1. Your individual health is important. Take a step back from theory. Making fun of Maoists does nothing for you, don’t waste energy and health on them. Take a step back and focus on humanity, and what it means to be human. Learn about active struggles in other parts of the world. Focus less on theory and memes and breadtube videos. I recommend the Tri-Continental, it’s a magazine directed by Vijay Prashad and it covers struggles all over the world. I like to read it because it helps me empathize with concrete issues, people engaged in struggle teach us many things. Theory is not abstract, it must be applied to the world around us.

2. You do not know “Sakai Thought”. A lot of ills have come from too many people only reading a few paragraphs of Settlers, whether they come away thinking positively or negatively of the text. There should be no feeling of guilt from that text, it is only a study of the history of the labor movement in the US and why it has failed. The book cuts down the mythology of the movement in the US, which a lot of the mythology serves to cover up the impact of racism and sell to the black and indigenous workers the myth that freedom for white workers is the same as freedom for all. Just, read the book. The only take away I see is that white workers, who do not naturally have an understanding of racism, assume that race isn’t a class construct, which can lead them to the reactionary position that destroying racism is outside of the class struggle. Men, inherently make the same mistake thinking that combating sexism is outside of the class struggle. Stretch this line of thinking to all oppressed groups. Oppression in Capitalist society is all within the context of class struggle, especially the settler construct. Those who ask for Unity without these things being addressed, without advancing all struggles together, only ask for more backs to step on while crawling out of the bucket.

3. We are human beings, we labor for fun. If capitalism did not exist people would still be making video essays on shows, competing on speedruns, playing sports, dancing, crafting outfits, making beer, etc. Capitalism has created the environment we live in, but we are all still human, in any environment we do humanly things. Cherish it rather than hate it, people deep into concrete struggles still like to enjoy life, haven’t you seen the videos of Fidel crossing up scrubs?

i’m sorry that you experienced something so unfortunate and uncomfortable. i hope you’re okay. i have a few thoughts for you:

1. sakai is fine, but frankly it doesn’t seem like a fantastic work to me. yes, it says a lot of things that people need to hear, but it just doesn’t seem very intersectional to me. there’s no monopoly on exploitation; you can be white and also be exploited. of course, whiteness generally implies a higher level of exploitation

2. socialism is not only more correct but feels better when it comes from a place of love. you should be able to love yourself and your class(es). apart from being able to distinguish the progressive forces in society, this love should even extend to your enemies to some extent because we can see the amazing potential for a unified humanity of which everyone will be a part.

3. it can be easy to get bogged down by the infinite knowledge of current events, or of economic exploitation and its horrors, or from alienation/pain/disability ultimately caused by capitalism. i think it’s necessary to have a correct philosophical foundation first and foremost, in order to give yourself a good framework to digest that infinite information. that framework should also be applied to your own personal life, which is the only way it can be solidified but also the only way you can truly understand yourself and your woes, thus providing you with revolutionary optimism. to the extent that you can, study dialectical materialism!

Sorry to hear that you had a breakdown. Other things were going on in my life at the same time but I also got very cranky when I first learned about Marxism. It naturally causes a lot of cognitive dissonance and can make you feel separated from everyone around you. This does wear off, the more you learn.

Most of the bit that will not wear off is the bit you get from engaging with negative environments, such as Reddit and Twitter. There are some gems on both platforms, but not many. Reddit (as with Twitter) has too many feds and bad faith liberals (of all stripes) poisoning the well.

Sounds like you need a break and to take some time to rest. Avoid Reddit and read wholesome books, instead. If you want to read more about Marxism, read Marxists. They’re a lot more hopeful and positive than the online (Western) left. If you have questions, etc, ask on Lemmygrad, instead, as you’re likely to get a more constructive response. But ask questions that do not begin with a ‘truth’ that is contentious, as people will argue with you.

If you want to know what any theorist says, read their own work directly. You shouldn’t dismiss theorists without first reading their work for yourself.

Be cautious with summaries, especially on Reddit. Most of the time when people summarise anyone, they’re being selective and must emphasize some points over others. This can distort the original message.

With any radical thought, the risk is high that any commentary is intended to distort the message. If that writer is a fed or other brand of anti-communist, they want you to be confused and angry, and to snap. As Sakai himself argues in his little book on security, the way to spot feds is to look out for ‘bad politics’. The best way to achieve this is to know good politics, and you get this from reading as much of the good stuff as you can.

This approach will also help you to avoid petty arguments, which is good because these are pointless and will not be good for your mental health. I wouldn’t really bother arguing with self proclaimed online ‘Maoists’, for example. And I’d caution against watching ‘dunking’ videos, unless it’s an audiobook version of Marx, Engels, or, Lenin. Almost all the fringe branches of Marxism are irrelevant, so I more or less ignore then.

I’m not going to get into too many of the details, here, because I don’t think it would be helpful for your mental health for me to even appear to be arguing with you. But as you asked how to stop hating, I can say something more about Sakai.

Sakai is worth reading. Sakai himself does not say to hate the local proletariat. It’s far more subtle than that. Indeed, he’s spent his life organising with people in North America (so far as I can tell). He wouldn’t do that if he thought there was zero revolutionary potential in North America. Settlors persuasively argues that the US did not begin with a white proletariat. Whether there is a white (or any) proletariat in the US today is another question.

If you search Lemmygrad for ‘Labour Aristocracy’, you’ll see that there has been some debate as to whether there is a ‘proletariat’ anywhere in the global north. If not, that does not mean that people in the global north should not organise or cannot be revolutionary; it means that different tactics and strategies are needed.

Honestly, just remember that most people and even most MLs don’t take J. Sakai that seriously.

We don’t even know J. Sakai’s credentials and others have cast doubt on the validity of his citations.

I’ve noticed problems with his citations and quotes 'cause I’ve read some of the original text.

Take heart, comrade: the proletariat is multiracial and you have to not give Maoists the time of day.

Third-worldism started as a Maoist invention so start from there.

I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but how can you claim you’ve fallen under that field of thought when you’ve only read a chapter or two at most of it? Something about that statement just doesn’t smell right; though you have my condolences for hitting that breakpoint.

Maybe it’s where I come from myself, where I’m currently at (surrounded by white latté left and redneck paramilitaries), or the fact that we still don’t have a modern Black nationalist line of proper theoretical thought for this era yet, but I refuse to discard Settlers myself. I stand firmly at a crossroads of 'if this nation’s proletariat wants me to believe that they even can break the shackles around their wrists, they need to show me so; show and prove." Til then, I’m fundamentally incapable of believing it-- and beyond that, pseudonymous publishing has been at the heart of rebellion since time immemorial; but crackers want me to discard one of the most salient, timely publications I’ve ever read with regard to wrongs done and how to handle them in this age just bc it makes them uncomfy? No sir/ma’am/otherwise.

Yes it seems that the proletariat of the imperial core are propagandized against the rest of their human compatriots at the moment. Violence is a tool to defend something worth dying for. If you are angry build something. If you are just by yourself, build something small. Ask others to join you and build something small that meets the needs of your community. Become a person that has a dialectical relationship with your community. People can be misinformed when they don’t have a dialectical relationship with something. If they experience it themselves directly, the falsehoods become revealed as falsehoods. Build something and help others and if they see that you are one of the good people, some may laugh at you, but others may join you because they are alienated and want to be part of something too. That way, when the shit hits the fan, your community will look to you, someone that cares about the community, as this system collapses. Your actions will speak louder than words on a fed infested server. So, unionize your workplace if you can, or set up a mutual aid network, join a local party if you can. Your anger comes from impotence. If you find yourself lacking in accomplishing what you want to accomplish, then turn that anger to become what a person representing communism ought to be. By focusing inward to increase your skills, physical health, and mental health, you can build something in this world. By building something in this world, you can contribute to communism. By contributing more to communism than western Maoists, you will have no reason to care at all what they say.

A YouTube link was detected in your post. Here are links to the same video on Invidious, which is a YouTube frontend that protects your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• invidious.weblibre.org
• inv.vern.cc