I don’t disagree but my focus is a step outside the ML theory position, on the ML tactical or agitprop position. We know we think those things, but how are we choosing to engage or disengage with people who don’t think those things or aren’t advanced enough in their radicalization/education to understand or be receptive to those ideas? It seems the broad unorganized left (whatever we want to call it) still isn’t inoculated against this kind of poison pill (I guess we’ll better understand the degree to which once we can fully see the Platner fallout). But I don’t think the ML left has enough cultural production/influence to take an explicitly hostile or exclusionary stance towards the broad unorganized left.

No, I’ll word that differently. I don’t know if the explicitly hostile or exclusionary stance serves us best. Or if that’s even how it should be labeled/categorized.

Is an explicit schism between the people who fell for it and those that didn’t useful for pipelining? Is pipelining even a real process that we should care about?

Another angle to it that I’m having a hard time putting into words. In game theory, there are often situations where a strategy is the correct one assuming all players are also playing to maximize value, but becomes worse if another player is playing poorly. So in a three player game, player 1 might play “optimally” and lose to player 3 because player 2’s incorrect play changed the equilibrium.

Shitty way of trying to explain the concept but here the first-order optimum might be for us (player 1) to outright reject electoralists. But because so much of the unorganized left (player 2) swallowed the poison pill, the original strategy may no longer be optimal. If we continue to play without exploring the possibility of a second-order optimum, we risk handing a win to player 3 (bourgeoisie, fash, institutional dems, whatever). But it’s possible the first one is still optimal. Again, this is how we publically engage with discourse, not about what we personally believe.

Trying to process that abstract nonsense into concrete particulars, say some co-worker is excited about Platner or watches Hasan or whatever is currently an outgroup signifier that I don’t keep up with. Is the process to sidestep the issue because it’s a psyop, to nip it in the bud and correct them, to develop a tactical response that hopefully leads towards self-radicalization? What about for somebody in a mutual aid group? A family member or friend? Someone in your political party? A media influencer?

The in-group/out-group lines are getting drawn on social media of course but I’ve really grown tired of them and how either disconnected or parasitic they can be towards real-life organizing. My impulse is to sidestep spectacle, but since I’m not the whole of the ML left nor the unorganized left, my personal impulse isn’t necessarily what would work best if all ML’s decided to do it.