Rainer is a shill. Anyone who's been listening to the PSL and to Becker's analyses knows that Becker is not against multipolarity. Becker's position is summed it quite well in the quotations Rainer pulls out of context - multipolarity is not a solution, only socialism is a solution.
The interpretation Rainer applies to the words of Becker are bald-faced bad faith interpretation. Becker is being quoted literally as saying that China and Russia are not looking to replace the US as the new global hegemon. Becker doesn't disavow multipolarity, nor does he state it should be resisted. Martin's quotation, which echoes Becker's analyses from other contexts, is that Russia isn't communist and in fact may even be anti-communist, and there are other countries in BRICS that are also anti-communist domestically. We must be vigilant there. Becker's position on Russia is measured - the US is at fault and also war is hell. We don't need to revel in bloodshed to have a multipolar analysis, nor do we need to defend Russia as a pure beacon of hope in order to understand the historical context that led to the now-escalating conflict nor to understand a Russian victory as the only outcome that will support socialism, a position that Becker has reiterated for years.
Rainer selects quottations from Becker and Becker's work that demonstrate Becker's position and instead of using them to establish a consistent reading of the PSL's position uses them to make a contradiction where none exists. First, Rainer assumes that the measured and nuanced position on Russia means Becker/PSL is anti-multipolarity, believes Russia and China are imperialist, and that the PSL is PatSoc. Then, Rainer selects quotations from the PSL and from Becker that disprove his own assumptions, but he frames that as "see how inconsistent these people are, they are disproving their own thesis".
I don't know what game Rainer is playing and who's paying him, but he's completely lost my trust in every single substack article I've ever read from him. He completely misrepresents the PSL and Becker and uses modern "journalistic" techniques like a strong propagandist does. Reports some facts, misinterprets those facts but frames the interpretation as fact not opinion, then reasons from there to a conclusion that is completely and obviously untenable, with the only goal of leaving the reader with an impression about the ideology of a third party.
If you read this particular piece, the only logical conclusion from the perspective of the author is that 100% of what has been said by the Russian government must be taken as pure unadulterated fact and that any attempt at interpreting the situation beyond that is equivalent to opposition of Russia. Every single serious communist treats the words of any government as propaganda, and as such, always takes a nuanced approach to interpretation. Rainer does not seem to even acknowledge this as a possibility, yet clearly demonstrates the capability by applying a nuanced interpretation of Becker and the PSL.
AFAIK, Rainer is a wrecker and a spoiler. He may be an op. He may just be a PatSoc looking to undermine the PSL so that something more vile can fill the void. My money is on him being an op.
I highly recommend you all listen to Becker's podcast (The Socialist Program) and listen specifically to the episodes on Ukraine and on Multipolarity and come to your own conclusions. And if you find that my assessment of Becker is a reasonable one, I would highly recommend putting up shields whenever Rainer's work comes through. From my perspective it's getting bad enough that I think we need to really consider as a community where we are going to limit how Rainer's work comes through here. I fear that amplifying and propagating his work is dangerously anti-communist.
Shea is such a bad faith op, I'm not even sure why people take him seriously. Another funny thing that I saw in the article was that he quoted Becker saying "what we need is the multipolar world.’…as a Leninist" when Becker says in the full interview "as a marxist leninist". It's literally ONE WORD that he chose to editorialize out. Why would he do this? I don't know...
Is there something we can do on Lemmygrad to limit Shea's impact? It feels like we moved the reactionary memes into a single community to stop their spread, but now we have this brain rot coming in elsewhere. Maybe we can ping @yogthos@lemmygrad.ml to opine?
I think it’s fine as it is. Most of the Rainer Shea posts recently have been in the leftist infighting community, as a place to criticize them after OP found the sort of reaction they got.
Maybe the best approach is to just dissect this stuff when it gets posted and explain why the takes are bad. Maybe can start aggregating common tropes and addressing them on prolewiki or something so we can just link to an existing article when something comes up repeatedly. I think it's particularly important to deal with people who claim to have a Marxist position and argue in bad faith because they ultimately end up driving people away. It has to be clear that they don't speak for us, and why we disagree with their position.
Well, there is no article on Rainer Shea. This might end up being a project for a bunch of people to do the research into Shea, gather his works and appearances, and then attempt to build a map of his positions, and then dismantle his problematic positions thoroughly. Sounds like a ton of work.
I'm not trying to be pedantic here, especially since I'm new to posting here, but I have to ask: why can't we just ban them? Would we not ban Matthew Heimbach just because there's a picture of him holding a communist flag? To anyone paying attention, Rainer Shea has been a long-standing problem in virtually every active communist community on the internet. He polemicizes anyone who doesn't support allying with the US far-right. I saw this post 2 months ago and he's gotten so much worse since: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogram/comments/139750w/petition_to_ban_rainer_sheas_blogaccount/
Do we just not have the resources to enforce a ban? I think he should be treated the same as Wisconcom.
I also support a wiki page and would contribute to it.
Personally, I'm not against banning stuff like that either, but there is educational value in discussing it critically as well. A lot of people here are well informed and are able to intelligently address such articles which helps others learn in turn. I'm not a mod though, so would be good to hear what our mods views on this are. :)
I don’t think we need to ban Shea posting. It’s not like he’s a griefer or spammer, he’s just someone who writes blogs that sometimes get shared. It’s true he should be delegitimized, but that can be done through having struggle sessions like these better than outright banning him.
I think he's fully delegitimized among those who know his name. The problem is that he's not gonna stop posting literal made-up bullshit and new people will upvote and uncritically consume it because he uses headlines like "Why Anti-Imperialism is Good". While I will bully him at every sighting, I can't commit to being online as much as him.
As long as it's confined to the infighting comm I don't think it's a problem. But he's clearly strategic about where and when to post each article to trick the most people into reading.
I don't think my proposal is unreasonable. This site is not a big tent, there's already a separate site for that.
Hard agree, we should also remember his bad faith readings of Gerald Horne. There are a lot of people (online) who take Rainer's portrayal of certain writers at face value. His bad faith quotes continue into his preferred writers in the form of book worship as well.
All of these attacks to defend coat tailing libertarians and PatSocs. 🤷🏾
Rainer is a shill. Anyone who's been listening to the PSL and to Becker's analyses knows that Becker is not against multipolarity. Becker's position is summed it quite well in the quotations Rainer pulls out of context - multipolarity is not a solution, only socialism is a solution.
The interpretation Rainer applies to the words of Becker are bald-faced bad faith interpretation. Becker is being quoted literally as saying that China and Russia are not looking to replace the US as the new global hegemon. Becker doesn't disavow multipolarity, nor does he state it should be resisted. Martin's quotation, which echoes Becker's analyses from other contexts, is that Russia isn't communist and in fact may even be anti-communist, and there are other countries in BRICS that are also anti-communist domestically. We must be vigilant there. Becker's position on Russia is measured - the US is at fault and also war is hell. We don't need to revel in bloodshed to have a multipolar analysis, nor do we need to defend Russia as a pure beacon of hope in order to understand the historical context that led to the now-escalating conflict nor to understand a Russian victory as the only outcome that will support socialism, a position that Becker has reiterated for years.
Rainer selects quottations from Becker and Becker's work that demonstrate Becker's position and instead of using them to establish a consistent reading of the PSL's position uses them to make a contradiction where none exists. First, Rainer assumes that the measured and nuanced position on Russia means Becker/PSL is anti-multipolarity, believes Russia and China are imperialist, and that the PSL is PatSoc. Then, Rainer selects quotations from the PSL and from Becker that disprove his own assumptions, but he frames that as "see how inconsistent these people are, they are disproving their own thesis".
I don't know what game Rainer is playing and who's paying him, but he's completely lost my trust in every single substack article I've ever read from him. He completely misrepresents the PSL and Becker and uses modern "journalistic" techniques like a strong propagandist does. Reports some facts, misinterprets those facts but frames the interpretation as fact not opinion, then reasons from there to a conclusion that is completely and obviously untenable, with the only goal of leaving the reader with an impression about the ideology of a third party.
If you read this particular piece, the only logical conclusion from the perspective of the author is that 100% of what has been said by the Russian government must be taken as pure unadulterated fact and that any attempt at interpreting the situation beyond that is equivalent to opposition of Russia. Every single serious communist treats the words of any government as propaganda, and as such, always takes a nuanced approach to interpretation. Rainer does not seem to even acknowledge this as a possibility, yet clearly demonstrates the capability by applying a nuanced interpretation of Becker and the PSL.
AFAIK, Rainer is a wrecker and a spoiler. He may be an op. He may just be a PatSoc looking to undermine the PSL so that something more vile can fill the void. My money is on him being an op.
I highly recommend you all listen to Becker's podcast (The Socialist Program) and listen specifically to the episodes on Ukraine and on Multipolarity and come to your own conclusions. And if you find that my assessment of Becker is a reasonable one, I would highly recommend putting up shields whenever Rainer's work comes through. From my perspective it's getting bad enough that I think we need to really consider as a community where we are going to limit how Rainer's work comes through here. I fear that amplifying and propagating his work is dangerously anti-communist.
Shea is such a bad faith op, I'm not even sure why people take him seriously. Another funny thing that I saw in the article was that he quoted Becker saying "what we need is the multipolar world.’…as a Leninist" when Becker says in the full interview "as a marxist leninist". It's literally ONE WORD that he chose to editorialize out. Why would he do this? I don't know...
Is there something we can do on Lemmygrad to limit Shea's impact? It feels like we moved the reactionary memes into a single community to stop their spread, but now we have this brain rot coming in elsewhere. Maybe we can ping @yogthos@lemmygrad.ml to opine?
I think it’s fine as it is. Most of the Rainer Shea posts recently have been in the leftist infighting community, as a place to criticize them after OP found the sort of reaction they got.
Maybe the best approach is to just dissect this stuff when it gets posted and explain why the takes are bad. Maybe can start aggregating common tropes and addressing them on prolewiki or something so we can just link to an existing article when something comes up repeatedly. I think it's particularly important to deal with people who claim to have a Marxist position and argue in bad faith because they ultimately end up driving people away. It has to be clear that they don't speak for us, and why we disagree with their position.
Well, there is no article on Rainer Shea. This might end up being a project for a bunch of people to do the research into Shea, gather his works and appearances, and then attempt to build a map of his positions, and then dismantle his problematic positions thoroughly. Sounds like a ton of work.
I'd be happy to help contribute to it :)
I'm not trying to be pedantic here, especially since I'm new to posting here, but I have to ask: why can't we just ban them? Would we not ban Matthew Heimbach just because there's a picture of him holding a communist flag? To anyone paying attention, Rainer Shea has been a long-standing problem in virtually every active communist community on the internet. He polemicizes anyone who doesn't support allying with the US far-right. I saw this post 2 months ago and he's gotten so much worse since: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogram/comments/139750w/petition_to_ban_rainer_sheas_blogaccount/
Do we just not have the resources to enforce a ban? I think he should be treated the same as Wisconcom.
I also support a wiki page and would contribute to it.
Personally, I'm not against banning stuff like that either, but there is educational value in discussing it critically as well. A lot of people here are well informed and are able to intelligently address such articles which helps others learn in turn. I'm not a mod though, so would be good to hear what our mods views on this are. :)
I don’t think we need to ban Shea posting. It’s not like he’s a griefer or spammer, he’s just someone who writes blogs that sometimes get shared. It’s true he should be delegitimized, but that can be done through having struggle sessions like these better than outright banning him.
I think he's fully delegitimized among those who know his name. The problem is that he's not gonna stop posting literal made-up bullshit and new people will upvote and uncritically consume it because he uses headlines like "Why Anti-Imperialism is Good". While I will bully him at every sighting, I can't commit to being online as much as him.
As long as it's confined to the infighting comm I don't think it's a problem. But he's clearly strategic about where and when to post each article to trick the most people into reading.
I don't think my proposal is unreasonable. This site is not a big tent, there's already a separate site for that.
Hard agree, we should also remember his bad faith readings of Gerald Horne. There are a lot of people (online) who take Rainer's portrayal of certain writers at face value. His bad faith quotes continue into his preferred writers in the form of book worship as well.
All of these attacks to defend coat tailing libertarians and PatSocs. 🤷🏾