Ask Lemmygrad

PSL has been great in my experience. They do receive funding from a singaporean billionaire but I genuinely believe he is a class traitor

That PSL is authoritarian

They're ML.

backed by a Chinese Maoist billionaire

Brian Becker is neither Chinese, Maoist, nor a billionaire.

PSL is riddled with sex abuse scandals

This is endemic to any dem-cent organization in the US. Idk how bad it has been at PSL but its not like a sex cult.

The main issue with the PSL is mostly around tactics. They do protests, they do protests well and I haven't really seen them do much other than protests. They do engage in local political issues but its usually in the form of protests.

The PSL also hasn't been very adept at appealing to the working class in the US. While they are leagues better than most on foreign policy, their rhetoric on domestic issues is severely lacking. Issues like student loans, housing, or medical expenses are rare in their literature. Without a concrete domestic program the PSL is an organization set to be on the right side of history but incapable of influencing that history.

That PSL is authoritarian, backed by a Chinese Maoist billionaire

That of course PSL would simp for DPRK because it’s authoritarian.

This part is just the usual reactionary tripe and not be taken seriously. Breaking it down:

• Authoritarian is a meaningless word: every state has a monopoly on violence in order to hold onto its state power (this does not inherently mean it promotes violence or seeks to abuse its citizens). Socialist states exercise power to suppress the capitalist power and transition to socialism and then to communism, and this is backed by a communist vanguard party. Capitalist states exercise power to suppress the working class more generally, but also consciously liberation-centered groups like those calling themselves socialist, communist, etc. (Takeaway: "Whose interests is power deriving from?" is a meaningful question. "Does power use violence to maintain itself?" is not)
• "Chinese Maoist billionaire": This is like a mad libs of red scare brain worms. The CPC itself, the vanguard party leadership of China, is not Maoist. They may at times refer back to Mao Zedong Thought, which is different from treating Mao's words as a whole brand of Marxist theory on its own. Though there have been Maoist groups historically, who took Mao's words more as dogma than "socialism with Chinese characteristics", they are about as far away from being a billionaire as you can get.
• "PSL would simp for DPRK because it’s authoritarian": I highly recommend Blowback podcast's season on Korea. It's not a pleasant history to learn about, but it may help in knowing more precisely why such a line is nonsense and why you can rebuff these people with confidence. Korea was brutalized first through Japanese occupation/colonialism and then through the US, the second of which continues this day with the occupation of what gets called "South Korea." Without the DPRK, Korea would probably be a colony of the US and China would probably be in a much weaker position globally. The damage that the US did to Korea, damage to civilians and infrastructure, is horrific. The idea of being called a "holocaust denier" for defending the DPRK is sort of like calling someone a holocaust denier for saying that the holocast was bad. It makes no fucking sense lol. If anyone was abused on a level resembling genocide involving Korea, it was the US doing it to Korea.

that PSL is riddled with sex abuse scandals

Don't know about reported incidents that have come up. It's possible they've had issues with sex pests, but the important part would be how they've handled it. Organizing, especially among people who can be as colonizer-brained as those raised in the US, is going to have problems sometimes. So far, I've not heard anything that would suggest PSL is fundamentally a problematic org, but local branches may vary, as can happen with orgs. As far as I can tell, they appear to be one of the most promising ones the US has in the current state of things, which is not a particularly high bar to meet given how mired the US left is in "reform", but it's something. It's also a reason why the imperialists would want to scare people away from getting involved with them.

Hope that helps.

Side point but I'm like 80% sure PSL has nothing to do with that documentary.

It's a great documentary tho. Members / adjacent members of PSL have made their own really good short and long-form documentaries too, like gaza fights for freedom, how palestine became colonized, several great ones on venezuela.

You're likely just encountering the standard "communism and communist parties = bad" in a lot of english-speaking spaces.

PSL has been around a long time and it'd be insulting if anarchist and other ultraleft groups didn't accuse it of everything under the sun (that they usually accuse each other of also). But because it practices demcent, and isn't some trotskyite or anarchist sex cult, It's not been shown that national or even any branch supports abuse.

The most important thing to know about the PSL is that there's a ton of misinformation and disinformation online from various kinds of sources. Find out for yourself what they believe and how they work by reading their websites and meeting them in real life. You can never trust what you hear online about communists.

If you have researched and found nothing to back up any negative claims, there is a better than even chance it's probably bot bullshit. Any organization even vaguely rubbing elbows with socialism, will come under attack. The Epstein Class goes after the DSA for being leftist and portray AOC as the next Lenin. I'm an SEP person myself and they come under the negative attacks.

Authoritarian for who? Authoritarian for bourgeoisie, libs, imperialists...

We have a page on them here, https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation, might wanna check the sources directly and make your own conclusions

I think they are mostly good and do good work, somw of the criticisms you mention just sounds like sectarian insults from people of other leftist tendencies

the authoritarian stuff is meaningless, and the DPRK documentary you watched is great and totally worth sharing. the issues i've heard about as it relates to PSL is about an ossified leadership and leadership structure. this is i think a large part of the reason why there have been so many sex abuse scandals: sex pests get into the org, commit sexual assault, and then are not removed but protected by various levels of leadership. this obviously implies some deep theoretical problems as well, which all current western ML orgs have anyhow.

i found this link that compiled every major criticism or complaint about PSL. i haven't looked through them all (there are a lot), but those that i looked at (i mostly focused on the sexual assault coverup allegations) looked legitimate. there's also some nonlegitimate critiques in there from what i recall, so take everything with a grain of salt. but, it does seem like western ML groups have an issue with not only patriarchal tendencies but underlying marxist patriarchal theory.

I unfortunately don't know much about the PSL, but I am curious about the documentary if you're willing to share

Making a separate comment to add more onto the initial post:

I'm not American and before my posting of the documentary, I had no idea what PSL was. I was not even aware of Marxist-Leninism. I wanted to ask because the 'Chinese Maoist Billionaire' and 'sex abuse scandals' was used to discredit the documentary. That because PSL made it—the documentary itself was invalid. That it was just propaganda.

This in addition to justifying the sanctions and attacks on DPRK made me also question their condemnation of PSL.