I appreciate everyone's responses a lot. I also think it was good to remove the post because there was some reactionary stuff in the google doc I linked. I found it through one of the articles that Bad Mouse's link led to, not in any of the other comments. I only looked at the "first hand accounts" links in the doc and didn't even double check what else there was so that's my error.

I had a feeling the take would be that there are certainly big flaws, as there are in any org, with any group of people, but PSL is still one of the few vehicles for socialist agitation that there actually exists, and by joining it we can help improve it.

I'm likely going to be moving to San Francisco when I'm back in the states in case anyone has recommendations about specific orgs in the bay that are certainly good.

Also I got to say Bad Mouse's ultra turn also bummed me out a little. It seems like such a baby leftist thing to do to just shit on a socialist party from across an ocean and then refuse to elaborate.

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[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 1 points 8 months ago

In the case of BadEmpanada, he has some unhinged behaviour on social media and he just has some garbage takes that increase in inverse proportion to the proximity to his main channel. In the case of BadMouse, he is so self-assured that I feel like the only right thing is to make up for his lack of skepticism by having enough skepticism of him for the both of us - he cycled through ideologies like a westerner window-shops for new outfits to wear and I'd argue that he's more of a convincing speaker than he is a person who has done the reading and put in the effort to enact his politics (I can't speak for his more recent turn away from being on YouTube to primarily being a grass-toucher but everything that is visible in his YouTube era is representative of him spending his time on creating online hot takes so...)

There's an opportunist streak about BadEmpanada, especially how he treated BayArea, and honestly, he's still a sexpat until proven otherwise just like all Anglo male immigrants in Global South countries.

And as for Bad Mouse, I just don't trust some dude who constantly changes ideology. It's one thing to do so when you've just been exposed to leftist thought, but at this point in the game, he has heard the arguments and talking points of all the major tendencies. There's absolutely no way he would have experienced consecutive life-shattering events that would cause him to reevaluate his core beliefs over and over again, which makes me think he was never sincere in the first place.