In the 1878 preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels somewhat snidely takes a swipe at how everything, every field, was being filled with “sublime nonsense”. As I was reading over this preface again over my breakfast, I found myself rereading and rereading the paragraph, over and over.
I’m writing this in the wake of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. splitting into the “American Communist Party”, featuring such infamous names as Haz al Din, and Jackson Hinkle, so-called “MAGA Communist” and a petty reactionary, for whom communism is nothing more than a way to differentiate his economic policy from the conservative mainstream. A childish, yet constant, contrarian behaviour. But despite him having made a name for himself, (mostly courtesy of Israel/Palestine exploitation), Hinkle is nothing more than symptomatic for the sublime nonsense that we are being subjected to in every sphere of life now, be it politics, work, art, and social life.
The weight of the internet is boring down upon us, with a burden close to that of Atlas. Algorithms determine everything we see, everything we try to think, and limit our imagination. We’re constantly blasted with stimuli, and it’s becoming increasingly more common that there is no space, even at home, that we can escape it. Tiktok glazes the eyes of children and teens, and Facebook’s wall of AI generated content and constant outrageous propaganda blasts our elders. Nor are those 20- and 30-somethings spared as they consume various long-form poorly written debates and video-essays on platforms like Youtube and Twitch (or for the more unfortunate, Instagram reels).
Over the years, I’ve dived into the sublime nonsense factories that are these platforms. As time has passed, select figures have risen to the “top” to represent various factions of the “left”. Hasan Piker for the online-pseudo-communists who like to talk a lot about anti-imperialism, but don’t go much beyond that, the Platonic ideal of impotent anger. Destiny for the angry liberals, who take chagrin with the fact that the left hasn’t bought into the cult of electoral politics. Vaush for those who want to claim the label “anarchist”, and yet simply espouse radical liberalism, come election year. After all, thoughts of radicalism are for non-election years, and also, not actually to be acted on in those time periods.
That may seem dishonest, though. After all, I’m simply another faceless one in the hordes of the many, no? Perhaps, this time, patriotic socialism is the way! Surely, it was just that Earl Browder was merely flawed in his application of it! This time will be different, naturally.
But then I cast my eyes to these bastions of an “American Communism” and I see them for what they really are. Lacking class analysis, lacking any real vision of a path to communism, they simply chatter away with poorly founded rhetoric, more akin to that of an online coalition of complaining middle-class Americans, but for a “communist” spin on the language.
Take, for example, the following interaction:
Throwing away traditional class-based analysis for something built upon fear and close-minded reactionary rhetoric means that the most-vulnerable in society suddenly, paradoxically, become the new bastion of power. Somehow, the people most likely to be victims of violence, far more likely to be victims of sexual assault and rape, and are absolutely part of the working class, with 40-60% of unhoused Americans reporting holding a job. Meanwhile, while they complain about being forced to “pay rent to the sidewalk lords”, actual landlords are stripping the working class bare, with the absolute minimum American dollar wage to afford a one-bedroom home being $26.74/hour.
The rent prices in the U.S., not to mention much of the so-called “West”, remain exceedingly high due to a variety of factors, but landlords continuously gain from these prices, while workers are beaten out of hopes and dreams of a future. The promises of modern capitalism have become increasingly fraught with depression, poverty, and strongarm robbery.
22 million people in the US are currently paying on average 30% of their pay cheque on rent. One third of their weekly earnings are being eaten away by those with that power. Even worse, 12 million are spending 50% of their wage on rent to these landlords. There is only so much the working class can bear on their shoulders as these dramatic rises in rent keep coming so quickly. Median rents are increasing at a sharp rate, far quicker than any increase in wages. In response, workers are decried for calling for support, at the insistence that it will cause further inflation.
All the while, corporations, and their billionaire CEO’s and owners are perfectly happy to inflate their prices more, all to drive endless profits – of course, none of which will ever be seen coming down to the workers in these companies. The expectation of higher productivity, the increasing threat of automation and AI-driven loss of job makes people
So, with such ineffectual individuals labelling themselves communists, we find ourselves adrift once more.
When I cast my eyes onto individuals like Hasan Piker, and more broadly, the “angry online pseudo-communists”, I find myself frustrated. Sure, they find themselves on the “correct” side of things, such as criticising American imperialism, or decrying Israel’s genocidal brutality upon the Palestinian people. Yet, the reactionary nature of the internet calls to them, too. Constant reaction, constantly drawn into cycles of knee-jerking into support for individuals and factions that are not worth defending. Cue joke about Trotskyists and critical support for ISIS against American Imperialism.
Too often have we seen this pattern of events. Communists throw in their hat with a reactionary force, for the sake of opposing the foreign imperialist power, only to watch as the reactionary force, rather than martialling revolutionary forces, ends up abusing and degrading the working class and poor of their nation. See the recent legal choices made by the leadership of the military coup in Burkina Faso with regards to the criminalisation of homosexuality.
21st century communism was always going to be a battle uphill. After the failures of the 20th century models (not to mention the massive propaganda loss), it’s ever the more important to fight tooth and nail for every gain, not make concessions that further allow us to be crushed underfoot by making ill-advised alliances or undermining our own ground by taking on reactionary ideology.
Throwing back to Engels and Anti-Dühring – Engels takes note in his introduction that socialists of yore were capable of criticising capitalism and the negative consequences it was having for the working class. They were, however, incapable of showing why this was bad, why this was something to move past – only that it was “bad”.
Is this not so symptomatic of the conversations around communism happening on mind-numbing platforms like Twitter and Youtube, which are just worse versions of debates that had been happening for years on Reddit and Tumblr, and before that, the depths of internet forums?
Sure, many people wear the scars of capital upon their body, and have thick scar tissue to show for it. It doesn’t mean that their criticism of capitalism is materialistic or grounded beyond the frustration and pain it exposes in them.
Years ago, I encouraged my deeply conservative father to read Marx, just to see if he agreed with it. He read the Manifesto in a few days and then confusedly asked me “Is that it?”
“Is that it, what?”
“This is all just stuff that makes sense. I thought it was going to be more about killing the rich or something. I could have written this.”
While I highly doubt that my Australian father could have replicated the work of a brilliant Hegelian and socialist thinker, it very much does ring true of the branch of reactionary “well, if I understand it, I shouldn’t need to read it, right?” thought that we see promoted online.
Reading, writing, communicating – these are all just part of the toolkit we need to be picking up every time we engage. This means doing the work – reading the literature, studying up, refining how we talk and interact with people. Become a better public speaker, learn how to communicate with different people from different backgrounds.
It’s been a few months since I first coined this article, and things have only gotten worse since I started writing it. Everywhere we look online is being choked out with reactionary narcissism and arrogance. It has gotten to the point, that sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the pixels of their heinous discourse, and it drives me spare.
Alas, it’s something we must deal with.
The constant droning whine of the internet requires non-stop “takes” and non-stop content and yet, for all of it, we are the poorer. We have more “leftist” content being produced every day than in the last 200 years, and yet how much of it has any value beyond petty squabbles, factionalism and refusal to acknowledge history? We are essentially all chained into a content machine that demands constant output, but is producing so little of value.
Every day we have to do voting discourse. Every day we have to talk about the Great Purges. Every day, we relitigate Kronstadt. Hell, nearly every day we’re subjected to endless word vomit around takeaway delivery that somehow purports itself to be essential and critical information.
Then we have the A.C.P. putting out images that look straight out of a traditionalists textbook, having less in common with communist movements of the past, and more in line with propaganda that you might see out of Nazi Germany.
It’s a given that the right is prone to reactionary ideology, but the relationship between reactionary ideology and populism on the right is something to never be underestimated. By having a variety of different right-wing movements, all espousing marginally different strains in order to create a haze and illusion of “difference”. Sure, you’re a libertarian, and they’re a fascist, and they’re a paleo-conservative, but the overall goal will be to crowd out the left and drag the Overton window to the point that we’re not in consideration.
They’ll take our policies and language, and then weaponise it to the harm that is so normal to right wing politics, scapegoating and marginalising until they get power. That’s why no matter whether from the Jacksonians in the USA, UKIP/Reform in the United Kingdom, the Country Party in Australia, or countless others spreading across Europe, Asia and Africa as I write this.
But on the left, the inattentive desires of the internet has forced us into a corner. For all of our talks of “multipolarity”, countries like China won’t be supporting leftist movements in any country, content with reactionary challenges to U.S. power. There is no COMINTERN, no Soviet Bloc, no international leftist co-ordination to rely on to aid those comrades fighting for their lives in the most desperate struggles. So, that is yet another thing we need to take on. We need to rebuild that international struggle and union.
This reactionary wave that we’re facing head-on is no doubt going to take more wherewithal, more discipline, and far more strength than can I even conceive of, but we’re still acting like the same shattered 90’s left that didn’t know how to land after the fall of the U.S.S.R.
If we want to challenge that, we’re going to need to abandon this reactionary nature that has become so second-nature, and start letting our future and discourse be separated from the algorithm’s demand. Take the time to breathe, take the time to think it through, and don’t let the Flow control you. Allow yourself to write, rewrite and counter-write until you feel comfortable.
Don’t let the internet convince you to fall into conspiracism and paranoia. Remain clear-headed, and hold your chin above the turbulent current.
Vedran Vega 
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