People on HexBear whenever someone posts about weird left online drama: "You NEVER encounter this shit in real life organizing"
Me almost every time: "What? Yes you do. This happened to me last week!"
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irl lefty organizing drama is usually even worse. A person picking fights about something they obviously don't understand and haven't even tried to understand. Romance drama (oh my God did you hear that X and Y broke up their polycule???). People narcing on each other (and when it is a good org, getting themselves kicked out of that org because NO SNITCHING). Absurd self-tokenizing weaponizations of identity to serve some egotistical bullshitting. Long, rambling "this is why I'm leaving the organization" essays that are about 30% factual.
Long, rambling "this is why I'm leaving the organization" essays that are about 30% factual.
Hey we used to have those here!
Also don't forget sex pest drama or reactionary trans/homophobic brainworms drama. Many such cases.
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Remember when people got banned for mocking those? And I think TC69 wrote two of them or something. There were definitely power posters who wrote more than one
yea a recent irl drama in an org I'm in involved stalking people and targeted harassment and attempted social isolation of an opposition organizer...
no the drama in real life is very different 99% of it is like 15 people in a meeting trying to figure out what to do as a group about an issue and like 2 people who have actual actionable things to do and 3 loud spoilers telling us why doing any of that is useless and 1 radlib who wants to know why nobody will vote for biden and one asshole who every goddamn meeting says something wild like "but arent police our union brothers?" and the anarchist dude who will do anything people decide on but really just wants to talk about underground metal while feeding the hungry and nothing of any consequence gets done until you get one person to be in charge for a meeting or two who just makes unilateral decisions and quickly gets conspired against by the spoilers and burns out and never returns
uh, all this is hypothetical of course and not based on any real experience tag yourself
the anarchist dude who will do anything people decide on but really just wants to talk about underground metal while feeding the hungry
Speak for yourself, I NEVER encounter this shit in real life organizing
(because I don't go outside)
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Lmao. I view trots like an IRL leftist version of the mechanicus from 40K. "It was decreed in the holy scripture that the populace was convinced with newspapers, so therefore newspapers will convince the people forever after!"
If trots wanted to do what Pravda did, they'd start a TikTok
The comparison is layered and not as simple as the two being the same. But I've found that people have a way of closing themselves off to things that are going on. On hexbear, if you don't read the comments of a post about comments that have been deemed a struggle session, you may have no clue even if you saw parts of the original. IRL, if you aren't part of the drama that's going on, don't hang out with the gossipy (not saying this as an insult) types and don't ask the sort of questions that inquire about drama, you won't find out.
I'll posit that you're probably a more central or more present part of your organisation than most people saying "this doesn't happen irl" are of theirs.