Overcoming the Whitegeist

“Why Trump? Why now? Why not Bernie?”

Don’t worry, US readers: this will not be yet another thinkpiece about how Donald Trump reflects the latent white supremacy of the settler-colonial Yankee national identity. This will not be yet another thinkpiece about how many of Donald Trump’s supporters are bourgeois. This will not be yet another thinkpiece which repeats that the Trump presidency is the means by which the crisis punishes all of the US for the victory of Clintonite status quo-ism over even the most modest reformism of Sanders.

You know these things already. The fact is, everyone knows these things. Everything under the sun is old and burnt.

Rather, let us dispense momentarily with a simple meditation, in lieu of a hot take. At this point, all but the most out-of-touch critic would agree that Bernie would, in fact, have won. But given that the objective conditions are such that Bernie did not in fact win, let us not forget how much of the blame lies precisely with political subjects such as Sanders and the Sandernistas for failing to see beyond the Whitegeist.

The Zeitgeist, as all of our readers know, is the spirit (Geist) of the age (Zeit). We are most concerned with the level of development of the masses, their collective consciousness and spirit. It does not suffice to consider oneself a meaningful political subject and not consider the objective reality of the development of the revolutionary masses. But who are the revolutionary masses In the United States? Quite simply, everyone except white people.

At this point, their biases against us confirmed, all the white leftists in the United States have stopped reading. But seriously, folks, nobody is actually preaching that there is no revolutionary potential in the struggles of “white” proletarians. And if such people do appear to exist, they’re just Worker’s Spatula psyops.

In fact, just to be safe, assume that everyone on left Twitter discussing such matters is either a Spatula writer or a sockpuppet which is part of a Spatula psyop, depending on whether or not we unironically share the views they espouse or not.

Can we all stop talking about the problem of imaginary leftists condemning labour strikes because of the skin colour of white workers? How often has this actually obstructed your practice, if you’re reading this and actually have any practice (since most of the internet left has neither theory nor practice)?

However, many white leftists in the United States, particularly the Sandernistas and large sections of the DSA, but also some anarchists and Marxist-Leninists, seem to think that chauvinism is found only in explicit statements of condemnation for oppressed nations and identities or movements addressing said oppression. Strasserite chauvinism finds its reflection in an obsession by more honest socialists with saving the soul of white workers, no matter how chauvinist those workers might be.

“Oh so you’re saying all white workers are chauvinists?” Hell yes we are, every single one of them is chauvinist trash, no different to the KKK, and all non-white workers are pure vessels for the revolution, whose only flaw is not kicking white workers out of their unions screaming “beat it, whitey!”

But seriously, the editing process for this piece was inordinately held back by debating how many times we should insert a joke about how we hate all white people* or there are no white workers or whatever. The hyper-sensitivity on this point by white communists (particularly in the US) is so obnoxious and we wonder when they will stop it. We assure you: we have considered the class implications.

We all know Trump voters are not disproportionately the disenfranchised in the US. We all also agree that there should be a unity of struggle between the white proletariat and the oppressed nationalities. The problem is, to build a sincere solidarity after literally centuries of harsh national oppression, which is not merely a scar on historical memory but which creates a real hierarchy in economic reality, we must do so on the terms of the more oppressed and impoverished oppressed nationalities.

Occupy Wall Street began in 2011. Afro-Americans have been struggling for their most basic democratic rights since before there was a United States. It is not unreasonable to expect that in uniting the two struggles, the one should show due deference to the other.

But what is the response of the white left? To scold others for bringing up the national question, to speak of “One United American Working Class™”, to compare George Washington to Robespierre, and other such thinly-veiled patriotic nonsense, right as the US Empire is weakening for the first time since the end of the Cold War!

It is not only the DSA, who speak of the US as a “nation”, who do this, but even many ostensible Marxist-Leninists! While the Whitegeist in the US may be one step ahead of Occupy Wall Street, the Zeitgeist of the oppressed nations in the US is one step ahead of Black Lives Matter, is in Cooperation Jackson, is speaking about “decolonisation”. We struggle to unite these struggles of course, but the Whitegeist must be brought up to the level of the heroic oppressed peoples in the US, the struggle of these oppressed peoples cannot be buried because the Whitegeist of the white working class (or intellectuals’ idealist conception thereof) is frightened of it!

Our hypocritical white US leftists insist that they support Black Lives Matter, that they “like” Malcolm X, that they name-drop Assata Shakur. Like anarchists, they use their individual lifestyle to cover up the essence of a more general theoretical critique; like social democrats, they assure us that Black America is on their mind, but we can’t divide the working class [vote?] by distracting precious white workers from their own precious white problems with anyone else’s “identitarian” non-white problems; like the liberals who worship Barack Obama, they want Black “allies” who validate their position as good white people and do not make them uncomfortable.

In short, these labour aristocratic settler-colonialist white leftists, who have yet to face their own history and social position, substitute their own consciousness for that of the revolutionary proletariat. They may be well-intentioned, but their good intentions are only an indication of of how far we can travel with them as individuals. They are no indication of the correctness of their analysis, which entirely substitutes their idealist and subjective conception of the working class for a critical dialectical process of material struggle of all workers and all oppressed.

There is a general tendency in the United States to characterise polemics such as this one, without using precisely this terminology, as “reverse racist”, or “anti-white”. The code-word used is “Third Worldist”. You would think, therefore, that those who demand that liberation of the oppressed be centred in the rhetoric of revolutionaries in the US are either idealists who don’t understand the material conditions of their own country, or foreign leftists who don’t understand that the objective conditions of struggle in the US are so undeveloped as to not be ready for this sort of revolutionary rhetoric.

And indeed, one of the writers who pushed this piece in committee did come from a country with wildly different economic conditions, political history, and culture.

Australia.

Yes, whatever you want to say about Socialist Alliance, and no Worker’s Spatula writer can pass up the chance to point out that Green Left Weekly, while a fine news source, simply has NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT HEGEL, but from the vantage point (Ollman lol) of Melbourne, it’s frankly startling to see how little the liberation of oppressed peoples means to white leftists in the US. It’s not as if we committed less genocide against the indigenous than the Yanks. If Yanks are under that impression, it’s simply because their settler-colonial society’s population has been bolstered by more immigration than ours.

And while it’s true that in Australia, Aboriginals are a greater portion of the population than the Indigenous nations in the United States, it’s equally true that the Afro-American people, who are subject to similar national oppression, are a much greater percentage of the overall population of the United States than the Aboriginals in Australia. Thus we can see that it is not that the white left are ignoring the oppressed peoples within “their own” borders based on irrelevance, but out of a chauvinism that even other settler-colonial peoples, such as the arch-racist white Australian society, are capable of overcoming on the radical left.

Compare the CPA to the CPUSA and despair.

This is a clear example of the role subjectivity plays in shaping objectivity. If the white left in the US insists on tailing the Whitegeist, then they will see no objective need to embrace the liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples. If the white left in Australia overcome the Whitegeist, suddenly it becomes completely objectively obvious to them that there is a pressing need to embrace the struggle of the Aboriginals.

In fact, whether or not we had written this screed, things are in motion in the white left, and the Whitegeist itself is developing. Different elements of the white working class in the US will be driven towards fascism whether we intervene or those with a less full analysis intervene with a more vulgar class politics. But to intervene most correctly we hope all interested comrades will grasp the limitations into which they were socialised, struggle to overcome them, and take on the struggle of the oppressed peoples as their own, and by doing so, become themselves a living connection.

Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!

Recommended further reading: How to be Class Conscious

*Although, you know, fuck white people.

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Point/Counterpoint: Yelling About Hegel

The First Annual Clandestine Worker’s Spatula Marxist Theory Symposium and Dance-a-Thon was held at an undisclosed part of York University campus in Toronto, Canada last night. Attendees who arrived thanks to secret invitations came from locations as diverse as Australia, China, Turkey, India, and Argentina to debate topics ranging from economics to gender politics to philosophy.

The highlight of the evening, according to all in attendance, was the debate on “Yelling About Hegel”, which consisted of York University’s own J. Moufawad Paul, who swiped the keys to get us all into the [REDACTED] building, and a Worker’s Spatula representative who is hot for Hegel. What follows is a 100% factual and 100% accurate transcript, and if J. Moufawad Paul seeks to object in any way, we can only assume his account has been hacked by the Russians, as is traditional in North America.

Moderator: Well, I see we have a packed room for this panel. Expected, I suppose, because if there’s one thing that draws the big crowds, it’s heated arguments about Hegel. You all know the rules: each participant is permitted to yell until they run out of breath, at which point the other begins yelling until they run out of breath. If I start yelling, everyone else has to stop yelling until I finish what I’m saying. The debate is over when somebody flips the table like TİKB did during the Toblerone conference in London. Any preliminary, non-yelled remarks from either of you?

WS: First of all, since we’re going to be yelling about Hegel, I want to give a shout-out to Arif Çelebi. Secondly, on behalf of all of our cadre taking part in the Ramadan fast, I wanted to thank J. Moufawad-Paul for his thoughtful choice of bream for this evening’s iftar. He has been nothing if not a gracious host to us, and has made me personally rethink my prejudiced view that all white settler-colonial English Canadians are hypocritical liberal scum.

JMP: Please, comrade. I also love bream. But I’m glad that I could prove that not all individuals from settler-colonial Canadian society are roughly as culturally sensitive as Justin Trudeau, if not to his right. I hope that this event will be the first in many occasions for meaningful exchange between revolutionary trends across the world. By the way, is there any chance you’d like to accept that Maoism is the third and hi…

Moderator: …AND WITH THAT, WE’RE OFF! START YELLING!

JMP: Oh, is it… is it time for me to start yelling? Okay: WHERE DO I BEGIN? MY POSITION IS ALMOST TOO OBVIOUS: HEGEL IS AN IDEALIST PHILOSOPHER, AND THE REPEATED IMPLICATION BY WORKER’S SPATULA THAT HEGEL IS ON PAR WITH MARX WAS ALWAYS INTERPRETED AS A JOKE UP UNTIL THIS POINT. IS IT ACTUALLY WORKER’S SPATULA’S POSITION THAT, AND I QUOTE, “MARXISM-LENINISM, MORE LIKE HEGELIANISM-LENINISM, AMIRITE?”?(?)

WS: YEAH SURE, WHY NOT? I’M NOT GOING TO GET IN TROUBLE FOR SAYING THAT. YOU CAN’T BE A MARXIST WITHOUT HEGEL. IT’S NOT A FUCKING COINCIDENCE THAT EVERY MODERN REVISIONIST YOU TALK TO CAN’T SUMMARISE THE UNIVERSAL MOTION OF DIALECTICS ON EVEN THE MOST BASIC LEVEL. YOU CAN’T JUST IGNORE DIALECTICS AS A MARXIST.

JMP: I NEVER SAID DIALECTICS WASN’T AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE MARXIST WORLDVIEW, I WROTE A FUCKING DIAMAT MANUAL. BUT IN THE DIALECTICAL INTERPLAY BETWEEN BEING AND CONSCIOUSNESS, THE BEING IS PRIMARY, AND HEGEL’S SHORTCOMING WAS PRECISELY IN HIS FAILURE TO GRASP THIS.

WS: DID HEGEL MAKE MISTAKES? OF COURSE HE DID. IN SO LONG A PERIOD FILLED WITH HEROISM, TRIALS, STRUGGLE, TRIUMPHS, IT IS INEVITABLE NOT ONLY FOR HEGEL PERSONALLY BUT ALSO FOR GERMAN IDEALISM AS A WHOLE TO MAKE MISTAKES.

MODERATOR: FOUL! No paraphrasing Enver Hoxha or Mao Zedong quotes defending Stalin! That joke is for Twitter only.

WS: Sorry, force of habit.

MODERATOR: That’s fine, just try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. JMP? Can we get your word that you won’t do the same?

JMP: Hey, I never do that anyway.

MODERATOR: Very well. Comrade, would you like to yell a more original and substantial response?

WS: LENIN SAID “INTELLIGENT IDEALISM IS CLOSER TO INTELLIGENT MATERIALISM THAN STUPID MATERIALISM”. WE CAN’T GO THE DIRECTION WHERE WE PAINT HEGEL AS AN ENEMY OF MARXISM!

JMP: I’M A FUCKING PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR! I THINK PEOPLE SHOULD READ HEGEL, AND I’VE READ HEGEL, AND I’VE TAUGHT HEGEL! I KNOW FULL WELL ALL THE WAYS HEGEL IS MISREPRESENTED, BUT MARX EXPLICITLY IDENTIFIES HEGELIAN DIALECTICS AS BEING DEFICIENT IN ITS IDEALISM, AND THE ANTI-REVISIONIST TRADITION IS REPLETE WITH BREAKS FROM HEGELIANISM AS SUCH, JUST AS MODERN REVISIONISM IS REPLETE WITH BREAKS WITH DIALECTICS AS SUCH.

DIALECTICS IS NOT SIMPLY DEFINED AS HEGELIANISM. THE FACT THAT IN THE MILIEU OF GERMAN IDEALISM A CERTAIN LANGUAGE EMERGED THAT WAS USEFUL FOR MARX IS NOT SOMETHING ANYONE HERE DENIES. THE ISSUE IS THAT YOU COULD JUST KEEP GOING BACK WITH THAT: DO WE NEED KANT TO UNDERSTAND HEGEL?

WS: LENIN ALSO SAID: “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE COMPLETELY TO UNDERSTAND MARX’S CAPITAL, AND ESPECIALLY ITS FIRST CHAPTER, WITHOUT HAVING THOROUGHLY STUDIED AND UNDERSTOOD THE WHOLE OF HEGEL’S LOGIC. CONSEQUENTLY, HALF A CENTURY LATER NONE OF THE MARXISTS UNDERSTOOD MARX!!” DID HE EVER SAY THAT SHIT ABOUT KANT?

MODERATOR: FUCKING FOUL! That’s two quotes from Lenin talking about Hegel in a row! Stop relying on Lenin to make your argumentation. JMP, your turn to yell.

JMP: LENIN IS NOT AN INFALLIBLE SOURCE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MARXIST METHOD! I HALF-EXPECTED YOU TO QUOTE ENGELS NEXT. AS I ARGUE IN MY BOOK, WHICH YOU’D KNOW IF YOU READ IT, I AM NOT ONLY AGAINST VULGAR MATERIALISM AND PSEUDO DIALECTICS, BUT ALSO AGAINST IDEALIST DIALECTICS IN THE FORM OF “PURE HEGELIANISM”, EVEN AS FOUND IN MARXISM! THIS WAS MAO’S FUNDAMENTAL BREAKTHROUGH: THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION IS ITSELF A FORM OF IDEALISM!

WS: Yeah, the SMF said the same thing when asked about the Abstrakt piece about Maoist dialectics.

JMP: The SMF?

WS: They’re supposedly a front for the [REDACTED].

JMP: Ah. Well, you see? MLMs.

MODERATOR: You’re not yelling.

JMP: WHETHER OR NOT THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION IS A HEGELIAN CONCEPT THAT HAS NO PLACE IN MARXISM OR NOT, IT’S NOT THE CASE THAT A KNOWLEDGE OF HEGEL ALONE IS A THEORETICAL DEFENCE FROM REVISIONISM: ŽIŽEK IS A FINE CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLE, HE DEFENDS THE RATIONAL CORE OF HEGELIANISM AS A BASIS FOR MARXIST THOUGHT MORE STRONGLY THAN ANYONE, MORE THAN YOU EVEN, AND YET HE ALSO DEVIATES CONSTANTLY TO THE RIGHT, YOU DON’T NEED ME TO LIST ALL OF HIS ERRORS, YOU’VE MOCKED HIS IDIOCY MORE THAN ALMOST ANYONE.

AND WITHIN ACTUALLY EXISTING SOCIALISM: MANY OF THE CAPITALIST-ROADERS DEFENDED A SORT OF CONSERVATIVE HEGELIANISM, A “RIGHT HEGELIANISM”. HELL, THE FACT THAT YOU EVEN FREQUENTLY EMPLOY THE TERM “LEFT HEGELIANISM” IS A TELL: YOU’RE FULLY AWARE HOW FORMAL HEGELIANISM CAN BE REACTIONARY, JUST AS YOU MUST AGREE THAT THE THEORETICALLY UNDEVELOPED MOTION OF THE MASSES HAS A GREATER REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL THAN ANY THEORY NOT APPLIED IN PRACTICE!

WS: FINALLY WE GET TO THE MEAT OF THE MATTER! FIRSTLY: IT’S DEFINITELY TRUE THAT THERE ARE RIGHT HEGELIANS AND THAT OPPORTUNISM AND REACTION HAVE BEEN AIDED BY PEOPLE WHO FORMALLY DEFENDED HEGEL WITHIN REVOLUTIONARY CONTEXTS, BUT WOULD YOU REALLY ARGUE THAT MAO’S CAPITALIST-ROADER OPPONENTS HAD A FIRM GRASP ON DIALECTICS, IDEALIST OR OTHERWISE, GIVEN THAT THEIR FUNDAMENTAL AIM WAS TO CONCEAL RATHER THAN REVEAL CONTRADICTIONS?

REGARDLESS, THIS IS THE SAME AS TRYING TO BRUSH ASIDE MARX BY POINTING OUT THAT OVER 90% OF FORMALLY DECLARED MARXISTS ARE CHARLATANS, FRAUDS, SCOUNDRELS, RENEGADES, AND OTHER INSULTS LENIN WOULD’VE USED. OUR DEFENCE OF MARXISM AS A METHOD AGAINST FORMALIST APPROPRIATIONS OF MARXISM, EITHER IN THE FORM OF A WORSHIP OF ICONOGRAPHY OR A SORT OF RELIGIOUS TEXTUALISM MASQUERADING AS ACADEMIC MARXISM: THIS IS FUNDAMENTALLY THE SAME AS OUR DEFENCE OF HEGELIANISM, WHICH AGAIN, WE CLAIM IT IS NO COINCIDENCE WAS MARX’S PRIMARY POINT OF THEORETICAL REFERENCE.

THIRDLY, YOU MAKE REFERENCE TO THE MASSES: WE DEFINITELY AGREE THAT THERE MUST BE A DIALECTICAL PROCESS BETWEEN MASS AND ORGANISATION, THAT AN ORGANISATION WHICH FAILS TO UNDERSTAND ITS SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE MASSES CAN NEVER BE REVOLUTIONARY, BUT THE VERY FACT OF BUILDING SUCH AN ORGANISATION IS A SUBJECTIVE MANIFESTATION OF TRYING TO DEVELOP A REVOLUTIONARY THEORY WHICH, I PRESUME YOU WOULD ALSO AGREE, IN THE FINAL INSTANCE IS A NECESSITY FOR TRULY REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE!

SO: IF WE DEFEND HEGEL IN TERMS OF A THEORETICAL BASIS, IT IS NOT BECAUSE WE ARE “IDEALISTS”, ANY MORE THAN YOU ARE FOR DEFENDING “MAOIST DIALECTICS”, OUR ARGUMENT IS THAT TO DEVELOP A CORRECT THEORETICAL LINE, WE NEED BOTH A MATERIAL ENGAGEMENT AND A FIRM GRASP ON WHAT DIALECTICS IS!

JMP: BUT YOUR ARGUMENT ON THE DEFINITION OF DIALECTICS IS BASED ENTIRELY ON HEGEL SIMPLY BECAUSE OF A FORMAL COMMITMENT TO HEGEL’S HISTORICAL ROLE WITHIN THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION AT THE POINT OF MARX’S WRITING!

Tragically, the debate was cut short at this juncture when a DHKP-C guerrilla who had infiltrated the symposium began firing a small handgun into the air and screaming: “FEUERBACH ÜZERİNE 11. TEZ!” over and over again whilst the entire crowd fled the room to retrieve their own weapons.

UPDATE: J. Moufawad-Paul has agreed to continue the discussion in an even more private location with the proceedings to be published later this Ramadan. Worker’s Spatula would like to apologise as usual on behalf of the Turkish left for the Mahircis being so goddamned Mahirci all the time.

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Point/Counterpoint: Theory or Practice?

Point: Your theory is bourgeois idealism, stop confusing the proletariat (me)
by Toilers’ Party for Global Freedom representative

Worker’s Spatula, shut the fuck up! Nobody gives a fucking shit about dianetics, nobody fucking knows who Steven Engels is, and for sure nobody fucking cares which part of the social-fascist deMOCKratic “$ociali$t$” of ameriKKKa (d$a) is better than which other part. You need to stop using so many big words to cover up for what you’re doing: spreading social-democratic and reformist views that serve imperialism and pave the way for fascism.

Fuck your propaganda for the Zionist psyop “Rojava” and the social-imperialist Jeremy Corbyn, fuck your stupid reading list which just confuses the proletariat (me), and especially fuck your claim to being anti-revisionist Stalinists when you don’t even uphold the immortal thought of Comrade President Xi. You’re nothing but fucking Trots, with your “movement building” and your “quantitative change” and your “blocking me from your Facebook page”. But what do you have to show for it? Pages and pages of bullshit nobody wants to read because it doesn’t relate to materialism.

While you were spreading your idealism, my party, the Toilers’ Party for Global Freedom, was engaged in real fucking revolutionary practice. We confronted your imperialist Sandersbot friends at some Fight for $15 bullshit, chanting “BERNIE KILLED ROSA” while waving the flag of the ONLY Korea, the North one, and the flag of the only Syrians, the SSNP. We’re fighting fascism in its most dangerous form, as the ANTISOFA front against social-fascism, while you’re all in the library or Melbourne or wherever the fuck you are.

While I can’t organise any workers because of that book Settlers, the one good thing your dumb site has recommended I read, I can say I’m personally doing more for proletarian revolution here in the so-called “United” States than any of you are doing in any country in the world, even if you are organising workers: I’m at the firing range every week, getting ready for the fucking people’s war against UnKKKle $am. I bet that pisses you off, doesn’t it?

More like “Imperialist’s Spatula”.

And stop over-complicating Leninism with your stupid quotes, you revisionists. You may be able to quote a lot of bullshit, but if Lenin were alive today, he’d answer you just as he answered the revisionists in his day with his 11th Thesis: OPPOSE BOOK WORSHIP.

Counterpoint: Stalinist practice is the result of Stalinist theory.
by the only Marxist on the internet

That was a marvelous display of ignorance, typical of Stalinists like the ones who run this sorry excuse for a website which has agreed to host my rebuttal.

I am sure no actual Marxists are even reading this, just the same sort of Stalinists who run this page, but I was promised a case of some truly choice pinot noir in exchange for a counterpoint in defence of Marxist theory, so here we are:

The claims of “revolutionary practice” by Stalinists mirror their claims of defending “actually existing socialism”. This faux-materialism is nothing more than a constellation of vulgar “left”-nationalisms which are bourgeois in the first and final instance, all attempts to dress them up otherwise notwithstanding.

Could you pop open one of those pinot noirs for me? No, no need for a glass, just uncork it and set it down there.

I’m sure Worker’s Spatula were hoping I was simply planning on rebutting the pithy pseudo-revolutionism displayed in the outbursts of this child from the so-called “Toilers’ Party for Global Freedom”. I suspect Worker’s Spatula editors forget all those times they called me a “leftcom waste of oxygen” and “wrecker neo-Trotskyite filth”. Then use me as a hired gun who can be bought off with a few bottles of pinot to gainsay your ideological enemies within the Stalinist movement???

Don’t take that away, I’m still drinking that!

Well, I haven’t forgotten. I haven’t forgotten anything. It’s always you Stalinists who forget things. You forget how many of your heroes wouldn’t be up to your own standards of Marxist theoretical rigour, you’ve forgotten how many un-self-criticised zig-zags and re-un-self-criticised re-zig-re-zags you’ve been responsible for throughout your confused 20th century aborted attempt at marrying assorted “anti-imperialist” bourgeois nationalisms with Marxism predicated on a few out-of-context Marx quotes, and now you’re doing it all over again with 21st century identity politics and whatever unsettled nationalist scores you can still muster in 2018! You fucking hacks! You expect me to treat you any differently from these first day communist kids because you can hobble together some Hegelese? You think I’ll view you as equals because you could hold your own in a debate with Žižek? Anyone with enough coke in their system who’s taken more than one semester of philosophy can pull that off! How long will your fraud go unexposed?

Your future will be the same as all of those who have gone before you, and picking on stupid kids who can’t tell the difference between the Bolshevik Party and Phalangists won’t change that. One day your opportunism will overpower your intellectualism and you’ll be right there next to them, you won’t be joking when you claim Trump is pushing history forward because of some ill-defined “contradictions”, your US comrades will be low-level functionaries in some washed-up post-DSA “popular front”, your German comrades will be little Horst Mahlers, your British comrades will be in the Green Party, your Australian comrades will still be in the Green Party, and any of your Turkish and Kurdish comrades who aren’t dead will be Doğu Perinçek and the PUK, respectively.

I can see the future through my superior understanding of the dialectic of class struggle, “comrades”, and I can tell you in the end everyone will see what frauds and fake Marxists you were, like all the Stalinists before you. One day, history will look back and see that I was the only real Marxist on the internet.

And then maybe, just maybe, someone will read my blog.

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#SaveEBDSA: Jeremy Gong Wants You to Rot in Prison

Not For Circulation – Do Not Share*

On behalf of the Worker’s Spatula Bay Area Detachment of Militant Correspondents and Fast Food Workers:

While covertly many members of the East Bay DSA who support our rightful campaign for Hasan and the Working-Class Unity and Power slate have been contacting us through various channels to encourage us to continue speaking truth to the dictatorial power that is Jeremy Gong, they have also emphasised their real fear. We have had more than one comrade say they are fearful about following our proposal to bring a spatula to the convention in defiance, lest Jeremy Gong call the bourgeois police into the convention and have them locked up on trumped up terror charges.

While this reassures us that if the result of the upcoming April 29th Steering Committee election at the East Bay DSA Convention is not a sound defeat for the forces of reaction manifested in the Bread and Roses clique headed by the scoundrel and revisionist Jeremy Gong, the only reason was that the vote was rigged by these true enemies of the people, it does lead us to delving deeper into the question of Jeremy Gong and the Bread and Roses slate’s relationship to the police.

It is one thing for Jeremy Gong and his cronies to claim that they don’t support the DSA’s “national”** line against police abolition (in defiance of the actual majority will of the DSA local itself) on the flimsy pretext of how “Black people” want more police in their communities (whatever that means, Gongites never enter into a serious discussion about the actual social nature of the bourgeois state). But is this the limit of Jeremy Gong’s defence of the police? Far from it. Jeremy Gong not only does not want to abolish the police, he and his gaggle of Kautskyite wreckers and liars want to strengthen the police specifically so that they might be used to arbitrarily harass the poor and hound socialists! Let’s turn to the evidence:

Members of the LC have used their organizational positions and social capital to dismiss the hard work of rank-and-file EBDSA members engaged in the brake light program. This has included public derision on social media, the denial of access to official East Bay DSA communications, and exclusion of any mention of the brake light program in the local newsletter.

We have made a lot of the brakelight scandal, but perhaps we need to make clear to those, like Jeremy Gong, who have always had a cordial relationship with the bourgeois cops exactly why this initiative was so important. In addition to being a valuable educational moment for new socialists into how socialist politics need not merely be a recreation of bourgeois politics with a picture of Marx in the background, but could be a politics based on real social dynamics in which elections were only an occasional part, it also was a concrete step that could be taken to lessen police harassment barring their actual abolition and other such reforms under capitalist society.

Have you ever been pulled over for a brakelight, Jeremy Gong? Have you ever been afraid that, once pulled over, because of the colour of your skin or your gender presentation you would be subjected to an arbitrary search, or violence of some kind? Have you ever considered how many people experience such moments of fear, or are indeed in some sense violated or attacked by the bourgeois cops given the opportunity presented by such minor infractions, which their poverty prevents them from avoiding? Do you ever think about all the young Black men who have been searched for drugs just because they were Black, and then busted, or saddled with some bullshit charge like obstructing “justice”, while all of your white friends from Berkeley have been puffing away, practically in public, for years?

Of course you think about these things, because you frequently take your friends in the Oakland Police Department up on offers of ride-alongs, where you delight in them pulling over Black, queer, and other oppressed youth, the fear in whose eyes fills you with incomprehensible joy, you monster.

But it is not just that Jeremy Gong wants to stop us from stemming the tide of arbitrary police harassment, arrest, and violence through little legal direct actions such as the brakelight initiative. It is not even that he wants to play cop and prevent an open discussion of such matters in his favourite “democratic” “big tent” so that his unpopular views from above can dominate the popular front which is forming from the heroic masses who are trying to save the East Bay DSA from these crypto-fascist neo-Menshevik wreckers:

Even though the brake light program is extremely popular, it was unnecessarily difficult to bring the project to a vote. Brake light organizers were forced to gather 90 signatures to put the brake light project on an agenda. Given sparse general meetings, and a complete lack of access to official membership contact lists, collecting signatures was and remains needlessly laborious³. When the program was finally brought before membership at a general meeting⁴, it soundly passed. LC members were among the few people who spoke against the program.

No, Jeremy Gong wants every socialist reading this who falls afoul of his beloved bourgeois state apparatus to rot in fucking prison while Nazis walk free.

Please turn to Section 2. Arrests in Berkeley during Anti-Fascist Protests:

In August 2017, in the midst of recurring white supremacist rallies, the Mayor of Berkeley moved to appease moderate liberals and classified masks as “banned weapons.” During a demonstration against one of these rallies, four EBDSA comrades were arrested under this ordinance.

Here is the clearest expression of what ultra-left spectre Jeremy Gong was conjuring when he disingenuously posed his authoritarian cabal as the alternative to both “the useless compromise politics of the liberal center” (meaning anything to Jeremy Gong’s right, which is very little indeed), and “the dead-end wheel-spinning of the activist left”. Jeremy Gong doesn’t want the East Bay DSA to counter the claims on the rest of the US left that the DSA is aloof to real struggle, that it is not on the front lines with the most advanced section of the masses confronting fascism in the streets. In short, Jeremy Gong believes that the problem with the rest of the US left is that they are too much like the anarchists.

But Jeremy Gong is Jeremy wrong. The problem with the US left is not that they are too much like the anarchists. The problem with the US left is they are too much like Jeremy fucking Gong. Self-anointed messiahs of a particular fantasy version of socialism totally detached from real world politics (which does not stop and start at the borders prescribed by the bourgeois state apparatus and its functionaries, you Kautskyite scoundrel). Commandist little kings and queens (but let’s face it, usually kings) of their shitty pseudo-Marxist kingdoms, reading neither Hegel nor Lenin but Jacobin and the LA Times alone, and giving their “analysis” in vulgar reaction to these idealist tomes and only engaging in a material relationship with the masses on the basis of recruitment and patronisingly talking down to the poor and oppressed, the supposed subjects of socialist revolution (as if Jeremy Gong would ever utter “the r-word” in such a sentence). He is like Bob Avakian, but instead of meeting with guerrillas from Nepal and winning you over with his connections to the Black Panthers and thinking the masses are stupid because they don’t just MAKE A REVOLUTION ALREADY, he meets with other Jacobin-reading reformists who think the masses are stupid because they don’t just VOTE FOR US ALREADY.

You make us sick, Jeremy Gong. You make everyone sick. All of your friends are viewed as nothing but self-important little social democratic Brezhnevs limiting the sovereignty of anyone you deem insufficiently “serious” and “respectable”.

“Calm down, Worker’s Spatula!” we hear our well-intentioned friends pleading. “Obviously everyone dislikes Jeremy Gong, but you don’t have to destroy him like this! We may need him for future solidarity! Socialists have to stick together!”

Surely in the abstract you are right, hypothetical moderately-critical East Bay DSA comrade. In the abstract. But concretely, what solidarity can we expect from “comrades” like these:

One DSA comrade was even charged with a felony. An East Bay member requested that this comrade’s court date be shared through EBDSA official communication channels, such as email, in order to amass critical court support. No such call was issued; no official arrangements were made to organize support for these jailed comrades.⁶

Actions taken by the San Francisco DSA (SFDSA) stand in stark contrast. SFDSA used their channels of communication to coordinate jail support and raise bail money. SFDSA made dozens of phone calls, organized legal support and tracked arrested comrades as they were moved through the criminal justice system. They waited outside the jail with food and transport ready until the early hours of the morning, when our EBDSA comrades were finally released. SFDSA made sure all 12 arrested protesters had a ride home, DSA members and non-members alike.

Specifics of the arrests aside, we are again confronted with numerous questions about the chapter’s priorities. Why is it that East Bay DSA comrades were made to rely on a neighboring chapter, which has fewer members, to organize a response to politically motivated arrests? How can our chapter maintain a position against police repression without practicing a basic and straightforward function such as court support? Is this example a problem of the will, a problem of structure, or both?

Oh no, dear readers. We can tell you exactly what the problem is. The problem is that not only does Jeremy Gong not want you to get out of jail, or for your arrest or trial or doxxing to be protested (although he’ll scream to the high heavens about a “climate of hostile surveillance” when he’s “doxxed” because he sends out his files that he later decides are embarrassing), but we would not be in the least surprised if Jeremy Gong was on the phone with the Berkeley Police Department shortly after the arrest, giving them information and assuring them that such “anarchist scum” would not be allowed to decide the future of the East Bay DSA, loyal servant of the Democratic Party and capital.

They should’ve stuck to “pursuing ordinary political goals” instead of taking on the ridiculously far-left goal of… let’s just check the notes here… ah yes, protesting Nazis.

“Demonstrations”, of course were one of the things Jeremy Gong listed as representing the sort of “mass action” reflecting the “style of politics” he so “enthusiastically affirms” in the Bread and Roses slate analysis document. But what are we to demonstrate against if not Nazis? The masses eagerly await marching orders on who they are allowed to protest from the one true interpreter of “mass action” and “highly visible and massively popular independent socialist activity”, Jeremy Gong.

As for us, our message is clear: Fuck cops. Fuck Nazis. Fuck Jeremy Gong.

–Worker’s Spatula Bay Area Detachment of Militant Correspondents and Fast Food Workers (MORE COMMUNICATIONS TO FOLLOW)

Image credit: @WhatBigTeeth, note that we are not critical of the cishet man-dominant implications of this meme in this context as we are under most circumstances, as it perfectly captures Jeremy Gong and cop-lovers everywhere.

*Credit for this joke certainly belongs to @NireBryce, who will presumably be livetweeting the convention. If they do not, or if there is some interruption, you all know who is to blame: Jeremy Gong.

**See the footnote in our previous piece.

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Worker’s Spatula: the World’s Biggest Trots

Like everything else in life, Worker’s Spatula is a process. Since publication began several years ago, both the international revolutionary movement and Worker’s Spatula have experienced many changes. Now, as Afrin burns, may seem an odd time to reflect on this, but consider this Lenin’s reading Hegel in response to the outbreak of WWI.

Worker’s Spatula, as is known, was formed in Ankara by a small group of friends of diverse national backgrounds and organisation within different Turkish Marxist-Leninist groups who enjoyed making jokes about other socialists over beer. From these modest beginnings, we quickly swelled our ranks with Marxist-Leninist elements from around the world drawn to the concept of an “Onion for the left”. But as editors and writers came and went, certain trends became clear.

The first noteworthy trend was the large number of modern revisionists who left the Spatula of their own free will because they were displeased with the increasing theoretical emphasis of a publication whose first piece was a satire of the alarmism of the bourgeois British press at the social democrat Jeremy Corbyn’s progressive stance in an almost entirely regressive political context. From there, we have only made more and more jokes about Hegel, which alienated such elements, resulting, to be frank, in a marked increase in the quality of work. This is proof, if any was needed, that Hegel was right, Hegel will win.

However it was not only negative elements which we lost in this long process which has brought us to today. Among the more principled, critical and theoretical elements who fell away from the Spatula, a common complaint gradually became clear that could not be meaningfully responded to. As some of our best writers and editors fell away because of the demands of serious political work, the common point in all of our conversations was the question of what the POINT of Worker’s Spatula’s jest and jokery was in the midst of such appalling conditions as those we live in with so much political work to be done on top of the economic demands of surviving in the capitalist-imperialist world system.

Catharsis? Surely, but each of us may find catharsis and solidarity in our small circles of really trusted comrades, friends, family. No, our mission statement, as we articulated it amongst ourselves, was always to use the FORM of satire to deliver a serious implicit message. But uncritical loyalty to this form has resulted in the departure of many writers who wanted to use this platform to articulate a coherent message due to the constraints they felt were imposed by the repetitive demands of the editors. Of those that remained, the question was asked: are we a legitimate source of criticism, and if so, why do we shy away from responding to the principled critiques levelled against us by our real friends? Is this not Trotskyism in essence? Endlessly criticising every political subject, but then never accepting criticism on the grounds that we ourselves are politics subjects? This is not the politics we demand of our serious organisations; so have we merely donned the cloak of “satire” to escape these political responsibilities in the midst of the internet left of whom our most consistent complaint is their lack of comprehension of their political responsibilities?

Comrades, this state of affairs could not stand. Our Left Hegelianism and our Marxism could not suffer such a serious contradiction any longer. Something simply had to be said, and something simply has to be done.

If Worker’s Spatula has won hundreds of readers by mocking the stubbornly uncritical way that so many Marxist-Leninist organisations regard themselves, we must apply this same standard to ourselves. Consider this our self-criticism, dear comrades. Those of you reading this who know we are addressing you, we call you back. The Spatula must rise from the ashes, like a red phoenix, and fulfill its mission to history. We must continue to intervene where so many Marxist publications fail to intervene in the ongoing developments in social life.

We call on all of our real friends to regard the Spatula as a forum for an irreverent internationalist and anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist discourse, including but not limited to satire. Real-world political work must always come first, and the Spatula may lapse into inactivity again on this account. But beyond the form of satire which has hitherto been the exclusive output of this publication, there is an essential dialectical and materialist core on which we all agree. You know as well as we do that this forum can be used to reach many youth who are truly hungry for theoretical and practical direction. You know as well as we do that we have all grown through it, and will continue to grow together.

We are the humble servants of the toiling and oppressed masses yearning for liberation. We are the students of the people, and their teachers.

–Worker’s Spatula editorial staff

January ‘Too Bleak’ for Internet Communists to Make Jokes

ANTARCTICA – Following a fortnight-long writing retreat to the Pole of Inaccessibility, Worker’s Spatula staff have conceded that January of 2018 is simply “too bleak” a month for the writing of internet satire for communists.

“Honestly if we had wanted to have Lenin looking down and judging us in sub-zero temperatures while we got nothing of any value done, there are plenty of places in the Northern Hemisphere we could’ve gone,” opined the Yank in between drags on his cigarette.

“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” replied one of the English. “We tried to write about the things people in those places were upset about, and we got nothing. The crisis is deepening, the war is claiming the lives of more innocent young poor people, Malcolm Turnbull remains an intolerable Kantian cunt, nobody has recorded a truly great album in over ten years, and we have writer’s block.”

The reality TV-style video diaries revealed more introspective takes on the inactivity of the world’s greatest anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist satire page:

“Life is pain, and we will all die. All humour basically emerges from these facts. But lately, every time the ghost of a smile creeps across my face, news from Turkey intervenes,” explained the Hamburger contingent. “Literally we have lost friends to prison and to the Reaper. Presently a town is being bombed unprovoked by the same fascist regime that took our friends from us. You have to laugh to keep from crying, but you’re only so strong, you know?”

This theme was expanded upon by one of the Turkish comrades: “When the day of liberation comes, and Erdoğan is put on trial, one of the crimes I want him charged with will be the continuous crushing of any glimmer of joy in my life, personally.

“Still: umut dimdik ayakta.”

The Australian had this to share: “I had a joke! I had a joke but they wouldn’t listen to me! I wanted to write about Invasion Day, which brought out a lot of people this year! I wanted to do something about Tsipras travelling to Australia in the hope of seizing power on the back of the Invasion Day protests. Pauline Hanson was going to say something about the wogs colluding with the Aboriginals against White Australia, and Syriza and the Liberal Party form a coalition. It was all going to culminate in a plug for the Green Left Weekly crowd.”

“Yeah, I remember her joke,” explained our Balkan correspondent upon being reminded of the Australia-Greece crossover joke. “Too soon, comrade. Too soon…”

“…not too soon to mock Syriza, mind you. They deserve it. But we’ve been burned by too many white Anglo leftist trends recently. Socialist Alliance is going to have to split like three times over arcane theoretical-historical points before we’re ready to trust them even as much as we trust the Maoists. Marxism isn’t about having good positions you know! It’s about being really angry about Hegel.”

“Too angry to write jokes about Hegel, at least this month,” concluded our Balkan hero before returning to taping notebook pages together to continue drawing the longest upward spiral possible, moving towards the Antarctic horizon…

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Worker’s Spatula Editor-in-Chief Revealed to be Your Flatmate

YOUR FLAT – Months of research have finally confirmed your suspicion that Worker’s Spatula, the most popular source of anti-revisionist snark on the internet, is run by none other than your flatmate.

Your flatmate, who is always seen with a döner wrap in one hand and a Persian-language history of the Kurdish national movement in the other, is supposed to be doing a Master’s in Economics or some such, but actually spends more time smoking in your shared kitchen, mumbling about Turkish politics, a pastime which has been confirmed to be part of the Spatular lifestyle.

Attempts at broaching the subject of Worker’s Spatula with your flatmate have up to this point been fruitless, with the latter constantly brushing off the Spatula by referring to it as “that juvenile bullshit you keep sharing on your Facebook page”. These words, however, were in stark contrast to your flatmate’s deeds, including meeting up at odd hours with local breamfishers, calling Sarajevo, Ankara, and Liechtenstein.

The conclusive proof came today when you found your flatmate’s unlocked smartphone sitting on the table, with a group WhatsApp chat entitled “Dialectics Firing Squad” open to a vote on what the Spatula Reading Group reading for the second half of April would be, with your flatmate, referred to by others as the “editor-in-chief”, casting the decisive vote in favour of more Hegel.

When confronted, your flatmate responded that he was done with the Spatula now, as it wasn’t funny anymore, and was thinking of shutting the site down. Asked if this wouldn’t be a shame, given the Spatula’s broad following, your flatmate responded by saying “When websites are shut down there should be parties to celebrate the victory of dialectics, to celebrate the destruction of the old.”

AMLU Caught in Theological Debate with Worker’s Spatula

NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY – AMLU youth at Rutgers University found themselves embroiled in an hours-long debate which quickly devolved into a discussion of Islamic theology with a Worker’s Spatula cadre tonight, causing the latter to question his faith in Hz. Ali and the former to question their faith in the rationality of material reality.

The German Worker’s Spatula cadre, recently kicked out of Turkey for alleged links to a proscribed “terrorist organisation” (in true Turkish fashion, the “terrorist organisation” in question was not even the one to which the cadre could realistically be linked), has been crashing on the couch of a US anarchist friend until he can determine which semi-colonial country he will be organising in next. To pass the time, he has been hanging out at various New Jersey universities talking to the heirs to the legacy of MJ Olgin about various theoretical, historical, and practical questions.

What started as a debate about national and class questions in the Black Belt South was quickly derailed, as is only natural, by a discussion about which Islamic sects most closely resemble which Marxist sects.

“Obviously Marxism is Islam because Marxism is true and real, like Islam,” began our German comrade, to nods of agreement from the New Jerseyite youth. “And as an Abrahamic faith, Marxism needs an Abraham.”

“Hegel, obviously,” responded a smirking young woman leaning against the wall in Brower Commons. “And Marx is Moses, come on, this is baby stuff.”

“Agreed,” said our Teutonic hero. “And obviously, Lenin is Jesus.”

“Because he is God in human form.”

“That, and because the Christians known as Trots accept him, but reject the final prophet, Stalin.”

With all present nodding in agreement, it seemed unity was close indeed. However, as is always the case with anti-revisionists, division would soon re-emerge.

“And then obviously, Mao is Ali. Because Shi’ism is a perversion of orthodox Islam,” offered a bearded young man in desperate need of a haircut.

“Excuse you?” asked our stunned exile, beginning a long shouting match that would continue outside Brower Commons for several hours after the group was kicked out because “We’re closed, can’t you fucking commies argue somewhere else?”

Arguments from both sides were impassioned, with the AMLU arguing that Hoxhaite fealty to the example of Hz. Stalin mirrored Sunni rejection of “Ja’fari Thought”, and that Maoist iconography mirrored Shi’a iconography. For our correspondent’s part, it was held that the acceptance of Sunnism as representative of “orthodox” Islam was predicated on popularity in a similar way to Maoism’s greater fame relative to that of the shining Marxist-Leninist path of Enver Hoxha.

Additionally, “everyone knows Abu Bakr supported the Three Worlds Theory.”

At time of press, no resolution had been found to the argument. All AMLU members had reportedly returned to their dorms, while the Worker’s Spatula representative was on Google frantically searching for Sunni mosques in the area at which to debate the finer details of the Sino-Albanian split.

Trots Secretly Reading Worker’s Spatula

AUSTIN, TEXAS – Following over a year of publicly referring to Worker’s Spatula as “the worst”, “diet Assadism”, “tankie nonsense”, and “Stalinist idiocy”, several “in the know” sources have confirmed that the Trotskyists secretly can’t stop reading Worker’s Spatula.

“The other night I woke up and realised I was in bed alone,” one source told us, in lurid detail: “I went into the living room and saw my partner was awake and staring intently at his laptop screen. He slammed it shut when he saw me, so of course I assumed it was pornography.

“While he was in the bathroom, I entered his password, which I guessed was the same as his e-mail password: P3rm4n3nt. He hadn’t even had time to close the incognito window, which was full of Worker’s Spatula tabs. I had to close the lid before he came out, so I couldn’t tell you what the pieces were, but at least one of them was about Žižek.”

Local Austin Socialist Alternative cadre have likewise been spotted checking the Worker’s Spatula reading list since the start of 2017. Mere hours after the latest reading list assignment was posted, suddenly all the younger cadre were reportedly discussing the importance of Hegel’s stance on the French Revolution, having previously been unconcerned with Hegel or the French Revolution.

One ISO affiliate met with us on condition of anonymity. We can reveal that she had with her a Barnes & Noble bag which contained the Foundations of Leninism.

“You’re not the sort of Stalinists I expect, I’ll give you that. Sometimes you make fairly good points and force me to rethink some of my positions, instead of just appealing to a caricatured anti-imperialism combined with an overly defensive posture about so-called ‘socialist states’. I am a little concerned that you keep joking about murdering Trots, but that is just a joke, right?”

Our ISO source ascribed the lack of reports of SEP and Solidarity affiliated Trotskyists reading the Spatula to Solidarity having “no sense of humour about themselves” and the SEP having “no sense of humour at all”.

A similar investigation was planned to determine the extent to which the “China is still socialist” crowd read the Spatula, but it was called off upon being unable to find any representatives who could confirm reading anything longer than 140 characters.

HDK Parties Courting Fired Academic

ANKARA – Fırat Önder, a left-wing academic recently fired unceremoniously from his position at Ankara University for his opposition to the Turkish state’s war on the Kurdish people, has been without any faint hope of another job since his passport was cancelled by AKP edict. However, he has not wanted for friends in these trying times.

This morning, TÖPG cadres reportedly showed up at the former History professor’s apartment door with a bouquet of flowers to ask him if he wanted to consider going out for a date sometime: “Any day you’re free, we can go to the park and distribute propaganda, or we can talk about dialectics. Whatever you want, abi,” said the young man clutching the yellow roses close to his equally yellow TÖPG vest.

Önder’s newfound popularity is not limited to TÖPG, the only element of the Turkish left whose cadre read as much Hegel as the Germans. Nearly every HDK party or group has come to him, hoping to win him over to their line. We sat down with Önder in his apartment in Çankaya to discuss his situation.

“It started with the letters of support from my students,” explained Önder to our correspondent over tea in his apartment, as SYKP cadre outside his window knocked on it, waving around pamphlets. “A Kurdish student who lost her little brother in the attack on Sûr told me that I was in her prayers. It breaks my heart to think about that.”

“I guess my students really liked me, because before long, they started getting involved in the campaigns for academics who have been fired. One of them joined Partizan and kept ‘bumping into me’ in the street. Now it’s like I’m in some Turkish film from the ’70s, where instead of being courted by men representing different social classes, I’m being courted by a bunch of 20-year-old revolutionaries who started reading Marx because of me.”

Attempts at courtship have varied in their scrupulousness: “Halkevleri approached me the other night at a bar. It was a man about my age and three much younger women whom he seemed to be offering as some sort of socialist concubines. I told them to fuck off, and they asked me, ‘what are you gay or something?’.

“Then there was DSİP. They said they would ring Callinicos for money for myself and other fired academics if I would help them attack EMEP and ESP.”

When asked if he thought he was going to get organised in the end, Önder nodded eagerly and said “Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m going to start working with Devrimci Parti, but they need to get me a few pairs of their trainers to sweeten the deal. I’m not going to give myself away so quickly and look cheap.”