New article: 🧵

I am pleased to release a working version of my "Members of Leftist Organizations, 1848-2024" dataset.

It tells a story of the multiple rises & falls of the organized American left, spanning from social democrats to anarchists: This is the first time such data has ever been compiled.

That's because the topic is messy and enormous. The data spans 176 years and ~250 notable organizations, using 2600 estimates from 1100 sources.

How messy? Here's what the data looks like without the 170 smallest orgs:

it's actually absurd that "Democrats don't pursue power, don't want to win, and don't have political beliefs" has somehow become Mainstream Leftist Thought

like, this idea just dissolves on contact with reality 🧵 This idea often comes up around abortion

"It's all political theater, Democrats just use abortion to win, so they will never protect it"

If true, why have literally all Dem-run states actively expanded reproductive rights?

Are people just unaware of this fact? 🧵

tankies are *already* calling Guyana a US puppet state that is "provoking" Venezuelan invasion

the "98%" figure is completely false -- currently, Guyana gets 50% of the profits and 2% of the revenue from the offshore drilling firms

Guyana is an extremely poor country with little leverage against megacorporations -- but it should fight for a better deal, as Brazil did!

James Somerton has outright deleted his Patreon

prior to deletion, James earned about $170,000 per year from 4,050 fans

Less than an hour after the Hbomberguy video dropped, Somerton took a defensive tone:

Somerton posted that he was "shocked" to "come under target from a significantly larger creator".

Somerton also claimed that "nothing new" was "brought up in the video".

very cool that people on here will push blatant lies to 2.4 million people, get corrected, and completely ignore that pushback

This is frustrating for 2 reasons:

1st, the truth is very easy to find.

Haaretz maintains a list of the Israeli dead, 1149 long.
- 775 were civilians (67%)
- 374 were soldiers or cops (33%)

Indiscriminate killings of civilians, as in Re'im, is always a war crime.

New blogpost:

Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza. 🧵 In one week, Israel has forced 1 million Gazans from their homes -- 47% of the Gazan population.

500,000 of those displaced are children and teens.

When Serbia displaced 230,000 people, NATO bombed their military into shreds.

Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza. 🧵

Hamas are terrorist morons. Don't cheer for them.

You will hear Israel supporters talk of "proportional response" and "the most moral military in the world". That's bullshit.

The IDF always responds disproportionately, always kills 10x and injures 100x more Palestinians. Evil. Violent conflicts like this WILL help Israeli reactionaries (pro-apartheid, pro-racism) like Netanyahu.

Getmansky and Zeitzoff 2014: constituencies within the rocket range of the Gaza Strip (and thus Hamas) causally became 2 to 6 pp more likely to vote for right-wing parties:

New blogpost:

On nearly every policy issue, Democratic states are substantially better than Republican states.

(but even Democratic strongholds fall far short of progressive goals, let alone socialist goals)

A thread of data: 🧵 Every time the Eternal Voting Discourse returns, I hear the same argument for leftists to vote 3rd party:

"Both parties are the same. Blue or red, nothing changes." (Example: See the meme below.)

That's wrong. And it's not even close.

Graphs below: 🧵 tinyurl.com/DemMoreProgRep

Every time the Eternal Voting Discourse returns, I hear the same argument for leftists to vote 3rd party:

"Both parties are the same. Blue or red, nothing changes."

That's wrong. Dems are better than Reps on nearly every issue, but fail progressive goals.

Graphs below:🧵 QUEER RIGHTS

The strongest leftist case for Democrats is on queer rights.

Take gender-affirming care for trans youth.

2/3 of Rep states have banned it in the last 2 years -- all of which are currently halted in courts.

1/2 of Dem states have legally protected it. 🧵

Today in red-brown news:

The world's richest man (who loves theocrat DeSantis) and the world's largest podcaster (who part-owns a fascist coffee company) are promoting anti-vax nonsense.

In response, Jimmy Dore -- the Last True Socialist -- sides 100% with the anti-vaxxers. Aside: It's very easy to broadly estimate the number of excess COVID deaths due to under-vaccination

Step 1: We know that vaxxed people had 5 to 15 times lower COVID death rates than unvaxxed people (graph below).

the current Discourse on DSA Twitter: Is DSA in crisis?

Nearly all those who say "yes" then blame that crisis on a specific ideological failure of DSA that drove away the masses

DSA *is* slowly bleeding membership -- but the data suggests it's for mundane, mechanical reasons 🧵 First, let's start with the data.

Here's DSA's dues-paying membership since February 2020, with some important US events on the vertical lines:

(This data is taken from National Finance Committee graphs -- if you know of similar pre-2020 data, DM me!)🧵

voting Discourse is back Democrats are centrists, liberals, progressives.

Republicans are theocrats, conservatives, libertarians.

Dems won't usher in socialist liberation.

But Dem state governments are currently defending abortion rights and trans rights.

That difference matters.

It's wild that a whole section of The Online Left thinks:

"You asked what socialist org I support? Nice try, FBI!"

As though they are running some hyper-militant underground terror cell, whose mere name would get them arrested.

A thread on actual fed infiltration: 🧵 I give zero credence to "I gotta maintain hyper-secrecy on Twitter" for a simple reason:

The feds infiltrated *every single* important socialist organization.

Your org is not special. If your org matters, you should *already* assume it has informants. 🧵

Do not bring a gun to Pride.

You will not be a hero. You are more likely to hurt yourself or others than to stop harm.

Do:
- Bring a charged phone.
- Bring a buddy.
- Bring a trauma kit.
- Learn how to Stop The Bleed. At minimum, bring a tourniquet, packing gauze, gloves, and marker.

Most 1st aid kits lack the first two. Check your supplies!

And check the dress code! Some events might not allow backpacks.

Watch an expert demonstrate Stop The Bleed techniques:

it's genuinely absurd to see so many socialists just *tearing apart* Zoe for this fairly simple take, stated fairly inoffensively

also: the quote tweets nicely highlight some deeply flawed methods of thought that have gained credence with lefties 🧵 example: "Sure, theism is objectively wrong. But can we reject people's lived experiences?"

Last note on guns. Consider three levels:

1. Micro: Personal ownership does NOT make you safer.

3. Macro: Higher social ownership does NOT reduce violence.

2. Meso: Medium-sized armed organizations *can* protect vulnerable communities. They *cannot* preserve all your rights. The evidence is very clear on 1 and 3.

At the macro level, more guns means more homicide.

At the micro level, more guns does not mean more safety.

https://twitter.com/SocDoneLeft/status/1659802666422222848

Defensive gun use is rare and doesn't reduce the likelihood of injury.

Higher gun ownership doesn't reduce rates of violence but does increase rates of murder.

Socialists should not deny these facts.

Evidence below. Thread: 🧵 ** Defensive gun use is rare. **

~2 in 5 American households have a gun. ~1 in 3 Americans are gun-owners themselves.

Yet among 4,357 victims of a crime (or attempted crime) at their home, just 1% reported using their gun in self-defense.

Hemenway Solnick 2015:

I'm so tired of lefties promoting the idea that guns will keep you safe.

This braindead conservative self-defense bullshit -- but repackaged as ✨pro-trans leftist praxis✨ -- got 29,000 likes.

Among rich countries, we're the most-armed, most-incarcerated, and most-murdered. I've talked over and over again about how more guns don't mean more safety.

I'm not gonna recap that here, beyond the "America is not uniquely violent, it's just uniquely deadly" graph:

the left post is so ungodly stupid

you wanna know what actually reduces child sexual abuse?

teaching kids what sex is, what consent is, and why the latter lets them refuse the former

it's called "sex ed", and conservatives *hate* it What does preventative sex ed look like?

In short, it focuses on telling kids what sex and sexual abuse (SA) is, why SA is wrong, how to say no, and why they're not to blame for their abuse.

Topping Barron 2009: literature review:

Secret Service stats of mass deadly attacks vs population

180 perpetrators 2016-2020:
* 175 men (95.6%), 51% of 15-29yos (2x more)
* 5 women (2.8%), 49% of 15-29yos (18x less)

Conclusion: Just blame men! Don't bother with gun control or mental healthcare or deradicalization! 🧵 Of course, that's nonsense.

Reactionaries *always* want you to focus on demographics so they can spin up hate. Anti-black, anti-trans, anti-immigrant.

But there are real solutions -- policy solutions. Want fewer mass shootings? Support gun control! 🧵

https://twitter.com/SocDoneLeft/status/1640450707609231382

this is a truly evil thing to say

there have been 3 shootings by transgender people since 2018

that's out of a total of 2829 shootings with 4 or more victims since 2018

(the anti-queer he/him Colorado Springs shooter claimed to be they/them to further epicly own trans people) the trans bar is literally one pixel high