Yesterday, I learned about Trotsky's complicated relationship with the Nazis, anti-Semitism, indentured servitude/slavery of non-white people in the Soviet Union, and most disturbingly pedophilia. It all makes sense now.

Many of Trotsky's more violent actions, war crimes, and atrocities help explain the authoritarian and undialectical behavior of some Trotskyist orgs, historically, and their willingness to upend democratic structures, systematize corruption, and overlook abuse and harm.

But when they do embrace "dialectics" its often chaotic + difficult for opponents (much less the masses) to follow. Which makes a lot more sense when you realize that his suggestions for organizational strategy were developed for child trafficking rings, not political organizing.

I don't have the citation on hand, but if any Trotskyists would like to disprove or complicate, or offer context to these revelations I am always open to reading an article or essay that demonstrates a different perspective.

In the meantime, I think that this necessitates a dialogue. We need to ask the tough questions. If people flood meetings with comments that are strangely in sync and aggressively pedantic, we should vibe check and be up front about our positionality.

There is a power dynamic in age gap relationships or workplace "romances" that labor organizers acknowledge, but pedophilia is 1000x worse. If we are serious about labor, we should be up front and transparent about benefitting from privilege through membership in pedophile orgs.

Of course, we should be diplomatic and tactful, not accuse people. But having that framework of understanding why some tendencies have certain strategic dogmas can help us unpack these uncomfortable contradictions so that we can all get on the same page moving forward.

And of course we should not be sectarian. Trotskyists are pretty much like the white people of the Left, and we organize with white people all the time !! But the condition is that white comrades embrace anti-racist and are capable of a base level of self-reflection.

Again, I can't find the article, but I hope that this thread is enlightening + helps us arrive at a point of departure for more rigorous analysis + more transparent cross-tendency relationships in order to strengthen the multi-tendency character of our movement @ this conjuncture

I'm not going to tag people at the bottom of this thread because I don't want to put people on the spot hee hee. I know that this can be a long journey and people should blossom and unfold at their own pace.