Thread by @BlackSocialists

This clip is a huge mess, not only because we have over a century’s worth of history illustrating how fascists court and work with certain tendencies amongst the so-called “Left,” but because almost the entire discourse in the clip below is in the scope of electoral politics too.

https://twitter.com/SocialistMMA/status/1399417270384873490

Red-Brownism seems to be reduced by this crowd to a nonsense idea of “left-wingers” working with “right-wingers” because they’re knowingly “right-wingers in disguise,” and their idea of “Left” includes left-Liberal forces (Social Democrats) in and around the Democratic Party too?

Point 1:

When we say “Left,” we refer to the revolutionary Left.

This “Left” is concerned primarily with labor and land, and supplanting the capitalist system with other systems.

The revolutionary “Left” is mostly made up of Anarchists, or authoritarians of various tendencies.

Both Anarchists and authoritarians want the system as it stands now destroyed, and claim to want the same ends, but they diverge in extreme ways regarding means.

While Anarchists resist statism, top-down organization, and hierarchy, authoritarian tendencies embrace these things.

That said, here’s Point 2:

Discussing the divide between Anarchists and authoritarian tendencies (Leninists, Maoists, Marxist-Leninists, etc.) amongst the so-called “revolutionary Left” is not the same as discussing the divide between your average Liberals and Conservatives.

If you keep conflating revolutionary Left forces with left-Liberal forces in “progressive” discourse around “Liberals vs. Conservatives” and “poor and working-class people coming together,” you will never find coherency or clarity on what the “Red-Brown alliance” conversation is.

Now that we’ve made some distinctions, here’s Point 3:

Fascists can and will operationalize whatever they can get their hands on, and authoritarian tendencies considered “revolutionary Left” are, next to Conservatives of all stripes, the easiest targets for a number of reasons.

Authoritarian “Left” tendencies aren’t actually to the “extreme Left,” but are instead, well... right-wing.

The thread linked below gets into this via the “horseshoe theory” discourse, but let us give a very light overview of the connections ourselves...

https://twitter.com/bobfrombrockley/status/1106149684668710913?s=21

Authoritarian “Left” tendencies tend to support nationalism, statism, nation-statism, state capitalism (state control of the economy), top-down and centralized organization, cult of personality, and much more.

These are all things fascists are typically fans of too...

Not only this, but because many left-Liberals (“progressives” or “Social Democrats”) believe in party politics and welfare state capitalism (on top of statism in general), there is a historical pipeline from the bourgeois, Social Democrat position to authoritarian tendencies too.

This is not the same exact thing as saying that authoritarian “Leftists” are themselves the same as fascists; what this is saying is that there is significant strategical and perceptive overlap between authoritarian “Leftists” and fascists that fascists frequently operationalize.

There is a reason Mussolini admired Lenin’s NEP so much.

There is a reason why the “left wing” of the Nazi Party admired “Bolshevism” and frequently praised it before they were wiped out by Hitler, and why Hitler and the Nazis operationalized “socialist” rhetoric to get support.

The core thing (amongst many other things) that all of these forces have historically held in common is a top-down, statist conception of “systems change” (really just regime change) that is heavily dependent upon strong personalities or leaders.

These days, Red-Brownism looks less like some right-wingers bringing “Leftists” into KKK meetings or something, and more like a convenient overlap of values and aims that, on the extreme fringes, leads to more explicit and clear partnerships between open fascists and “Leftists.”

More insidious than this, however, are the more subtle, but much less fringe ways in which fascists operationalize broader discontent with Neoliberalism in the “West” amongst authoritarian “Leftists” and Social Democrats to essentially pull them into their geopolitical positions.

It’s not hard to do when you have so many supposedly “Left” tendencies that essentially operate under the implicit assumption that borders, nation-states, representative “democracy” (as opposed to direct democracy), top-down/hierarchical organization, and more are legitimate.

This brings us to Point 4:

Red-Brownism at its most outright looks like the Strasserist tendency (not super popular).

But it’s at its most effective in ambiguous, ideological overlap contextualized under vague, anti-“West” sentiment and top-down organization for power grabs.

For example:

How can the head of PSL – Brian Becker – host a podcast along with ex-CIA that’s openly funded by the Russian government, and frequently bring on one of Aleksandr Dugin’s closest associates (Mark Sleboda)?

What do all of these forces get from one another?

Think...

Just because forces are against the same thing does not mean that they are for the same thing.

And just because forces claim different labels does not mean that their methods or values differ all that much.

So a key question becomes:

“Who has the upper hand in a power vacuum?”

This leads us to Point 5:

Right-wingers and fascists currently have the upper hand globally; this means in the event there is destabilization and collapse, the most reactionary forces are the most equipped to take advantage of any power vacuums that open up.

And they know this.

Aleksandr Dugin frequently comes up in these discussions, not because he’s in some crazy position of power these days, but because of how influential his works have been amongst those in power (ex: Leonid Ivashov in Russia), and fascist forces worldwide.

https://twitter.com/blacksocialists/status/1102475483265024000?s=21

Forces in repressive governments opposed to the “West” in rhetoric – and under command of ruling-class interests amongst global centers of finance capital – push their own fascist agendas of homogenization and ethnic cleansing that rely on particular geopolitical arrangements.

These geopolitical arrangements are not always opposed to “Western” interests, because these interests are dictated by capital, and capital – along with the ruling class – is global.

Take U.S. arms deals with Turkey before Trump pulled troops out of Northeast Syria, for example.

But where these geopolitical arrangements are opposed to “Western” interests, certain state forces (ex: PRC) won’t hesitate to use Left rhetoric or mythos via state or public-sector media (or front orgs) to reel people into defending their aims (sold as “the people’s” interests).

This hasn’t been more obvious than with the Russian state and their use of state and/or public-sector media.

RT, Redfish, In the NOW, Soapbox, and plenty of other platforms continue to push Russia’s geopolitical line and authoritarian ideologies behind “Left” rhetoric today.

Now this point covers the phenomenon of campism – “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” as geopolitics – but it is most relevant for our discussion on Red-Brownism because it is through discourse on geopolitical matters that certain fascists find their most fertile ground.

As it has been implied above:

When a “campist” outlook is taken (as opposed to an internationalist or intercommunalist outlook that rejects nation-states), fascists aligned with state forces claiming to be against the “West” and using vaguely “Left” rhetoric are able to use you.

Because fascists worldwide are generally closer in proximity to state power and make up a considerable portion of state forces, they seek ruptures that can allow them to more aggressively insert their agendas, and via organizational means that align with authoritarian tendencies.

Both fascists and authoritarian “Leftists” are all about the power grab from “above.”

Social Democrats or “progressives” only really conceive of “radical change” as happening from “above.”

All these forces stay close to matters of “above” with dreams of imposing from “above.”

Fascists and authoritarian “Leftists” historically tend to be more prepared to use violent means to attain power “above,” and extremely similar organizational means as well.

But they claim to do what they do for different ends.

So why would real “Leftists” align with fascists?

On one hand, you have an expression of radically different “ends” in terms of what people are for, and on the other hand, you have the reality that right-wingers and fascists have the upper hand globally.

So why, as a “revolutionary Leftist,” would you give them more advantages?

It’s at this juncture that we have a real convo about Red-Brownism, and the answer to the question above goes beyond similarities in shared values or ideas around power.

It goes into geopolitical particulars tied up in Cold-War-era battle lines and the origins of fascism itself.

Much of this is covered extensively in the long reading featured below (essentially a book), but we don’t expect the people we’re responding to here to necessarily read it, so let’s move on to the final point.

libcom.org/library/invest…

Point 6:

No serious Leftist with anti-authoritarian politics is seriously suggesting that Leftists shouldn’t be making good-faith appeals to non-Leftists of all sorts as a means to bring them into Left ideas and strategy.

The line is simply drawn at “uniting” with fascists...

“Uniting” with fascists means forging strategical alliances with them as a means to confront Neoliberal forces, or bringing them in close and providing them with strategical advantages as a result.

We are not talking about Liberal and Conservative politicians agreeing on policy.

We are talking about poor and working-class people of various political tendencies operating outside of the government as a means to supplant the government and the state as they stand now with some other system, and how they relate to each other in a struggle for systems change.

There is no doubt that poor and working-class white people in the U.S. must be appealed to on matters of both class and identity if we want Socialism, but there is an issue when supposedly “Left” forces are cool with reproducing certain hierarchies non-Leftists are currently for.

It is in the reproduction of some of these hierarchies – and social hierarchies in particular – within “revolutionary Left” spaces, orgs, and movements that we will continue to see inroads with fascists of all sorts created, even with all of the obvious contradictions on display.

Just gonna throw this relevant thread in here to sort of hit the point home.

https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists/status/1400676296020082691?s=20

Here’s a thread response packed with receipts for folks in denial and disbelief around what we stated regarding Mussolini’s admiration for Lenin’s NEP (the connections there are even worse than that), and elements around the “left wing” of the Nazi Party.

https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists/status/1401390580316487689?s=20