As exciting as that is, that's not really why I decided to make this post. What I'm concerned about is how corporations (and potentially state actors) are beginning to respond. In years past, leftism had been irrelevant enough that it just wasn't worth it to try to undermine the integrity of online communities. But now that we have the will and ability to actually fuck over big business, there's finally a profit incentive to make our movements as disorganized and ineffective as possible. And coming back around to antiwork, we're starting to see just how powerful their disinformation campaigns can be.

The word astroturfing has been around for years now, but up until this point it was mostly associated with hamfisted attempts by companies to advertise as if they were actual users. But now they've entered the plainly political realm by attempting to infiltrate /r/antiwork. And frankly, those attempts were about as successful as you could expect. But what came after is what really concerns me, friends. Because now seemingly every other post on the front page of the sub is about said astroturfing, or accusing other users of astroturfing, or disagreements about how the movement should be organized or what the proper narratives are about leftism's relationship with liberalism and right wing politics. It's leftists eating other leftists, and it's a story as old as socialism itself. It took surprisingly little effort on the part of the capitalists to set us off, too. Regardless of whether antiwork survives this trial by fire, it is clear that we as a community will need to come to terms with this flaw.

Now, you may think that perhaps the issue is with our organizational structures, but there I would have to disagree. Though clearly decentralized movements tend to devolve into disorder like we've seen here, those with too great a degree of centralization are prone to corruption due to the power distance between members and leadership. Organizations which have an appropriate mixture of the two are already complex enough that you're basically running a party, or even a state, and if that's the case then you're no longer just trying to get your budding movement off the ground. So if not organization, then what else? Ideology is the natural culprit after this, and to a degree I would indeed attribute the dysfunctionality of leftism to this. But not necessarily in the way that you would expect. In fact, the issue is with how we ourselves relate to leftist ideology, and which parts of it we see fit to model our own lives around.

Leftism invites us to imagine a kinder world. One in which people care for their neighbors, not entirely unlike preindustrial society. One in which people feel genuine empathy for one another. This is not the leftism I see today. There is a certain level of social and emotional intelligence that I think was lost in the process of the commodification of labor, and which has only been worsened by the rise of the internet. Now, this isn't something which is the fault of technology. This is a result of our own deprioritization of socialization in general.

And do you know what I think the solution is? We need to grow the fuck up. I'm tired of seeing leftists try to flex on each other with virtue signalling and going off on unhinged rants against anyone perceived to be to their right. We're all in this together trying to topple the liberal status quo, and biting each others heads off is no way to make progress. As a community, we need to learn to be civil to one another, and further than that, call out this kind of toxic behavior when we see it. I'm not suggesting this will be easy. Not even remotely. It's hard to grow and change as a person. But we spend so much time laughing at conservatives for being so emotionally stunted and intellectually dishonest, yet we can't be real with ourselves that there are a lot of assholes in our camp too.

I've also heard the argument thrown around that rhetoric isn't as important for us because we're obviously right, and by engaging in praxis onlookers will have some sort of epiphany about mutual aid or some shit. Or, to paraphrase an actual conversation that I saw on telegram, that optics is for neoliberals. Well, I hate to say it, but you do have to actually convince people that you're right by actually talking to them. And this is another realm where leftism has failed horribly. Neoliberalism too, for that matter. Conservatives have obviously been winning the rhetoric game since basically the beginning of the cold war, and we need to accept that our current methods are simply not working. Personally I'm not above pandering to patriotic values like they do, but that's a conversation for another time. The least we can do is engage with people on an empathetic level, and that requires a level of emotional maturity that, honestly, I don't really think I've seen much of recently. Let alone the kind of cohesion which would be required to determine a cohesive messaging platform.

What I envision is a community where we trust one another. Not simply as people sharing a common ideology or goal, but just because we're all people, and we're all trying. I want to see a world where it's not the wild exception to see a debate end in someone conceding that their position was not entirely well founded, and wishing their interlocutor a good day. I want to see a world where we can take pride in the work that we all do together. If we can actually cooperate with each other as empathetic individuals, I believe we can achieve much more than any purely rationally motivated group ever could.

Now, I realize that I'm essentially shouting into the void here. I'm nobody, and you probably are wondering why you should give a shit about my bitching and moaning. And the reason is that you probably feel the same way that I do. And this is me officially giving you permission to vent those frustrations on a public forum. In fact, *please* do. This is the sort of message which is only effective if it becomes widespread enough to spark discourse in the leftist sphere at large. For far too long we have been shamed into pretending that we are all perfectly functional adults, but it's okay to have some growing left to do! In my wildest dreams, social and emotional wellbeing would become central components of leftist communities, rather than at best being an afterthought, and at worst being actively harmed.

A pretty cool rant from a friend of mine. ^

Here’s a guide Kellogg’s products. We must stand in solidarity with working class men and women!
https://redd.it/rfrtoi
@coolguides

The last text sent by Larry Virden, who died in the Edwardsville, IL Amazon facility collapse.
Death to capitalism! Death to wage slavery!

I really, really do hate our state's politics.

Warning: Rant inbound.

"I can't, I'm having a self care day." "Sorry, I'm taking care of myself right now." Do you all realize how completely nuts you sound? One of the ideas I've seen dominate so much of our society recently is this concept that, in order to deal with your problems, you have to pull away and "focus on yourself." Now, I'm not trying to devalue contemplation nor am I trying to say that there aren't some issues that are best handled on an individual basis, but this whole emphasis we have on "putting ourselves first" is often times a rejection of the thing that's made humans so great and successful for thousands of years: We build communities, and the members of those communities take care of each other. It's the building of communities that fills human hearts and lifts the burdens from human shoulders. This church we've built around "self-care" is just another iteration of the death cult that is the modern idea of individualism, and it isn't going to make us feel any better, no matter how much we pretend it will. We can manage on our own, but in a group we can overcome.