Okay, so I have some criticisms of leftists on this site that some of you probably share. I'm going to start with the criticism the most people agree with in my estimate. Not putting this in the moderation feedback thread because it's about the praxis and theory of the users as well, and they ought to read it.
The theme of this thread is reactionary politics masquerading as leftism.
Why, fundamentally, is discussing certain topics effectively banned on this board if you don't have a certain view on it at the moment? Primary examples being imperialism, climate change, and """th*rd position""" politics.
Should this board not be dedicated to educating people on these topics, including ourselves? How do you expect to debate reactionaries on these topics if you cannot be bothered to do it here? This seems like the best place out of any to come up with sound rebuttals, because we actually have reactionaries in our midst to play the most realistic devil's advocate role possible.
It just seems irrational to me that this board's moderation is at some points more welcoming to so-called national 'socialists' than to other sorts of turd-positioning autism.
For a long time this board has allowed reactionaries to make their case reasonably, and I do not think a particular type of reactionary should be excluded. I think the people on this board are generally savvy enough to recognize exactly why these things are bullshit, and savvy enough to explain to reactionaries why what they believe is wrong. When you limit the arguments reactionaries are allowed to make against us, you're limiting, to some extent, the arguments leftists here are prepared to refute. 8/pol/ does this to its users, and it shows. It's why Holla Forumstards come over here every so often, and turn into leftists.
My short criticism (due to lack of information so far, they are a fairly new board after all) of the /leftpol/ moderation is that they are not fundamentally better on this. I don't know the ideas of the BO over there on it, but I've seen at least one 'race & intelligence' thread locked and anchored. I don't trust their staff to be better on this sort of thing.
My last criticism is of Holla Forums + /leftpol/ users themselves, and it's in a similar vein to the last topic. It has to do with your criticisms of "identity politics". Why do they seem so contradictory and all over the place? I get that as individuals you all have different beliefs on it, but I can't help but notice. Here and there I see some of you calling your idpol beliefs "anti-idpol". For example, supporting the legacy of the Black Panthers while totally rejecting all aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement. Or as another example, responding to Holla Forumstards asking questions about or insulting you about liberal idpol with a simple "We're not liberals!" and an attachment explaining idpol and why you are against it. Isn't this at least somewhat reactionary? I know many of you are legitimately in favor of sexual and racial equality for instance. I know some of you are actually not, at least not to the extent one might expect for a leftist, or you may hold off-color beliefs about it. If you hold any of these beliefs, why can't you defend them instead of deflecting? Pretty much all of us can see that certain 'idpol' things like "muh more black woman CEOs" or the 'progressive stack' are anti-leftist, but many of you seem to hold other 'idpol' beliefs which you probably have serious reasons for. Do I fundamentally misunderstand you and/or identity politics?
One last thing: I do believe many of you have what it takes to analyze reactionary thought and refute it. Even if my word wall doesn't manage to convince the staff of anything, we should collaborate in some sort of general thread to refute standard right-wing talking points, including (and especially) the ones that they are not allowed to argue here, in easily digestible image-form. The right does this sometimes with pretty good results, I don't see why we can't do the same thing. The idea has been thrown around in the past on this board but never seems to have materialized properly. I suppose our OC thread might count, but a thread more specifically for this type of content would be more useful. I would be happy to contribute where I can. Some of you are fairly well-read, should you not be able to condense the ideas you're familiar with into a form your average person can understand?
Let me know what you think on all this. I don't usually post threads, especially not like this, I usually just shitpost, which I've caught a ban or two for in the past, which got me thinking about this sort of thing more than I already had been.