In my opinion, the people like Maupin, Jackson Hinkle, and especially the Infrared YouTube channel (people like Haz) have not engaged in the debate in good faith AT ALL.
But moreover, I do believe that patriotism, certainly “American patriotism”, has no place in the ML movement. I believe in the working-class, but I wouldn’t want to muddy the waters with cheap appeals to what would essentially be working-class conservatism and chauvinism. I won’t say much more than the fact that my comrades and I have been talking about this extensively and all agree: decolonization comes first and foremost. Landback is a must and many people, of all races and ethnicities, have been hurt by colonialism and neo-colonialism as well as imperialism both within and outside the United States, the original indigenous inhabitants being a prime example.
I hope I haven’t said anything to offend anyone, but I support Landback and decolonialism. I even originally became an ML in part due to Berta Caceres’s murder in Central America. In the CPUSA, Browder was very controversial and was fought against as he became more and more unpopular (until he was finally ousted, in huge part because of his “Americanism”). SO even then: the issue of “American patriotism” was suspect. I think that we live in a much more radical and interesting time where decolonization must take center stage now more than ever before.
That Haz would say that “indigenous peoples” or Native Americans have no place in the ML movement is folly; we should be doing more to not only comfort them but make us more available to them as a movement, not decry them or anything.
Anyways, enough Twitter drama. I took a break from most social media and I feel much better now. But I think Maupin/Haz (Infrared)/Jackson Hinkle have belittled and side-stepped the issues at stake, from what I’ve seen of their content.
It does the wider communist movement a disservice when people claiming to be CPUSA members (who obviously aren’t or can’t be traced back to in the databases) and people who certainly are CPUSA members (albeit, from what we can tell, a minority so far in the organization) try to appeal to right-wingers and sometimes even believe in their nonsense. Well, I can’t say much more about the organization other than what’s on display on Twitter, but I do think that one should be open about all this.
Welp, that’s all I have for now.
I don’t go to twitter, so I have no idea what this is about, but I do have something to add/talk about regarding patriotism in the western left.
If you look at Patriotist movements around the world, many of them tend to favour anti-imperialism, self-determination, and mirror Nationalist sentiments, but in a more softcore sense. Patriotist movements aren’t inherently bad, just as Nationalist ones aren’t, but when we look at them in a western context, we see a strong political bias from them. But, who woulda guessed the people who colonized and imperialized the globe would have a far-right sentiment when talking about protecting themselves from outside influences.
In the US, before the red scare, patriotism and American Socialisms went hand in hand often. It wasn’t uncommon to see far-left organisations of all stripes make calls to patriotism to further ingrain left-wing sentiment within their target audience. As well, in the modern world, there is an argument that’s worth mentioning that calls to patriotism still have value. But, if we look at the left-wing organisations in the US that make calls to patriotism today, you’ll find that it’s primarily right-DSA aligned groups. Or, to put it in twitter liberal terms, socially woke but economically broke aligned groups. I.E. they care about social issues, but don’t care about fighting capitalism passed the aesthetic of saying “capitalism bad”
The American Iron Front is the group I see making the biggest appeals to patriotism, they’ve put an American flag on their logo, “American” is in their name, they constantly talk about ‘patriotic duty’. They’re essentially what happens when you fetishise the WWII western front, then suddenly Nazis show back up… which is literally what’s happened and why they exist. But, post-red scare, you can’t make calls to American patriotism without also making calls to anti-communism, so of course every left-wing group who tries to use patriotism also uses anti-communism. Which is where their “left-wing” gets a hole.
Groups in the US that use patriotism inherently lean towards the right, and anyone who tries to use patriotism for a fascist, imperialist, and colonialist country as a means of inspiring left-wing sentiment is only using left-wing aesthetic to push pro-capitalist narratives.
This 100%… the patriotism of imperialized nations can’t really be equated with those of the imperial nations. It’d be as wild to our ears as being “patriotic” to the Roman empire, or British empire.
I always ask people: what exactly is there to be patriotic about in the US experiment?
Its almost always either the multiculturalism trope, which Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz gets into here, or labor struggles, which were deemed completely unpatriotic at the time and had several red scares against them. There were even a few “patriotic socialist” movements in the US in the 1920s that were racist as hell, and excluded non-whites or other immigrant groups.
Yeah very well said. I don’t know since when but the defining feature of the USA is anticommunism and even in its formation the core values are antithetical to communist ideals. I cannot envision a socialist USA even if I can envision of a socialist India. Patriotism towards USA makes no sense to me because of that.