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Black Socialists of America
@BlackSocialists
, 8 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
Y’all ever hear about a couple of dudes we call “the Strasser brothers” (Otto and Gregor) who led a left-wing faction of the Nazi Party that followed a Völkisch (nationalist and racist) form of “socialism” back in the 1920s?

Wait, but it gets more interesting than that...
Their explicitly anti-capitalist “socialism” was for nationalization and “worker control” while still remaining an anti-Semitic and anti-Communist form of Nazism. And guess what?

Otto Strasser saw Marxism-Leninism as a softer, Russian form of “National Socialism.”

There’s more!
These dudes even advocated for cooperation with the Soviet Union and with the “anti-imperialist” peoples of the East (China and India, for example) against the “declining” West!
We need our comrades to be very clear and specific about what principles they stand on.

We need our comrades to be sticklers when it comes to intersectionality, democracy, decentralization, and internationalism.

Fascism is far too syncretic for us to move any other way.
PS: Some irony here is that the USSR would go on to support pro-Zionist foreign policy in the 1940s (thinking Israel would be a socialist bulwark against British hegemony), supporting the Partition of Palestine (and endorsing ethnic cleansing) + the creation of the Israeli state.
Oh, and USSR policy became openly anti-Semitic before Stalin died too, by the way.

The Eastern Bloc faced a wave of anti-Semitic purges in the 1950s (ex: the Night of the Murdered Poets: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_… and the Doctors’ Plot: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%2…).

Contradictions.
We need to be vigilant in checking that internalized oppression, y’all.

If we can’t do that, then fascists can and will exploit us and our movements.

Period.
Just so we’re clear...

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Black Socialists of America
@BlackSocialists
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin was a SNCC and BPP member who hijacked a plane to Cuba to evade prosecution for allegedly trying to kill a KKK leader before being extradited from Europe.

Here is a thread of highlights from his pamphlet, “Authoritarian Leftists: Kill the Cop in Your Head.”
“Where there is repression, there is resistance... period. Self-defense is a basic human right that we as Black people have exercised time and time again, both violent and non-violent; a dialectical and historical reality that has kept many of us alive up to this point.”
“Have any of you actually sat down and seriously thought about why there are so few of us in your organizations; and at the same time why non-white socialist/communist formations, particularly in the Black community, are so small and isolated? I have a few ideas...”
Read 36 tweets
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Black Socialists of America
@BlackSocialists
Kuwasi Balagoon was a BPP and BLA member, New Afrikan Anarchist, and Panther 21 defendant.

He was imprisoned for a robbery in 1981, and died in 1986.

Balagoon spoke to and represented much of our current approach.

Here are excerpts from prison letters of his that show how/why.
“I think we tend to use the term ‘Left’ too loosely.

Everybody left of Reagan ain’t ‘Left.’

Basic self-determination, the means of production being in the hands of the workers, should be the criteria of recognizing an ideology as ‘Left.’”
“The politics of the so-called ‘Left’ haven’t reached a lot of people, and their elitist airs are actually turnoffs — there’s not much mention of ‘serving the people.’”
Read 10 tweets
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Black Socialists of America
@BlackSocialists
Here is a thread of highlights from an iconic speech given by the first Black Socialist of America, Peter H. Clark.

The speech is titled, “Socialism: The Remedy for the Evils of Society.”

This man said this in 1877, y’all. 1877.
“Machinery and land will, in time, take the same course, and cooperation instead of competition will be the law of society. The miserable condition into which society has fallen has but one remedy, and that is to be found in Socialism.”
“Observe how ... communities pass from a condition of ... prosperity to ... depression and distress. Observe how continually these fluctuations occur; how the intervals between them grow shorter; how each one is more violent than the last, the distress produced more widespread.”
Read 15 tweets

Related threads

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↙↙↙ Ꮶ₳Яጦ₳ 🏴🏴🏴 VERITĀS ĀÉQUITĀS
@KarmaAteMyDogma
1.
#Fascist #Racist #Abusive #Manipulative #TwitterTrolls

This is what some will do to bait: “PsychoticTr4nny” is the username for this account. You can see their chosen name below.

If you comment on it, you are accused of dehumanizing or transphobia

archive.is/WGpaN
2.
...when the account is simply trolling to suspend users after being suspended many times themselves.

Them and their friends who desire to: “dox random liberals, fake tweets of them making racist remarks and get them fired”

Completely unacceptable.

archive.is/7wwDP
3.
These trolls' intentions are more nefarious than most.

The alt-right whines loudly about "conservative" censorship on Twitter.

Ironically, alt-right "Microchip" rolled out a strategy to attack the left using deplatforming in Oct. 2017.

archive.is/n5ykE
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Josefin Graef
@graef_j
#AfD’s lawsuit vs. #BfV still pending. Report examining AfD’s efforts against liberal-democratic basic order (FDGO) claims calling party ‘Test Case’ in public is justified b/c it refutes previous speculations about it as a ‘Suspected Case’. What else does it claim? THREAD 1/32
Report is based on 1,069 pages of publically accessible material from local, regional and federal level (party and election programmes, social media channels, websites, transcribed speeches); NO intelligence and parliamentary material. 2/32
Key principles for assessment: (1) Principle of ‘party freedom’ (Art. 21 Basic Law (‘Grundgesetz’, GG)) bound by the ‘militant democracy’ constituted by GG: FDGO does NOT necessarily assert itself through public opinion formation. (B II 1.1) 3/32
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David Walsh
@DavidAstinWalsh
So, there's a couple of things going on with @RealCandaceO's pretty, uh, QUESTIONABLE thoughts on Adolf Hitler and nationalism. (thread alert)
One, her comments are part of a broader political project on the American right to turn Hitler and the Nazis, Mussolini and the Italian fascists, and all sorts of unsavory right-wing dictators into far-left socialists.
This has a *long* history, dating back to the 1930s. You see the antecedents in the rhetoric of anti-communist conservatives all the time--yes, Hitler and Mussolini are authoritarian dictators, but in that sense they're no different than the Soviets.
Read 43 tweets
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The Muslim Turtle 🇺🇲☪️🐢
@theMuslimTurtle
Why were the Nazis able to come to power and what events lead to the allies involvement in the Second World War?

A thread:
In 1914, Adolf Hitler joins the Bavarian army and fights in World War 1.

On May 7, 1915, the British passenger ship RMS Lusitania is torpedoed by a German U-boat. The Lusitania had originally been planned to convert into a war ship if necessary and was painted dull grey.
However, during 1914/15, even though demand for passenger transport across the Atlantic bad been severely impacted. Many ships had been docked at Port or converted into hospital or supply ships, but the Lusitania remained in commercial operation and repainted into civilian livery
Read 37 tweets
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❄️Not Michael Wilson
@DropMikeWilson
twitter.com/i/moments/9541…
In February 2017, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from a local park named for him & in June they voted to rename it “Emancipation Park.” nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/…
On May 13, 2017, #WhiteSupremacist Richard Spencer led a rally to protest the removal of the statue. His protesters held torches near the statue (as seen in photo used later for August #UTR) nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/…
Read 52 tweets
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Shrikanth Krishnamachary
@shrikanth_krish
India became a republic in 1950. And held its first parliamentary elections in 1952. What was so momentous about this event was that a country largely illiterate and unused to democratic process transitioned to universal adult suffrage in a manner unlike any other country.
Close to 80% of the Adult population in India was illiterate at the time of the first general election. And yet every Indian was given the right to vote across the country. A very very radical transition
This is in sharp contrast to say a country like UK, that was NOT a democracy throughout the 16th/17th / 18th centuries - when it had its great Industrial Revolution and managed to lift millions above mere subsistence living for the first time in human history
Read 57 tweets

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