This whole section is glowy.

This is a right wing 4chan term with racist history, for your future reference.

I don’t give af that you don’t give af.

You literally asked what I wanted to be done about gun culture. I think you are losing track of what we are even talking about because you’re preoccupied with me, personally.

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but the nations conditions doesn’t care about your feelings on this matter when clearly the cultures and conditions formed under them need to be infiltrated by

You’re describing, vaguely, tailism and entryism. This nearly always fails and you’re not going to be the exception. I don’t think you understood my point, either. I’m happy to clarify.

The Left, which has historically been militant and armed, needs a return to that and we happen to be in one of the nations with a pro-gun culture that needs to be seized by the Left and oppressed communities.

Like I said, arms are a tool. You are very focused on one tool among many necessary tools. It’s as if someone came up to you and said that holding rallies was the issue, people on the left just don’t hold enough rallies, historically we had lots of them, so we are the rally holders, send us all your info!

Now, I do think that arming is essential, but it has to be with everything else, it must be a part of major formations. And at this stage, infosec and opsec are a more valuable tool than learning how to shoot a stationary target real well, and your target-shooting club is doing bad infosec even though it doesn’t need to be. This is not an either-or, which you have mistakenly assumed. But your priorities are reversed.

Literally every single organization since the Bolsheviks kept membership lists to keep in contact with people.

The Bolsheviks were arrested and forced into hiding for years, in part facilitated by these practices. They did not sufficiently prepare for the terror. They then adopted quite different practices with cells and false names and some very nice crimes. Though I should note that I mentioned this as a similarity between your org and SRA, a liberal anticommunist org with which you compared yourselves.

Your obsession with this is counter to history, efficiency and material reality.

Now I’m obsessed! The theatrics and escalation continue!

PS lists are an essential part of organizing. Square that with your narrative. How could I possibly think this, you must ask.

As someone who heads the topic of infosec & OPSEC, has wrote about it, and teaches people about it, I say this firmly when I say you have not even the slightest idea what you’re talking about here. There is almost nothing you can get from that photo or any of our content because we go through a rigorous process to keep it that way.

Your “About” page lists a city and state and your front page shows a specific indoor range. I could likely find that location with 1 local person and a couple days.

We are a national org who are building cells and training people outside our primary state. The Maoist “form a local cell and build from there” doesn’t work in conditions of this size and stature

This doesn’t make sense. You don’t have cells if this is how you recruit. This information is clearly central and little care has gone into it.

The idea of forming a local group and growing from there is hardly unique to Maoists. I have no idea what you are trying to reference. Nor do I know what you mean by conditions or stature. Are you referring to material conditions or something else? It can be difficult to tell whether you are using jargon incorrectly or being vague.

PS I know very well how little it takes to call one’s org a national org. What are the chances one of you moved and wanted to keep the work up?

As we have done before because of our involvement across the US, “normal organizing” isn’t just the fancy idea you have in your head

I have no idea what this means.

its everything that organizes people online and offline to do events, build programs, fight for victories people want, and so on.

I am telling you to organize through direct, in-person, organizing conversations. Every competent communist org does internal trainings on how to do this. I am contrasting this to advertising to collect PII, given the nature of your org to attract attention. In order to have organizing conversations, you need to get people to meet with you. For this to be meaningful, you need to embed in community, authentically, which is the polar opposite of atomized internet fishing for contacts. Because the actions you organize have to be locally relevant and be something that can build into some definition of mass support.

We have far more skin in the game than you think and I’m not here to appeal to a random who came at us negatively.

You have plenty of the skin in the game just by being reckless. This was never in question. But it remains careless.

“who came at us negatively” oh dear.

We aren’t a communist party, we aren’t running for elections or local boards - we aren’t limited in how we present ourselves or do the liberal “polite politics,” we are militant and keep it that way.

So, you have no discipline. No concept of organized and consistent external messaging, people just say what they want when they want and consequently this thread is how you end up conversing with people and representing yourselves.

This approach is actually what liberals and anarchists subscribe to, focusing on this freedom for the individual over the collective project. This works fine for them because they aren’t a threat to the capitalist order, they can hem and haw all they’d like and the feds actually love that they spend so much time on pointless infighting. And communists tend to recognize the value of discipline.

The organization has discipline, yes, but this is solely, as one of the heads of leadership, my response to you.

You just described how it doesn’t have external messaging discipline, then said it does have discipline, and are now trying to tell me that you are only representing yourself and not your org? Amazing.

I have the same tone and approach given to me by both the old Leninist vanguard who taught me and the veterans I’ve been around and organized with against war.

Hanging out, seemingly without shame, with war criminals may explain the interest in tailism.

I don’t personally care about your tone, it doesn’t affect me except when I laughed at a few things, but as I have repeatedly said, it suggests an unseriousness and dysfunction that mean people should stay far away from your organization.

PS calling yourselves Leninists but not being part of a communist party is strictly incoherent.

I don’t know you, you came at us harsh, and you’re upset I matched energies.

I did not come at you harsh and I am not upset. You have the ways that we are coming across reversed, in fact. I provided valid criticism and, sure, did not qualify it with praise or guesses about good faith efforts, and you have responded defensively: escalatory, irrationally, losing track of the conversation, spreading falsehoods about my positions. My audience in my first comment was not you at all, but the readers, because this site has many unorganized people who might not spot the recklessness. They would be much better-served by joining a larger communist party and independently learning to shoot.

And as I said earlier, there is literally nothing to distinguish you from a comrade or a cop; and I’ve dealt with plenty online & offline people, and factions in my previous organization, to know who is genuine and who gives off weird ass vibes.

Do you believe that petty and baseless personal attacks will make people think your organization is serious and trupointless

I ain’t replying to all this because it would be pointless with a random who isn’t even engaging in a left-wing space like anyone else.

You wrote quite a lot, though. Are you sure it’s pointless? I even had to split my reply in two to be able to post it. And what do you mean by not engaging in a left-wing space like anyone else?

The way you act on here, which is the little I can go by, makes me believe this is a fed account just trying to waste my time and further influence random viewers in this site because the feds know we’re by and large heavily influenced by random people who are assumed “Left”

I think you just didn’t like that I described your “put in your personal info here” promotional commie gun web page fed behavior, so now I must be defensively fedjacketed.

Nothing of what you’ve said in these two comments was “comradely ciriticism,” it was contrarian, dismissive and condescending.

My original comment noted the problematic nature of the post and that it did not inspire confidence that your small org calls its leadership a politburo. It is a silly thing, as I explained. Those criticisms were met with irrational defenses and you have ignored my further responses to them.

This is not a game or an internet slap fight, creating and keeping these lists for your kind of organization can get people arrested and killed. Your responses are not taking this seriously, they are simply defensive and, as I explained, imply that your org either lacks discipline or collectively chooses to present itself this way, which very much means anyone reading this should stay far away from this organization and not give them your information. They are not even careful about external messaging, so don’t expect them to be careful with your personal details that associate you with communists that can shoot. In addition, they seem to readily personally attack rather than productively deal with criticism, i.e. take unprincipled action that undermines the project.

I have provided your org with criticism and advice in this context. You have said some confused things in response and even dabbled in some bad faith accusations to try and put words in my mouth. I have only condescended to the extent that it is obvious you do need advice, as your org needs to correct itself along the lines of what I have pointed out, and in criticizing some statements that suggest a naïveté in communist organizing and concepts.

Additionally, criticism is done in private among the group itself, as is seen from theory & past examples of communist organizations. Otherwise every little outside criticism can comes from both comrade and cops infiltrating circles online.

Your behavior in this thread suggests organizational dysfunction (external messaging disciplibe) and knee-jerk defensive posturing. This is why I am lecturing you on the importance of criticism and accepting it in a healthy way: the opposite is in evidence.

If we was to have some kind of formal communication and met and knew the work we’ve done, then your criticism would be welcomed - otherwise you’re a stranger online, nothing to distinguish you from an actual comrade or a cop besides the comments, tone, or posts you leave.

Think about your logic and how it applies to a random website asking for your personal information where a small org says it has a politburo. Do you trust that page and those people?

Anyways, you are just making excuses for why you don’t have to listen to valid criticism from a comrade. You’re free to ignore it, of course. You didn’t even have to reply at all in the first place. Trying to litigate my status as a comrade is certainly its own choice for how to represent your organization.

The only thing that makes it appear as “comradely” is that latter comment regarding it because it’s a softer tone than the rest of your statements across both comments.

My tone is consistent, actually. There was just more to respond to in the second comment.

Yes there is and its well documented, and while they may vary, they don’t vary by much if you’ve done any kind of reading.

No there isn’t. There is no reference to “the theory & praxis method” for anyone to get. The concepts of theory and praxis are basic to communist thought, but not some single “theory & praxis method”.

And they do actually vary quite a bit. There are various strains of communist and they choose different people and concepts and methods to prioritize. MLMs and MLs and Trotskyists can all be diametrically opposed on core issues like, say, organized labor in their locales, and whether they should be armed, or what imperialism is, or what is most important and worthy of focus. You have already, by your participation in your org and defense of this post, decided in what you think is most important and what is much less important, and I have strongly disagreed.

You’re going to be targeted for being a communist in general regardless if you’re online or offline, militant or pacifist.

Ah, the evergreen thought process of not taking infosec or opsec seriously. “We are all on lists, so no need to account for how exposed we are”. This is naturally contradicted immediately by, say, proclaiming one’s org to be full of cybersecurity experts who account for information challenges. Or covering your faces in your promotional pictures. Why’d you all do that? Aren’t you on the lists anyways?

Anyways, I think you actually forgot what we were talking about, as you didn’t address it.

The options is either stay in the shadows and work with a tiny circle with limited reach, don’t organize at all, or be active and use all tools available. You’re arguing for the first which is backwards in this day and age.

“Use all tools available” or stay in the shadows with limited reach? How about you just do what I already recommended: skip the website that comes across as a PII honeypot and do direct organizing, growing through the sustainable method used by all successful communists.

You call to a past that has moved tf on. Either advance with time or stay irrelevant.

Your approach is not any more modern than a 90s web page with forms, but it is still a bad one for a communist gun club and I have explained why.

There is multiple ways to limit using personal information from aliases, burner numbers, privacy focused emails, etc.

Your website asks for first name, last name, phone number, email, and “social media account”. If you think the responsible thing to do is to use anonymized methods, then you should change your website.

As schizo as many of us in the cyber security Left are, we aren’t anywhere to the level you are, you need to chill.

Ableism aside, those familiar with the tech tend to avoid it outside of what is necessary for organizing. There is a reason we create front groups for less spicy actions. Those can have names and lists etc. For anything spicy, you avoid this, limit it, protect it carefully, etc. It only takes one undisciplined person in leadership to make everyone exposed, best to limit the ways that can happen.

But really, you are justifying a lack of seriousness and care for your comrades. As I already explained, this is a common blind spot for alleged cybersecurity experts. They spend their focus on how to make tech secure and can easily miss when not to use tech or collect certain info. Cybersecurity itself is more about making sure granny’s bank login isn’t stolen by a MITM or browset bug. It’s not really infosec and doesn’t qualify you to be good at infosec. The fact that I need to explain this is concerning.

PS I pointed out issues re: data storage.

You have no idea the amount of data the state collects from the average person that it can’t functionally comb through even with AI as whistleblowers have said.

I’m not sure how you think this is a defense, it actually sounds like you are justifying being careless. Also “AI” is trash and entirely unnecessary for the relevant threat models.

If you expect to be perpetually anonymous in a state like the US where even hackers know that’s impossible, I don’t know what to tell you. The most we can do is be as anonymous as possible to force the state to exhaust resources.

You’re not going to exhaust them. They play with funny money. Intelligence types don’t succeed due to efficient competency, they just get to constantly fail and keep trying. Financial and institutional resources are where we are vulnerable, not them. What we have is the ability to organize, take action, and make it harder for them to come after us.

You have far more to worry about from the fascist groups working in the dark than you do the state because if the state wants to find out something they will exhaust resources to try and do so.

You should be concerned about right wing groups as well, yes. But you’re again wrong about the state. Why would they need to exhaust resources when they can just subpoena your cloud host or raid your house? They love it and have infinite resources to do it.

Additionally, not doing any kind of interview with people to know what you’re dealing with is exactly why the Left has an issue with infiltration because you mfs keep arguing to not vet people coming into things and wonder why shit goes south.

You are just talking to people in your head at this point. And you sound like someone juxtaposing yourself to “the Left”, saying “you mfs” rather than “we”. I assume this comment is just written accidentally and not a tacit admission to being against “the Left”, strangely capitalized.