I feel exhausted.

I work a full-time job while going to graduate school full-time. I try to make time for friends, chores, taking care of my health, etc., but I constantly feel unproductive.

I always feel like there should be more to do and more to accomplish. I always have that feeling of not being good enough.

I am sure many of you can relate. How many jobs do you have to work to keep afloat? I can tell you that millions of people are working multiple jobs to make ends meet.

We didn’t even get into taking care of kids, our families, and ourselves, along with multiple other obligations. As life becomes more unaffordable, we are witnessing live-stream genocide/war crimes, and we are expected to be more and more productive…life becomes exhausting.

We in the working class are overworked and underpaid, we are exploited, and this exploitation alienates us from ourselves and each other. This alienation fragments us, pulling us away from each other and from the world around us.

Marxist philosopher Georg Lukacs called the alienating process inherent in capitalist production “reification”.

On the one hand, the objectification of their labour-power into something opposed to their total personality (a process already accomplished with the sale of that labour-power as a commodity) is now made into the permanent ineluctable reality of their daily life. Here, too, the personality can do no more than look on helplessly while its own existence is reduced to an isolated particle and fed into an alien system.

History and Class Consciousness by Georg Lukacs

Reification describes the process by which we see things as commodities or objects. Everything is reduced to what can be bought, sold, or measured, rather than to the human relationships behind things.

For example, at a job where quotas matter, you will be judged not by your character but by how much you produce and meet that quota.

Things become disconnected, you become disconnected from your job, and you become disconnected from everyone else. The capitalist economic system depends on this disconnection.

Capitalism is built on the fragmentation of labor; factory workers are meant to specialize, and so is everyone else. Work is broken into tasks, tasks are measured, and time is quantified. Human labor itself becomes a commodity: your time can be sold, your skills come at a price, and your work is measured.

You become just another number, another cog in the machine, and this has vast psychological impacts.

I think this is part of why we feel so isolated and so pacified. Even our attention and understanding are a market, the commodification of human beings relies on the fragmentation or reification of society itself.

The reification of society treats people as things. You start treating yourself that way too; instead of meaning and purpose, you focus on production.

Am I productive enough?

Am I optimizing my time well enough?

This process is physically and psychologically draining as well, because you never allow yourself to rest (along with the fact that you cannot rest in many cases).

Reification also ties into an existential exhaustion as you lose meaning. Most of our waking hours are spent at work or school (which many treat as work). During those hours, you only see your tasks, your role, and your metrics, not the full meaning of what you do.

This exhaustion can quickly turn into despair as effort never leads to fulfillment, meaning disappears, and you internalize the system's problems.

What is the potential antidote to this?

An Antidote to Reification

Imagine a pair of socks. You go to the store and buy a pair of socks.

Have you ever considered the interconnected process that brought those pair of socks from raw material to the store you walked into? Someone had to grow the cotton that makes up your socks, someone had to process that cotton, someone had to transport the cotton, someone else had to sew the socks together, someone had to pick up those socks, process them into packages, someone had to ship the socks to a port, someone had to drive a large boat with those socks across the sea, someone had to pick up the socks from the port, etc…

There is an entire system and process involved in creating, distributing, and selling those socks. Most of us do not think of that vast system. This is where Lukacs has another important concept.

Another concept from Lukacs is “totality” which means seeing the whole system. We need to see society as a connected whole, not just isolated pieces.

For example, rising grocery prices are tied to inflation, global supply chains, corporate decisions, government policy, etc.

The socks mentioned earlier are part of a global system that involves numerous people to make it function.

Totality is a way of breaking out of the conditions that make reification feel inevitable. Here are 5 ways totality does this:

1. You can see that the feelings of exhaustion and despair are not just yours.

You tell yourself that you are bad at managing your time and that you need to improve, but, in totality, that means shifting that self-blame toward deeper systems.

Ask yourself, what system am I inside? Rather than, what is wrong with me?

Totality allows you to see the constant demands on productivity, the economic pressures, social expectations, the algorithms that run our lives, and more.

It allows you to see that these feelings are not just yours but are felt by many others in a system meant to exhaust you.

2. It can restore meaning.

While reification can isolate you into tasks, metrics, and outputs… understanding totality seeks to connect us to other people, social processes, and real-world impacts.

Human beings need meaning; we need to know that what we do has meaning. While this meaning is almost impossible to find in an alienating capitalist system, we can find meaning in our relationships, our communities, and across arbitrary borders.

Meaning can help us connect with others based on our humanity rather than seeing people and things as separate from one another.

3. It breaks the illusion that everything is unchangeable.

Reification makes the world feel rigid, mechanical, and inevitable. This brings to mind the Mark Fisher concept of capitalist realism, in which people believe there is no alternative to capitalism.

But capitalism, much like the rest of our social order, is historically created, can change, and social relations themselves are not permanent. We can change our system for the better and totality helps us have the ability to see the possibilities.

4. It de-objectifies you.

Rather than seeing yourself as an object and as a unit of productivity. Totality allows us to see ourselves as part of a collective, an active participate of society, and someone capable of shaping structures.

Rehumanization is part of what the left is all about. Change starts when we believe and see that we are capable of bringing that change.

Capitalist society depends on us seeing ourselves as objects that can be used in the marketplace. In order for a new world to form, this sense of self must be broken, and something better must be reclaimed.

5. It opens the possibility of changing the system.

Without totality, we see solutions as fragmented self-optimization hacks that fit perfectly within the system. We think about time management over asking bigger questions.

For change to occur, we as a collective must ask the bigger questions.

Questions such as:

Why is work organized the way it is?

Why does everything need to be measured?

Who benefits from the way this structure is set up?

When we ask these bigger questions, we can begin to challenge and hopefully change the system by which we live.

Reclaiming Ourselves in an Exhausting World

So where does this leave us?

It leaves us with a clearer understanding that our exhaustion is not a personal failure; it is a structural outcome. The system demands more from us than we can sustainably give, then convinces us that falling short is our fault. Reification isolates us into fragments: worker, student, consumer, metric. It strips meaning from what we do and replaces it with output, efficiency, and endless comparison.

But totality gives us a way to fight back not by escaping the system overnight, but by seeing it clearly.

When we understand that our exhaustion is shared, we stop blaming ourselves. When we see the interconnected processes behind our lives, we begin to restore meaning. When we recognize that the system is historically created, we understand that it can be changed. And when we reject the idea that we are merely objects to be optimized, we begin the process of rehumanizing ourselves.

This is where resistance begins.

Not in perfection. Not in productivity. But in clarity.

There are a few takeaways we can hold onto:

• Your exhaustion is not a personal defect; it is a political condition.

• You are not a machine, and your worth is not measured by output.

• You are part of a broader system and a broader collective.

• The way things are is not the way they have to be.

And maybe most importantly:

• Rest, reflection, and connection are not escapes from the struggle; they are part of it.

Because a system that thrives on fragmentation depends on us staying isolated, exhausted, and disconnected. Every moment we reconnect with ourselves, with others, with the reality of the system we live in, is a small act of defiance.

You are not alone in feeling this way.

And more importantly, you are not powerless within it.

The first step is seeing clearly.

The next step is deciding what to do with that clarity.

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How many times do we feel anxious or depressed?

How many of us are eventually diagnosed with anxiety or depression?

The feelings themselves are not new. Sadness, dread, stress, and exhaustion are familiar experiences for millions of people. They appear in the quiet panic when the bills pile up and there is no clear way to pay them. They show up in the despair of losing a job during an economic downturn. They linger in the constant fatigue of working multiple jobs just to survive.

For many people, these feelings are treated purely as individual psychological problems. If we feel overwhelmed, we are told we need better coping strategies, stronger resilience, or perhaps medication.

But what if something deeper is happening?

What if these feelings are not simply personal failures or chemical imbalances?

What if they are the predictable outcomes of the system we live under?

These conditions are not accidents.

They are not coincidences.

They are the result of a social order that systematically alienates people from their work, from one another, and from themselves.

Political economist Karl Marx described this phenomenon as alienation. Under the wage system, workers sell their labor to employers but have little control over how that labor is used or what it ultimately produces. The products of our work do not belong to us. The pace and structure of work are rarely ours to determine.

Work becomes something we endure rather than something we meaningfully shape.

Over time, this produces a profound psychological disconnection. People become separated from the creative and social aspects of labor that once gave work a sense of purpose.

Capitalism not only allows this alienation to exist, it actively depends on it.

We are constantly encouraged to compete with one another. We are told to outperform our coworkers, to climb the ladder, to optimize our productivity, and to constantly improve ourselves. Even rest becomes suspect. Rest is framed as laziness. Recovery is treated as wasted time. Enjoying life often begins to feel like a luxury reserved for moments when productivity has finally been exhausted.

This culture of relentless competition feeds directly into the mental health crisis we see today.

It helps explain why so many people dread going to work each morning. It helps explain why burnout has become one of the defining emotional experiences of modern life. Workers are pushed to produce more and more, yet they are rarely given the time, stability, or security necessary to actually thrive.

The system demands our time, our energy, and our attention. It requires our bodies and our minds to keep the machine running.

But feeding that machine often comes at the cost of something deeper: our sense of self.

Social psychologist Erich Fromm described alienation in deeply human terms in his book The Sane Society:

“By alienation I mean a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts—but his acts and their consequences have become his masters… The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person.”

Fromm’s insight highlights something that many modern discussions of mental health overlook: alienation is not only about work.

It spreads outward into the broader structure of society.

The relationship between economic systems and cultural life is not accidental. In dialectical materialist terms, economic conditions shape the social environment people inhabit. The norms, expectations, and pressures of everyday life develop alongside the economic system that organizes production.

When work is unstable, society becomes anxious.
When competition is normalized, relationships become transactional.
When survival dominates daily life, meaning becomes harder to find.

It is therefore not surprising that so many people report feeling lonelier than ever before. Surveys consistently show rising levels of isolation, even as we live in an era of constant digital connectivity.

The deeper problem is not simply loneliness itself.

It is the erosion of meaningful connection and purpose.

When work lacks meaning, when people feel powerless over their own lives, and when identity becomes tied primarily to survival, the conditions for psychological distress multiply. Anxiety, depression, and burnout flourish in environments where individuals feel they have little control over the forces shaping their lives.

In this sense, the mental health crisis cannot be understood purely as a medical issue.

It is also a social and economic one.

Our economic system produces the very conditions that generate widespread stress, exhaustion, and disconnection. Treating these outcomes solely as individual pathologies obscures the broader structures responsible for them.

This does not mean therapy, medication, or personal coping strategies have no value. They can provide important relief and support.

But when millions of people experience the same forms of distress at the same time, it is worth asking whether the problem lies only within individuals.

Or whether the system itself may be making people sick.

Until we are willing to confront that possibility, the mental health crisis will remain something we try to treat individually, even as the conditions producing it continue to grow.

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One of the biggest weaknesses of the modern left is our tendency to talk about capitalism without studying how it works.

We critique capitalism constantly (myself included). We talk about exploitation, inequality, and imperialism, but too often our understanding stops at outrage rather than analysis. Karl Marx’s Capital remains one of the most important tools ever written for understanding the system we live under.

We need to understand how profit is created, why crisis under capitalism happens, and why this system repeatedly produces inequality and suffering.

The problem is that Capital is intimidating. It’s dense, historical, and difficult to approach alone.

That’s why I am helping to organize a book club with my comrade to read Capital together with the goal of turning theory into something living, practical, and useful for understanding the world we’re trying to change.

Theory matters because it gives us clarity about the system we are fighting. Without it, our politics collapses into outrage, surface-level analysis, or endless cycles of reacting to the latest news cycle. Reading Capital can help us understand the mechanisms of capitalism so that we, as workers, understand the forces shaping our lives.

Learning theory helps us see patterns where others see isolated problems. It reveals how exploitation, imperialism, and inequality are not accidents or mere moral failings but structural features of the system itself.

When organizers understand these structures, they’re better able to build movements and organizations that address the causes rather than the symptoms.

Theory is never separate from practice; effective theory comes through practice.

The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice…

…The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.

On Practice by Mao Zedong

Throughout history, workers, organizers, and students have studied Marx in groups. They discussed passages, asked questions, and connected theory to the realities of their own lives.

This is what we shall be doing; that is the point of this book club.

The goal is not academic perfection or pretending to be experts. The goal is to learn together, break down complex ideas into something understandable, and build a deeper grasp of the system we are trying to change.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll work through the book.

and I will be hosting chats within Substack for subscribers to discuss Capital. We will be posting questions, having discussions, and sharing what we thought was interesting in the text.

If you are interested in joining:

• Subscribe to and

• Look out for Substack chats related to Capital.

• Grab a copy of Capital Volume 1 along with the companion reader by David Harvey (Copies of the books can be provided via chat if you can’t grab them)

Things to keep in mind:

• There are no scheduled chats; we will discuss each session asynchronously.

• Each session will be two weeks long

• This is a massive book, so do not expect it to be done in a weekend.

• Each session will have discussion questions and focus areas to pay attention to.

Here is the schedule:

Session 1 (Weeks 1-2): Mandel’s Intro & Marx’s Prefaces
Session 2 (Weeks 3-4): Chapter 1 (The Commodity)
Session 3 (Weeks 5-6): Chapters 2-4 (Exchange, Money, and the General Formula)
Session 4 (Weeks 7-8): Chapters 5-9 (The Labour Process& Surplus Value)
Session 5 (Weeks 9-10): Chapter 10 (The Working Day)
Session 6 (Weeks 11-12): Chapters 11-14 (Relative Surplus Value & Co-operation)
Session 7 (Weeks 13-14): Chapter 15 (Machinery and Large-Scale Industry)
Session 8 (Weeks 15-16): Chapters 16-22 (Absolute/Relative Surplus Value & Wages)
Session 9 (Weeks 17-18): Chapters 23-25 (Accumulation &The General Law)
Session 10 (Weeks 19-20): Chapters 26-33 (Primitive Accumulation)

If you have any questions, feel free to comment them!

I recently released a piece on not leaving Substack. There was a mostly positive response to this piece, though there was some pushback. This pushback had me reflecting on a few things. Things such as notoriety, fame, the spread of ideas, social media, and, I am sure, more.

In the past, I wanted to work on a piece detailing streamer Hasan Piker’s blatant opportunism. For those unfamiliar, opportunism, in the broadest sense, means changing one's political position to exploit circumstances for personal gain. In Hasan’s case, he would sell out the Socialist movement, which he claimed to be part of, to support the bourgeois Democratic Party.

I am not going to go over the numerous errors in reasoning that Hasan gives for supporting a pro-imperialist, pro-genocidal capitalist party. However, I will use that instance as a jumping-off point to discuss the dialectical relationship of fame.

Marx and Engels’ dialectical materialism discusses the reciprocal relationship between the material world and societal phenomena. In simpler words, what is the relationship between how resources are produced (the economy) and how a society functions (class society)? This functioning is dialectical, as it progresses through contradictions and change in response to material conditions.

Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict.

Socialism: Utopian or Scientific by Fredrick Engels

How people live determines how they think, not the other way around. Therefore, the contradiction between fame and the material world becomes apparent. If fame brings wealth, power, and prestige, the material conditions of that person’s life change. Why would that person then seek out societal change to make the world more equitable if they benefit from the status quo? Most wouldn’t, that’s the point of fame.

Capitalists know that the greatest tool they have to defang social movements is by having people sell out. The opportunism of the few can destabilize social movements and render them ineffective in challenging the system. We have seen this used in the 2020 BLM movement, in which many were attempting to focus their energy on challenging the capitalist-imperialist system, but were later defanged by the Democratic Party.

Furthermore, the issue of greatest concern for us is the relationship between the Global Network and the Democratic Party. This is hypocritical at best, as the Democratic Party has historically rejected and ignored BLM’s demands and has made it clear that they are pro-police, pro-prison, and committed to capitalism. From Obama’s support of police and his double-cross of Erica Garner, to “Top Cop” Kamala Harris’ denial of justice for Matrice Richardson, even going back to the 1994 Crime Bill authored by Joe Biden along with the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act that stripped basic human rights from countless Black people—the Democratic Party has literally created the conditions that led to the formation of this movement. Even now, the Democratic party continues to support imperialism, killing African heads of state, bombing Somalia, abusing immigrants (including those of the Black diaspora), and spreading the U.S. military throughout Black and Brown countries around the world. This is a party that is a threat both here and internationally. To ally with them is to ally against ourselves.

Source

The opportunist sell-outs within the BLM movement, such as Patrisse Cullors, have led the ruin of a movement that had the potential to truly pose a challenge to the status quo. Where is the prominence of BLM now? Where are the reforms and met demands of that movement? The co-optation of the BLM movement should be a reminder to all of us of the dangers of opportunism that fame can bring.

Why am I discussing fame and the dialectical relationship of it?

Well, it has come to my attention that this newsletter has grown to over 3 thousand subscribers and followers. I never expected this newsletter or page to grow beyond 1,000 people, but with persistence and writing somewhat decently, this page has grown quite a bit.

While 3 thousand people are a drop in the bucket compared to other influencers, most people on Substack do not have thousands of readers.

Should I let that small sense of nortoriety go to my head? Should I seek to turn this into a personal brand? Should I include paid tiers and posts in my newsletter?

These are questions I once pondered but have since relinquished, given my current goals. My goal ever since starting Substack has been to grow this account. In the past, I had petty-bourgeois aspirations; I wanted to be an influencer and internet famous as a means of getting out of my impoverished position.

As was previously said, your material conditions determine how you think. People who are desperate to get out of their situations tend to do things they believe are in their own best interest, despite how they affect others or society at large. However, a few of us understand the bigger picture; we understand that personal gain at the expense of others is short-lived and ultimately hurts the world rather than helps.

People talk all the time about their motivation and reasoning for being a leftist. They talk about basic empathy, their own suffering, religious or philosophical conviction, or some other life/situational factor that spurred their thinking and actions towards something different.

For most of my life (even to this day), I struggle. I struggle mentally, physically, and socially. I struggle to do what’s right, to care about others more than myself, and to reconcile the contradictions within myself and what I see. Politics is personal when you know hunger, despair, and suffering.

While my suffering is nothing compared to the suffering of others under the boot of my country’s (the US) imperialism… I understand others' perspectives because of this suffering. I understand that the people of Gaza, Sudan, Congo, Cuba, etc. are no different from myself in that they dream, they want, they aspire, they suffer, because they too are human beings.

Leftism is the ultimate humanization process; it shows that people are not less because of something like their class, country, gender, race, sexuality, etc. This humanization process shows us that fame is not the goal.

The goal now is to bring awareness to greater issues, foster important conversations, and express thoughts within a space that can actually grow in the hopes that these conversations and thoughts will lead to action. To side with the oppressed is to struggle to relinquish one’s own comfort.

Selfish individualism will not improve the world. Therefore, we in the imperial core, those who benefit materially from the subjugation of the world, need to make the difficult sacrifice of renouncing our privileged position by siding with the super-exploited.

Does this mean we reject fame?

I think fame overall in our bourgeois capitalist society is shaped by that society. “Fame” in the capitalist sense will always be tied to upholding the current system as a person benefits from said system. The concept of becoming famous will always tie into the society in which you are becoming famous.

If a person wants “fame,” the follow-up question should be why?

Why do you want to become famous?

What do you think fame will bring you?

More importantly, what do you want to become famous for?

Some of us have this naive expectation that we can become famous by exposing our political program: standing against oppression, standing up for the oppressed, and wanting a more egalitarian society. But capitalist society regularly punishes and marginalizes the political program of the left.

Why would the capitalists want a political ideology, organization, or person who seeks to wrestle power away from their control to become famous?

This is why numerous figures become infamous or de-radicalized irrespective of their historical nuances.

For example, how many of you know of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches in which he spoke against capitalism?

Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.

The Three Evils of Society by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

If a radical figure like King, who is “famous” within the American consciousness, can be this whitewashed and de-radicalized, then what does that tell you about more radical figures who are infamous?

They will call revolutionaries “monsters”, “tryants”, or “authoritarian”. They will call the people who dared to stand up to the empire “terrorists”.

All the while, the USA is built on settler colonialism, has destroyed democratic nations, and aided in a modern-day genocide as it continues to terrorize the world.

This tells us that our understanding of fame comes from a distorted place. A society that upholds those deemed safe, sweeping under the rug all misgivings, and highlighting only the parts that they want to be highlighted.

This is ideology in action.

This is the mythos of capitalist society within America.

We cannot seek fame within a society that wants to defang our movements as the anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist left.

So what does all of this mean for those of us trying to write, organize, and struggle within a system designed to neutralize us?

It means we must remain conscious of the contradictions we operate within. Social media can spread ideas, but it can also transform ideas into commodities. Visibility can help movements grow, but it can also elevate individuals in ways that pull them away from the very struggles they claim to represent. Fame, within capitalist society, is rarely neutral. It is shaped by a system that rewards compliance and punishes genuine threats to power.

That is why revolutionary work must always return to purpose.

The goal was never notoriety. The goal was never personal branding. The goal was always liberation, the dismantling of the systems that produce exploitation, imperialism, and human suffering. If writing, speaking, or building platforms helps illuminate those systems and connect people to struggle, then those tools have value. But the moment those tools become ends in themselves, they risk reproducing the same individualism that capitalism thrives on.

Ultimately, the task of the revolutionary is not to become known, but to remain committed. To remain clear-eyed about the world as it is, and unwavering in the effort to change it.

Movements endure not because individuals become famous, but because people choose, again and again, to stand with the oppressed rather than with the system that oppresses them.

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It recently came to my attention that Substack has struck a deal with Polymarket, an online gambling platform. The blatant monetization of user data and the introduction of another addictive feature into a writing platform is frustrating, to say the least. But are we really shocked? Big Tech behaving like Big Tech is hardly breaking news.

I came across an article from a prominent online leftist explaining why they planned to leave the platform. Their main argument seemed to be that social media should not be so profit-driven, and because Substack is clearly moving further in that direction, it should be abandoned.

But when I checked their social media links, they were active on Instagram and Twitter. Are those platforms not profit-driven? Has Meta not sold user data, cooperated with governments, and covered up internal harms? Twitter, now owned by a billionaire openly sympathetic to fascism (who is an outright fascist himself), arguably presents an even worse case. These platforms don’t just pursue profit; they actively shape public discourse in ways that reinforce imperial power and corporate control.

This isn’t to excuse Big Tech. Their surveillance practices, algorithmic manipulation, and monopolistic behavior absolutely deserve criticism. But from a Marxist perspective, none of this should be surprising. The capitalist class acts to protect and expand its interests. Owning media platforms is a logical extension of that. They have the capital, the infrastructure, and the networks to control what we read, watch, and discuss.

So the real question isn’t why these platforms behave this way. The real question is: what are we actually trying to accomplish by using them?

The purpose of being on social media, whether it’s Substack, TikTok, Instagram, or anywhere else, is not to “liberate” the platform itself. These platforms are owned by capital and will continue to serve capital. The purpose of being there is to communicate ideas, spread information, and help develop political/class consciousness. Like it or not, this is where people are. If we want to engage the public, we have to meet them where they already gather.

Personally, I’ve received important updates on Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, and other global struggles through Substack. I’ve seen organizing calls circulate through Twitter and Bluesky. I’ve even picked up useful left-wing memes and ideas on Instagram. These platforms are flawed, often deeply so, but they also function as distribution networks and distribution matters. A well-written post on a corporate platform can reach more people in a day than a pamphlet could in a month.

That doesn’t mean we should be naive. It means we should be strategic.

So, What Should a Left Social Media Strategy Look Like?

Speaking as someone who once seriously studied digital marketing in my early 20s, the left needs to take information distribution seriously. Good ideas alone do not spread themselves. Platforms reward consistency, networks, and visibility, not just correctness.

1. Maintain Multiple Accounts

Political repression online is real. Left-wing pages are shadowbanned, demonetized, or removed all the time. Relying on a single large account is risky. A decentralized approach with multiple accounts, multiple contributors, and cross-posting makes it harder for platforms to shut down circulation entirely. Think of it as redundancy, like how movements historically used multiple newspapers and local chapters.

2. Share and Amplify Relevant Information

Algorithms reward engagement. Sharing posts from other left-wing accounts helps circulate their ideas beyond their immediate audience. Commenting responsibly, reposting, and linking content helps push it into wider feeds. This isn’t just about visibility; it’s about building an ecosystem where information flows across networks rather than staying isolated in small bubbles.

3. Treat Email as Infrastructure

This is where Substack still shines. An email list is portable. If Substack collapses, bans your account, or becomes unusable, your audience doesn’t disappear; you can take that list somewhere else. Email is one of the few digital tools that still offers direct communication with your community without algorithmic interference. That alone makes it valuable.

4. Take Digital Security Seriously

We know platforms share data with governments and corporations. That means being mindful about security matters. Using VPNs, secure browsers, encrypted messaging apps, and strong account protections isn’t paranoia—it’s basic digital hygiene. Movements throughout history have always had to think about surveillance; the online era is no different.

5. Build Depth on One Platform, Reach on Others

Not every platform serves the same function. Some are better for long-form analysis (Substack, blogs, newsletters), while others are better for reach (Instagram, Twitter, TikTok). Instead of expecting one platform to do everything, the left should think in terms of funnels. A short post, meme, or thread draws attention; a newsletter or essay provides depth. The goal is not to win arguments in comment sections, it’s to move people toward deeper engagement over time.

6. Be Consistent, Not Constant

One trap many creators fall into is chasing the algorithm by posting nonstop. But consistency matters more than volume. Regular posting builds trust and familiarity, while burnout helps no one. A sustainable rhythm of weekly essays, periodic updates, and selective engagement often works better than trying to dominate feeds daily.

7. Connect Online Work to Real-World Networks

Social media should not exist in isolation from organizing, study groups, unions, or community work. The strongest digital presence reflects real relationships offline. Posts about strikes, mutual aid efforts, or community struggles tend to resonate more than abstract theory because they connect ideas to lived reality. Online platforms should amplify real movements, not replace them.

Leaving platforms in protest may feel principled, but it can also mean abandoning a space where millions of people are actively consuming information. I’m not here because Substack is ethical. I’m here because it’s useful. Until we build independent infrastructures strong enough to replace these platforms, abandoning them outright risks isolating ourselves rather than advancing our ideas.

History shows that movements rarely grow by retreating into smaller and purer spaces. They grow by engaging the terrain that actually exists. Right now, that terrain is corporate media ecosystems. These platforms shape how people learn about the world, where they encounter political ideas, and how narratives spread. Walking away from them doesn’t weaken corporate power; it often just removes dissenting voices from the conversation, leaving the space even more dominated by reactionary or apolitical content.

The goal isn’t to pretend these platforms are neutral. The goal is to use them with clear eyes and a strategic mindset. If the ruling class controls the megaphones, the left doesn’t win by walking away from the stage; we win by learning how to speak loudly enough that people hear us anyway.

That means treating these platforms less like homes and more like tools. You don’t need to totally trust a tool to use it. You don’t need to believe in a platform’s ethics to understand its reach. What matters is whether it allows us to communicate, connect people, circulate analysis, and help others make sense of what they’re experiencing. As long as millions of ordinary people are scrolling, reading, and sharing, there’s value in being present where those conversations are happening.

At the same time, being strategic also means being realistic about limits. No platform is permanent. Accounts get banned, algorithms change, audiences shift. That’s why the real long-term work is building networks that can outlive any single platform—email lists, cross-platform communities, real-world relationships, and independent archives. The platform is just the delivery system; the relationships and ideas are the real infrastructure.

If the left waits for perfect, ethical platforms before communicating, we’ll be waiting forever. In the meantime, the right will keep organizing, spreading narratives, and shaping public perception on the tools that exist. I’d rather use imperfect tools consciously than surrender the terrain entirely.

I work in an education setting.

It’s difficult being in this setting because you witness firsthand the propaganda and indoctrination children go through from elementary age all the way to high school.

For example, at the time of this it writing it was Veterans Day in the US, a day that celebrates US soldiers who have retired from supporting the US imperialist project directly. In nearly every elementary school in my area, there are drawings, colorings, and or paintings dedicated to these past soldiers.

I was taught from a young age to revere the US military, I was taught to respect the police, and I was taught that the USA is the best country in the world. US exceptionalism was beaten into my mind since I could remember. School children are compelled to pledge allegiance to the US empire every morning.

The education system serves the prevailing ideology of the system. In the US, you are taught that the system is good, justified, and better than others. You are taught that those who disagree with this system are ‘bad’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘uneducated’, or ‘terrorist’.

Systems of knowledge and information dissemination groom us. Education and the media use subtle acts of psychological conditioning and manipulation to accept the prevailing ideology of the US empire.

Education as a Means of Control

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”;1 for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.”

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

In Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the concept of education in the West is viewed through the ‘banking’ model. Knowledge is deposited in a student and withdrawn as soon as it is necessary, but what is not encouraged is deep reflection on facts.

Students are taught to achieve high test scores by reciting facts and concepts on command rather than deeply reflecting on the why behind them.

Students are taught that soldiers are good and that America is exceptional, but they are readily discouraged from asking why.

Why are American soldiers the good guys?

Why is America exceptional over other places?

Why is the economic system of capitalism superior to others?

Furthermore, even if students ask why they are given parroted responses that do not critically analyze history, geopolitical reality, and alternative perspectives.

If a student asks:

“Why are American soldiers the good guys?”

The response might be:

“Because they protect our freedom from bad people.”

But what is freedom in this case? Who decides who is “bad”? How does protecting said freedom make them “good”?

These follow-up questions will be regularly shut down in the American educational system. Students are taught facts, concepts, and skills to improve their test-taking. They’re not giving conscious awareness of systems to challenge better and perhaps change them.

The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of learning that, on the contrary, floger gave green grass to the rabbit. The “humanism” of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons—the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

The US empire needs to sustain itself; it will teach its citizens to view it as necessary, justified, and preferable to any alternative. Any threat to this established order is dangerous.

This model of education is given to children and adults alike; we are taught that soldiers are good, what the US does is justified, and that the US system is the best. But we are regularly discouraged from questioning such assumptions.

The Media Grooms Us Too

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.

Manufactured Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

Admittedly, I am not a big fan of Chomsky for various reasons (not including his photos with Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein), but I do like the propaganda model of media that both he and Herman detail.

Media in this case is constrained by factors related to power and economic incentives. In the USA about 6 media companies control pretty much all the major news networks. It would be naive to assume these corperations do not filter and control what their news networks are allowed to talk about.

We saw this during the Gaza genocide, with western media outlets repeatedly trying to deny that there was a genocide being committed and trying to sweep under the run Israeli attrocities.

The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news “objectively” and on the basis of professional news values. Within the limits of the filter constraints they often are objective; the constraints are so powerful, and are built into the system in such a fundamental way, that alternative bases of news choices are hardly imaginable.

Manufactured Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

This skewed distribution of power along with financial control creates certain “filters” which influences what news is being covered, how that news is framed, and how it is being covered.

One of these “filters” is American Exceptionalism; corporate media does the work of sanitizing US military action and supposed “interventions” in developing nations. Coups, bombings, drone strikes, invasions, etc., are justified because America is ‘exceptional’ in its actions.

American exceptionalism survives not because it reflects reality, but because it is manufactured, meaning produced, polished, and repeated until it becomes common sense. The U.S. media system doesn’t simply report the news; it constructs a worldview in which America is always benevolent, always justified, always the reluctant savior rather than the active oppressor.

Through constant repetition, the population is trained to see American violence as “defense,” American interventions as “humanitarian,” and American dominance as the natural order of things. In this ideological universe, imperialism is invisible, genocide becomes a “conflict,” and those resisting oppression are framed as irrational or extremist.

This is how American exceptionalism functions: not as a description of the world, but as a psychological shield that protects the U.S. from accountability and insulates its citizens from the reality of their own empire.

We, as U.S. citizens, are groomed to accept this shield; we are discouraged from questioning it and can be potentially harmed for standing up against it. As we saw with those who stood up against U.S. support for the Gaza Genocide, you can easily be imprisoned and have your career ruined.

Psychological Grooming Under Empire

Working in education makes the process painfully visible. You watch children move through a system that molds not only what they know, but how they feel and interpret the world. Patriotic rituals, “heroes” of the nation, and narratives about the military are fed to students before they can question what they’re absorbing. By the time they reach high school, the ideological framework has already settled in: America is good, America is justified, America is right.

Paulo Freire helps us understand this process. He argues that oppressive systems must work not only on material structures but on human consciousness itself. The goal is to shape how people imagine reality. The U.S. education system is not simply teaching math and reading; it is actively manipulating children with dominant cultural narratives. These narratives invade the minds of children and, subsequently, adults, shaping their understanding of reality.

Cultural invasion is on the one hand an instrument of domination, and on the other, the result of domination. Thus, cultural action of a dominating character (like other forms of antidialogical action), in addition to being deliberate and planned, is in another sense simply a product of oppressive reality. For example, a rigid and oppressive social structure necessarily influences the institutions of child rearing and education within that structure.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

As previously stated, under the “banking model” of education, teachers deposit facts into students, who are rewarded for reciting them, not interrogating them. Questions about why America wages war, why the military is revered, or who benefits from nationalism are not simply discouraged; they are treated as inappropriate or unpatriotic.

What Freire describes is a form of psychological grooming: conditioning the oppressed to internalize the worldview of the oppressor. Children learn that the United States is the global guardian of freedom, that soldiers protect “our way of life,” and that dissenting from these narratives makes you suspect. This is how ideology gets under the skin, long before a person can analyze geopolitics or history, they have already learned what is sacred, what is forbidden, and who is “on their side.”

Michael Parenti, in Inventing Reality, shows that this grooming does not end in the classroom or even in the newsroom. The very state apparatus and institutions we rely on shape our understanding of the world and skew this understanding towards a particular end.

Today corporate leaders and their well-paid deputies dominate the top posts of society’s educational, communicational, artistic, entertainment, legal, and scientific institutions. These institutions are ruled very much like business firms themselves, by boards of directors (or trustees or regents, as they might be called) drawn mostly from the business class or those in the pay of that class. Numbering between ten and twenty-five persons, these boards have final say over the institution’s system of rewards and punishments, its budget and personnel, its investments, and its purposes. They exercise power either by occupying the top executive positions or by hiring and firing those who do. Their power to change the institution’s management if it does not perform as they desire is what gives them control over policy.

Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti

While Parenti argues that the media does not simply relay facts, it constructs interpretations of reality that favor dominant power. The whole of American society emphasizes America’s benevolence, frames foreign conflicts through U.S. strategic interests, and downplays or erases the suffering caused by U.S. military and economic policy. In this sense, our social institutions overall become a continuation of the schooling project, policing the boundaries of acceptable thought.

The psychological grooming of empire, therefore, happens on two fronts (even though this applies to many institutions): schools shape emotional loyalty, and media shape intellectual loyalty. Together, they form what Gramsci called “cultural hegemony”: a system in which the ruling class does not need to enforce obedience through force because the population willingly consents to the dominant worldview. That worldview insists the U.S. is always the hero of history, always the protector of democracy, always the necessary actor in global affairs.

Breaking this conditioning is difficult, not because people lack intelligence, but because they have been denied the tools for critical reflection. Freire warns that without critical consciousness, the oppressed will internalize the values of their oppressors. Chomsky helped show how the media constructs those values. Parenti explains how institutions reproduce them without question. And I am sure educators witness the results firsthand, students who can recite patriotic slogans but cannot explain what the U.S. actually does in the world.

To call this grooming is not an exaggeration. It is a precise description of how an empire sustains itself, not only through bombs and bases but through beliefs.

Emotional Investment in Imperial Identity

One of the more overlooked dimensions of U.S. psychological grooming is not merely the information people consume, but the emotional identity they internalize. Empire is not sustained by facts alone; it is sustained by feelings: pride, fear, belonging, resentment, nostalgia. These emotions bind the individual to the imperial project in ways rational argument cannot easily undo.

I call this our imperial identity, the identity we adopt in relation to the imperial projects of a given country. Notice that this identity is inherently nationalistic. For example, US citizens are not only taught that the United States is powerful or moral, but they are also taught that it is theirs. The military is “our troops.” Foreign policy becomes “our interests.” Wars are framed as protecting “our freedom.” Through ritual (the pledge), symbolism (flags in every classroom), and holidays (Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day), national identity fuses with personal identity. Once fused, critiques of empire do not feel like critiques of a government; they feel like attacks on the self.

We see this in the media's use of first-person plural language to identify with state power. The adversaries of the United States government are “our adversaries”; when the US military intervenes, that translates to “we intervened”; allies of the US government are “our allies”, etc.

While Washington policy-makers argue that US overseas intervention is necessary to protect “our interests,” the press seldom asks what “our interests” are and who among us is actually served by them. As we have seen in regard to Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and other cases, “defending US interests” usually means imposing a client-state status on nations that might strike a course independent of, and even inimical to, global corporate investment. This is rarely the reason given in the national media. Rather, it is almost always a matter of “stopping aggression,” or “protecting our national security,” or punishing leaders who are said to be dictators, drug dealers, or state terrorists.

Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti

The great psychological trick is to conflate US imperialist interests with the interests of individual citizens. This psychological connection is not organic; it is manufactured. Most Americans do not materially benefit from the Pentagon budget, the CIA’s covert operations, or the overthrow of governments abroad. But because imperial identity makes citizens feel personally invested in the survival of U.S. dominance, the state’s geopolitical projects take on the emotional stakes of personal safety, dignity, and belonging. When empire kills, sanctions, occupies, or destabilizes, the public is taught to interpret these acts as unfortunate necessities carried out in the name of “our security” rather than the enforcement of U.S. capital and military primacy. As Parenti points out, the media rarely asks “security for whom?” or “interests for whom?”, because such questions break the emotional bond between empire and subject.

This bond also produces a powerful defensive reflex. When leftists criticize U.S. imperialism, they often face not logical counterarguments but emotional backlash. Criticizing drone strikes becomes “hating America,” opposing sanctions becomes “supporting dictators,” standing with Palestinians becomes “supporting terrorism.” These reactions are not spontaneous; they are the result of a national identity built on imperial virtue. When the oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor, they come to defend those values as their own, even against their material interests. In the imperial core, this manifests as working-class people defending policies that enrich corporations, devastate foreign nations, and funnel resources away from their own communities all because empire has successfully positioned itself as the embodiment of national pride.

Breaking Free from Identity and Grooming

Breaking from imperial identity is rarely a matter of acquiring a few new facts. If imperial ideology were held in place by information alone, a single graph, documentary, or statistic would shatter it. But because imperial identity is emotional, educational, and psychological, the rupture tends to happen under different kinds of pressures.

To break from this imperial identity is difficult, not because Americans are uniquely irrational, but because the identity itself is structured to feel natural and inevitable. The antidote is not simply more information, but a shift in identification. This is where internationalism becomes essential. Internationalism offers a competing identity, one rooted not in national superiority, but in shared struggle against exploitation. It invites U.S. citizens to see themselves not as stakeholders in empire, but as part of a global working class whose liberation is tied to the liberation of workers and oppressed peoples everywhere.

Internationalism does not demand self-hatred or guilt, it demands disidentification with imperial power. It asks us to stop saying “we invaded Iraq” or “we support Israel,” and instead ask the questions Parenti teaches us to ask: who is “we”? who benefits? and who pays the cost? Once those questions are on the table, the emotional spell of imperial identity begins to crack. When Americans recognize that their true allies are not defense contractors or state officials but teachers in Chile, farmers in India, and students in Palestine, the possibility of real solidarity emerges. And in that emergence lies the beginning of anti-imperial struggle, not only against bombs and sanctions, but against the ideological chains that make empire feel like home.

Paulo Freire would call this moment conscientização, the development of critical consciousness. It does not come from being told what is true; it comes from realizing what one has been prevented from seeing. Seeing the fact the others struggle under the boot of imperialism abroad and the strangeling hold of capitalism at home.

It is throught awareness from agitating and education that can hopefully break through emotional identity.

How People Break From U.S. Ideological Grooming

If we look across movements rather than moral prescriptions, there are several recurring conditions under which individuals and communities break from the ideological grooming of empire:

1. Contradiction Between Narrative and Lived Experience.
When the narrative of U.S. benevolence clashes with domestic poverty, medical debt, police violence, or endless war, the myth of America-as-savior becomes harder to sustain. The Black Panther Party articulated this contradiction clearly: domestic oppression and foreign imperialism were not two separate stories, but the same story playing out at different scales. This linkage created pathways for Black Americans to identify not with the U.S. state, but with anti-colonial struggles abroad.

2. Exposure to Suppressed Histories.
Ideological grooming relies on erasure: Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1965, Chile 1973, Iraq 2003, Gaza 2023. When those histories re-enter public consciousness often through diaspora communities, independent media, or declassified documents the official version of America collapses. There are numerous historical works that function in this register: they return agency to the colonized, interrogate the storytellers, and reveal who benefits from forgetting.

3. Relationships That Cross National or Racial Boundaries.
Internationalism is not only theoretical; it is interpersonal. Solidarity networks, student exchanges, refugee communities, migrant labor, and globalized communication create lived encounters that make U.S. narratives less airtight. Once an American befriends someone who fled a U.S.-backed dictatorship or who lost family to sanctions, empire ceases to be abstract.

4. Moments of Imperial Overreach.
Empires produce disillusionment when they demand too much too much blood, too much treasure, too much justification. The Afghanistan withdrawal produced widespread questioning not out of anti-imperialist enlightenment, but because two decades of war could no longer be reconciled with promised outcomes. Historically, all empires face such limits.

5. Cultural and Intellectual Currents.
Art, film, literature, and scholarship can become solvents for ideology. Parenti’s lectures reached people not through institutional authority but through emotional clarity and humor. Freire influenced educators who recognized domination in their own classrooms. None of these figures “told people what to think”, they widened the field of what could be thought.

These conditions do not guarantee a break from empire, but they demonstrate that ideological grooming is not totalizing. It can be interrupted, destabilized, and replaced by other frameworks, particularly internationalist ones.

And that brings us full circle: internationalism is not simply a political stance; it is an identity alternative to imperial identity. It situates the individual not in relation to “national interests,” but in relation to global structures, shared precarity, and collective dignity. When internationalism takes root, the emotional loyalty that empire once commanded is redirected, not toward another state, but toward humanity itself.

If imperial identity tells us, “Their suffering protects our freedom,” internationalism replies, “Their freedom is bound to ours.”

That shift constitutes the true break from grooming, not just seeing through empire, but ceasing to identify with it.

I recently came across an essay from a well-known Marxist meme page titled “Imperial Privilege Despite Minority Status.” The title alone tells you the argument: some leftists in the Global North focus too heavily on identity politics while ignoring class, particularly class shaped by imperialism. The author claims that minority groups in wealthy imperial countries benefit from imperialism and often overlook the suffering of working-class people in the Global South.

There is some truth here. We’ve all seen left spaces where identity becomes the only frame of struggle, just as we’ve seen left spaces where class is treated as the only thing that matters. But what troubles me is not the substance of the argument; it’s the implication that the solution is to remind people of their privilege until they fall in line. That approach misunderstands what building a movement actually requires. You cannot shame people into internationalism. You cannot guilt people into class consciousness.

Synthesis by Jae

Identity, Class, and the Politics of Building a Real Movement

Growing up in New York City, I was taught about racism and sexism the same way kids are taught about bad weather: unfortunate, unfair, but ultimately random. Teachers framed these injustices as “bugs” in the American system, leftovers from the past that good people mainly had fixed. If discrimination still existed, it was b…

Read more

5 months ago · 34 likes · 12 comments · Jae Rose

History makes this clear. Take the Black Panther Party. They never needed to be lectured about their “privilege” within the United States to understand internationalism. They saw their struggle as directly connected to the struggles of colonized and oppressed peoples across the world.

We have vowed not to put down our guns or stop making Molotov cocktails until colonized Africans, Asians and Latin Americans in the United States and throughout the world have become free. . . . We want to tell the people who are struggling throughout the world that our collective struggle can only be victorious, and the defeat of the murderers of mankind will come as soon as we create a few more Vietnams, Cubas and Detroits. . . . The Black Panther Party recognizes the critical position of black people in the United States. We recognize that we are a colony within the imperialist domains of North America and that it is the historic duty of black people in the United States to bring about the complete, absolute and unconditional end of racism and neocolonialism by smashing, shattering and destroying the imperialist domains of North America. In order to bring humanity to a higher level, we will follow the example of Che Guevara, the Cuban people, the Vietnamese people and our leader and Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton. If it means our lives, that is but a small price to pay for the freedom of humanity.

Black Against Empire by Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin (pg. 270)

The critical question is: how did the Black Panther Party identify with and build solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles in the Global South?

They saw the plight of Black people in America related to the plight of exploited peoples seeking liberation within the Global South. Their identity and class position did not dissuade them from correctly seeing their oppression intertwined with the oppression seen worldwide.

If we were to remind the Black folk of their privileges within the United States, would that actually improve their situation? Would that make a material difference in their lives? Would that have made them more likely to relate to other oppressed groups? Or could we lean on the lived experiences of oppressed people in the Global North to build solidarity with those in the Global South?

This is the danger of reducing internationalism to privilege discourse: it turns solidarity into a competition over who suffers more. Instead of uniting people against capitalism and imperialism, it encourages fragmentation and constant moral judgment. Yes, the Global South faces extreme super-exploitation. Yes, imperial countries benefit materially from that system. But none of this erases the exploitation that exists within the imperial core itself, and none of it justifies treating working-class people in the U.S. or Europe as enemies rather than potential comrades.

To defeat chauvinism and nationalism, we need proletarian internationalism, not guilt. Lenin was clear: revolutionary politics must evaluate struggle in terms of class interests and the global fight against imperialism, not narrow national or identity-bound perspectives. Our task is to broaden people’s horizons, not beat them down.

The socialist, the revolutionary proletarian, the internationalist, argues differently. He says: “The character of the war (whether it is reactionary or revolutionary) does not depend on who the attacker was, or in whose country the ‘enemy’ is stationed; it depends on what class is waging the war, and on what politics this war is a continuation of. If the war is a reactionary, imperialist war, that is, if it is being waged by two world groups of the imperialist, rapacious, predatory, reactionary bourgeoisie, then every bourgeoisie (even of the smallest country) becomes a participant in the plunder, and my duty as a representative of the revolutionary proletariat is to prepare for the world proletarian revolution as the only escape from the horrors of a world slaughter. I must argue, not from the point of view of ‘my’ country (for that is the argument of a wretched, stupid, petty-bourgeois nationalist who does not realise that he is only a plaything in the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie), but from the point of view of my share in the preparation, in the propaganda, and in the acceleration of the world proletarian revolution.”

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky by Vladmir Lenin

Real international solidarity doesn’t come from scolding; it comes from helping people understand that their liberation is tied to the liberation of others. It comes from expanding perspective, deepening analysis, and building movements that unite people around shared material interests rather than dividing them by moral hierarchies.

What Real Solidarity Requires

If the left is going to build a movement capable of confronting capitalism, confronting empire, and confronting the global systems that bind us, then we need to understand solidarity as more than a sentiment or slogan. Solidarity is not a moral posture; it is a practice, a set of commitments, habits, and political choices that knit people together across identities, borders, and experiences.

The liberal tendency to reduce solidarity to “acknowledging privilege” can’t get us there. Privilege discourse alone does not build organization, change material conditions, or forge international bonds. At its worst, it encourages guilt over clarity and self-flagellation over strategy. Real solidarity is not about who apologizes the loudest. It is about who shows up, who builds, who organizes, and who understands the actual structure of the struggle.

So what does real solidarity actually require?

1. Start from shared material interests, not moral accusation.

Working-class people in the U.S. and working-class people in the Global South live different realities, but they are shaped by the same system: global capitalism driven by imperial extraction. Hunger in Detroit and hunger in Dhaka share a root. When we begin with common material interests, people understand that solidarity is not charity or moral performance; it is survival. Shaming people for not already knowing this shuts down conversation; connecting their struggles to global structures opens it.

2. Use identity to illuminate, not divide.

Identity is essential. It helps us understand how oppression is lived, such as who gets policed, underpaid, displaced, or excluded. But identity becomes counterproductive when we turn it into a hierarchy of suffering or use it to police one another rather than confront the system itself. Real solidarity acknowledges differences while insisting they must be understood relationally, not competitively. We don’t need to erase identity; we need to connect it to political economy.

3. Tie local struggle to global struggle.

A rent strike in the Bronx is not isolated from a general strike in Argentina. A protest against militarized policing in Minneapolis is not separate from a protest against U.S.-funded militarization in the Philippines. The same imperial core that exploits labor abroad enforces austerity, policing, and dispossession at home. Solidarity requires seeing that capitalism is a global system and therefore demands a global response.

4. Fight chauvinism with political education, not guilt.

National chauvinism, racism, and U.S. exceptionalism are real obstacles. But they cannot be defeated by scolding people for their privilege. They are defeated by showing how the empire harms the oppressed and the ordinary people who live within it. Political education grounded in history, economics, and lived experience is how consciousness shifts. Lectures don’t radicalize people; struggle and clarity do.

5. Build movements where people see themselves as part of a global class.

Capitalism is international. Imperialism is international. Our movements must be international as well. When people understand themselves as part of a global working class, not just an isolated identity group or national constituency, solidarity stops being symbolic and becomes strategic. It becomes the basis of coordinated action rather than moral alignment.

Growing up in New York City, I was taught about racism and sexism the same way kids are taught about bad weather: unfortunate, unfair, but ultimately random. Teachers framed these injustices as “bugs” in the American system, leftovers from the past that good people mainly had fixed. If discrimination still existed, it was because a few individuals were ignorant or hateful, not because something deeper was wrong.

But when I began learning about capitalism’s exploitation, the mass deaths produced by colonialism, and the ongoing violence of U.S. imperialism, the story stopped making sense. The more I studied, the harder it became to believe that oppression was simply the result of a few bad actors. The patterns were too consistent, too profitable, too embedded. They pointed not to individual prejudice but to systems designed to produce inequality and violence.

And then came the current U.S. presidential administration that ripped the mask off completely. Suddenly, the racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia weren’t glitches; they were openly embraced as a political strategy. Millions cheered them on. These weren’t anomalies. They were reminders of what America has always been willing to tolerate, and often celebrate.

The United States is built on genocide, slavery, land theft, and the domination of other nations. It has overthrown democracies, installed dictators, waged wars of empire, and experimented on marginalized communities at home. Its legal system, policing, foreign policy, and economic structure reflect those origins. The Nazis studied American racial laws for inspiration, not because the U.S. failed to hide its contradictions, but because it perfected them.

Understanding this history matters. It’s impossible to build a meaningful left politics without recognizing that oppression in the U.S. isn’t an accident; it’s foundational. Identity is crucial for people navigating these harms; it helps us name our experiences, defend ourselves, and understand how society positions us.

But identity alone can’t build a mass movement.

To confront capitalism, imperialism, and the systems that reproduce oppression, we need to build on what we share, our common exploitation, our common dispossession, our common interest in a world beyond profit and domination. If we only focus on what divides us, we stay stuck in personal narratives while the system remains untouched. If we ignore identity entirely, we risk recreating the very injustices we claim to fight.

The task is balance:
Honor identity for what it reveals, and organize across identity for what it makes possible.

Because liberation won’t come from choosing between who we are and what we have in common, it will come from weaving the two into a movement powerful enough to change the world.

In the United States, political discourse often collapses into a false binary: either you center identity, or you center class. Liberal politicians, nonprofits, and academic circles elevate identity politics as the primary terrain of struggle. Meanwhile, specific segments of the left respond by insisting that only class matters, dismissing race, gender, sexuality, and other lived experiences as distractions from the “real” fight.

Both approaches fail us.
Both approaches weaken mass politics.

Identity politics, as commonly practiced in the U.S., zooms in on individual experience while losing sight of the larger structures that shape it. It teaches people to analyze their oppression in a deeply personal way through representation, symbolism, and language instead of through the material conditions of capitalism, imperialism, and colonial power. This is why representation politics can give us a Black police chief, a woman drone pilot, or a queer CEO, while changing nothing about the violence and exploitation built into the system itself. A Black business person exploiting a Black worker is not representative of a better system; it merely perpetuates the exploitative dynamic of capitalism with a new face.

But rejecting identity entirely is just as dangerous. When class politics ignores how race, gender, disability, immigration status, and sexuality shape one’s position in the labor market and within the capitalist state, it risks replicating the very hierarchies it claims to oppose. If class analysis does not understand why Indigenous land is stolen, why Black workers are super-exploited, why migrant labor is hyper-precarious, and why disabled people are systematically excluded from economic life, then it becomes abstract, moralizing, and blind to the actual conditions of struggle.

Identity and class are not competing truths; they are layered realities. Identity politics without class becomes representation instead of liberation. Class politics without identity flattens, becomes mechanical, and is incapable of speaking to lived experience.

The challenge and the opportunity are to build a politics that honors both.

A mass movement must understand that capitalism does not oppress people in identical ways. Class exploitation is fundamental, but capitalism sorts bodies differently to intensify that exploitation. Race, gender, sexuality, ability, and nationality become tools through which capital organizes who gets paid less, who gets policed more, who gets dispossessed, and who gets excluded entirely. These identities do not exist outside class struggle; they shape its terrain.

…it is not accidental that the American bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression, not only of the Negro people in general, but of Negro women in particular. Nothing so exposes the drive to fascization in the nation as the callous attitude which the bourgeoisie displays and cultivates toward Negro women.

- An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman! by Claudia Jones

At the same time, identity cannot be the engine of political transformation. Individual experiences and recognition struggles cannot replace the collective force of workers organized across differences. You cannot reform capitalism by diversifying its ruling class. You cannot end imperialism by electing someone who “looks like you.” And you cannot build socialism by dissolving solidarity into competing narratives of personal oppression.

What we need is a synthesis:
Identity reveals how oppression is felt. Class reveals why oppression exists.

Identity helps us understand how people are hurt.
Class helps us understand how to fight back.

A movement that centers only on identity remains trapped in the politics of the self. A movement that centers only class risks reproducing systems of domination within its own ranks. But a movement that integrates both can finally see the whole picture: how capitalism exploits, how imperialism divides, and how solidarity must be built from the ground up, not assumed.

Respect identity.
Analyze class.
Organize materially.
Build collectively.

This is the ‘middle’ ground, not a compromise, but a strategy.

Because what we’re fighting for is not just representation, and not just redistribution.
We’re fighting for a world where no one’s identity determines their suffering and where our identities enrich our solidarity rather than limit it.

Understanding the history of U.S. oppression is one thing; knowing what to do with that knowledge is another. Once we see that racism, sexism, xenophobia, and every other form of oppression are not random “bugs” but core features of capitalism and empire, the next question becomes: How do we fight something this entrenched?

For many people, the answer has been to lean deeper into identity, to uplift individual stories, call out harmful behaviors, and demand greater representation. For others, the answer has been to reject identity altogether and return to “pure” class politics. But the truth is that neither approach is enough on its own. Identity without class cannot transform the system, and class without identity cannot mobilize the people most harmed by it.

The challenge of our moment is building a politics that sees both the material and the personal, the shared struggle and the different wounds we carry. This requires discipline, clarity, and a willingness to step outside the habits that U.S. political culture trains in us: individualism, moralizing, and fragmentation.

A movement that can actually win must feel like a home. It must give people the tools to understand their own experience and the structures that create it. It must show that fighting racism means fighting capitalism, and that fighting capitalism means fighting every mechanism it uses to divide and devalue human beings. It must make solidarity more appealing than shame, and collective action more meaningful than symbolic gestures.

Most importantly, a movement must give people something to do, not just something to feel.
Here are a few practical tips:

1. Start where people already are.

Political education works best when it’s tied to lived experience, such as rent hikes, medical debt, police harassment, and workplace exploitation. Meet people at the material points of pain. This is classic Marxist agitation, speaking towards people’s experiences and pain.

2. Build solidarity across differences by naming the system, not the individual.

Your fellow workers are not your enemies; the conditions shaping them are. Critique the logic of capital, more than the person who has been shaped by it.

3. Create spaces where identities are respected but not weaponized.

People need room to speak about how oppression affects them without reducing themselves to those identities.

4. Connect identity-based harm to class-based exploitation.

Show how capitalism depends on racialized labor, gendered labor, and disabled exclusion. Help people see the pattern, not just the symptom.

5. Move from conversation to organization.

Study groups become political organizations. Mutual aid becomes political education. Workplace frustration becomes a union drive. Outrage becomes structure.

Because the goal isn’t just to understand the world; it’s to change it. And change requires numbers. Not a chorus of individual stories, not a scattering of class-first purists, but a disciplined, rooted, collective force capable of fighting capitalism at home and imperialism abroad.

If identity tells us who we are and class tells us what we face, then organizing tells us what we can become, together.

I recently watched a video by YouTuber BadEmpanada concerning a phrase regularly used in left-wing discussions, which is “be ruthless to systems, be kind to people”. This phrase is commonly attributed to the late Michael Brooks. BadEmpanada stated that this phrase was harmful for a few reasons. The main argument is that people make up systems, so we must criticize people as systems are not detached from people.

Systems like capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism (which is a stage of capitalism) are made by people and run by people. However, the systems are complex, and people operate in them knowingly and many times unknowingly. Many people are not conscious of how society operates at the systemic level. This is not to minimize the harm caused by systems or the people who operate within them, but to add clarity and context to the discussion.

From the Marxist perspective, people are incentivized, propagandized, and indoctrinated into systems, like capitalism, which harm them and others. Marxists typically referred to this as false consciousness. These are people who are not conscious of class society, of the social relations of production, or of the harm this social arrangement causes to the world and the masses of workers. This is why the masses must be educated; admonishing them for being “stupid” or “horrible” does not educate them on why their participation in the system is wrong or why the system is harmful.

As Lenin outlined, revolution cannot take place through individual action but only through mass movement. The masses must be educated to become conscious of their class and then organized into a movement that seeks to end the harmful systems (primarily capitalism) that plague this world and replace it with socialism. However, this willingness to be educated and organized needs to emerge from agitation. We need to speak to the problems of the working masses in the historical and social context we are in. Effective agitation means meeting the people where they are by actually being there. When a tenant strike is happening, when a general strike is happening, when there are community events, when there are protests, etc. We need to be actively involved in the movement that is there and active within our communities. Even the Black Panthers provided free breakfast and services to their communities, this was significant outreach and helped them to meet people where they were.

The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.

What Is To Be Done? by Vladmir Lenin

After this agitation, we educate and organize the masses as an effective counterweight to capitalism at home and imperialism abroad. People do not spontaneously organize themselves and educate themselves; it takes the most conscious of us to reach out, educate others, and try to organize a meaningful movement.

Dogmatic takes about blaming individuals, and condescending remarks about certain places do not build a movement. It is easy to sit down and belittle others when you are not building towards a mass movement, when you are not a part of the struggle. Part of that struggle is to speak out against harmful ideas, people, and beliefs, but the purpose of that struggle is to build towards something better.

There will always be those who are reactionary, there will always be those who are ignorant, and there will always be those who are conscious with the fewest of us who are trying to take action towards change. We as leftists didn’t just spontaneously become so; we made our mistakes, had/have our biases, and have to resist a society that attempts to marginalize our beliefs and views. We still work towards educating those who are willing to be educated, we still speak towards the suffering people are facing, whether they live in the USA or not. We attempt to organize those willing into the best counter force we can against the system.

The capitalist state apparatus has been successful in culling successful leftist movements on the national and international level. Operations like COINTELPRO helped to diminish leftist movements at home, while military ‘intervention’ helped to diminish these movements abroad. We need to take into consideration this history, the history of sabotage, the history of bloodshed, and the history of manufactured consent when we talk to the people we are trying to get on our side.

While folks like BadEmpanada have a point that Western countries and settler colonial projects (like Israel and the US) gain immensely from their imperialism and that the spoils of imperialism benefit their citizens… That cannot be the only factor in why leftist movements have failed to gain traction in many cases.

Capitalism has a significant effect in that it co-opts movements, gets members of movements to capitulate, indoctrinates the masses with its logic, and destroys those who do not kneel to it. Under such a system, people’s beliefs become compromised and infected by specific trends, whether they capitulate, become pessimistic, support the current system whole heartily, or advocate for gradualist approaches. Revolution is scary, revolution is not easy, and revolution is not convenient. These trends relate to the fears, uncertainties, and harsh realities associated with conducting revolution, but for change to truly happen, it is necessary. It is only through the desperation of the masses that revolution becomes the solution.

A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it.

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

However, this desperation is being felt as more Americans identify socialism favorably as wealth inequality grows, and the affordability of basic necessities decreases. As the contradictions of capitalism grow, so will discontentment with the system.

If we don’t build that bridge between confusion and consciousness, capitalism will. If we don’t give people language for the pain they live through every day, Fox News will. If we don’t offer a political home to the exploited, the right wing, or worse, the nihilism of hopelessness, will fill the vacuum. The masses don’t spontaneously radicalize; they are guided, developed, sharpened over time. They must be organized, not merely awakened. Class consciousness is not a natural outcome it is a construction, shaped through struggle, agitation, organizing, and authentic relationships with real people whose material lives are on the line.

And so our role is not to stand above the people, but with them by being patient, disciplined, principled. We win not by shaming but by politicizing, not by sneering but by showing that another world is both necessary and possible. Revolution is not a spark; it is kindling layered over years until the moment comes when the masses, fully aware and fully fed up, decide that the old world must fall. That is why we must be ruthless with systems and generous with people. Because the system is powerful enough to crush us as individuals, but the people united are powerful enough to replace it. If we do our work right, they will.

For a long time, I asked myself what actually made me a leftist. There was a period when I rejected anything associated with “the left” and called myself a centrist. So what shifted?

Part of it was the pandemic. I was studying public health while watching a real-time public health collapse. People who claimed to be “moderate” began repeating right-wing talking points, minimizing the crisis, and insisting that “the economy” mattered more than human lives. I saw the entire public health playbook, carefully developed for decades, abandoned because reopening businesses took priority over protecting people. It forced me to confront a basic truth: an economic system that sacrifices lives to preserve profit is fundamentally broken.

Around the same time, I reflected on my own experiences, periods of homelessness, financial strain, and the constant pressure to simply survive. I realized these struggles weren’t individual failures; millions of people face them. So I returned to the most critical public health question: why do people experience poverty at all?

That question pushed me deeper into political theory, conversations with friends, and my own reading. Eventually, everything clicked. The suffering we see—both in the U.S. and globally—is not random or accidental. A predatory system produces it. The same system that extracts resources abroad is the system that creates precarity, inequality, and abandonment at home.

This understanding matters today, especially as the U.S. escalates hostilities toward Venezuela and continues its global interventions. Suppose we, on the left, want to resist imperialism meaningfully. In that case, we must understand not only what imperialism is, but also how our own experiences and observations tie into a broader global structure. While my reflections are not academic, they are the foundation of why anti-imperialist struggle is necessary.

What is imperialism?

For a long time, I wondered why entire countries could be trapped in poverty, corruption, and exploitation. It became clear that these crises weren’t caused by a lack of “hard work,” but by historical and systemic processes far larger than individual effort.

My first real entry point was colonialism. In college, I encountered Frantz Fanon and the Black radical tradition, which exposed the violence and psychological devastation that defined the colonial world:

To blow the colonial world to smithereens is henceforth a clear image within the grasp and imagination of every colonized subject.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Reading Fanon, Cedric Robinson, Angela Davis, and others pushed me to question how the United States behaves abroad, governs territories, and sustains its global power. Colonialism, broadly defined, is the domination and subjugation of one people by another, a political, military, and economic relationship built on extraction.

But I still wondered: what was the economic engine behind colonialism? Why did so many nations remain impoverished even after formal independence?

However, I wondered what it was about colonialism and its economic connection that made much of the world impoverished. This is when I began reading more of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who described the predatory nature of capitalism.

In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels

Colonialization, in this case, is part of the process as Marx and Engels described it: “the conquest of new markets.” Colonialism in its purest, most exploitative form is the economic and resource extraction of a colonized place by a colonizer. Capitalism requires conquest, it requires exploitation, and subjugation; in this case, colonized lands fit the bill.

When outright colonial rule became unsustainable, it didn’t disappear; it evolved. Debt traps, IMF structural adjustment, CIA coups, and military “advisors” replaced direct occupation. This is the logic of neo-colonialism: domination without formal administration.

So where does imperialism fit into this picture?

While colonialism is one practice of domination, imperialism is the broader systemic stage that makes such domination necessary. Bourgeois scholars define imperialism as a policy of extending political or economic control beyond national borders, but this definition misses the engine driving it.

Lenin captured that engine clearly:

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladmir Lenin

As capitalism concentrates, banks merging with corporations, markets consolidating into monopolies, it must expand outward to survive. It must seek new territories, resources, labor pools, and markets. Colonialism (and later neo-colonialism) becomes one of the tools it uses to accomplish this.

This is why capitalism and imperialism cannot be separated. They function as a unified capitalist-imperialist system, driven by accumulation, expansion, and domination.

If this system produces global exploitation by design, then the question becomes: How should the left resist it?

The Attitude of Anti-Imperialism

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

- Steve Biko

In the Marxist tradition, there is a saying that we must agitate, educate, and organize. We must agitate by speaking to the wounds of the masses, these wounds being their lives and misfortunes under capitalism-imperialism. We must educate people on how to liberate themselves from said system. And then we must organize people in politically viable ways that will finally lead to liberation.

Part of the education process is letting go of attitudes and beliefs that serve the prevailing status quo, which is capitalist-imperialist. The purpose of education in the Marxist sense is to build class consciousness.

Consciousness of the conditions in which we live, concerning class society and class relations. An awareness that most of us are working class (proletarian) and that our interests are in direct contradiction with the capitalist ruling class (bourgeoisie). Consciousness is essential because if we are not conscious of the problem, we cannot change the situation.

If we cannot build consciousness, we cannot hope to change the current state of affairs.

Part of building this consciousness is understanding two outlooks that can help on the path of resisting imperialism: Revolutionary Optimism and Proletarian Internationalism.

Revolutionary Optimism

Revolutionary optimism refers to different lines of thought related to revolutionary politics. One of those lines is being hopeful that the goals of the revolution will one day be achieved. Another train of thought is the rejection of pessimistic ‘doomer’ outlooks that nothing can be changed.

Revolutionary optimism is also not a native outlook that the capitalist-imperialist system will fall on its own. It is the acceptance that, to achieve revolution, we, as a collective, must work towards it, and that work starts with action.

Revolutionary optimism demands that we look honestly at the world as it is without collapsing into fatalism. The point is not to deny crisis, exploitation, or suffering, but to refuse the idea that these conditions are permanent. Despair is politically disarming; it convinces people that nothing they do matters. Optimism, in contrast, becomes a discipline, the practice of believing that the future is still open, still shapeable, and still worth fighting for.

It also reminds us that revolutions are not spontaneous miracles. They are built through organized, patient, collective struggle carried out by ordinary people who refuse to give up. This kind of optimism rejects the passive belief that the system will crumble on its own. Instead, it insists that social transformation requires strategy, solidarity, and a willingness to show up for each other even when change feels distant.

Most importantly, revolutionary optimism reframes historical “failures” not as evidence that liberation is impossible, but as lessons for the next struggle. Every fallen movement leaves behind tools, insights, and memories of possibility. The point is not to romanticize the past, but to understand that we stand in a long lineage of people who believed that the world could be different. Their unfinished work is not a reason to despair; it is a reason to continue.

Proletarian Internationalism

The socialist, the revolutionary proletarian, the internationalist, argues differently. He says: “The character of the war (whether it is reactionary or revolutionary) does not depend on who the attacker was, or in whose country the ‘enemy’ is stationed; it depends on what class is waging the war, and on what politics this war is a continuation of. If the war is a reactionary, imperialist war, that is, if it is being waged by two world groups of the imperialist, rapacious, predatory, reactionary bourgeoisie, then every bourgeoisie (even of the smallest country) becomes a participant in the plunder, and my duty as a representative of the revolutionary proletariat is to prepare for the world proletarian revolution as the only escape from the horrors of a world slaughter. I must argue, not from the point of view of ‘my’ country (for that is the argument of a wretched, stupid, petty-bourgeois nationalist who does not realise that he is only a plaything in the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie), but from the point of view of my share in the preparation, in the propaganda, and in the acceleration of the world proletarian revolution.”

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky by Vladmir Lenin

Proletarian internationalism, as Lenin defines it, is the principle that the working class has no true national interests within a capitalist-imperialist world order. For Lenin, workers across all countries share a common position: they are exploited by their own bourgeoisie and dragged into wars that serve capitalist expansion rather than the needs of ordinary people. Because of this, the proletariat must reject nationalism and unite across borders in a shared struggle against all imperial ruling classes. In other words, the “enemy” is not the worker in another country; it is the capitalist class in every country.

This principle becomes essential in resisting imperialism because imperialist powers rely on dividing workers, convincing them to abandon class solidarity in favor of patriotic loyalty.

Lenin argues that as long as the proletariat identifies with its own bourgeoisie, it becomes a tool of empire, supporting wars that enrich the ruling class while intensifying the misery of the masses. Proletarian internationalism breaks this spell. It forces workers to evaluate every war and every international conflict not by the flag it flies under but by whose interests it ultimately serves.

For Lenin, resisting imperialism therefore requires a global revolutionary movement. Only by organizing internationally, by recognizing the shared struggle of workers in oppressed and oppressor nations alike, can the proletariat undermine the economic, military, and ideological foundations of empire. Imperialism is a global system; its defeat must be an international project. Proletarian internationalism is the political, moral, and strategic commitment that makes such a project possible.

Bringing It Together

We need BOTH revolutionary optimism and proletarian internationalism to resist imperialism effectively. We need to believe revolution is possible while also seeing past petty international differences between workers.

I have noticed that many within the US left tend to think in terms of national interests while sacrificing workers on the international stage. Lenin and others spoke out against this social chauvinism, pointing out that it benefits the ruling capitalists in a given country.

The US left should not see themselves as “American”, but we should see ourselves as workers, mothers, fathers, children, etc. We should see the commonality between ourselves and the oppressed, either at home or abroad. We should recognize the importance of revolution not only at the national level but also at the international level. The US empire has harmed and is harming numerous people. This must be resisted, and that resistance starts with being conscious of the problem and potential solutions.

What Actions Should Be Taken

It is always contentious when discussing political action, especially in a country where people tend to sit back and are less politically involved. While I could talk about Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? and get into building a vanguard party… There are various trends of thought concerning what should be done to fight imperialism effectively.

Instead of covering these trends of thoughts, potential strengths and downsides of said thoughts, and whatever other details concerning organizing an anti-imperialist movement… I think it’s crucial for any leftist who is not involved to get involved.

What local left-wing organizations are in your area? (not the Democratic Party or its affiliates)

What do those organizations need?

What can you provide?

If we are not even past this elementary stage of involvement and struggle, vast theoretical considerations do not matter. While education is always essential, so is doing something with that education.

If you are involved, good, keep helping your organization. Keep reading theory, perhaps start a reading circle if you aren’t a part of one already. Reflect on both the positives and negatives within your current organization. See where improvement can foster and dare to speak up.

One of the most important things you can do is deepen your understanding of the political terrain, study imperialism, study class struggle, study the history of movements that succeeded and movements that collapsed, not as an academic exercise, but to sharpen your instincts and avoid repeating old mistakes. Organizing requires constant reflection. Seeing what worked, what didn’t, where contradictions lie, and how strategy needs to shift as conditions change.

You should also take on the work that keeps organizations alive, such as outreach, logistics, administrative tasks, communications, fundraising, political education, coalition-building, and conflict mediation. Much of movement work is unglamorous, but it’s in these small, consistent actions that political power is built. Becoming someone others can depend on by showing up on time, meeting deadlines, being transparent, and communicating honestly. This matters far more than having the “correct” line on every theoretical debate.

If there are no existing groups in your area, you can start small. Connect with a few other leftists in your area and form a study group or political discussion circle. These often become the seeds of something larger. Many historical organizations began with only a handful of committed people who read together, analyzed their surroundings, and slowly built capacity. Even sharing anti-imperialist news, hosting reading nights, or organizing small teach-ins in community spaces helps break political isolation and prepares the ground for more serious work.

Anti-imperialist work also requires understanding how imperialism operates in daily life. Support union drives at workplaces, defend immigrant communities targeted by repression, show up for protests against U.S. intervention abroad, participate in Palestine solidarity efforts, or connect with abolitionist groups fighting police and carceral violence. Each of these fronts, labor, anti-war, anti-racist, anti-police, and anti-capitalist, feeds into the broader struggle against imperialism. No single action “solves” the system, but each builds confidence, networks, and political clarity.

Finally, keep building your political discipline. Learn how to attend meetings consistently, take on tasks humbly, build trust, handle disagreements without factionalism, and practice accountability. This applies to those who are just starting and who are well established. Anti-imperialism is not only about what we oppose; it is about cultivating the kind of movements capable of winning. Theory without action is hollow, but action without discipline collapses. Getting involved means committing to both.

Taking time to read the bourgeois press can be enlightening, it is enlightening because they genuinely try to frame horrible actions in the most sanitized way possible.

There has been an ongoing battle between the Trump administration, the government shutdown, and funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Due to the government shutdown, SNAP’s funding on a federal level is in limbo.

Trump says he wants to fund half of the program this month. This is absurd on so many levels, considering the nearly 40 million people who depend on SNAP, many of whom include children. It doesn’t help that the US Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to withhold full aid for the program.

It’s obviously fucked up to use hunger as a political pawn to dangle over the most vulnerable citizens in the supposed richest country in the world. However, I want to remind people that famine is a specialty of the USA.

Do not forget the US-sponsored genocide in Gaza, which has led to a manufactured famine in the area. Also, do not forget about the many who starve and die due to US economic sanctions in countries like Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, Cuba, etc.

The imperial boomrang, for those unfamiliar, refers to how imperialist methods abroad are eventually brought back home.

More specifically, the ‘imperial boomerang effect’ is a term for the way in which empires use their colonies as laboratories for methods of counter-insurgency, social control and repression, methods which can then be brought back to the imperial metropolis and deployed against the marginalised, subjugated and subaltern within. With weak moral and legal restrictions, empires are gifted a free hand to test new technologies and social hierarchies on colonised populations. Once honed, the circulation of personnel and knowledge through the empire spreads these repressive methods across colonies – and back into the domestic heartland.

The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate back to the metropolis by Connor Woodman

What is happening to people in the US now is what the US has subjugated those it deems inferior abroad.

The cruelty of empire always returns home, It has to. The logic of domination cannot stay contained overseas as it metastasizes. Once you normalize starving entire nations through sanctions, it becomes easier to let your own citizens go hungry when a budget dispute stalls in Congress. Once you learn to frame collective punishment as “national security,” it becomes second nature to frame cutting SNAP as a “political dispute.”

The imperial boomerang doesn’t just describe policy it describes psychology. It’s how a population becomes groomed to accept suffering as order. When Americans read that children in Yemen or Gaza die of malnutrition, the headline says “shortages,” as if food evaporated in the desert sun rather than being blockaded by Western power. When they read that children in Mississippi or Detroit are food-insecure, the headline says “budget negotiations,” as if this were a natural event. In both cases, the same moral anesthesia applies: suffering is bureaucratized, cruelty made procedural.

Empire teaches its citizens to starve politely. To nod when pundits say there’s “no money” for food assistance, but billions for bombs. To accept that feeding people must be debated while funding genocide is automatic. The boomerang is moral before it is material. It bends the conscience.

This is why the SNAP crisis is not an isolated scandal but a mirror. The U.S. state is treating its poor the way it treats the Global South… As populations to be managed, not cared for; disciplined, not nourished. The same austerity logic that squeezes working families at home fuels the IMF’s debt programs abroad. The same bureaucratic cruelty that locks up baby food behind glass in Walmart locks entire regions behind sanctions.

The empire always needs hunger as hunger disciplines. It keeps labor cheap, populations quiet, and people too busy surviving to revolt. That is why both parties, Democrats and Republicans alike, speak of the “working poor” as if poverty were a demographic, not a design. They call it a “safety net,” but it’s really a leash. The SNAP program isn’t generosity, it’s damage control for a system that refuses to let people live with dignity. Capitalism depends on peoples complacency and does not give them real freedom.

When the capitalist leash tightens, the press rushes in to explain it as an unfortunate side effect of partisanship, never as what it truly is: class war. The bourgeois press sanitizes structural violence into human-interest stories, translating cruelty into civility so that empire can continue feeding itself.

The basic indictment of this book – that U.S. policy serves mostly the favored few rather than the common people in this country and abroad – is given no recognition in mainstream political discussion and media commentary. From Argentina to Zaire, from East Timor to the Western Sahara, U.S.-sponsored counterrevolutionary campaigns of attrition have taken millions of lives, with tens of millions wounded, maimed, emotionally shattered, displaced, or exiled. Yet one hears hardly a word about it in what passes for political discourse in this country. We are told that this nation is under an obligation to demonstrate its resolve, that it must constantly display its strenght, flex its muscles, and act like a great superpower so as not to be pushed around by some small upstart nation (an argument used to justify the pulverization of Vietnam and the massacre in Iraq). Any failure to apply our power, we hear, undermines our credibility and invites aggression. One might wonder why U.S. leaders feel such a need to convince everyone else that the United States is the strongest military power in the world – when everyone else is already painfully aware of that fact.

Against Imperialism by Michael Parenti

The imperial boomerang is not a metaphor, it’s a warning. Every sanction, every blockade, every act of economic strangulation abroad lays the groundwork for domestic austerity at home. Every “defense budget” is a prelude to a food desert.

So when we see the shelves empty and the benefits vanish, we are not witnessing a system error. We are witnessing its perfection. The hunger exported to Gaza, to Haiti, to Venezuela, has come home. The empire has run out of elsewhere to starve.

The purpose is to call out the empire for what it does: starve. We need the moral clarity and a sober analysis to call out the weapon of hunger against the people. It does not matter what people, as no people, should go hungry under the boot of empire.

I grew up in New York City.

I am from one of the poorest areas in the entire city, the South Bronx.

I know what it is like to be homeless, to be hungry, and not to have. Even in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, my family and I struggled.

This struggle informs my worldview and my later political development.

That said, there is nothing I would like more than for the city I call home to help those in need. I would love the suffering I witness and experience to end for good; this is why I am a socialist, this is why I am a Marxist.

However, being a Marxist requires a sober analysis, one that resists the allure of intoxicating hope. A sober analysis that requires an understanding of historical events and their material implications to arrive at a more accurate understanding of current events.

While many leftists and progressives are celebrating the mayoral win of self-described socialist Zohran Mamdani, I am not celebrating.

Many of these folks have fallen for intoxicating hope in the absence of a sober analysis. We cannot discard this analysis if we genuinely want to see events for what they are and not what we want them to be.

Mamdani and Reformism

I have argued previously that Zohran Mamdani is a reformist, not a revolutionary.

What is reformism?

Reformism is a political trend within the socialist movement that aims to achieve socialism through gradual means within a capitalist system. Reformists want to push policies like free healthcare, free education, free housing, etc., hoping to achieve socialism over time.

Zohran Mamdani and Reformism

Mamdani is not advocating for revolution. In fact, he is on record saying he would work with billionaires. What Mamdani advocates is a series of reforms that do not fundamentally change or challenge the mode of production.

Getting free healthcare does not mean capitalism ends. Capitalism ends when the mode of production turns to socialism, when workers themselves own the means of production.

In this regard, Mamdani is a reformist, and I would argue he is a social democrat.

Social democracy accepts capitalism, but seeks to tame its problems through policy and institutions; think of post-WW2 America before the neoliberal phase. While Mamdani will be on record using radical phrases, the substance of his politics is not socialism, but capitalism tamed.

You can have free buses under capitalism, the way capitalism functions is not ultimately altered with reforms. The fault with social democracy is that it does not challenge the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, nor does it stop capitalism in its imperialist phase, as Lenin described it.

The forms of domination of the state may vary: capital manifests its power in one way where one form exists, and in another way where another form exists—but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or some other rights or not, or whether the republic is a democratic one or not—in fact, the more democratic it is the cruder and more cynical is the rule of capitalism. One of the most democratic republics in the world is the United States of America, yet nowhere (and those who have been there since 1905 probably know it) is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so openly corrupt as in America. Once capital exists, it dominates the whole of society, and no democratic republic, no franchise can change its nature.

The State: A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University by Vladmir Lenin

As long as capital exists, we are under the rule of capitalism. Mere reforms have never succeeded in changing this arrangement, we have no reason to believe they will now.

A Sober Analysis

As I previously established, Mamdani is a reformist. We know from historical context that reformism does not work, and in fact, it helps capitalism.

When we speak of the Socialists as social fascists, we are not merely abusing them, we are giving the scientific description, the name of the political role which they are performing. That role was to prepare the road for fascism, to prevent the struggle of the masses against fascism, and to tolerate and support the establishment of the fascist governments. Socialists in words, fascists in deed! That is what social fascism means.

The Meaning of Social Fascism by Earl Browder

These are the people who advocate for the “lesser evil” and the struggle against fascism while actively supporting the capitalist (therefore the fascist). These are the people who claim to be socialist but do not want to change the system to be a fundamentally socialist one. The people who claim to be socialist while in practice defending capitalism are “social-fascist” because fascism only arises as a result of capitalism itself.

…Fascism is not merely the expression of a particular movement, of a particular party within modern society, but that it is the most complete expression of the whole tendency of modern capitalism in decay, as the final attempt to defeat the working- class revolution and organise society on the basis of decay. This tendency runs through all modern capitalist countries without exception, and the advent of open Fascism to power is only its final and completed expression. The drive against the workingclass, the strengthening of executive and police powers (Sedition Bill in England, constitutional reforms in France, new emergency dictatorship forms in the United States), the attempt to paralyse the working-class organisations from within upon a basis of enforced class-co-operation and war against all revolutionary elements (social fascism), the drive to war and increasing Organisation of the entire economic social and political structure for war, go rapidly forward in all countries, including the formally “democratic” countries, Britain, France and the United States. The fight against Fascism is the fight against this entire process of modern capitalism. In particular, the drive to war, in close unity with the drive to Fascist forms of organisation and preparation of war within each country, becomes the more and more dominant character of the present stage

Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt

Reformist socialists are social fascists because they work to buy time for the bourgeoisie and, in effect, defend the system of capitalism, whether directly or indirectly.

One of the principal weapons of social democracy in carryingthrough this policy and securing the acceptance of this policy on the part of the workers has been the formula of the “lesser evil”…

…In the political field, the theory of the lesser evil means the support of the “best” bourgeois politicians and the “best” bourgeois parties as against the “worse”bourgeois politicians and parties.

The Meaning of Social Fascism by Earl Browder

How can people call Mamdani a legitimate socialist when he is under the bourgeois Democratic Party? How can we legitimately think that this person will be a liberatory force and not just capitulate to the capitalist?

Zohran Mamdani is not a revolutionary who will change our capitalist system into socialism, nor will he lead the working-class struggle to do so. At the same time, he works under the Democratic Party. How is he not a social fascist? Socialist in name, but fascist in deed.

Final Thoughts

I am not buying into the intoxicating allure of hope in this situation. What are people being hopeful for? If we are being hopeful that this will lead to capitalism changing in America or even in New York City, we have no reason to think that way.

The point is not to gain more progressive faces for a decaying system; the point is to get rid of this system altogether for something better.

Zohran Mamdani will not lead this change or struggle. For someone like me who wants the system to change, Mamdani’s electoral win means little to nothing.

If we want the system to change, we need more than charming politicians; we need a working-class movement aimed at revolution.

“Nuance” is a word that so often flatters itself as wisdom, when in reality it can function as a delay, a cover, or a fog. For years, when Palestinians and their allies spoke of occupation, blockade, and apartheid, the response was: It’s complicated. A way of saying: don’t speak with certainty, don’t speak with conviction, don’t name what you see.

Many were lulled into silence, told they were overreacting, and yelled at for being too demanding of a situation they were told they didn’t “truly” understand.

But when the United Nations and major human rights organizations now use the term genocide, nothing truly new has appeared, except permission. The violence was always asymmetrical, the dispossession always visible. “Nuance” only served to defer moral clarity until institutions of power caught up, at which point the very same truths suddenly became admissible.

This is the danger of nuance, as it can disguise domination as debate. It can turn oppression into a puzzle to be solved rather than a reality to be opposed. The oppressed don’t need nuance to recognize their suffering; it is the comfortable who need it to delay their responsibility.

Moral clarity is not the absence of complexity. It is the refusal to let complexity erase accountability.

However, sometimes, the idea of ‘nuance’ is vital for sketching out the complex complicity of power structures and dominating groups towards people’s suffering.

When Nuance is Actually Needed

Nuance is valuable when it helps us see systems more clearly rather than excuse them. For example, when analyzing global events, nuance allows us to connect how colonial histories, economic structures, and political alliances shape the present. Without nuance, we risk reducing conflicts to caricatures like good vs. evil or “ancient hatreds,” which can flatten agency and obscure root causes. This deeper analysis doesn’t weaken moral clarity; it strengthens it by showing how oppression is structured and maintained.

The problem is that, as nuance can be weaponized to delay action in morally clear instances of oppression, it can also be weaponized by those who want to misuse it to spin their own interpretation of events. I am thinking of the fascists who spin tales of immigrants stealing jobs and secret cables of Jewish people running the world.

Conspiracy theories also aim to explain the world while claiming their own form of “nuance”. However, the key is that nuance should explain complicated mechanisms, not morality. We might say: the historical roots of apartheid are complex, but the reality of apartheid is morally clear. In contrast, conspiracy theorists (especially of the fascist variety) often do the opposite: they pretend moral clarity exists where evidence is absent (e.g., blaming shadowy cabals, inventing scapegoats). They reject legitimate nuance, like scientific uncertainty, historical context, or structural complexity, and replace it with oversimplified villains.

Nuance is only helpful when it adds depth. For example, Marxists utilize the science of historical materialism to critique and analyze complex events. Historical materialism does not seek to delay action but to critically analyze how material conditions (economy, labor, resources, class relations, etc.) shape human society, culture, and ideas. Understanding these factors does not work to delay moral action.

Nuance does not seek to dismiss accountability. Understanding complex historical events does not mean that power relations, harm, and responsibility are irrelevant. Understanding the historical pretexts for Nazi Germany does not dismiss the harm of the holocaust. Similarly, understanding the historical pretexts of Israel does not dismiss the harm of the Gaza genocide or the preceding events that took place.

Nuance opens the door for solidarity. Nuance allows one to understand the complexity of experience, especially those of the oppressed. People have differing experiences of oppression even within similar environments. Factors like race, class, gender, disability, colonization, etc., matter for understanding the full range of experiences someone goes through when dealing with injustice. Nuance makes space for hearing different voices within a movement or cause. For example, solidarity with Palestine is deepened when we listen to more than political leaders and actually listen to Palestinians themselves.

When Nuance is Harmful

There’s a kind of “nuance” that doesn’t sharpen our understanding but instead clouds moral clarity. It shows up in A few predictable ways.

Nuance can be used as a tool to delay judgment. We are told “it’s too early to tell” or “we need all the facts” while the bombs are already falling. In Gaza, Palestinians described starvation, hospitals reduced to rubble, and families wiped out in real time. Yet much of the world insisted it was “too complicated” to call it genocide until the UN and major human rights groups finally did. By then, the clarity had always been there; only official recognition caught up.

It can be used to create false equivalence. The siege and bombardment of Gaza were often framed as a “conflict between two sides,” as though the power of a trapped, stateless population could be equated with a nuclear-armed state receiving billions in U.S. military aid. This “balanced” framing flattened the obvious asymmetry: one side holds overwhelming power; the other is fighting for survival.

Nuance can be used to center the comfortable. When Western media urged “nuance,” it wasn’t for the sake of those being bombed; it was for the sake of audiences who didn’t want to confront genocide in their newsfeed. “Nuance” here served as a balm for the conscience of outsiders, not a reflection of the lived experience of Gazans.

Nuance can excuse the powerful. By labeling Israeli attacks as “complex” or “tragic,” responsibility was diluted. The narrative shifted blame to “ancient conflict,” “inevitable violence,” or “both sides gone too far.” This reframe lets powerful states and their allies off the hook for enabling atrocities.

It replaces truth with speculation. At the same time, conspiracy theorists offered their own distorted “clarity”, claims about hidden actors or global cabals, flattening reality into simplistic stories built on bad evidence. This shows how false nuance and false clarity both obscure the truth: one by endless hedging, the other by scapegoating.

In Gaza, this playbook of obfuscation delayed global solidarity. Nuance became not a tool for understanding, but a shield for the powerful.

Holding Clarity and Nuance Together

So, where does this leave us? We have a responsibility to hold both clarity and nuance in their rightful places. Moral clarity is the compass; it tells us that genocide, apartheid, and colonial domination are wrong without qualification. It grounds us so we don’t get lost in the fog of excuses, false balance, or delayed recognition. Without clarity, analysis becomes paralysis.

When used rightly, nuance is not the enemy of clarity but its companion. It doesn’t erase accountability; it shows us the mechanisms and histories that produce oppression, and the diverse experiences of those living under it. Nuance makes solidarity richer and more durable because it insists that people are not just victims of harm, but complex agents of resistance and survival.

The danger arises when nuance is weaponized to shield the powerful, soothe the comfortable, or delay justice. That kind of nuance is a mask, a diversion, a betrayal. But when nuance is used to expose structures of domination and deepen our solidarity with the oppressed, it becomes a tool of liberation.

The task, then, is not to choose between clarity and nuance, but to insist that each serve justice. Gaza shows us what happens when clarity is deferred until it’s too late for too many. Our challenge is to refuse that delay and to speak with conviction while still doing the hard work of analysis. Moral clarity without nuance risks simplicity; nuance without moral clarity risks complicity. Together, they can help us see the world as it is and fight for the world as it should be.

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Let’s start off simple.

What is purity?

The Merriam-Webster definition defines purity as “the quality or state of being pure”.

But what is pure?

There are a few definitions for pure, but the first one that came up was “unmixed with any other matter”. It’s helpful to think about something that has been untouched by something else. In the realm of chemistry, this can be simply an element that has been untouched by another, a pure form of itself.

The concept of pure, uncontaminated form is nearly impossible in nature. Matter typically contaminates other matter, elements mix and create compounds, and those compounds can combine and develop products or reactions. The realm of human thought is even more contaminated.

Ideas are typically never pure; they find inspiration and influence from other ideas. Even if someone comes up with something we consider pure or uncontaminated and original, that idea is a product of the time, place, language, person, and society that produced it.

Why am I bringing these philosophical considerations up? Because the idea of ‘purity’ in political discourse makes little sense when uttered. There are no pure thoughts in politics and pure considerations. There can be standards, assumptions, principles, beliefs, etc. that play a role in one’s political worldview, but they’re hardly pure.

What is purity politics?

There are numerous discussions of purity politics and numerous definitions. Depending on who you ask, there will be a different definition and standard for what is meant by purity politics.

One article defines purity politics as:

A “purity spiral”, with the more extreme opinion the more rewarded in a pattern of increasing escalation. Nuance and debate are the casualties, and a kind of moral feeding frenzy results.

The bias in that article is obviously that the liberal ideals of liberty and equality should be upheld against ideological “purity”. But again even if we define purity politics within this idea of “purity spirals” who decides what is an extreme opinion?

For some in the U.S., having universal healthcare is an extreme opinion, having housing as a human right is an extreme opinion, and not supporting genocide is an extreme opinion. So, the framing of “purity” as “extreme” is questionable, as to who gets to define extreme and why they define it in those terms.

The U.S. Democratic Party seems to define “purity politics” by political purity ‘tests’. As another article puts it, “As they lose ground with key voting blocs, it not only becomes harder to defend a type of purity politics which shuns voters or candidates who are not 100% on board with party orthodoxy around issues including abortion, immigration, race and gender, but it also limits how much the party can expand the electoral map.”

So purity tests in this respect can mean accepting those who are against the Democratic Party’s stances on abortion, immigration, and race/gender. Does this mean the Democratic Party is trying to invite racist, xenophobic, sexist bigots to their party in a bid to win elections?

The answer is implicit, but we know what it is.

Purity politics in this regard means whatever the person wants it to mean. Being against ‘purity’ can serve whatever agenda the speaker wants it to serve.

Are you against genocide? That’s too pure.

Are you against racism? That’s too pure.

Are you against putting migrants in cages? That’s too pure.

The list can go on… Human lives are sacrificed on the political altar of purity or lack thereof.

Since it’s been established that the concept of ‘purity’ is unhelpful and, in fact, harmful in political discourse, what do we use instead?

We use principles.

Principles vs. Purity

Leftists have principles, principles which include bare minimum asks like don’t do genocide, no to settler colonialism, no to war and empire, prioritize people’s basic needs, etc. But apparently, this is too ‘pure’ for many liberals and folks who style themselves as ‘progressives’.

The difference between leftists and liberals, besides the obvious anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist stances, is that leftists have principles.

We have certain standards by which we want the world to operate so that other human beings can be treated. While our ideological lenses and the specifics on how we want to achieve a more egalitarian world might differ, the basic premise is the same… We ask for a world that liberalism cannot offer because it asks for peace in the absence of justice.

We have to criticize them because they represent the liaison between both groups, between the oppressed and the oppressor. The liberal tries to become an arbitrator, but he is incapable of solving the problems. He promises the oppressor that he can keep the oppressed under control; that he will stop them from becoming illegal (in this case illegal means violent). At the same time, he promises the oppressed that he will be able to alleviate their suffering — in due time. Historically, of course, we know this is impossible, and our era will not escape history.

The Pitfalls of Liberalism by Kwame Ture

The principle of revolution are also kept in mind for leftists, as liberals want a reformist approach that does not challenge the inherent power structures that cause oppression in the first place.

Principles are what distinguish those who want a better world from those who want the same one but slightly nicer.

And this is why “purity” becomes such a convenient smear. When liberals accuse the left of being too pure, what they are really saying is: your principles make us uncomfortable because they expose our complicity.

Liberals can call for “peace” while funding wars, call for “equity” while defending settler states, and call for “democracy” while backing coups and blockades. For them, politics is branding, a language of aspiration without the will to confront the structures that devour lives.

For leftists, principles are not optional. They are survival. They mean “no” to genocide even when it is politically inconvenient, “no” to settler colonialism even when the settler is our own state, “no” to ecological collapse even when it threatens profit. These are not luxuries, but the floor of any politics that dares to call itself emancipatory.

Kwame Ture was right: the liberal poses as a mediator but ends up as a guard. He tells the oppressed to wait and the oppressor to relax, promising both sides what he cannot deliver. This is why liberalism, in every era, becomes the velvet glove for the iron fist of empire.

The difference between principles and “purity” is the difference between life and death. Principles tell us that no child should starve, whether in Gaza under siege or in the U.S. under austerity. Principles tell us that survival cannot be negotiated for donor checks or electoral convenience.

Purity is their word. Principles are ours. And without them, there is no left, only a softer right wing.

In the end, the question is simple: Do we want to manage oppression, or do we want to end it?

Everyone who remotely pays attention to U.S. politics knows who right-wing political pundit Charlie Kirk is. People who are remotely paying attention know that he was killed yesterday in a seeming attack.

If you do not know, he is basically the human parrot of the Trump administration who made a name for himself by debating freshman liberals at various U.S. universities. There is nothing worth mentioning about this man outside of the hateful rhetoric he spewed, which included saying that gun violence may be justified, gay people should be stoned, suggesting violence against trans people, saying Palestine isn’t real, while supporting Israel through the Gaza genocide, and certainly more.

So, Charlie Kirk was the mouthpiece for the far right, who only made a name for himself because of big payments from the Koch brothers and other wealthy donors.

While the political right will use this to martyr Kirk and normalize his messaging, always remember that the ideology and rhetoric he supported would only work to further the violence the right will now performatively decry.

Leftists, anti-imperialist leftists, are not opposed to violence, and we see it as a tool towards liberation. While my stance against adventurism is well known because I am a Marxist, I also understand that as capitalism descends further and further into chaos, politically motivated violence will increase domestically.

Nevertheless, this violence pales in comparison to the violence committed across the world on behalf of U.S. imperialism. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and are currently starving by an imperial outpost of the U.S., funded by the overexploited workers’ taxpayer dollars.

This also doesn’t scratch the surface of the numerous coups, sabotage, military interventions, and other imperialist/colonialist methods utilized by the U.S. to maintain its rule abroad. The U.S. is no stranger to ‘political’ violence, but this violence typically happens to brown people in developing nations, not fascist political talking heads on a college campus.

It really showcases the selective outrage and performative condemnations of both the American conservative and liberals. ‘Violence’ should be condemned when it happens to a white man who made a career and became very rich off of promoting a message that can only ever lead to violence, especially towards marginalized communities.

The funny shit is, we do not know if the killing was politically motivated or who exactly did it at the time of this writing. The assumption is that he was killed because of the hate he spewed, but why is that a bad thing? Why should we have empathy for a person who argued against it? Why do we have to empathize with oppressors who will never empathize with the oppressed?

Most societies in the West are not opposed to violence. The oppressor is only opposed to violence when the oppressed talks about using violence against the oppressor. Then the question of violence is raised as the incorrect means to attain one’s ends. Witness, for example, that Britain, France, and the United States have time and time again armed black people to fight their enemies for them. France armed Senegalese in World War II, Britain of course armed Africa and the West Indies, and the United States always armed the Africans living in the United States. But that is only to fight against their enemy, and the question of violence is never raised. The only time the United States or England or France will become concerned about the question of violence is when the people whom they armed to kill their enemies will pick up those arms against them. For another example, practically every country in the West today is giving guns either to Nigeria or to Biafra. They do not mind giving those guns to those people as long as they use them to kill each other, but they will never give them guns to kill another white man or to fight another white country.

The Pitfalls of Liberalism by Kwame Ture

There was a time when the fascists were afraid of spreading their rhetoric. The left knows that a good Nazi is a dead one. But individual acts of violence will not topple fascism; it will take the collective efforts of the working masses informed by the science of Marxism to break the chains of fascism.

I feel lost.

I truly and utterly feel lost. I know I am going down a path as I pursue a master’s degree in mental health counseling and have a job in mental health, but I still feel lost.

It feels like my sense of direction is off course, a sense of overwhelm. I know it’s the anxiety talking, as we live in an anxiety-inducing neoliberal capitalist hellscape. But I still feel this sense of being lost.

The genocide in Gaza seems to be ramping up even as public opinion of Israel worsens, the United States is becoming more politically and economically unstable, and more people seem to be struggling. It’s hard not to be hopeless right now and give in to despair.

Comrades have given me revolutionary optimism and praxis as the main antidotes. Still, initiating praxis in a rural area is challenging while juggling work, grad school, and a personal life. But this isn’t meant to be a pity party, as the fight for a better future can never stop and must never end, even with the defeat of capitalism.

Nevertheless, I see why many leftists become chronically online. It is easier and more convenient to escape into a digital landscape than to face a harsh reality. Comrades of the past had no choice but to face adversity; there was no YouTube or Netflix to divert their attention.

Unfortunately, I felt this sense of loss since the pandemic. My original purpose of becoming a fitness influencer was shattered as my mental health declined. My petty bourgeois aspirations fell to the wayside, but I never wanted to stop helping people. This is why I went back to school to become a therapist and got into Marxism to begin with. But what I am missing is an anchor.

What I mean by an anchor is a purpose that drives me even during the most bleak adversities. It is something that can ground you and last even when everything falters. For many, that is religion. I tried turning back to God, even as a previously staunch atheist, but I found that the certainty of God did not quell my fire for change. I did not want to accept a God’s will who would allow children to starve or suffer. If a God or Gods were truly on my side, they would push my convictions to change the world around me for the better.

I am well aware of attempts to do what I just mentioned via liberation theology, a mixture of Christianity and Marxism. But I see religion as a potent weapon that can be used to justify great good, just as it can be used to justify great evil; even Hitler considered himself a good Christian for what he was doing!

However, I think moral conviction is lacking in many leftist spaces, particularly communist ones. We talk to one another on a high theoretical level, but how many of us speak to working-class people and relate to their struggles? How many of us show up for other people when they struggle? How many of us struggle to fight against the machine of capitalism and imperialism?

Many of us fight to be right. Yes, the method and tool is dialectical materialism, but why did you become a communist? I became one because I struggled so much in my life that I didn’t want to see anyone else go through that pain. I didn’t do it because of a logical deduction of capitalism’s flaws. I went down this path because of my pain, compassion, and empathy for my fellow human beings. Many could argue that Jesus taught similar lessons, but when I see people who call themselves Christians defending Israel for what it’s doing, I question the lesson. Do people really learn lessons, or do they take away the lessons they want to learn?

Even within communist circles, we have the same set of books from the same people, but a vast array of interpretations and sectarian beliefs. Some folks think Trotsky did nothing wrong, some folks think Mao did nothing wrong, some folks think Stalin did nothing wrong, etc., while others disagree with those folks. Which interpretation or beliefs are correct is constantly up for debate. Meanwhile, we live in a world where the capitalists have won.

They have shattered the labor movement and bombarded us with massive amounts of propaganda since we can remember. Killed many leaders. And spent trillions to sabotage the very idea of socialism.

What can we do? Should we give up? Should we give in to the Bourgeoisie and benefit from their system where we can? Should we fight harder? Should we get more involved?

I know Lenin gives us a potential blueprint, but the circumstances have changed up to a point. While it was undoubtedly hard for the Bolsheviks to have their revolution in Tsarist Russia, they were not in the heart of a Western empire with the most well-funded military apparatus in the world.

The feeling of defeat benefits the capitalist, but it’s understandable. How do we anchor ourselves as leftists?

At all costs, the belief in the revolution cannot be purely rational; it has to be an in-part irrational belief in a better future. While Marxism is a science, what drives that science might be something non-scientific. I am still grappling with these contradictions myself.

What do you think?

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Now, Wired has confirmed what many of us suspected: a major liberal dark money group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, has been secretly funneling thousands of dollars a month to Democratic influencers, with contracts barring them from disclosing who paid them. The same people who mocked conservatives for propping up their online culture warriors were doing the same thing behind closed doors.

And we can’t forget the context. While Palestinian children were being starved in Gaza, too many liberal influencers worked overtime to deflect, to reframe, to dilute the reality of genocide. They weren’t mobilizing outrage against empire, they were soothing their audiences, minimizing, or outright ignoring the scale of U.S.-backed violence. All while cashing checks from a machine that demanded their silence and loyalty.

We can look at the easy example of David Pakman, who was one of the recipients of these funds, who defended Israel’s current genocide, via liberal Zionism, as it was unfolding after October 7th. When the story broke about liberal influencers receiving these funds, Pakman’s response was:

“The left needs to fund independent creators the way that the right does.”

There was no remorse, no accountability, and no honesty. There were just excuses. Liberals do not care about justice, they do not care about opposing fascism, and they do not care about stopping genocide. They care about making money and monetizing the outrage created by the suffering of the GOP while they sit idly by.

This isn’t about purity politics, it’s about honesty. If your outrage at the right is real, you don’t mirror their tactics in secret. If your care for justice is real, you don’t take hush money while genocide unfolds. Leftists were right to call liberals out for their complicity. Because at the end of the day, the problem isn’t just who’s cutting the checks, it’s the empire both sides keep defending.

We won’t forget and we won’t excuse their actions. The left, the REAL left, begins at anti-imperialism.

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This short post is a response to a recent post made by journalist Caitlin Johnstone. Many of you in the pro-Palestinian resistance space will recognize Johnstone for her continued advocacy and coverage of Palestinian resistance, as well as crimes committed by the ‘state’ of Israel.

Let me be clear that I support Johnstone in her crusade against the Gaza genocide and for the liberation of Palestinians. This response is made in good faith, and I would appreciate a response from Johnston as we share many similar outlooks and goals. Discussion and clarification helps us all.

Nevertheless, she recently posted some responses to her readers’ questions. One question in particular was interesting:

“A question, how do you see yourself politically? You’ve mentioned you’re not a Marxist, but you do seem close to it.” (source)

Caitlin’s response was also quite interesting:

The best way I’ve been able to sum up my politics is that I support shoving things as far to the left as possible until we get a healthy world. Shoving as far away from capitalism, ecocide, militarism, empire-building, oppression and exploitation as is necessary to have a peaceful and harmonious world where everyone gets what they need and we’re not cannibalizing our biosphere for shareholder profits.

I probably am pretty close to a Marxist in a lot of ways, but I avoid categorizing myself as such for a couple of personal reasons which are unlikely to be of interest to many people.

Firstly, I try to avoid joining up with any ideological factions because humanity is still in a state of extreme delusion at present, so even the best political groups will be full of wildly dysfunctional individuals whose thinking and behavior I’d rather keep at arm’s length to make sure I stay on the right track. I’ll help with leftist movements and agendas where I can be of service in my own capacity like I am with Palestine right now, but I personally don’t find that aligning myself with any group is a safe move at this point in the human adventure.

Secondly I try to avoid limiting my thinking to anyone else’s -ists or -isms. I’ve seen a lot of Marxists get super religious about it and close themselves off to whole aspects of human psychology and spirituality just because of something some dead guy said in the 1880s. That’s something I find too confining as a writer, as a thinker, and as a human organism.

I wanted to highlight plenty of wrong factors and ideas in this response. But first, I will steelman her position and be charitable with my framing.

I understand the general desire for leftists to be seen as non-sectarian. There are plenty of specific factions within specific movements that can close one off to growth, understanding, and actually getting involved. These chronically online individuals do not organize in their communities and do not put their ideas into practice like a true Marxist would. I have encountered some of these individuals, so it is understandable where some misconceptions might apply. There are also plenty of splintered and shady organizations within the U.S. that claim to be a ‘vanguard’ party, but are either highly revisionist or are sometimes known for questionable behavior.

However, as Johnstone would find it unacceptable for someone to characterize the entire movement of Palestinian resistance to the worst caricatures of Hamas, I find it inappropriate for her to represent the whole of Marxism by the worst caricatures of supposed ‘Marxists’.

Marxism is not limited to the USA, Europe, or the West in general. It is noted for being an important part of liberation struggles in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

That it is already the ideology of eight hundred million Chinese people; that it is already the ideology which guided the Vietnamese people to successful struggle and to the defeat of imperialism. That it is already the ideology which allows North Korea to transform itself from. a backward, quasi-feudal, quasi-colonial terrain into an independent, industrial power. That it is already the ideology which has been adopted on the Latin American, continent and that serves as the basis for development in the Republic of Cuba. That it is already the ideology which was used by Cabral, which was used by Samora Machel, which is in use on the African continent itself to underline and underscore struggle and the construction of a new society.

It cannot therefore be termed a European phenomenon; and the onus will certainly be on those who argue that this phenomenon, which was already universalised itself, is somehow inapplicable to some black people. The onus will be on those individuals, I suggest, to show some reason, perhaps genetic, why the genes of black people reject this ideological position.

- Marxism and African Liberation by Walter Rodney (1975)

The rejection of Marxism because of dysfunctional individuals to preserve Johnstone’s own agenda tells me that she is more concerned with serving her own interests than with understanding the movement of Marxism.

Another dubious claim Johnstone makes is that Marxists utilize Marxism in a religious context. Marxism's underpinning is dialectical materialism, which is supposed to be seen as scientific, as described by Marx and Engels.

Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort, Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution. In this connection, Darwin must be named before all others. He dealt the metaphysical conception of Nature the heaviest blow by his proof that all organic beings, plants, animals, and man himself, are the products of a process of evolution going on through millions of years. But, the naturalists, who have learned to think dialectically, are few and far between, and this conflict of the results of discovery with preconceived modes of thinking, explains the endless confusion now reigning in theoretical natural science, the despair of teachers as well as learners, of authors and readers alike.

- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels

If Johnstone took the time to look over something some dead guy said in the 1880s before posting, she would know that Marxism is dependent on a scientific method of historical and dialectical materialism.

I would suggest two basic reasons why I believe that Marxist thought, Scientific Socialist thought, would exist at different levels, at different times, in different places and retain its potential as a tool, as a set of conceptions which people should grasp.

The first is to look at Marxism, as, a methodology, because a methodology would, virtually by definition, be independent of time and place. You will use the methodology at any given time, at any given place. You may get different results, of course, but the methodology itself would be independent of time and place.

And essentially, to engage in a rather truncated presentation of Marxism, inevitably oversimplifying, but nevertheless necessary in the context of limited time I would suggest that, one of the real bases of Marxist thought is that it starts from a. perspective of man's relationship to the material world; and that Marxism, when it arose historically, consciously dissociated itself from and pitted itself against all other modes of perception which started with ideas, with concepts and with words; and rooted itself in the material conditions and in the social relations in society.

This is the difference with which I will start. A methodology which begins its analysis of any society, of any situation, by seeking the relations which arise in production between men. There are a whole variety of things which flow from that: man's consciousness is formed in the intervention in nature; nature itself is humanised through its interaction with man's labour; and man's labour produces a constant stream of technology which in turn creates other social changes.

So this is the crux of the Scientific Socialist perception. A methodology that addresses itself to man's relationship in the process of production on the assumption, which I think is a valid assumption, that production is not merely the, basis of man's existence, but the basis for defining man as a special kind of being with a certain consciousness.

It is only through production that the human race differentiates itself from the rest of the primate's and the rest of life.

- Marxism and African Liberation by Walter Rodney

Marxist methodology has helped and can help liberation movements, including the Palestinian cause. Marxist works have been produced in the Gay liberation movement (Lavender and Red), the Decolonization movement (Walter Rodney), the Black Queer Feminism movement (the Combahee River Collective), etc.

To suggest that this vast array of work is “too confining” makes me question whether Johnstone is serious about tackling the problems of liberation and imperialism. While she does not have to agree with Marx and Marxism, her comments portray a profound ignorance of Marxist history, theory, and practice, which could only work to hinder her work and understanding in the future.

Too often in mainstream discourse, “the left” is diluted into a vague brand: cultural values, a politics of compassion, or at worst, a boutique progressivism that coexists comfortably with empire. But there is no left without anti-imperialism. That is the foundation. Any movement that seeks justice while excusing domination abroad is not leftist at all… it is merely liberalism draped in red.

On the flip side, “the left” is often demonized as this horrible boogeyman that’s aimed at stealing people’s toothbrushes and dominating the world. The political ‘left’ concept is then conflated with liberalism in the American context.

I seek to appropriate the left back to its anti-imperialist roots, showing that the left is for freedom and the self-determination of the oppressed. The left needs to be for the destruction of the empire; anything less is a smoke screen made to distract us.

Empire as the Bedrock of Capitalism

Imperialism is not an accident of U.S. foreign policy; it is the engine of capitalism itself. Lenin clarified this in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917). When capital outgrows domestic markets, it must expand, dominate, and extract globally. From oil in Iraq to lithium in Latin America, U.S. imperialism is the lifeline of its economy.

Imperialism, as we know it, is a stage of capitalism that requires global expansion and domination to sustain itself.

To call yourself leftist while supporting the endless wars, coups, sanctions, and military occupations of the U.S. state is to ignore the very structure of capitalist domination. Michael Parenti was blunt:

“Given its expansionist nature, capitalism has little inclination to stay home. Almost 150 years ago, Marx and Engels described a bourgeoisie that ”chases over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.... It creates a world after its own image.” The expansionists destroy whole societies”

- Against Empire, 1995

Imperialism abroad and exploitation at home are two faces of the same system. The bombs dropped on Gaza or Baghdad are tied to the austerity budgets and crumbling schools in Detroit or Jackson.

Nevertheless, imperialism is not solely a problem with U.S. foreign policy; as described earlier, it is inherent to capitalism. Lenin outlines it simply here:

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

- Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1917

The advancement of monopolies, which consolidate markets and shut off free competition, is an essential development in how capitalism functions. This is not unique to a particular country or area. However, since the Second World War, the United States has become the political and economic strong arm of neoliberal capitalism in the Western world. So, understanding America's version of imperialism is of the utmost importance.

Anti-Imperialism as the Ecological Struggle

Imperialism is also an ecological disaster. Extraction is not just economic, it is planetary. The Pentagon is one of the world’s largest polluters, with a carbon footprint larger than many nations. Fossil fuel wars and resource grabs devastate ecosystems, displace communities, and accelerate climate breakdown.

The war machine, which imperialism depends on, kills life on earth, generally on top of the human lives lost to bombs.

To be leftist is to recognize that ecological collapse is not a “policy failure” but the logical outcome of an imperial system that treats both people and the planet as expendable.

As Jason Hickel writes:

Under capital’s growth imperative, there is no horizon – no future point at which economists and politicians say we will have enough money or enough stuff. There is no end, in the double sense of the term: no maturity and no purpose. The unquestioned assumption is that growth can and should carry on for ever, for its own sake.

- Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World

Green capitalism is no answer. Solar panels built on stolen Indigenous land, or “sustainable” mining operations in the Global South, are not liberation, they are imperialism painted green. Any ecological politics that does not confront U.S. militarism and imperial extraction is doomed to reproduce the very destruction it claims to resist.

We are on a finite planet with finite resources. We cannot survive in a system predicated on infinite growth because this will inevitably lead to destruction.

No Left Without Internationalism and Decolonialism

Frantz Fanon taught us that liberation requires breaking the chains of colonial domination, not merely reforming them (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961). The same lesson applies today: you cannot build socialism, ecological sanity, or genuine democracy while endorsing the global machinery of empire.

This is the litmus test. Supporting U.S. imperialism, whether through NATO expansion, regime-change wars, or sanctions, is fundamentally incompatible with leftist politics. One cannot claim solidarity with the oppressed at home while denying it to the oppressed abroad.

What imperialist countries do abroad to others will eventually find its way back home. Aimé Césaire, a politician who inspired Fanon, wrote about this phenomenon in 1950, dubbed the ‘imperial boomerang effect’.

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind—it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples…

- Discourse on Colonialism

It is only when the terrifying truth of fascistic methods is utilized on bodies within the imperial core countries (the United States and Europe) that people begin to take them with the seriousness that they deserve. But the abominable methods of imperialism and domination should not be tolerated at all.

The left begins with anti-imperialism because it is the only stance that sees humanity as a whole, not divided into worthy and unworthy lives, not partitioned by the empire's profit needs. Decolonial struggle abroad is our struggle at home.

Toward a Liberatory Politics

A real left politics starts where the empire ends:

• Anti-imperialist: refusing to endorse the domination of one nation over another.

• Anti-capitalist: recognizing that imperialism is capitalism’s highest form.

• Ecological: refusing to let the planet be strip-mined for imperial gain.

• International/Decolonial: seeing domination and imperial rule as wrong, no matter where it is, and seeking liberation for those affected.

Without these, “the left” is just progressive window dressing on a system built to consume, dominate, and destroy. With them, it becomes a force capable of breaking chains, here and everywhere.

Because to be leftist is not to fight only for one nation’s working class, but to stand with the oppressed across the world. That solidarity is the root. Everything else grows from there.

I just can’t help it.

I can’t help posting my ideas on the internet. I can’t help sharing what I know and what I’ve learned with others. I just can’t help but speak up and speak out against a system that I know from first-hand experience fucks people over.

I can’t help it and now I arrived here, I arrived at yet another attempt to flesh out my thoughts and connect with likeminded people.

If you are new to my account on Substack, I want to welcome you and reintroduce myself.

My name is Jae, and this publication is called Synthesis by Jae. This publication is a way for me to connect my thoughts on politics, philosophy, psychology, and my various other interests.

Like many of you, I am a human being with a unique story. It all started when my parents had me at the ripe age of 16, and from then on, I experienced numerous hardships. I was homeless, I dealt with abuse, I felt alone, and I continue to struggle. I tried to use my intellect to make sense and navigate my experiences, but I came up empty-handed until recently.

Now I am an adult with two bachelor's degrees, which are worthless in today’s job market, but gave me the razor-sharp analytic ability to see things in a different light.

While my experiences were awful, they are hardly unique in our society. Many people struggle, and they often struggle in similar ways. For a long time I wondered why that was and I attempted to go to college to find the answers, but I found nothing worth mentioning.

What was introduced to me in college but fleshed out outside of the walls of academia was the true history of radicalism. The history of struggle, the history of oppression, and the history of rebellion. Even after finding this history, I was hesitant to adopt it’s conclusions. The conclusion being the need for revolution to truly liberate the working class.

Growing up, I was a milk toast liberal who believed that the Democrats were good no matter what and the Republicans were bad no matter what. As I went through college, I had a mentor who pushed my positions towards a more refined progressive liberalism. However, my position was compromised during the global pandemic.

As a public health student, I saw the ideals of science held up by the liberal establishment and institutions go to the wayside for corporate profit. The nail in the coffin was seeing President Biden declare the pandemic over without any evidence or consideration. The reasoning was primarily to ‘open the economy’; many lives were sacrificed at the altar of capitalism.

I then became disillusioned with my public health program, which attempted to teach me to appease our political system and be okay with for-profit healthcare. I was told in class to think about ‘healthcare CEOs’ when discussing universal healthcare. It was incredibly disillusioning to go through that experience, and I had to look beyond my current understanding.

I decided to move to another city to study philosophy in graduate school. I learned a lot during that time, and my mentor was a self-proclaimed radical who was questioning the racial history in the US, particularly its treatment of black men. However, my health became worse. As a result, my mentor shunned me rather than supported me. He gave me a very neoliberal ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ speech even while he spoke about racial injustice in another class. I left that program rather quickly.

From then on, I was in limbo, lost in what to do or who to be. My previous illusions concerning myself were shattered. I would go to a few meetings with notable leftist groups and even half-assedly participate in a Marxist study group, but I was still lost.

Then, on October 7th, the commencement of the Gaza genocide proceeded. I saw the atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza. I watched as the US enabled and supported this massacre by sending billions of taxpayers’ dollars and giving weapons. I watched as many Western media outlets supported these crimes and demonized the opposition towards them.

This led me towards further disillusionment with my liberal past, as many prominent self-declared liberals supported a genocide. However, before my past self could be put to rest, I was petrified with fears of another Trump presidency. The American liberal establishment fed off of these fears to drum up support for the pro-genocidal Kamala Harris.

Like a fool, I voted for Harris, thinking she was the ‘lesser evil’. I gave in to my selfish desires by putting the people of Gaza last, so that maybe, just maybe, things wouldn’t be so bad for me and those I love. However, as we all know, Harris lost and Trump won. Hindsight hurts when you turn your back on principles to hopefully save your skin, but you learn it was all for nothing.

These events increased my commitment to leftism and socialism, leading me to completely abandon liberalism. There cannot be prosperity and freedom for people with the chains of capitalism and the boot of imperialism on the world’s neck.

My experiences with homelessness and struggle, along with my educational attainment, have made me overtly critical of the system as it is today.

Synthesis by Jae is really about my personal reflections on class politics, socialism, and other events within our political sphere. I genuinely know that politics intersects with different areas of people’s lives. There is a psychological toll to capitalism that I would love to explore. Many areas of study intersect with what’s going on societally. I fully intend to explore this intersection.

I appreciate everyone who will follow along with my journey.

My other publication, called The Last Leftist, will focus on more theoretical considerations rather than my personal reflections. My other publication, Ghost Pepper, was originally for my vegan journey, but it will now be repurposed into my thoughts on public health in America.

The Last Leftist

A rabbit hole of left-wing thoughts and ideas.

By Jae Rose

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By Jae Rose

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