Want to get politically active

leftcoms they confuse memes with theory so they can have the best of both

Petit bourgeois actually.

What is exactly is this "Action Front" you are talking about?

Dude, fucking find people online. There's almost certainly a Facebook page or Twitter niche that Socialists from your city are part of.

Better get reading.

I wish.

Look, the same still applies for your village/hamlet. If there's internet access, there's dozen leftists out there for you to reach out to.

I live in a big city, with very established left-wing "spaces" and "scenes", but I hate all of them and we disagree on everything so I got together with three dudes I like and we started reaching out to people with similar sensibilities based on their Facebook profiles.

Leftcums and anarkids were right, party politics were a mistake
In hindsight I could've tried to score with my knowledge of theory, most girls were solid 7+/10 and they seemed to like my rambling

We are a non-secratarian anticapitalist group dedicated to the movement. We are small right now but have big plans coming shortly. So far most work has been wheatpasting, but we are in the works of expanding to more direct action right now. If you are interested send an email to [email protected]/* */

Meant for

This. No more excuses buckos, either do irl organizing or do action front please. We all have to pitch in the stakes have never been higher.

kys

Lol this is pretty much 50% of the reason to do organizing. Most leftists are theoryless retards so its pretty easy to appear smart, confident, and like a leader if you actually read. All the autistic pdf reading will actually make you seem alpha.

guess it's time to start reading bookchin. where should I start?

Read Marx

If it wasn't for the internet, I would have absolutely no one with whom to talk politics. You guys keep me sane.

for some reason rambling about theory can lowkey get you laid sometimes

I'll be taking screenshots of this post. Enjoy your ban on /r/socialism :)

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Would count as a dream or a nightmare for you?

that was exhausting tbh

I know this feel

Which is why I started making my own flyers and posting them

f-fug

Where do you live?

You could always pretend to be a nazbol and slowly convince them Stalin wasn't that bad.

wake me up when the options are less embarrassing

Same here. Try to do something for the town. Collecting trash from the perimeter, repairing age-old broken things etc. You'll get known quickly.

I'm thinking of becoming a politician in my country.
I plan to use the platform to spread socialism and but propose and vote for socdem laws (except where appropriate, like reforming elections) just because they will be better accepted.
I would also probably get paid handsomely.
The only things keeping me back is not wanting to get shot and the fact that it would probably be very hard to get people to vote for me.

Big brother is watching you

This.

It is boring. I want to kick trash cans with my comrades

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Australia

You only need to know one other person. That's how the black Panthers got started.

Jon action front

There's a thread here discussing Australian organizations:

You should also join action front

How do I join action front? With a generic name like that your website, if you have one, doesn't exactly jump to the top of the list of duckduckgo results

by reading your own damn thread

I'm not the OP, but thanks. Does action front do online shit? I'm out in the boonies for the forseeable future.

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agitate the youth, offer a reading and study circle or something
get into non-political groups and bring in politics

That sounds like a really easy method of becoming socially ostracised as the autist that nobody likes.

Have we seriously gone a whole thread without anyone suggesting OP agitate in their union? They're in Australia, the unions here still exist (beholden to the Labor Party though they may be). We need way more communists trying to stir up rank-and-file revolts like the BLF had in the 70's.

That's part of some of the new phase of projects we will be doing at Action Front. Join in.

are you the guy from the Australia thread? I think what you're advocating for is closer to actual class struggle than this bullshit that PSL/WWP and Trot types are going for.

I'm not sure about doing it within the current union framework, and I know this is a point of difference between the communist left (which I'm attracted to) and traditional Leninists (which I used to be). I work part time in retail so I have tried to get into contact with the RAFFWU (the challenger to the SDA) but to no avail so far.

How do I get the courage to send an application to the local communist youth organisation? They've made it so scary, "send your info and we'll contact you" type of thing.

I'd go youth org because it legit seems like a better place than the parties, it isn't directly related to any party either. One party seems cool otherwise but just a lil bit too tankie, and I fear everyone there would be 30-50 years older than I am.

Go straight to their offices, that's what I did.

My nigga they love the young bloods. You won't have problems if you're 16 or older

Someone who is 35 is not 50 years older than you.

only if you're dropping it like spaghetti
not every agitation is down from a podium but with people around you in every day conversations about their every day life issues

Yeah, I've been in that thread calling every marxist group in this country a cult (very bitter from years wasted there, can ye tell?). I'm absolutely advocating for more class struggle unionism. Most of the older M-L types have dissolved into the bureaucracy, and the rest of the Left is pretty hit-and-miss.

The question of fighting the bureaucracy vs. trying to get a red union off the ground is a tactical one, I think. Every union's different. Ordinarily I would have said that a union like the SDA was begging for a militant challenger given how far up the bosses arse they are, for example. However, SAlties have actually done a half-decent job of wringing concessions out of eg Coles and Crust by trying to turn the large but passive membership against the leadership.

Fair enough, I was just imaging the average imageboard user trying to turn every conversation to the evils of capitalism and I got the reflexive urge to bully that imaginary person. Holla Forums is a Chad board though, so I'm sure my fellow Thundercocks would do just fine

The tankie organisation is mostly 50+ yo people as far as I know. It seems like they've actually put a really young dude in an important position now, tho.

I'd still prob go to the youth organisation first. I'd prefer a slightly more (theoretically) relaxed group, SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM NOW, NORTH KOREA IS GOOD type of stuff turns me off.

The youth org at least claims to be M-L so they shouldn't be too liberal, either. Their past study groups included plenty of Lenin, it seems.

when i had better days i used to join in on peoples conversations when they turned political, on train rides and such. there is always opportunity. being in some sort of club is just a suggestion to put OP or anyone really into an environment where they get to know people and conversations eventually turn political without having to force it, while also socializing and connecting on a more relatable, human level rather than just rather abstract ideas.

Yes, if you're remotely socially capable like the both of us obviously are it can be a great way of bringing people to your politics. A side benefit is that the ability to speak passionately and confidently about relevant politics gets you all sorts of laid, too.

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it is really irritating or hard to engage non-leftist people though (or people who aren't really "anything" politically)

it is hard to get anywhere when the discussion needs to stay relatively casual yet you'd need to explain a whole new ideology to them

if the discussion begins on neoliberal grounds, there's just no way to really bring leftism there without making it a big and fat debate. and people don't usually like it when one tries to reshape their discussions in such a way.

just have your talking points on issues prepared and throw in some specific infos, most people who casually start up a conversation on politics are not prepared in the slightest and you just roll them over while being amazed how "smart" you are while it's actually just repetition for you.
take for example zizek (whom i despise), when you've watched 3 or 4 videos you'll recognize the things he said are just slightly altered in their wording at best.

I might be a bad or uncharismatic talker then, my experience is not such. Or I just happen to meet exceptionally neoliberal folks.

My experience is that people don't like radical disagreements. And they don't like being proven wrong on small points, either.

And if I do engage in a long debate, their retorts get to the "well huh that worked so well in the soviet union didn't it" "wow you're bitter and jealous" level, there's just no point.

I don't know how closely you've followed the whole Coles thing, but have you noticed how the SDA continuously doubles down on trying to paint Hart and co. as illegitimate and trying to convince everyone them and Coles dindu nuffin?

I wanted to add before that SAlt do advocate for doing exactly what you're suggesting within the unions, and some have had success and are actually members of unions. their heavy orientation towards student politics is one worrying aspect about them though, they're in a big conflict at Edith Cowan University in my city over the guild leadership there. it sounds like they've been neglectful and are just pushing their own activism above everything they were elected, but then again, I'm literally hearing this from Young Liberal and Young Labor trash who belong in a gulag.

having been in SAlt in high school and knowing people who have left disenchanted as well, do you have any choice criticism of the group aside from cultishness (which, I have to say, isn't completely unfair towards them) and the usual accusations of being too aggressive? other than it being a bit of a revolving door like Trot groups are known for - because that much was obvious to me.

what do you think of the ASF as well? I didn't know about them til I read about their dispute with Domino's recently, and I now recall seeing them at an anti-Reclaim counterdemo.

above everything they were elected to do*

That's pretty bog-standard red-baiting - pretty much par for the course, given the SDA's historical association with Bob Santamaria's hysterically anti-communist DLP (fun fact: the DLP used to be the only path by which they'd let 🍀🍀🍀Catholics🍀🍀🍀 into the Liberal Party back in the day - it's where Tony Abbot got his start in student politics).

About the ASF I don't know, really. From what I recall of the Domino's thing it just seemed like some kids standing around outside a Domino's that they didn't work at somewhere deep in the Melbourne suburbs. It doesn't surprise me they resurfaced at the anti-Reclaim stuff, every anarchist suddenly remembered they were on the Left to join in with that. Never saw any of them at anything else or on any picket lines, but yelling at yobbos wearing flags they can do.

From what I've seen, SAlt has a pretty good policy regarding union activity. It's obviously paying off a bit, but yeah their uni student membership base presumably ends up limiting their potential union activity quite a bit. Not sure there's a lot you could do about that, mind: they'd likely have died out entirely if they oriented entirely toward workers.

On the student politics front the whole subject gets a pretty resounding 'who fucking cares' from me. Uni admin have turned student unions into a total joke at this point, it's just a bunch of kids standing shoving leaflets in peoples faces and fighting over a pittance. The bourgeois parties spend it on campaigning for their real world parties and commies are gonna spend it on posters.

I wouldn't bother singling out SAlt for their cultishness - every political group on the Left is more or less a cult. It's pretty much an organisational necessity. If you don't have much real activity to engage in you have to apply some kind of pressure to keep people from drifting away entirely. Cult tactics just happen to be very effective at retaining members. Every leftist group is culty - the bourgeois self-criticism sessions of the old-school western Maoists is pretty much just a warmed-over confessional/hot-seat technique used in all sorts of cults: workingpsychology.com/cult2.html

On the aggression question, meh. The only people I hear spouting that one are liberals who got their fee-fees hurt and rival cults jealous of even SAlt's minimal size. I don't think they really scare 'ordinary people' away from anything because 'ordinary people' really don't give a shit one way or the other as far as I can tell. I can imagine the average Holla Forums poster would probably have negative run-ins with SAlties though - weeb tankie versus problem-haired trot is a battle that has no winner.

The only real problem I have with them is that I think the whole organising model is fundamentally flawed - what the alternative should be I don't know exactly, but it seems that the tiny revolving-door lefty cult is a model that has done its dash. It seems like the whole communist project (that includes the anarchists) needs re-jiggering if it's actually going to succeed and not turn into bullshit, but I'm not sure what that change needs to be. I was sympathetic to leftcoms/communisers before I tried out activism and activism has only increased that sympathy.

Macktavists please go.

Whoa hey I never said you should use activism to pick up women. I simply said that being able to articulately talk politics gets you laid. I was talking about like, at a bar or in some other non-political social situation.

I happen to think it's inappropriate to hit on women during the course of revolutionary activity. Keeping things comradely ensures everyone is able to participate fully without being made to feel uncomfortable socially.

I know you're just femposting to troll but I happen to think that autist leftist dudes hitting on women at protests or whatever drives women away from deeper political engagement. I also, separately, know that talking politics well in a social situation is a fantastic way to get laid.

can you elaborate on this point a bit? I tend to concur with what you've said generally though. particularly on the people moaning about SAlt heckling them, 9 times out of 10 they're complete fuckwits who deserved it.

I've been thinking along these lines for a while too.

oh boy, this. plus, I don't think it's idpol to feel a bit weird that some dudes use leftypol to post soft porn, either. I wasn't aware that rejecting identity politics gives you carte blanche to throw away any sense of self-awareness about the way you act towards women and minorities.

Looking at my options here. Earlier this year, I decided I'm going to join some group during this year.

they seem stuck in the past, too much like a party-party for old people
they even had a juche madman as one of their leaders at some point. but I dunno, they might even be decent nowadays. their online presence is tiny - bad thing nowadays. also old people.
but a bit contradictory. googling their stuff, sometimes they seem proper M-L and sometimes they just sound like a bunch of basic leftists who want to reject parliamentary politics, might be risky. young members might be good, more possibility for online propaganda and so on.
they're more radical than their big brother leftist party. I need to look deeper into them to confirm whether they can be an option. they might be too focused on feminism and such: not a bad thing in itself, but I specifically want to join a group where I can act to keep Real Leftism alive, in however small a form.

So do you guys act globally or nationally? As small groups or individuals?