I know the entire PSL party went out of their way to discredit of SA victim, bring all their media people to destroy her. No wait that was the democratic party and Tara Reade.
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
28 points (80.4% liked)
Ask Lemmygrad
809 readers
1 users here now
A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I know the entire PSL party went out of their way to discredit of SA victim,
I know you're trying to make a joke, but isn't this a little uncomfortably close to what happened in Philadelphia?
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation
Is it only "believe women" when it's politically convenient?
Is it only "believe women" when it's politically convenient?
yes, communist men can be fucking gross when it comes to facing the reality that this occurs in many orgs.
What he said was "the entire PSL", not a branch, and that's kind of the thing about these accusations, that they are raised to try to claim that the entire Party participated or even had any awareness of the reality of the situation in whichever specific chapter, which is not true. Maupin is a real example of what is being insinuated here, with the central leadership being aware of and covering up his actions, among other complicit acts.
I'm not batting for the branch here, cut it off and burn it for all I care, but we need to be clear about the real scope of what happened, and the implicit meaning of "PSL shields predators" is that a Maupin-like situation is happening or something else (like the Catholic Church method) where the PSL has any involvement. No such accusation has been made concretely that I have ever seen, even though insinuations to that effect get made all the time.
The national Twitter account, pslweb, publicly doxed the alleged victim in Philadelphia. The current VP pick signed the letter denying the alleged victim's claim of SA ( https://www.gnvinfo.com/psl-president-candidate-claudia-de-la-cruz-responds-to-infamous-steven-powers-case/ ).
There are something like 5 cities with issues named in the prolewiki article, a source that's pretty friendly to PSL.
I don't hate PSL, but it's super gross to act like there isn't a kernel of truth here. Maybe it's an issue with organizing in the U$ as a whole, I don't know, but it's fucked up to ignore it.
Just a clarification :p we aren't necessarily friendly (or unfriendly) to any party, but we also can only write about what we can back up. In the case of PSL's controversy section ref 14 is a huge repository of many primary accounts, though I haven't followed their own links, but I would start with that catalog as it has tons more links that I saw
Sure, that's more like the "Catholic Church method", as I called it, so then insinuations about the whole organization on the basis of that case are warranted.
That said, doesn't the denial dox use the (potentially) real name of the girl who the boyfriend cheated on the alleged victim with, who the alleged victim alleged was another victim? The article only mentions that person by name in one place and doesn't mention outing or doxxing. I don't know, this is hard to follow.
I do need to defend myself though that I absolutely did not say anything should be ignored, I was simply saying that the scope of the claims and people's actions should be kept in mind. It was PSL stepping in to deny this that is potentially the problem with "PSL" as an organization rather than "PSL Philadelphia" or whichever other chapter. Am I making sense? If some guy commits a murder, that doesn't mean his whole household was complicit in it unless they actually do things to help him (accomplish it, get away with it, etc.). What I am saying is that if it was the guy (chapter) acting on his own, put him on trial and sentence him appropriately. It's only if the household (overall organization) seemingly intervened at some point in the process that pronouncements like "the household is guilty" becomes relevant. And then you kindly provided evidence toward that latter end, so I agree with you that such pronouncements are relevant.
I can not believe u just made me read several long ass articles about a woman who was salty she got cheated on and decided to take revenge by having her ex kicked from psl. Like even IF literally everything she said was true i dont think he even did anything illegal (tho certainly enough to get kicked from an org) but there is no evidence at all that anything is true, u and every article makes it sound like this guy is beyond any doubt a rapists, like its just like any other scandal of a rape coverup we have heard about, but its literally just her voice against his and there is no reason at all to believe either, and i (and i hope everyone else) am not inclined to treat someone as one of the worst kinds of people there are just because someone said so.
Considering how long it took me to work thru this one i dont really feel like looking at all the other incidents in other branches listed in the source for the article u linked but the Philadelphia story is just a nothing burger, it bothers me so much that someone can just be like "actually PSL sucks they cover for rapists" and then im worried cuz i dont want to vote for or be part of the so called "Predator Support League" so i want to look into it and like an hour of reading later its just nothing like literally nothing and im kinda upset.
don't know why anyone is shocked about this it's a problem in every national communist party I've ever heard of. urge reckoning with reality instead of hand waving violence against women!
Accusations to discredit leftist organisations are so severe that you should only believe it if there's hard proof. Let those accusers give some actual evidence then
the burden of proof is on the people claiming that, not on us or the psl.
To be fair, PSL isn't a monolith, and the US is filled with misogynists and horrible men in general. Awful that people in power in the org covered it up, even for a single branch it should be all that we're against. Here's a mega link with criticisms and accounts of SA
Will note I disagree with a good portion of the public criticisms section as some are Maoist/Trotskyist takes but the first hand accounts here are worth listening to. I think a big problem here is the lack of transperancy and purposefully hindered communication (cadre in branches are told not to talk to each other except through leadership) and overall too much centralization without the democratic part. Considering the anti-indigenity found in their socialist reconstruction program as well as by other indigenous groups interactions with them (I would suggest reading the Red Nation link in the drive), you could also tie this in with their settler politics as a whole.
I will also note the organization has a history of calling people who disagree with their line or mention the cases of SA as "adventurists" "wreckers" or the like. This is where the danger steps in, PSL is a deeply imperfect org and even an org as revolutionary and worthy of praise and support as the black panthers should and would take SA seriously.
I once heard a similar thing about Tjen Folket here in Norway.
OP you are engaging in my mind in unacceptable wrecker behavior.
You are attempting to suppress votes for the only anti-imperialist, socialist party on the ballot nationwide in the US on election day.
The time to ask this question was a week ago, a month ago, 3 days ago, time for people to have a discussion without a deadline looming to cast a ballot for them or not.
Doing this at the 11th hour reads to me as an attempt to suppress votes for them, to perhaps even attempt to get some lurkers to vote Democrat instead by causing issues and concern that they're voting for abusive people.
Since we're in the court, I move that OP be given a temp ban until the election is over and this thread be locked and removed as should all other discussion on this as wrecker behavior.
Why couldn't any of you have brought this up a week ago? A month ago? We've long been supporting PSL's candidates and discussing our imminent votes for them for some time and people would have been happy to discuss it. But there was silence, no threads, no major discussions on it. Now at this opportune moment you break ranks, you deploy these accusations in an inflammatory thread on election day without proper time for a discussion, raising emotional tensions against PSL right as we most need people to vote for them.
So why now? I'm disgusted by people dredging up this shit on this day of all days. It's transparent what it is. It isn't good faith, it isn't helpful or useful. Even if it's all true what are you going to do about it? How else are you going to signal on the ballot as an American a support for the agenda of socialism, a vote against war with China and Russia?
There is a time for discussion and a time for solidarity and closing of ranks and showing any left-leaning people who browse our instance that we support Claudia de la Cruz and they should too rather than voting Democrat. Today is a day for closing of ranks. Tomorrow will be a day for litigating any problems we may have with our movement.
This is peak western left in-fighting, ill and unacceptably timed.
This is how you get people to see through your party and NOT want to vote for them. Bourgeois democracy is literally not ever that serious, it is a symbolic protest vote and matters so SO much less than SA allegations true or not. Calling someone who wants to make sure they aren't supporting SA protectors a "wrecker" (again, whether the allegations are true or not and there are certainly true ones) is a misogynist reaction to real concerns that only shows that women are unsafe in the PSL. One more vote for Claudia is not worth that.
I really didn't want to get into it and have to try to work out how to say it diplomatically (and even so, I fear I'll get accused of being dismissive of women's issues for saying it), but since you've already gone there and aren't pulling any punches, I will say, I had a similar thought as you. The timing of it, whether accidental or not, is weird as hell. The accusations could be entirely true, exaggerated, false, or anywhere between, but there is no time for people to sort that out properly literally on election day. And it's not as though PSL is gonna win the presidency and someone needs to call them out to make sure they don't gain immense power and abuse it. In this election, they've always been a fringe "closest thing to something truly 'left' to gain popular support and build a movement at all" and electorally, is mostly just a way to spread a "leftist" message. Tossing around "what's up with, I heard a rumor" type statements at a time like this, when they're going to be at the height of being seen at all throughout all the erasure a party like them faces in popular media, is bizarrely naive at best.
Similar happened with the green party recently (not originating on here, mind) and though I have little desire to defend them considering I never expected them to be aligned with folks like us in the first place, the timing of it was also odd. After a lot of hearing little about them policy-wise one way or another, the green party VP running has a statement extracted out that makes him sound like he has anti-trans views. Maybe he does and it's important to know, but if there is one thing US electoralism is a well-oiled machine at, it's smearing political candidates. And when it's coming for candidates who in the best case scenario could have their party win 5% or whatever for funding, it's all the more to me like, "We're doing this right now? Is this supposed to be principled?"
I could understand if we were talking about candidates who can actually win the presidency, but like, what exactly is the goal of bringing it up right now other than to get people to hesitate voting for a third party and help undermine any attempts to put a wrench in the dual party structure?
Even as little as a week ago would have been better. At least then there'd be some time to go over what is known. And if this was already known and people were waiting around to bring it up until now, that's just straight up the opposite of helping; not helping women and not helping organizing efforts either.