On "Maoist Rebel News" and Ultraleftism-Third Worldism

Comrades, I have just published a polemic against the "Third Worldist" trend! What are your thoughts?

On “Maoist Rebel News” and the Folly of Ultraleftism-Third Worldism

Quote:

If you are not already familiar with the Maoist Rebel News brand, then it will suffice to say here that it first began as a Youtube video channel whose scope was to provide current events analysis from an ostensibly Marxist perspective. It is maintained by a Canadian man named Jason Unruhe, who upholds a pseudo-revolutionary political doctrine known as “Third Worldism”, or “Maoism-Third Worldism”. In this critique, offered from an authentically revolutionary left-wing perspective, I will demonstrate why this erroneous political line (which is by no means exclusive to Jason Unruhe’s Maoist Rebel News) is not what it purports to be. It is neither a coherent nor scientific worldview.

Nobody cares about MRN except people on the internet. He is American communism's own personal sperglord.

Even Bob Avakian ignores him. I'd be surprised if the MTW position is legitimately upheld by more than 2-3 dozen people in the real world.

He was a late to hop on the train anyways iirc.

There was a minute though where it seemed like M3W could really have succeeded the MIM but then they turned out to be exclusively bourgeoisie first world white people.

Sometimes I think spending time criticizing third worldists is the worse thing you can do.

DkBuntovnik wrote:

Comrades, I have just published a polemic against the "Third Worldist" trend! What are your thoughts?

On “Maoist Rebel News” and the Folly of Ultraleftism-Third Worldism

Hopefully this will get published in a leading Marxist theoretical journal. New Left Review would be swell. The world needs to know about the erroneous political line of a fat prick who dresses up in uniforms for YouTube and hates the First World that he lives in. In a century or so, intellectuals will still be poring over the learned exchanges between "Jason Unruhe" and Daniel K. Buntovnik. How can one hold that Unruhe and the like are just stupid internet cultists, and yet write almost 9,900 words (11,500 words if you count the notes) "polemicising" against them? Either someone is casting his pearls before the swine as a kind of public service, or they are pretty much the same as the stupid cultists.

After skimming some 1/4 of this material I had to close the tab (after copying the text for a word count) because I felt myself actively getting dumber, and I think this is the only real effect of this kind of writing. My advice to the OP is to delete this crap and apologise to his friends and family for neglecting meaningful personal interactions for vanities like this. Or at least stop pretending that any of this has anything to do with communism or even leftism in any form whatsoever.

On a related note, I wonder what happened to the Rural People's Party (the folks who brought us classic slogans such as "Death to the United $naKKKe$)?

They were "big" enough to have their own Myspace page, complete with photos of their compound in North or South Carolina, which consisted of a dirt road and a rather shabby looking farm house.

That "party" was literally three people and that was just their trailer iirc.

Also everything that no. 14 said.

Thank you praxicoide, please let me know if you get a chance to finish it.

No 14 wrote:

Hopefully this will get published in a leading Marxist theoretical journal. New Left Review would be swell. The world needs to know about the erroneous political line of a fat prick who dresses up in uniforms for YouTube and hates the First World that he lives in. In a century or so, intellectuals will still be poring over the learned exchanges between "Jason Unruhe" and Daniel K. Buntovnik. How can one hold that Unruhe and the like are just stupid internet cultists, and yet write almost 9,900 words (11,500 words if you count the notes) "polemicising" against them? Either someone is casting his pearls before the swine as a kind of public service, or they are pretty much the same as the stupid cultists.

After skimming some 1/4 of this material I had to close the tab (after copying the text for a word count) because I felt myself actively getting dumber, and I think this is the only real effect of this kind of writing. My advice to the OP is to delete this crap and apologise to his friends and family for neglecting meaningful personal interactions for vanities like this. Or at least stop pretending that any of this has anything to do with communism or even leftism in any form whatsoever.

Lol, you really made me laugh there, to be honest. But no one's forcing you to read this if you think it's vain. And to be fair, everybody on the internet wants attention, pretty much, and Unruhe gets a lot of it. At least for a "communist". Why is that? I am more interested in Sun Ra, Aferim!, and Laibach than Jason Unruhe, but the articles I wrote about those things barely got as many views in months as my 3 posts on Unruhe did in two days. So what does that say about people?

Also, Unruhe has issued a "rebuttal", if you could call it that, after retracting his first attempt:

In response to Jason Unruhe's second attempt at a rebuttal of my critique

Why does he get attention on the internet? I don't know. Persistence and dedication, I guess. Anyone can be obnoxious on YouTube, but you have to go the extra mile to become really notorious. In this case, going the extra mile means to take the weirdest caricature of Maoism you can find on the internet and turning it up to 11. That does take work, since you actually have to explore these theories and develop them into something that's just retarded enough that people will accuse you of trolling, but others will take you at face value just because of your dedication and sincerity.

I also do not doubt what you say about your post on MRN getting the most views on your blog. Probably all the people who are genuinely interested in MRN as a YouTube personality will also necessarily be the audience for those trying to take him down. Nobody else cares enough. It says a lot about certain kinds of people, rather than about "people" in general. If you asked all your co-workers or classmates what they think of Jason Unruhe, how many would know who you're talking about? It's only on YouTube that someone like him can get both followers and detractors in serious numbers. People become his followers pretty much by accident: in another world, they might just as well have been detractors of his (or vice versa), and their opinion of him only depends on what kind of ideological influences they have been exposed to first.

That is also more specifically why I think it's a waste of time to try and take him down on an ideological basis: his ramblings may form some kind of coherent ideology (I don't know enough about that to be sure, and I already feel quite a bit of shame of being aware of his existence before reading this thread), but they do not exert any social force in particular. To refute them can be interesting as a kind of intellectual exercise for its own sake, but it cannot be satisfying for any extended period of time. Of course he is playing his part by responding to you, and you have responded to that, and so it will go on for a time, but it will probably spark more "meta" debates like this one than anything.

One thing I find striking about MRN is how many outright anti-communists watch him, including numerous "third positionists," monarchists, and open Neo-Nazis. That actually seems to be his strongest audience next to adolescent communist YouTubers.

Comrade Gulper wrote:

On a related note, I wonder what happened to the Rural People's Party (the folks who brought us classic slogans such as "Death to the United $naKKKe$)?

They were "big" enough to have their own Myspace page, complete with photos of their compound in North or South Carolina, which consisted of a dirt road and a rather shabby looking farm house.

They were two Neo-Nazis (a husband and wife) and have since transitioned into being a Hindu death cult: http://www.nknews.org/2013/05/white-pow ... -revealed/

praxicoide wrote:

Well, Marx dealt with Stirner, Heinzen, Vogt and a lot of others who really didn't deserve his attention, it was still good as a sparring exercise.

Stirner had influence in the philosophical milieu in which Marx and Engels operated in the early-mid 1840s. Heinzen had some influence among German left-wing democrats and tried to discredit the Communists. As for Vogt, he claimed that the Communist League was a police operation even though in reality he himself was connected to the French police. All three men are obscure nowadays, but it was important to confront them back in the day.

All this is pretty different from Unruhe, who has no real influence on anything. That being said, I don't mind a few exposures of Unruhe's lameness, so long as he's not taken too seriously.

Ismail wrote:

One thing I find striking about MRN is how many outright anti-communists watch him, including numerous "third positionists," monarchists, and open Neo-Nazis. That actually seems to be his strongest audience next to adolescent communist YouTubers.

This is interesting. I wonder why this is the case. Is it just the phenomenon of radical Internet subcultures converging or at least keeping tabs on each other?

The Internet is awash with all kinds of ideologies, with the Far Right seemingly having the biggest presence I think. I am not sure what to make of this. I would rather the Far Right remain a marginal Internet movement with no real-world relevance but if the Internet is increasingly a reflection of how people, and especially young people, think, then it is worrisome that the Far Right seems so popular and that guys like MRN seem to represent the Left now.

Piccolo wrote:

This is interesting. I wonder why this is the case. Is it just the phenomenon of radical Internet subcultures converging or at least keeping tabs on each other?

MRN has the same position as a lot of reactionaries in regards to feminism and other supposed "SJW" issues, since he's part of the same toxic online culture as they are.

Quote:

The Internet is awash with all kinds of ideologies, with the Far Right seemingly having the biggest presence I think. I am not sure what to make of this. I would rather the Far Right remain a marginal Internet movement with no real-world relevance but if the Internet is increasingly a reflection of how people, and especially young people, think, then it is worrisome that the Far Right seems so popular and that guys like MRN seem to represent the Left now.

I don't think MRN represents "the Left" online, not even on YouTube. There's plenty of academic "Marxist-Humanist" and other types, as well as ML and Trot groups, whose online presence is more significant. The big issue with Unruhe is that he takes young people who would likely be attracted to Marxism-Leninism and diverts them from learning more about it in favor of his silly "Maoist-Third Worldist" views.

At least in the USA, the "left" is essentially represented by what I conveniently call "Socialist Humanism", with Bernie Sanders being the mainstream poster child for such a tendency. Meanwhile, the "right" is mainstreamed in the form of Donald Trump (with a significant undercurrent of support from various racist groups, such as the Klan, the Nazi Party, etc., and miscellaneous "Border Watchers" and other malcontents).

The interesting thing is that, even though the right wing is unified in its ultimate goals (creating a racially homogeneous corporate feudal state), their greed and self righteousness are so thoroughly self defeating that they are perpetually unable to unite behind a single, all encompassing party and candidate. Theocratic fascists like Glenn Beck and Franklin Graham leaving the Republican Party are perfect examples of this. Meanwhile, Trump can't quite pacify Fox News or get all of the Teabagger wing of the party to back him.

A Democratic victory is thus all but assured, especially if Bernie Sanders can secure the nomination. Once he does so, he'll be the face of the "Left" in this country, win or lose, like it or not.