I’m on the fence. On the one hand, deeply committed Trots are wreckers and ultimately reactionary, but I was brought into Marxism by well-intentioned but poorly informed Trots: there is hope for some of them. Maybe we leave it there but make it more of a community to try to pull online Trots out of their ideological dead end. I don’t know what that process would be, maybe forcing them to allow historically accurate content to contrast their claims.
It’s a right wing talking point about how some people in the US are being held to account for their actions for more or less the first time, particularly in regard to racism and sexual violence. Cancel culture to the right is wanting to remove someone’s status or influence based on past actions. To us, it’s just doing the right thing and making people responsible for the distasteful things they’ve done.
In my opinion there are two kinds of tr#ts. First we have the new leftist, someone who has only recently discovered socialism, and is still learning the history and theory liberal education denied them. As such, they come to support socialism, even communism, but do not yet have an accurate understanding of history and as such are uncomfortable supporting AES. They go through a Tr#tskyist phase, believing that the USSR would have been perfect if everyone had just followed Tr#tsky. Usually, this kind of person ends up as an ML (myself included) because they continue to do research and get into arguments on the internet with better informed MLs.
Then there is the other kind of Trots#yist, the well read and committed Tr#t. They know what he did, they know what he wrote, and they know who he allied himself with and they either do not care or deny it. These kinds of people are the more detestable ones, as they spend their time spreading lies about Lenin, Stalin, and all AES while also wrongly and ahistorically insisting that the peasantry cannot be a revolutionary class and that the proletariat alone can pursue revolution. Most of these types are western academics like the type that turned me into a t#ot. Honestly I wish there was an easy way to fix these people, but for the time being we should continue to marginalize them while teaching accurate history and theory.
Trots#yism itself is pretty simple. Take orthodox Marxism ala Rosa Luxemburg and prented to do Leninism sometimes. Then add the beliefs that exclusively the industrial proletariat can be revolutionary and that the purpose of the revolution in any country was not to build socialism at home but to commit it’s resources to spreading the revolution abroad (war). Even during the Russian revolution he was proven wrong by the fact that in many areas of the country, peasants and soldiers engaged in the revolution to a great extent. The second bit is even worse, as what this means is that he would have built an economy centered around war with the sole and explicit goal of invading other countries, overthrowing their governments and social order, and then moving on to the next conquest. This too is a laughable idea. It would have been suicidal and ruinous to reengage with WWI like Tr#tsky wanted, and it wouldn’t have been much better if they had declared an offensive war at any time after that. He was a fool who should be acknowledged for the positive role he played during the revolution, but his actions afterwords are inexcusable.
How can I nominate you to lead the Korean Friendship Association? If you aren’t involved with them , you should be.