Ask Lemmygrad

I am primarily referring to media such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts etc. I am fairly young (college age) and I have noticed almost everyone around me primarily gets their news from these apps. I am not entirely opposed to people who this as I understand it makes news accessible. But, I have noticed that the people I know who do this use terminology or at least concepts associated with communist/revolutionary thought while still being adamantly liberal and opposing communism. They also tend to talk about politics more, but they aren't very receptive to any pushback or disagreement (saying you didn't support Kamala Harris was social suicide for awhile).Ironically, the people I know who don't use these platforms for news and basically never use the terminology tend to be a lot more left leaning and I tend to be able to have more nuanced political discussion the most with. I generally avoid short term form media so there's not much I can say from my own experience. For context, I attend a large American University and hang out with diverse groups.

Yeah we all hear the main arguments... AI is bad because of slop content, stealing from creators, brain rot & brain damage, privacy concerns and most importantly... how billionaires are just using it for their own selfish reasons

​But I'm asking about YOU 🫵 personally. The individual. What do you really think about AI? Do you care or are you indifferent? Has it actually affected your day to day life?

My country is Italy, first of all. I had this Idea because I see that comrades from other countries do this already, so I wanted an opinion on it.

Is that even useful? I'm thinking it could help connationals in getting organized (me included, as I'm still undecided on what to do) and overall be informed of the material conditions in our country, but I don't know how impactful that would be.

Of course I should get informed extensively on each party's political positions and whether they deserve covering or not based on it. So far I've read Fronte Comunista's manifesto (Quick analisys: They're anti-revisionist, see China as revisionist, don't see socialism of the XXI century as successful, don't show support for Russia or Iran beyond anti-war sentiment, support a two-state solution for Palestine based on the 1967 borders; on the other hand, they recognize all other AES and seem to be one of the more militant communist parties, as some have pointed out previously) but eventually I'll branch out to the others as well.

Finally, if I were to do something like this, where should I post? Should I already create a community (and call it "Italian communists", or "Italian leftists") or should I start small and post somewhere else? Where?

Thanks for the suggestions in advance.

Like the title says, I'm new to Marxism and have only read a couple works relating to socialism. I don't think I know enough about Marxism to firmly define myself into any "type" (although council communism sounds pretty interesting.) Second Thought and Yugopnik are what got me into Marxism, but more recently I've been listening to Socialism For All's audiobooks and reaction videos while driving. In his reaction video to The Deprogram's China Episode, he makes some interesting points about how China could become "social imperialist" and succeed the US/NATO as the new imperialist global hegemon, among some other things. From an outsider's perspective, I don't consider the current China socialist because of the fact that private property and many other capitalist elements still exist within it, but I do appreciate how much it has been able to develop over the past few decades, like poverty reduction and massive infrastructure projects that wouldn't be possible with typical liberal democracies. People excuse the private property and "restricted" capitalism as necessary evils until China has the conditions to create socialism, but I have doubts about whether China's still even working towards socialism or whether the Chinese proletariat actually hold power over the bourgousie. China doesn't support communist movements internationally, and the liberalized economy has gone on far longer than the NEP in the soviet union despite both being created for the same reason, and I can't seem to find a good reason why it's lasted this long. (I also have concerns about privacy and the fact that access to the outside internet is restricted, although that's not really related to this topic.) I'd stumbled across this reddit thread a while ago, and while I know reddit isn't the best place for serious discussion, I think that the person in the video does make good points, as do the people in both the r/TankieTheDeprogram and r/ultraleft threads and I honestly don't know what to think or who to take seriously in that discussion. I would appreciate if anyone could give me a genuine response to these concerns, thanks.

Edit: Thank you all so much for the responses! I've learned quite a bit reading them, although I haven't had a chance to check out the links people have sent yet. I'll try to update this post with any new questions and respond to comments whenever I have time.

I was recently talking with a Russian friend of mine, and he told me that Finland is actually Slavic. His reasoning was that Russia and Finland share a long border and a lot of history

Please don't burn me at the stake I'm just the messenger D:

I know next to nothing about this and just wanted to see if there was any truth to what he said from a cultural or historical standpoint

As per the title, I am looking for some tactics and strategies for building organization numbers, could be as little as personal anecdotes, and as much as source texts.

Why do anti-imperialist movements in the Global South tend to see queer folk as enemies rather than fellow oppressed people? (Not saying all are like that, but why don't we see that many radically pro-queer movements in the Global South)

the book 'short history of USSR' is available easily in our bookshelves and it might help with dispelling narratives especially to people near me who aren't quite convinced

I've been struggling for a while to reconcile my faith (Islam) with communism. I've run into a lot of leftists who tell me flat out that you can't be religious and a Marxist. They quote Lenin, Bukharin, and the ABC of Communism to argue that religion is 'idealist' and that any believing communist is a 'revisionist.'

But recently, someone on this platform responded to one of my posts with something that really stuck with me. They suggested that the leftists I've been arguing with might be confusing mechanical materialism with dialectical materialism. They put it this way:

'A dialectical materialist view would say that somebody receiving a message from a god is part of their material conditions... either way, it's still a real thing impacting them.'

They argued that a mechanical materialist treats humans like passive objects, reduces consciousness to brain chemistry, and sees religion as just 'false consciousness' to be eliminated. A dialectical materialist, by contrast, understands that consciousness is real, that ideas emerge from material conditions and then react back on them, and that religion is a complex phenomenon that can be a force for resistance or oppression depending on the context.

This really resonated with me, but I want to understand it more deeply.

So I want to ask you all:

1. In your own words, what is the difference between mechanical and dialectical materialism?

2. How does dialectical materialism approach the question of religion, compared to mechanical materialism?

3. Does dialectical materialism require atheism as a philosophical commitment, or is it compatible with someone who holds religious faith as a personal and communal practice so as long as they don't use their faith as their analytical tool or basis for an argument?

Requesting more information. Another unfairly maligned woman? Do we know more?

I was wondering why the USSR is universally beloved among Marxist-Leninists but other AES states tend to be more controversial. So I looked into it.

Saved Europe from Fascism Abolished private property Abolished wealth accumulation Centrally Planned Economy, quotas, prices, wages, EVERYTHING State Atheism - BASED Universal Literacy First Man Into Space Public Healthcare Public Housing Public Transportation

Holy sea cow SpongeBob! Any anarchist would fall out of their chair if one of their projects achieved even one of these things.

What in your opinion are the greatest policies and achievements of The USSR?

I've been primarily reading in English because that's the language that pretty much all theory is available in, but I've been having issues translating the ideas into my native language.

Asking a very concerning and serious question because the more I dig into the problems the more I fear for my life as a trans person because if my research is correct then the enemy is literally next to me and those I care.

After the counter-coup on TankieTheDeprogram and assisted the mods to remove top mod Alexitine my gut feeling kicks me hard because I thought long time about it that they would try again. In the process I learned about how ACP and Eureka were linked, and how ACP was a rebrand of PCUSA. Then after I made a post on CWPUSA, a user admitted in my thread that CWPUSA is indeed another rebrand of PCUSA, which confirms my suspicion. So I started digging and found out the old TheDeprogram wiki on MAC linked them also back to PCUSA. Which is then I learned about the existence of obscure US fascism cult LaRouche, that finally connected the dots they're all LaRouche clones. Knowing how dangerous it is throughout ACP/LaRouche infiltrations on reddit, I dug further and found out one of Red Rifle Collective founders recommended ACP as third option for organizing on his substack, which leads me to this post, because these infiltrators aren't just actively on reddit or TankieTheDeprogram (they're still salty about my involvement in ousting CWPUSA link to PCUSA, or Alexitine) but also within this platform. I won't name them directly but one of the long time users of this platform is RRC founder. Which means I am unsafe because one thing that linking them all together is they tend to be cis men-dominant, chauvinist, exploitation of class reductionism to gaslight trans issues. Especially the last point because when I made the post on Marxists shouldn't use gendered slurs, the mod of MarxistRA spent most of his time gaslighting me to the point of borderline threatening to dox me until the mods intervened. And MarxistRA is technically RRC community. So they're not only aware of my presence and the other users who combat their toxicity but also actively sabotage the community with desire to influence general common beliefs that meant to serve their end goal, which all leads back to the tactics of LaRouche.

You want "the receipt" here's it.

https://islamicsocialist.substack.com/p/links-website-telegrams-socials

"I am the secretary of RRC"

https://islamicsocialist.substack.com/p/rrc-range-day-january-26th-2025

Brand new user. Being from a post-yugoslav country, I've experienced lots of the nostalgia, but the longer time goes on, the more liberal takes I've seen on Yugoslavia in my own country. Apart from growing liberalism, I've noticed the distain for the USSR that many people who lived during socialism have (I assume due to the entry of more western opinions due to the soviet-yugoslav split) . The only ML takes I've heard about Yugoslavia were from Marxism Today (together with Yugopnik), aswell as TheFinnishBolshevik, with the latter mostly spending several hours calling Yugoslavia revisionist, and having some extremely strange (and frankly ultra) takes like saying yugoslavia led a campaign to colonize macedonia, or things in that vain. I'd like to see some takes that aren't completely dismissive or approving of the state, and look at things from a proper materialist point of view.

I had to use their services to do my work. Ipad, iphone, mac etc etc. But, now I don't have to use their shitty products since I don't work on that shitty job. Right now, I'm trying to get out of their monopolistic eco-system.

What would you reccommend to me replace those mac, iphone, ipad? I'm hearing that GrapheneOS is a good alternative but bank apss and faceID is a must for me.

My current phone is ageing. Normally I wouldn't urgently think about it replacing it now but as AI eats the world I am worried that electronics will become more expensive with time. Computer components have already skyrocketed in price.

So should I buy one now? Or is there no need to panic?

Right now my health is not so stable meanwhile I need money. I doubt I can work like many people in the near future and what I can do is make stock investment or something like that.

Since I am not a socialist let alone a communist, I would like to ask you, my communist friends, for your opinion on this. And if you have any moral advice or a better solution, I'd love to hear it.

I am sorry if my English is bad.

I think of downvotes and upvotes as head nods, and head shakes.

Head nods and head shakes are not constructive criticism.

Removing the ability to give low effort or low quality criticism would encourage us to put effort into real criticism, no?

I've been hearing a lot of mixed stories about brazil and what is going there, what it's government is like and whether it's more left or right wing.

Unfortunately my knowledge on brazil isn't great, does anyone have any good sources yo get more informed? Thank you.

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8675305

While many may think the suffering has eased, we are still living under the weight of fear and uncertainty every day. The sounds of bombardment continue to steal any sense of peace, and safety remains a distant dream. In the midst of these harsh conditions, my family's needs do not stop. Food, medicine, and basic necessities have become burdens that are increasingly difficult to meet.

Every act of support, no matter how small, can bring hope into our lives and help ease some of this struggle. Thank you to everyone who stands with us during these difficult times.

🔗 https://gofund.me/1d3ea05b6

#Gaza #Palestine #HelpGaza #Donate #SupportGaza

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8663719

Sometimes, all it takes is a helping hand at the right moment to change an entire day of hardship.

I struggle every day to provide for my family's basic needs, but the challenges keep growing, while the responsibility of caring for my children and my husband's heart medication remains on my shoulders.

Any support, no matter how small it may seem, can make a real difference in our lives today.

If you are able to help or share our campaign, you could be the reason a family finds relief and hope.

🔗 [https://gofund.me/1d3ea05b6]

#Gaza #Palestine #HelpGaza #Donate #Humanity #SupportFamilies

There's a video documenting Chinese people being racist towards black people. I have yet to watch it beyond the first few seconds, which is a bad habit because I need to face these things if I'm to be a good comrade. No investigation, no right to speak. The replies contain horrified people of all colors, anecdotes of encountering racism, and right-wingers praising China, admitting unfamiliarity with their game or some shit. My first thought; China's huge. There's going to be racists. On the other hand, I was wondering if there was yet more to this than that.