holding members.

A classic example of these cult tactics in action is the Maoist 'Bourgeois Self-Criticism Session' - it bears direct resemblance to the group confessionals that are a common feature of cults. These sessions are designed to bind members socially through a bond of 'shared sins', and also provide ammunition that the leadership can use to emotionally blackmail wavering members. This is an extreme and relatively uncommon example, but others abound: constant high levels of political activity (making you too busy to pause for contradictory thought), long late-night meetings (to tire you out and make you suggestible), encouraging existing members to rapidly socially integrate new members (to socially isolate them), financial commitments (to encourage a sunk-cost fallacy), and retreats/conferences (to isolate members for several straight days and bombard them with the organisation's worldview), constant public recruitment drives (to encourage members to internalise the organisation's perspective by making them argue it to others), etc. I really could go on here, but suffice it to say that if you want to start a leftist org in the first world today, books about cult tactics should be higher on your preparatory reading list than anything by Marx.

Even with massive cult-like pressure, these organisations only ever manage to maintain a roughly static membership, due to high turnover. In a year a national organisation on the order of 1000 members might have a net gain of 20 or so members despite signing up 100+ people. Additionally, despite rigorous schedules of political reading groups and educational seminars, these organisations end up maintaining a fairly static average level of political education year on year. The reason for this is that member turnover tends to be on a first in, first out basis, that is the members leaving tend to have a couple of years of membership under their belts. This trend is only exacerbated when the org bases itself on the campuses, as graduation usually spells the end of a member's engagement with the organisation.

Of course, the massive pressure placed on members to participate in activity tends to make breaking with these organisations a pretty dramatic affair. Many members cut off all contact both with the organisation and political activity in general when they leave - mainly because they don't want to deal with the barrage of calls they will inevitably get from their organiser trying to badger them back into the fold. Those that don't drop out of politics entirely tend to become sworn enemies of at least the political organisation they left, if not the entire tendency to which it belongs. More often than not these poor sods end up falling in with the political cult next door, who are all too happy to take someone pre-primed to accept cultish integration tactics - not to mention the coup for internal cohesion that the successful 'conversion' of an 'enemy agent' provides.

Of course, you may be wondering about the leaderships of these kinds of organisations. You might wonder what kind of leadership forms over an organisation with a decent annual income, high membership turnover and a self-limiting average level of political nous. Well let me tell you, the result doesn't tend to be good. They are simply not encouraged to do anything but slowly ossify and putrefy. Financial matters are kept from the membership as a matter of the organisation's 'security', decisions about political perspectives and activity for the organisation tend to be handed down from on high, and sexual abuse of the membership is absolutely rife.

Anyway, you wanted to know why they all turn into cults. That's why (and how). Source: See if you can guess why I might know all this stuff.

Spoken like a true liberal.

Some of them do if only because most have no idea 'Strasserism exists.

trots are MLs, though. The vast majority of them support central planning and vanguardism, as well as unhealthy amounts of political repression.

I'm stopping this meme before it becomes a thing.

Good post

MLs BTFO

pick one