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What does ultra mean to you? (vis-a-vis leftism) (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by JustSo@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

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I'm curious whether calling someone an ultra has a generally agreed upon meaning here.

Not to defend any accused ultras or whatever. Recent post got me thinking about it though. It feels like a very loaded word and using it seems like in-group/out-group differentiation signalling or .. I dunno.

Maybe another way to put it is often when I see the term being used it feels like its serves a similar purpose to the "tankie" label's utility for anarchists and liberals.

I might just be running up against tone parsing issues or something, and so maybe this is just me or a figment of my imagination, but it often seems to limit or shape discussion when it pops up early in a discussion.

Again I'm sure I'm just Wrong about this, but it almost feels like a mild thought terminating cliche at least some of the time.

Not trying to fight with anyone, I'm just curious about the nuances (if there are any) with the term.

What does it mean to you and do you have any thoughts you feel like sharing regarding the role it plays in online leftist spaces?

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[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ultras are people who think AES (USSR, China, DPRK etc.) are imperialists and red fascists that are just as bad as Western capitalism, and need to be toppled and replaced by the proletariat revolutions of the world.

They’re closer to the Trotsky’s permanent revolution position but somehow even more extreme than that.

[–] BigBrainEngels@hexbear.net 2 points 1 month ago

I don't think Trotsky's permanent revolution relates to what you're calling an Ultra.

Trotsky's permanent revolution is explaining the process in which less developed nations are prevented from undergoing a bourgeois democratic revolution due to the pre-existing imperialist powers and this creates a 'permanent' revolution to persist within a nation, spurring the proletariat and peasantry to demand socialist aims in order to achieve any meaningful bourgeois-democratic demands.

Trotsky uses the February Revolution necessitating an October Revolution as an example of this exact process, and of course he was murdered before any other workers' states were created for him to analyze.