1. Think about why radical liberal "leftism" is pushed so hard by the ruling class. Do you think its predominance on college campuses was something that grew organically and had nothing to do with CIA cultural programs that encompass things like the Congress for Cultural Freedom?

2. Though shills of empire might be idiots, those in power certainly aren't. Outright rightist propaganda against communism is certainly effective, but it has a very specific "customer base" that leaves many potential "customers" uncaptured.

3. The State Department knows that it has to market anti-communism in different ways to convince different people, kind of like how the same razor is packaged differently and marketed as "masculine" or "feminine."

4. As long as there is capitalism, there will be anti-capitalism, and as long as there is class society, there will be very complicated class contradictions with the bourgeoisie and proletariat at either end, and various wavering strata in between.

5. Among the middle classes are intellectual youth who are rightfully angry at the system and want to destroy the current order in order to establish a new one, and if they and the working masses begin learning from one another, you'll get something like the Bolsheviks.

6. You see, the middle class intellectual youth are fueled by a sense of justice, and their hearts are in the right place, but if they're not grounded by the working masses, then they will never get a worker's movement going.

7. Communist revolutions MUST follow a proletarian line. Absent a proletarian line, you have justice fighters who want to see the world burn, while the working masses want order, stability, and better standards of living.

8. If the workers and the intellectuals can be isolated from one another, then both are significantly weakened. A successful revolutionary movement involves the proletarianization of intellectuals and the intellectualization of proletariats.

9. Enter radlib "leftism." At the end of the day, its purpose is to create a "left" movement that's useless to the working class, and harmless (or even beneficial) for the bourgeoisie.

10. It works by providing the angry intellectual youth with a pressure release valve, and introduces postmodern ideology opposed to the idea of there being an objective reality. It replaces revolutionary optimism with reactionary nihilism.

11. Meanwhile, it convinces the broad masses that THIS is in fact leftism, communism, socialism, what have you. Think about that point of personal privilege DSA video. Call me "problematic" for criticizing it, but if I find it laughable, then so do many working class normies.

12. Workers are a product of their environment, and nobody is immune from having reactionary ideas. With *effective* education, agitation, and organization, though, people can be transformed. But this isn't what's happening with the pseudo-leftism we have today.

13. What we end up having are petty-bourgeois "leftists" who vilify working class people for not being up to date with radlib "leftist" teachings, and, unfortunately, some workers will knee-jerk react and go deeper into reaction.

14. I know, some idiot will twist my words & say that I'm calling for unity with the most reactionary of workers, but if you study revolution, the formula has always been to win over the advance segments of the working class, who will transform their middle-of the road colleagues

15. who in turn transform the workers with more backwards ideology. The ones who absolutely refuse to struggle with reactionary ideas are then isolated. This is a protracted process that takes time and effort and CAN'T be accomplished with virtue signaling.

16. I'm saying all of this because I know many people who call themselves "ML" now have gone through a radlib phase, most likely during college, and it's certainly an uncomfortable process to really reflect on your belief system and challenge certain aspects of it.

17. But seeing that this is an ideology intentionally created to weaken communists, it is something that absolutely has to be done. This is also why it's not enough to call yourself a communist or Marxist-Leninist -

18. it is your actual political line that determines whether or not you are a communist, not your words. If you are serious about becoming a communist, you MUST be willing to study history and theory so you can apply Marxist analysis on your own society today

19. The purpose of studying history and theory isn't to memorize facts, but to build yourself into a better communist. Read "History of the CPSU(B): Short Course," you'll realize a lot of opportunist trends are essentially remixes of ones that existed over a century ago

20. Why reinvent the wheel when we can learn from the past and apply what we learn to our current situations, making adjustments where necessary? Anyways this rant is getting a bit long, so I'll stop here. Eventually I'll come up with a list of recommended readings for beginners.