Thread by @therubykid

A comrade has sent me a screenshot of a Facebook post by a Labour Party activist in their area (who’s not, as I understand it, a Stalinist) which links to Paul’s tweet below and says “why doesn’t Paul Mason just come out and say ‘I’m in the AWL’”? Let’s unpack that for a sec...

I don’t want to blow it out of proportion, it’s just one person on Facebook, but it is consistent with a method of argument I’ve encountered several times before, so it merits a response.

Firstly... thanks, I guess; if the message is “the AWL = the people I most associate with going on about how Stalinism is bad”, then yeah, cool. I won’t argue with that. That’s definitely a big part of what we do.

But what seems to be implied is that saying “Stalin was bad and it was wrong to make alliances with Hitler” is some kind of marginal or extreme position that Mason could only conceivably be articulating if he was part of a small Trotskyist group.

Apparently we really are at the point on the Labour left where some people, who aren’t themselves Stalinists, are happy to go along with the idea that historical affinity with Stalinism should be the default/mainstream, and dissenting from that makes you some sort of outlier.

It’s a subtle attempt to ideologically and rhetorically bully other people from speaking out against Stalinism in the movement, for fear of being tarred by association with the dreaded Trots.

It’s also illustrative of a culture of apolitical distortion and lying: Paul Mason is manifestly not in the AWL, as even a cursory glance at any number of his our our basic positions on a whole range of issues, will make clear.

Political critique goes out the window, replaced by a kind of tabloid demagogy. But to make “Stalin was bad” the argument you’re trying to place beyond the pale... wow. Kinda bizarre, kinda worrying.

But, also, as I say, weirdly... kinda cool. If people want to designate us as the official voice of anti-Stalinism on the Labour left, be my guest. Follow @workersliberty for a regular dose of anti-Stalinist, revolutionary socialist goodness.