So I've recently gotten involved with socialist politics in Australia and I've noticed that nearly everyone here hates...

I don't know of any other socialist organisations over here in Perth so maybe I'm missing something but what have they done that is cultish, opportunist and imperialist?

Covering up sexual assault scandals.

being 'against trump' means absolutely nothing. even neocon war mongers, neolib shills and rapey trots can do it

That's the American Socialist Alternative you massive retard.

Trump is a massively unpopular president who has effectively become the face of racist, imperialist neoliberalism.

It would be stupid not to latch on to the anti-Trump movement. And, no, hardcore Trump supporters would never have supported our movement anyway, you might as well be claiming that the Bolsheviks should have appealed to the Black Hundreds.

every time. please fuck off with your bullshit. I'm convinced you're just a CIA plant to make sure every leftist wastes their time on worthless make-do projects.

Opposition to Trump isn't an organization, retard.

Talked to some of those dudes the other day, i liked what they said and it's not like they were autistic trots.

used to be involved with them in Perth myself. some of them are good communists and really dedicated people. most people seem to dislike them for having a constantly confrontational attitude, as well as being involved in bickering amongst leftist sects.

I (and others I know) found there was too much consensus within their politics. they are rather inward looking as well, I know people who were made to feel uncomfortable by particular well established members and left. it always felt very cliqueish to me.

on the other hand, a few years back they did end up merging with the RSP which was a quasi-Marcyite group that had some members in Perth. they aren't *completely* inward-looking, and are probably the most relevant group I've seen turn up to demos in Perth.

my specific criticisms of their politics would be that they seem to on the one hand denounce the ALP but also fetishize it. they also spend an inordinate amount of time on student politics where they've got themselves disliked by a lot of people (although their members did eject Dennis Huts from Curtin last year, which even most normies supported). I also think they're not critical enough of the unions: the predominant line I heard from SAlt members was that communists should engage in entryism in the SDA, while at the same time one of their members (Duncan Hart) was himself founding a new union to compete against the SDA to scrap new and old WorkChoices-era EBAs. and that's without going into criticisms of activism more generally, which is what they seemed mostly focused on as a student-heavy group.

I've heard interesting things about how their higher ranking members are encouraged to sell more newspapers, but I can't verify myself whether those were truths, half truths, or otherwise.

this is basically correct, iirc they split from the ISO decades ago.

lots of lefties hate them for daring to say in their newspaper that there are lots of Syrian people who aren't jihadists who want to see Assad ousted. I've never seen the accusations that they support al-Nusra, US imperialism, etc. actually substantiated by shit SAlt have said.

as for cultish, there are some somewhat valid criticisms of how SAlt acts on the grounds of cultism if you care to google.

pic unrelated.

you haven't seen the anti-Trump demonstrations SAlt were involved in organizing in Australia? I suspect you don't even live here, friend.

polite sage.

Guess there's still some hope for modern Trots. If we can just get them Marcypilled they might convert to real Marxism.

this is a pretty interesting stuff, thanks a lot!

polite sage

From my experiences with em, more red liberal then anything. Guess I just aint met the right people.

Sure, but the SAlt that is being referenced here is the American Socialist Alternative.

Socialist Alliance member here, in the interests of full disclosure. I have worked with SAlt on committees and in movements in a couple of places now including Canberra and Sydney. My girlfriend, formerly in Perth, also had a particular Perth experience. My experience with SAlt, especially in Canberra, was comradely because of the small size of the events we were working on, so we pretty much had to get along. Even then, there was plenty of friction. In Sydney I have both heard of and seen with my own two eyes a quite extreme sectarianism.

The biggest problem I have seen with SAlt is a cliquishness, sectarianism. I have been in meeting where I'd propose something only to have three or four SAlties gang up and shut me down and say I had a horrible idea, etc., only for one of them to propose the same idea fifteen minutes later to group applause. They will also gladly stack any open meeting, which, fine, don't have open meetings if you don't want them stacked, but they're shameless about it.

They have also displayed some fairly opportunistic tendencies especially within student politics, voting with the Liberals, or Labor Unity (right) to stop Greens motions getting up, etc. I have heard tales of sneaky shit like cutting power to meeting rooms to forestall motions but that is heresay.

Predominance of students in their cadre means that a lot of younger kids are out there to get laid at Uni by posing as the socialistest radical hardcore red-flag waving ripped-jeans cop-fighting dude, with the knowledge that if anything goes wrong Daddy will bail them out and they can go on after Uni to a nice job in the Public Service or Daddy's firm.

Walking through Brisbane or Sydney and coming across a bunch of SAlties just shrieking shit into a loudhailer on a Friday or Saturday night doesn't endear them to me much.

Finally, they have a remnant of the old ISO attitude of 'radicalisation by cop' where they will come along to 'mixed' rallies with crowds of families, old ladies, children, etc., like you see in the refugee movement and try to deliberately incite cops to have a swing or get pissed off and charge a crowd.

I have tried to be fairminded and qualified in my above criticism, but I will say that their splitting the Anti-Reclaim Australia movement in Perth was disgusting. They were trying to get their clique into a mob mindset to start a punch on with cops and Reclaimers, even though the crowd had voted it down in a mass vote and nobody was keen on starting what didn't need to be started. After this they did the whole works, using Facebook admin to chuck established organisers out of their own pages and pretty much started their own Anti-Reclaim with hookers and blackjack, which fizzled predictably.

The obvious reference here is honisoit.com/2016/03/my-salty-summer/ but I will caveat with bourgeois liberal propaganda warning. Also if you're a syndicalist maybe check out the Perth Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation they seem pretty legit for anarchists, and they actually have one or two unionised workplaces (rather than just being a random affinity group with pretensions to unionism)

Thanks so much! There's so much surprising stuff here.

By a particular 'perth' experience do you mean, like me, that SAlt was pretty easy to get along with?

Jesus that's pretty awful, I'd think that a socialist organisation would be more friendly but oh well.

I've noticed this and similar stuff quite a bit, it was one of the things that has made me hesitant to really involve myself with them.

That's just bizzare, the people over at Perth are pretty chill when in the city doing info stalls. They just hand out flyers, try and sell some newspapers and talk to randoms about socialism.

This behaviour is in really strong contrast to the behaviour to that in Perth. The SAlt over east seem to be a really more aggressive beast. I've actually talked to some of the prominent members about this tactic and they've pretty much shut it down as a shit tactic.

You sure this was in Perth? Like I said above, they seemed to be firmly against this kind of tactic.

I've tried to find the syndicalists but I've had no luck. Do you know how to by any chance?

Again thank you for replying so in depth, this is really interesting.

No worries comrade, always happy to help.

For the ASF-Perth, try [email protected]. If that doesn't work, asf-iwa.org.au

And unfortunately the Reclaim behaviour, both the violence stuff and the movement-splitting, was confirmed by multiple eyewitnesses I trust deeply (including community members outside of Socialist Alliance)

That said, it's always possible that SAlt Perth had a process of internal debate since 2015, and decided to move on from those tactics as a result of practical experience. That would be cool and great to hear.

I heard SAlt Australia is full of sluts who put out to get you to pay dues to the Org. Just go to any of their meetings, and you'll immediately get a bunch of girls acting interested in you for seemingly no reason.

Thats any political organization with girls in it. But make no mistake, they are just as much thirsty for cock as they want the organization to prosper. It's a win win for everyone involved, as long as its an organization you like.

fair enough user, I am aware that the logo is from the US org, but I suspected that may have been a mistake.

ime Marcyite socialists are the most wishy-washy and least well read 'Marxists', but your experience may be different.

last time I went to one of those things and chatted to SAlt members they seemed least likely to provoke Reclaim loons, as they had *apparently* already been attacked at UWA and had an understanding that the cops would definitely take the other side in the event of violence. on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if all their members weren't on the same page on things like that.

I'm really interested to read what you said about the ASF though, I had no idea they really had a presence in Perth. I read a bit about their wages fight against some pizza joint and thought they sounded pretty legit.

thanks for your reply to the OP as well, because I found it quite enlightening too.

I honestly think this is probably a sensible explanation, because my experience is/was the same.

I'm kinda skeptical, doesn't this rumour go around regularly about every left group involved in StuPol

hope we've helped you a bit anyhow OP.

Sounds like good praxis to me

Welp, why does American SAlt suck so bad in comparison?

unless SAlt over east are blood and cum thirsty succubi I have a sneaking suspicion this is complete bull.

Everyone hates Trots

To corroborate what some others have said, and I'm not in Perth or a member, too far from any branch but have some knowledge and experience with the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation.
They're small, not the most well organized but really legit people, actually lead some pretty small scale workplace actions from time to time

And i stopped fucking reading…

They sell books that you can find for free on the Internet. They pretended to fund raise for Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter but just pocketed the money for themselves.

enpassant.com.au/2013/12/17/why-i-have-resigned-from-socialist-alternative/

From an senior ex-member of the SAlt.

TL;DR: They're radical Larpers that don't want to engage in anything actually changes anything, nor do they actually really have any end goal or even know jack shit about Leninism.

So people don't generally like the Socialist Alternative because they're extremely vitriolic and radical in the worst ways. We're talking standing on a soapbox early sunday morning while everyone is hungover out to get some brekfast and yelling point blank at them with a megaphone about Palestine or some shit, infiltration and hostile takeovers of other activist movements then purging all the members of that movement and replacing them all with SAlt people (famously happened with a gay rights group recently which pissed off the gay community), what cobber comrade said here about 'Radicalisation by Cop', they are extremely aggressive in student politics pissing off most people on campus and burning bridges with other left groups through abuse and lies.
I know plenty of people who are Socialist leaning, but not really that political, who fucking hate the SAlt and the far-left now in general simply because of interactions with the SAlt on campuses.

They're also kind of cult-y and buy any bullshit their leadership tells them without question.

You also have the bizarre love affair with Labor as well.

better a poorly-read Marcyite than a well-read socdem or Trot. If someone actually reads Marx and Lenin yet remains Trotskyist, not only does it signify that they have bad politics, but it also shows that they have zero reading comprehension. Guess what's easier to cure?

marcyites are trots and most revisionist MLs are trots too.

this is pretty damning, is there an online source discussing this?

are you referring to their weird attitude towards the ALP generally, or is this about some relationship they have with Labor students at a particular university I keep hearing about? cause I can vouch for the former being something which utterly confused me.

you're talking about three things that are virtually the same, if I'm being honest. Marcyites are like a bizarre lovechild of Stalinoids and Trots themselves, almost like the worst of both worlds, and Trots aren't much better. succdems can just fuck right off completely imo.

this sounds pretty spot on to me, worth the read for anyone interested.

It's called SAlt

40% approved at minimum, and probably more given the taboo nature