Can’t discuss his wealth, can’t discuss he went to a brothel in Germany, can’t discuss how he treats his dog, because apparently he says good things about Palestine and so he must be cherished for that, as if he was the only person speaking on Palestine. The point of self-criticism is to improve a line. We are scared of losing or detaching ourselves from anyone who appears remotely left because we always feel on the defensive. This is not unique to the US, though it’s often the subject - this happens in Europe too. Eurocommunists and trots abound, and they get a pass (some trots) because “they’re moving things left”. But if you move 3 people left while preventing 100 from moving further at all (to give an illustrative example), then are you really helping? This is the kind of data I would prefer to rely on.

He doesn’t even have to say anything to address anything said against him anymore, as soon as something pops up it will be instantly dismissed by others for him. I’m just asking myself, is this how the CPC works? How the CPSU worked? “Yes Xi is embezzling funds despite his anti-corruption campaign, but he’s just too big to fail. Think of everything else he’s done for us!” I just can’t see it happening and we have to be serious communists in our entire life, i.e. both online and offline, if only for ourselves.

The crux of the matter is we are on the defensive because we don’t feel anywhere we can act. But it’s up to us to seize the moment, without asking for permission first. I know it’s easier said than done, but if Hasan is to be part of a pipeline then it’s also on us, the communists, to seize on that. Don’t leave people stew on streams and wait for them to somehow make their way somewhere, reach out to them. Show them there exists something beyond the first step. This is why I mentioned r/thedeprogram, I’ve vetted hundreds of people online (real credentials I know lol) and many of them said they listened to one of the three deprogrammers, then went to the subreddit, then went further left - and then I/we get them further left into Lemmygrad and ProleWiki. This is also why it’s important to have a strong line, though I realize of course you won’t really have a party line online and people will naturally drift towards their own opinions, hence (probably) why Hasan refuses to understand the problem with visiting a brothel in Germany. The other problem is things never fully live in the past online even if you’ve changed as a person since that time. There is an argument that it was 5 years ago and he can’t dwell on it.

Anyway, maybe that pipeline happens in his twitch chat and that’s cool. I think some people link theory there, I’m not sure if it was him or someone else. I’ll be completely honest, I don’t really have the patience to go watch entry-level streamers. I have many things I could say about this but the relevant one is ultimately they’re just presenting their one view, and I know a lot of people are going to adopt these opinions as their own just because their streamer says it. But a line is forged through crit and self-crit, it must be submitted to others to be discussed, critiqued, refined and ultimately a third, new thing appears that did not exist anymore (you can see it as the Aristotlean dialectic, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, with the synthesis not being a recap of the 2 elements but a completely original thing).

One last thing - if we don’t expose people to marxism and the verbiage, then they will never pick up on it. Nobody comes up with the bourgeoisie by themselves, understandably. If we did we wouldn’t be reading Marx. We “disdain to conceal our aims” because doing so dilutes theory. We call it the bourgeoisie because it means a specific thing, not ‘capitalists’ because that word means a lot of different things. To be pre-emptive, I’m all for starting out simply with the stuff that makes sense to newcomers, but at some point you have to get them in deeper if they are to learn the material. This goes for all things; scientists call things by their names, not by euphemisms.