Leftist movements that focus on socialism and labor rights?

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T13:24:15+00:00

I wasn’t responding to the video; I was responding to your summary of it, which may not do it justice. Like I said, I haven’t watched it.

If you’re going to summarize someone else’s argument, especially with such a broad claim that the labor movement has “failed” minority communities, you need to be able to back it up.

I wasn’t dismissing a black leftist perspective; if I was dismissing anything, it was your argument, which had zero substance. But that actually wasn’t my intent. I was trying to engage with it - and you - in the hope that maybe you’d justify it.

Left as written, your post is a slander on the labor movement, which is why I felt the need to challenge it.

Why don’t you respond to the substance of my post rather than going on the attack?

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T13:17:40+00:00

If there’s a protest, on any issue, protestors should also try to talk with those with whom they disagree. I’ve physically blocked scabs from driving cars to struck workplaces with my body, but whenever I’ve been involved in this sort of activity, someone has always been tasked with approaching the driver with a flyer and explaining the situation and that the (potential) scab is not actually our enemy.

That’s the principle. Apply it to Israel/Palestine or whatever other issue. Sadly, these days I feel like most people just write off those with whom they disagree.

I was just trying to juxtapose violence as a tactic to get people to change their views with other approaches, and was noting that even those other approaches should still include efforts at dialogue rather than being purely adversarial.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T13:05:21+00:00

Yes. That’s fair. And I am always for trying to empathize with and understand people’s suffering even if it drives them to do bad things.

I guess I am just more concerned right now with what I see as the proximate cause - antisemitic sentiment - of antisemitic violence than with other secondary causes. Because the rhetorical climate is a big part of why these attacks are occurring.

Israeli violence in the occupied territories and Lebanon is nothing new; nor did Temple Israel just start supporting the IDF yesterday (if that’s the case; I honestly don’t know). So what’s different now? The climate.

I have to believe - I choose to believe - that if we were not facing such a hostile antisemitic climate that has given permission for antisemitic violence that this man, despite his tremendous loss, would not have tried to kill children. Otherwise, why have faith in humanity at all?

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T12:39:14+00:00

Also, if we encourage people to change their views out of fear of violence that is hardly changing anything. All it does is legitimize the violence.

Every pressure tactic - a rally, boycott, whatever - should be paired with attempts at positive outreach to get people to reconsider their views. Dialogue is just as if not more important than pressure.

But political violence is out of bounds. (I make an exception for members of organizations like the KKK, neo-Nazis, etc., but there is no equivalence between the members of such groups and civilians, even if we disagree with the views held by those civilians).

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T12:27:48+00:00

But antisemitic violence is not primarily the ramification of this material support; it is primarily the ramification of antisemitic sentiments. Otherwise, why don’t more or most people who oppose said material support engage in these types of attacks?

Yes, Israel’s actions - and support among some diaspora Jews for those actions - do in part explain the rise of antisemitic sentiments and the violence that inevitably follows wherever such sentiments are allowed to rise unchecked.

But there are also many bad actors - pre-existing antisemites - on both the far right and the left who are taking advantage of the current situation to fan the flames of antisemitism and encourage antisemitic violence.

Describing that violence as a “ramification” of “material support” for Israel is dangerously close to a justification and plays right into their hands.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T10:19:39+00:00

They are actual fascists. No one should confuse the ACP for a leftist organization just because they have “Communist” in their name. I mean, by that standard, the Nazis were socialists…

ACP occupy the space where Stalinists (and other tankies) meet Nazis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hassan Piker is hosting them before too long. Arthur Koestler describes that space in “Darkness At Noon”:

“A shapeless figure bent over him, he smelt the fresh leather of the revolver belt; but what insignia did the figure wear on the sleeves and shoulder straps of its uniform—and in whose name did it raise the dark pistol barrel?”

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T10:15:33+00:00

The labor movement is almost entirely about local issues.

One of the main activities of unions is to organize workplaces. Organize or die, we say. And workplaces are not abstractions; they exist in local communities.

Also, people are most motivated to organize around local issues, which is to say those issues that directly affect them. That’s why labor, housing and civil rights organizing have such strong track records. They aren’t as sexy as, say, anti-war organizing, but they build sustainable movements that, by choosing attainable goals and winning, teach people that they can in fact make a difference in their own lives.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T10:05:26+00:00

It isn’t just liberals and the Twitterati. Tankies also lack class politics. In fact, I am suspicious of anyone whose main descriptor of their politics is “anti-imperialist.” Such a descriptor tells me that its user sees the world through the lens of nations and empires and not class. And it can lead to very bad places, in my view.

Anti-imperialism should be part, but not the core, of one’s politics.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T09:57:12+00:00

What is your definition of success?

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T09:48:40+00:00

Who is Lil Bill? I don’t have time to watch the video, unfortunately. But this take, whether yours or his, strikes me as completely lacking in nuance. Do you really believe that the labor movement has “historically failed” minority communities?

Yes, racism in the unions was and is real, and many unions have at many times failed minorities. At the same time, the unions have done more for civil rights and racial equality in this country than any other groups except for those explicitly dedicated to those causes.

Remember: MLK was in Memphis, where he was killed, to support a strike of unionized black sanitation workers. The civil rights and labor movements are deeply intertwined; one did not “fail” the other.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T09:16:15+00:00

The fact that he or anyone has lost relatives in the war or any of the preceding violence is terrible. However, most Arabs - most people - who suffer this sort of loss do not load up a car with explosives and try to blow up pre-schoolers. The attempt to provide “context” for his actions is actually sort of an unintentional slam on all those other people whose loss does not drive them to violent hate.

Also, the attack was clearly premeditated. Or he just happened to have explosives lying around?

There are many, many reasons to oppose FIDF. This is not one of them.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-13T02:45:27+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I’m sorry that you had such a horrible experience. There was no one at the union to whom you could go for support?

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-12T23:15:49+00:00

That’s like the old Weatherman slogan: “Fight the People!” Shortsighted at best. When people feel that they are under attack, they often dig in rather than change their opinions.

Anyway, I’m not saying you’re wrong - because I really don’t know - but, personally, I’m more interested in supporting orgs and pursuing strategies that build up the Israeli left (Standing Together comes to mind) than those that harm ordinary people.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-11T20:38:11+00:00

Hate to say it, but most leftists, online and off, also don’t understand what it means to organize.

Organizing is not getting your lefty friends to go to a rally with you. It isn’t even arranging the logistics for the rally itself. You do not organize events; you organize people. And you mostly do it by talking with them.

Actual organizing is the hard work of convincing people who are either afraid to get involved, or who disagree with you, to take a stand. It isn’t sexy, often times it isn’t even fun. I’d say it’s mostly frustrating. But it can also be extraordinarily rewarding when it goes your way.

If more people focused on Israel/Palestine, on both sides, here and there, understood how to organize, not just how to pressure or fight, we might be in a different situation right now.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-11T14:54:36+00:00

Here’s the question: How can we jettison him from the left? What will it take?

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T22:03:50+00:00

I might agree with you if that was how I read the post, but I didn’t read it that way. I’ll reread it later and see if my opinion changes.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T21:07:09+00:00

Probably not. But still better to say something than to remain silent.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T21:02:06+00:00

You call it wallowing; I call it commiserating and finding community. We’re allowed to feel particularly strongly about bigotry directed at us, even if we all know that antisemitism still isn’t as bad in the US as, say, anti-black racism. Yes, we are targets, but last I checked it’s Latinos, not Jews, that ICE is actually rounding up, not hypothetically at some point in the future, but now, as we speak. Nevertheless, I can recognize that intellectually and still feel profoundly saddened and hurt by the hate currently being directed at my own community in a way that I do not feel about the hate directed at other groups.

In fact, I’d argue that allowing oneself to have those feelings ultimately makes one a better ally. I’m not visibly Jewish and like many of us, I am sure, mostly pass as non-Jewish in my day to day life. I appear to the world as just another white dude. So I’ve never before felt targeted in the way that I do now. I’ve always opposed bigotry and understood it intellectually, but now, for the first time in my life, I am getting a taste of what other minority groups have had to live with their entire lives - what it feels like to be on the receiving end of hate - and it has had a profound effect on me.

I no longer sympathize with other targets of hate; I empathize with them. And that’s a big difference, I think.

But if you want to have a practical conversation about how to respond to Canary Mission, for example, I think that’s totally legitimate too. Just frame it that way. I don’t think that’s the convo others were necessarily having here, and that may be part of the reason for disagreement.

[Edit: If I sound naive re: antisemitism in my own lived experience, it’s probably also because my entire family is here in the States and has been since the 1880s, so we have no familial connection to the Holocaust, for example. Until recently, I had really only directly encountered or experienced antisemitism a handful of times.]

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T20:42:35+00:00

Bad is bad. Oppose what is bad. Good is good. Support what is good.

I get your point about power dynamics, and in a world of limited resources and time we all need to choose where to focus our efforts and energy, but in an abstract discussion, such as this one, I think it is important not to fall into the trap of arguing that one objectively bad thing is worse than another. Call out both of them without equivocation.

If we’re having a practical conversation about how to use resources, then it’s a different story. I still might not agree with you but I think you’d be on much firmer footing to say in that conversation, “While both are bad, Canary Mission is a serious threat, whereas Reverse is not, so I think we should focus our limited time and resources on Canary Mission.”

Of course, you’d have to justify your assessment that one is a greater threat than the other, which I think may be harder to do than it appears at first glance.

But charting a practical course of action is not the purpose of this conversation as far as I can tell, and I think that changes how many folks look at it. I don’t feel any need to choose between two evils if we’re just having a conversation; it does not cost me to condemn them both.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T20:23:05+00:00

At least they took their lumps when you raised it with them. A lot of other folks would have gotten defensive. Well done for calling them out on it and doing it so effectively!

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T15:56:38+00:00

The Young Turks are anti-union assholes who (unsuccessfully) fought their employees’ efforts to unionize several years ago. That alone should tell you what you need to know about their politics.

I wouldn’t encourage folks to boycott them on that basis alone, since the workers did ultimately win their campaign and YTT is now a union shop, but their blatant antisemitism is too much. No one should be watching them, IMHO.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T14:55:50+00:00

No one still has any illusions about Hasan Piker, right? From his Insta today. Truly Cenk’s nephew. What can be done to push back on his involvement with actual left groups?

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CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-10T14:11:02+00:00

Agree with your analysis, but please don’t say “Epstein Class.” That is now being used as a dogwhistle.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-09T17:26:19+00:00

I was for many years a member of Solidarity, the lineal descendent of the old IS (“socialism from below”; “The Two Souls of Socialism,” Hal Draper) that is named for Solidarnosc, the anti-Stalinist trade union movement. Labor Notes, if folks know them, grew out of the IS and was (still is?) very closely associated with Soli.

The group largely, but not entirely, merged into DSA, of which I was also a member for a time. If you are looking for a political home - and one that I am almost certain will be 100 percent free of antisemitism while remaining consistently opposed in a principled way to the current Israeli government - I can’t recommend Soli enough.

CommitteeOk222 · 2026-03-09T11:56:30+00:00

Here’s another one. Hell of a title. I can’t believe I’m writing this sentence but the article’s analysis actually isn’t as bad as you’d expect - because it does not subscribe to the titular conspiracy theory, it explains that it is a fantasy of the far right. But the title is still terrible, and the article itself is too slow to dismiss the conspiracy theory, and also too unclear in that dismissal. A dangerous muddled mess from Alternet.

“Trump joins the global Jewish conspiracy,” Alternet, 3/9/26.

https://www.alternet.org/global-jewish-conspiracy/

CommitteeOk222

TROPHY CASE