Sandwich Theory

We at Worker’s Spatula pride ourselves in being both the most theoretically advanced of shitposters, and also the shittiest of theoreticians. It comes as a great disappointment to us that in our years of weird theoretical interventions on Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and now Instagram, we have barely succeeded in explaining even the most basic fact about Hegel’s dialectical method which Marx upheld and appropriated, namely that it is not about THESIS – ANTITHESIS – SYNTHESIS.

We encourage readers who really are coming at this stuff from the beginning to start with the famous Twitter thread. However, we recognise that some of our examples were either too political or too philosophical for many of our target audience, who are used to discussing everything in terms of what is and what is not a sandwich.

Therefore, we present to you, our dear readers, comrades and strugglers, toilers and oppressed, from Melbourne to Moscow, the dialectical answer to the question “is it a sandwich?”

Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Well, obviously it must first be said that a hot dog is technically a kind of sausage, which is ordinarily served in a manner that provokes sandwich controversy:

the thing in the package is a hot dog,
the thing on the label may be a sandwich

However, the standard presentation of the hamburger patty in contemporary culinary norms being called a “hamburger”, we accept that most readers likewise will excuse further reference to a hot dog on a hot dog bun as a “hot dog”. Are these bread-meat combinations sandwiches?

Without a doubt. By removing the sausage or the patty and replacing them with, e.g. tuna fish, everyone would agree that what you have before you is none other than a sandwich. Consider this indisputable sandwich from the chain “SUBWAY”:

Clearly there is nothing more sandwich-like about this than a hot dog

So then is our answer so simple? Is a sandwich merely anything inside of bread? Let us turn to other possibilities:

Is an Onigiri a sandwich?

We have no doubt that some readers will doubt that the tasty snack displayed below constitutes a sandwich exactly and precisely because it is not made out of bread. But we have equally no doubt that each and every person who seeks to exclude onigiri from the category of “sandwich” is a frothing racist:

You’ve been called out, onigiri-haters.

The “filling” of the onigiri is clearly sandwiched between rice, and it is meant to be eaten much in the manner of a sandwich, and accordingly fills, in Japanese society in particular, the universal social role of a sandwich.

So it is clear that no true internationalist revolutionary can disagree that onigiri too are sandwiches. The matter here is that we have only initial affirmations of sandwichhood, with no negation, and thus NO DIALECTICAL PROCESS THROUGH WHICH TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF SANDWICH-HOOD CAN CONCRETELY EMERGE.

Let us reveal the essence of the sandwich phenomenon through its negation, the un-sandwich:

Is a pie a sandwich?

As with the hot dog example above, certain terms are imprecise for theoretical/philosophical sandwiches. The word “pie” is used for a great many things, but let us consider this extremely haram English pork pie, purely for theoretical reasons because no Spatula writer-militant would dare allow pork to touch their lips, and could only be made to eat pork under the duress of torture by fascists:

Don’t look at it for too long, Allah will grow displeased.

While it cannot be denied that bread contains this repugnant dish on every side, it cannot be eaten in the manner of a sandwich. Beyond the act of parallel containment by sandwiching, the preparation of a true sandwich must be mindful of the end result of the process by which a sandwich is eaten as food, in a sandwich-like fashion:

A sandwich is made to be held in the hands by its sandwiching parts and eaten likewise for the convenience and enjoyment of the proletarian worker (who has ideally produced it for themselves in an unalienated fashion, but perhaps has purchased it as a commodity because we live under capitalism).

In other words, despite having all the formalist appearance of a sandwich, and indeed being constructed through sandwiching, unless you can unhinge your jaw like a fucking python, the food this man is showing us is in social practice no sandwich:

It is, however, arguably very erotic.

We hope that the theoretical essence of sandwichhood has thus been revealed, and through this, any serious Marxist can now determine for themselves if almost any foodstuff is a sandwich.

Is a pizza a sandwich? A taco? A burrito? A falafel wrap?

As we have already charged deniers of the sandwichhood of the onigiri and upholders of the sandwichhood of that girthy monster above with formalism, it should be clear that it is highly undialectical to deny that any foodstuff, from an ice cream sandwich to a Hot Pocket, which is produced in such a manner that it may be purposefully consumed in the manner of a sandwich through sandwiching is a sandwich.

A Pop-Tart is a sandwich.

Most controversially, this means that we deny the sandwichhood of the so-called “open-face sandwich” as REVISIONIST.

However, any “open-face sandwich”, including any slice of most varieties of pizza (putting aside the culinarily superior Chicago-style “deep dish” pizza), that can be accordingly manipulated may be rendered a sandwich through the simple act of folding:

A cheese and tomato sandwich.

Disagree with any single word of this on social media and you will be blocked and reported to Stalin.

Sandwich workers and oppressed
sandwiches of the world, unite!

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Point/Counterpoint: Stalin was Non-Binary

What follows is a debate between two Worker’s Spatula cadre at a closed Spatula conference on gender politics which took place in an undisclosed location. As the comrade arguing the initial “Point” represented a Maoist tradition, and the comrade arguing the follow-up “Counterpoint” represented a “Hoxhaite” tradition, they will be identified as such for the purposes of publication:

Point: Stalin was non-binary because Jughashvili was a Georgian
by a queer Maoist

There is, as everyone knows, a prolific online discourse as to whether Joseph Stalin was trans or not. Naturally, as with all such discussions, we as anti-revisionists assume that the side which wishes to associate Stalin with conservativism and reaction are nothing more than agents of the cishet patriarchal capitalist-imperialist-fascist enemy, who wish to sow confusion and division in our movement.

However, as Chairman Mao famously said: “no googling, no right to tweet”.

Googling reveals a startling pattern: Russian sources consistently refer to Joseph Stalin with the masculine pronouns in use in the Russian language, and no Russian sources mention that Stalin was a trans man, or any other kind of AFAB individual. Could Joseph Stalin have been cis?

The problem, of course, with consulting Russian sources is that they’re in Russian and by Russians. How can this imperialist language with its patriarchal pronouns capture the fullness of Stalin’s personhood? To discover the answer, I became fluent in the Georgian language, memorising its complex verbal morphology and becoming a master Georgian calligrapher, so that I could blend in to the indigenous culture of Georgian Orthodoxy and understand how gender was expressed among the Georgian people before capitalism and Russian Tsarism penetrated their country and imposed the cishet patriarchy on these noble people.

While reading the diaries of Stalin’s seminary friends, I discovered something startling: the same pronoun was used for “Soso” as for the Virgin Mary. That’s right: Stalin used the Georgian equivalent of they/them pronouns, because the indigenous Georgian culture doesn’t have gender.

Anyone who claims Stalin was a “cis man” doesn’t only impose on Stalin a gender identity which Stalin never chose, but because they are imposing this identity which apparently doesn’t even exist in Georgia, anyone who claims Stalin was a “cis man” is actually a racist.

I rest my case. Stalin’s pronouns are “ის/მან”, Stalin and the entire Georgian people are non-binary.

Counterpoint: Stalin was non-binary because Stalin represented the multi-gendered masses
by a queer Hoxhaite

While it’s definitely true that we have to critically reexamine any Russian sources of the Soviet Union as unrepresentative of the reality of the minority nationalities, particularly after decades of revisionism and known national oppression, we need not resort to Cuğaşvili’s national origins to deny the slanderous revisionist lie that Stalin was a “cis man”.

Even if Cuğaşvili would fit into our understanding of what a “cis man” is, Cuğaşvili was not Stalin, and Stalin was not Cuğaşvili. Before Soviet power was lost, Stalin was the symbol of soviet power, and as such, Stalin was at least bigender.

Oh, that’s right: if you consider Stalin–a symbolic representative figure based on the real hero but none the less fully human person Cuğaşvili, a figure expressing the political consciousness and will of the revolutionary proletariat in its totality–could possibly have just been a “man”, then you are effectively excluding women from your understanding of the proletariat which is, in addition to being grossly sexist, revisionist as all fuckhell.

Both of these people are equally Stalin.

So, accepting that the Stalin figure to whom all anti-revisionists pray to intercede on their behalf to the Dialectic of History was effectively “bigender” in the Russian-dominated official Soviet system, we must further surmise that today, in an online discourse that encompasses gender expressions of diverse kinds from diverse cultural traditions, Stalin, who lives on in our struggle, is extremely genderfluid.

We can safely say that if Stalin were on Twitter, Stalin would post pronouns as “any pronouns”: whether she/her, he/him, they/them, ze/zir, xe/xem, etc.

Stalin’s pronouns are whatever your pronouns are, you beautiful Stalin you.

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Fast Food Workers Told us the Five Worst Things about their Jobs

Fast food workers have a tough job, and nobody knows it better than us. From low pay to the long hours the low pay imposes, from heartless management to impatient customers, there’s good reason why “flipping burgers” is the go-to descriptor for undesirable minimum wage work. We spoke to workers across Australia whom we contacted through our top secret RaFFWU networks about the things in their line of work which make their lives the hardest, and we collected their answers into a convenient five-item list for the clickbait-hungry public!

5. Rude customers:

“I understand most of our customers are about as hungry, broke, and pressed for time as we are, and I wish they could see that in us, too! Sometimes we make mistakes on an order, and no matter how apologetic I am, there are some customers who want to use me as a verbal punching bag! It’s not right, I’m having a hard day too.

“Also, one time, we called out this woman’s order about eight times, and then moved on to calling out other orders. A few minutes later, she came up to the counter demanding to know where her order was, and when I said we had called it out, she said I should’ve given the number in English, as if anyone was speaking anything but. Then she demanded a refund even though her order was right there, ready to be taken! What satisfaction do people get from this sort of behaviour?”
–”Ayşe”, Hungry Jack’s, Roxburgh Park (Melbourne)

4. Mussolini management:

“My manager is the worst. In addition to the sexual harassment and the fact that he threw my copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed into a bin because I left it in a public area, he’s a borderline fascist with our time! If we go a couple of minutes over on our break, he starts talking about ‘time theft’, but his nephew who he just hired can come in late and do nothing and we never hear a word.

“Besides, I wonder how ‘efficiently’ he’s using his time when he locks the door to his office and puts on music so we can’t hear what he’s up to? Fucking wanker.”
–Anita, KFC, Melbourne

3. The fucking SDA:

“The SDA are a bloody bosses’ union. They don’t speak for us, and it’s impossible to claim they are even winning reforms for proletarians like ourselves! I’ve been slipping RaFFWU propaganda into all my coworkers bags, and I haven’t been caught yet. We’re taking back our labour union movement, for the labourers!”
–Ali, Subway, Perth

2. The lack of consciousness of their coworkers of their potential as a political class:

“I work at the drive-in, and I can say the absolutely most unbearable thing is in between trying to hear the customers over the faulty speaker system, whenever I consider that even many of my coworkers who complain about their wages or hours or whatever are unaware that by formulating a theory and taking part in a practice which encompasses the totality of social struggle they can constitute a political class, namely the revolutionary proletariat, that can end exploitation and alienation as we know it!”
–Cindy, Red Rooster, Sydney

1. Modern revisionists and their fundamental lack of understanding of Marxist-Leninist categories of class analysis:

“The other day, my coworker Riley got upset because someone compared labour policies in Australia to those in China. His complaint was that China is socialist, and shouldn’t be compared to a capitalist country. I told him I considered China was not only not socialist, but was developing into an imperialist country. He scoffed at that, and when I asked him about the export of Chinese capital, he said ‘Why can’t socialist countries export capital? Do you want them to starve?’

“I couldn’t even tell what he meant by that, but then he said something about how China ‘can’t be imperialist because it hasn’t invaded any other countries’. It’s one thing to be ignorant about the PRC’s invasion of Vietnam, for example, but Lenin never theorised imperialism on the basis of its wars, imperialist wars are a natural outcome of the economic basis!

“How am I supposed to work with such people during the lunch rush?!”
–Karen, McDonalds, Canberra

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#SaveEBDSA: Conclusion and Beginning

On behalf of the Worker’s Spatula Bay Area Detachment of Militant Correspondents and Fast Food Workers, we greet you, dear friends and comrades of the East Bay DSA.

We want to begin by saying:

We are sorry.

We are sorry we didn’t gather forces in the East Bay quicker, just as we are sorry we are still gathering friends around the world, the invisible army of the poor and oppressed that is Worker’s Spatula. Further, one of our heroic writers had been insisting we direct our time and resources towards the Working-Class Unity and Power slate of the East Bay DSA for some time, and only near the very end did we take up this important task of real-world politics. Had we intervened earlier, perhaps we would have had a more favourable result.

There are those who would blame the extremely undemocratic means the East Bay DSA had been run, under the dictatorial control of the bastard and shit Jeremy Gong, for any losses on our side, or, put another way, for any single victory by the crypto-fascist Bread and Roses clique. These people are objectively right, and the fact that all of the DSA’s resources, from its propaganda on the internet to organisation-internal communication channels and information crucial to recruitment certainly contributed to the favourable result these absolute villains achieved. Further, we dispute the validity of every single absentee/”proxy” vote which was across the board in favour of the treasonous Bread and Roses slate.

Definitely we agree with this general take, that they had everything and we had nothing, and that’s why they won. You may recognise this as exactly what happened to Sanders when he went up against Clinton.

However, we must also see our own subjective role in this. It was inevitable that the enemy, being in their totality an enemy force, and not merely some misguided friends (even if some within may individually seem to be mere misguided friends), would use every method in their hands to advance their goal of selfish sabotage of the project of the collective. Why should they not? We know that they have never loved the people and never sought to criticise all existing conditions (including themselves) for the good of the people. That is our goal, and we too will use every method in our disposal (“any means necessary”, if you will) to advance and defend the interest of all poor and oppressed and empower them in unity and struggle.

When we started, our About page had a joke about how we will “take credit for any revolutionary success anywhere in the world” but “will disavow any responsibility for failure”, or something to that effect. During an internal criticism session, it was pointed out that even as a joke, this had the effect of encouraging the extremely wrong tendency among leftists of every tradition to see their own agency in victories but see the agency of the enemy in their failures. “We lost the Cold War because of the imperialists!” “We won WWII because Stalin was so strong!”

One could easily claim the reverse, however, that we lost the Cold War because of our mistakes (there is much truth in this), and that we won WWII because of weaknesses of the Nazis which Stalin exploited (again, not untrue).

It is this contradiction between various subjectivities that makes up the totality of ideological and political struggle. Once again, we as the Spatula must make clear that had we in particular intervened much earlier, the result could have been more positive, and therefore we take responsibility for every single inch of ground which the crypto-fascist Bread and Roses clique held onto. We apologise to all of our friends and comrades in the East Bay DSA and pledge to continue working with them from here on out to the best of our ability. We will build stronger networks, we will help with propaganda, we commit our resources to helping build and advance real revolutionary and socialist solidarity in the East Bay.

And this is the essential point of criticism, comrades. We criticise and self-criticise because we want to do better. Criticism is a most revolutionary intervention into any sphere of life, but especially politics. By criticising in a correct Marxist-Leninist fashion, we can in fact elevate our political practice. And let us be clear: we have already achieved some victories through this campaign.

Firstly, of course, there is the general question of propaganda. Our enemies, the Bread and Roses clique, who probably deny the Armenian Genocide so as to not alienate potential Republican Turkish voters in New Jersey or something, have exercised a dictatorial control of the East Bay DSA channels of propaganda and internal communication, not only against minority dissenters, but even on quite popular points where their narrow clique is isolated but holds political power and thus feels it can dictate the truth from above, like Allah revealing the Noble Qur’ān to the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

Such a belief is, of course, a form of shirk, and contrary to Islamic belief. As devout Ja’faris and partisans of Ali, Vicegerent of Allah, we sought the guidance of Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammad Al-Yaqoobi on this important question, and he advised us to use our own propaganda channels to carry out counter-propaganda against this crypto-fascist clique who mock our religion and our politics with their very existence.

The opportunist scoundrels and careerist idiots of the wrecker Bread and Roses clique fear our heroic propaganda because it tells the truth. They silence all dissent within the East Bay DSA and close off all channels to the heroic dissenters who speak for the revolutionary masses from Fruitvale to Fremont. This organisation-internal dictatorship, however, masks a deep insecurity which is obvious from the lack of reaction to Worker’s Spatula’s heroic interventions.

Jeremy Gong and his Bread and Roses clique can never respond to Worker’s Spatula because they know that they do not command either the popular support in the revolutionary movement at large nor the theoretical and practical knowledge of Marxism, the world, and politics to go toe to toe with such a mighty force as Worker’s Spatula. Respond to our critiques? They dare not speak our name! Yet we have continued our propaganda assault, and we will continue it, until enough forces have been gathered and a concrete strategy is formulated to take down this wrecker clique once and for all, and rebuild a platform for popular front activity for all revolutionaries and socialists in the East Bay.

This day will come. Already, little by little, the revolutionary masses are waking up to the unique threat of Jeremy Gong, and the universal opportunist-careerist-wrecker-crypto-fascist politics he represents within our movement. More and more, the mere mention of his name evokes revulsion by the youth. High school students hiss and jeer as he passes. Elementary school students throw garbage at him. The day will come soon when a baby is born in Oakland, and their first words as they are handed to their adoring mother for the first time in the hospital will be “fuck Jeremy Gong” as they raise an adorable little middle finger to the sky, only to shift it over into a victory sign, and then clench a tiny little fist of anti-fascist anger.

That is one cute baby. What’s more, that baby was conceived the natural way for cishets: by a woman who was head of her own matriarchal harem in which the men she controls stay in their place, and give her dick when she asks for it, and do not let their eyes stray to other women. “Who’s the father?” a nurse asks the heroic mother of this rebel baby, motioning towards her man-harem on the other side of the room. “I don’t know,” she replies, “some man,” she laughs, and the nurse laughs, and the doctor laughs, and the baby laughs, but the men do not laugh, because it is shameful for a man to laugh in public, for it may arouse the desires of strange women.

Deal with that, patriarchy. Deal with that, Jeremy Gong.

At any rate, Jeremy Gong is not happy with this result either. He is like Erdoğan when he won that election, but it was obvious he didn’t have the whole country in his pocket like he thought. He now has to work with two Working-Class Unity and Power people, including our dear friend Hasan. We are exposing Jeremy Gong as the most hated person in the DSA every day. Bear witness to the poll where people were asked “Who is a bigger fraud and scoundrel as a ‘socialist’?” between Jeremy Gong and known unpopular guy Phil Greaves. No matter how hated Phil Greaves is, Jeremy Gong hangs tight with him. We could’ve lost every single seat in that election, but he can’t make the reality that people hate him as much as the most hated “leftist” on Twitter go away.

Further, they are exposing themselves at the same time. Jeremy Gong gave perhaps the least confident and most patronising “left” speech ever delivered in the history of the DSA. There was no vision, only desperate hatred for everyone but himself. One of the other Bread and Roses scoundrels also suggested that the DSA should be running candidates in the South as Republicans. This goes against their supposed “hero” Sanders’s plan for a “50-state strategy”, a reference to the voter suppression of Afro-Americans in the Black Belt South: they want to abandon Afro-Americans who are desperate to take part in the legal electoral democratic politics the DSA as a whole is focused on, and desperate to do so in a way that would objectively pull local politics “left”, simply because the Bread and Roses slate thinks only white people matter no matter what. It is good that this was exposed and we must continue to emphasise this point which should make even the most reformist Democrat squirm, and if they do not issue an official retraction we must assume they have no firm line on whether or not racist voter suppression by the Republican Party is wrong or not.

Yes, the convention handed a propaganda victory to us through Bread and Roses’s own rhetoric by calling into question whether or not they support Jim Crow.

The Steering Committee results are now in, and yes, most of the seats went to the hated Bread and Roses clique, in line with the earlier Priorities Resolutions result. Bread and Roses won in an electoral sense, the only thing that matters to the heartless Clintonite monsters of the Bread and Roses clique headed by the reactionary agent Jeremy Gong. But it was a victory for us in a very real sense. It was a victory that we got two good revolutionaries on the Steering Committee. It was a victory that 67 brave souls showed up, in person, to vote against this garbage Priorities Resolution and the defeatist, pro-oppressor “socialism” it represents. You 67, you were in that room. Go find the other 66 people. Hug them. Exchange phone numbers. Befriend them. Learn about their struggles. Become a network of genuine human solidarity. 67 is not a small number of people to consciously challenge imperialist “social democracy” together in one place.

These 67 are the heroes, the very front line of the rebel youth, the heroic masses, the future. They should all work and learn and build together.

We would like to thank @NireBryce, one of the real heroes of the day, for tweeting the most of the proceedings of anyone, almost all the way to the end. That is exhausting work, not only having to type so much, but keep track of what people are saying, often rapidly, while you type. Let’s all thank them for their heroic work!

Regarding the Steering Committee, one of the Working-Class Unity and Power candidates who is now a Steering Committee member is the one that we as Worker’s Spatula endorsed: Hasan. Dear sweet Hasan, the solitary link between the East Bay DSA and the struggles of the downtrodden Turkish people who have lived under CIA-backed fascist dictatorship for decades, and the unspeakably oppressed Kurdish people who suffer under the most horrific colonial subjugation and violence, whose anti-colonial struggle in Rojava has been raised up to an international struggle of all suffering humanity, which drew Californian DSA member Michael Israel to fight in its defence, where he fell as a martyr. Hasan not only supports this link, Hasan lives it and speaks it every day by being Hasan, the living truth of the experience of the gurbetçis, all immigrants, all LGBT, all resisters. Hasan is the Anatolian angel of unity, the beautiful face of victory.

As our Turkish comrades always say, “bu daha başlangıç, mücadeleye devam”: “this is just the beginning, the struggle continues”. The scoundrels of the Bread and Roses clique may continue to hold back the democratisation of the chapter and the flow of information within and around it, but we can build our own channels, and we call on all our friends and comrades to speak with us about this work. We will continue to work together with all progressive forces to bring down these enemies of the people, and they know that we can succeed.

Already we have done a lot. Jeremy Gong is now known across the US as a condescending, sectarian, petty little man who thinks anyone to his left has mental health issues, insulting both to those of us who suffer from mental health issues and to the values of democracy and socialism he upholds in word only. Such a “leader” cannot last long if they are exposed.

We will succeed, because we are right. The truth is on our side in this fight. Always tell the truth. And the truth is this: Jeremy Gong is Adolf Hitler.

Fuck Jeremy Gong.

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

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#SaveEBDSA: On Leadership and the Masses, or: Fuck Jeremy Gong pt. II

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

As everyone knows, Jeremy Gong wrote a shitty excuse piece for Medium about trading his soul to the Devil at the crossroads in exchange for being anointed Messiah of the Mass Socialist Movement to Come™. It was garbage and should be thrown out, but we cannot avoid responding to it before the election on April 29th, when, God willing, Jeremy Gong and his Bread and Roses clique will be cast out from the East Bay DSA Steering Committee by the revolutionary masses as Satan was cast “as a profane thing from the mountain of God” by God Almighty [Ezekiel 28:16], amen.

Damn thee, Satan! We rebuke thee and all of thy works! Thou art naught but the Antichrist, a liar, profaner of the DSA! May a healing fire sweep through the DSA and free us from thee and all of thy wicked followers, amen!

Amen!

Without further ado, behold how Jeremy Gong deceives the people:

On the one hand are those of us who are tired of both the useless compromise politics of the liberal center and the dead-end wheel-spinning of the activist left.

Here Jeremy Gong positions himself and his gaggle of shits as the only meaningful alternative both to self-congratulatory politics which do not connect to practical results for the masses, and the “compromise” politics which actually likewise produces no practical results for the masses. They are part of the totality of idealist “left” opposition to bourgeois politics in the imperialist United States of AmeriKKKa, eschewing material progress either by selling it out in exchange for bright lights or by disengaging from it in favour of feeling like a hip part of an elite club.

How are the Bread and Roses slate different from this? Well, in the first instance, because they do share some proposals for meaningful progress, namely, the Medicare For All campaign which is the fig leaf for their treachery.

Gong is particularly fond of routinely connecting this and his own personage to Bernie Sanders, who himself is known for being the target of near endless criticisms from the revolutionary left. But there are serious differences between Sanders and Gong, particularly with regard to claims to being “democratic” and “socialist”. Sanders stands for a shift to the left of the Democratic Party. Whatever our readers feel about this particular project, this means he is for more “socialism” in this party, which itself represents more “democratic” accountability to the Democratic Party’s base, who, since 2008, increasingly openly detest Wall Street rule.

By contrast, Gong stands for a shift back to the right of the DSA, for less “socialism”, as it were. From putting the brake on the brakelights campaign, to standing against the righteous reformist demand for police abolition popular in the local and endorsed at the “national”* level (very “democratic”!), Jeremy Gong and his frankly unpleasant friends stand for “one step forward” (in the form of the Medicare For All campaign) in order to legitimise as many steps back as possible.

And for all Gong’s attempts to link himself to Sanders’s “mass” “democratic” approach to “socialism”, how democratically minded is he? For all of our criticisms of Sanders, he is occasionally receptive to criticism, and will backpedal, with or without self-criticism. Charged with being soft on Israel, he refused to meet with AIPAC. Charged with not knowing how to engage with Black Lives Matter and Afro-Americans more broadly, he used the slogan “Black Lives Matter” during the debates with Clinton and travelled to Jackson, Mississippi, where Cooperation Jackson and the masses continue their ongoing struggles, and where he was well-received by the masses.

Jeremy Gong stands aloof from the masses and responds to criticism with defensive posturing about how he already represents the masses (because he says so!), instead of apologising to those he insults, he admits he has been offensive, before changing the subject as quickly as possible, and instead of acknowledging his complicity in racism and indeed reifying patronising views of the oppressed within an organisation opposed in word to oppression, he evades the point entirely and attempts to curry sympathy with reference to his disability.

All of this is to say: while Jeremy Gong is doing all this, he wants you to know that the “other” path must be the “middle path” between open opportunism (when Gong’s open opportunism and careerism are well-known) and sectarian “activism”. Given his assessment in the rest of the piece, it is already known that he ascribes to all of those who disagree with him identity with the latter trend. Not only on behalf of Spatula correspondents working within the DSA, but on behalf of the entire left wing of the DSA, we reject this in the strongest terms: our extreme willingness to compromise in order to achieve real results has been demonstrated again and again, and it is the Gongite clique’s unwillingness to allow for a democratic discussion within the East Bay DSA which prevents the many principled “left” elements of the East Bay DSA from demonstrating the falsehood of the blanket claims Jeremy Gong makes against his opponents in this slanderous hit piece, this FAKE NEWS.

Let’s read on:

these workers are part of a nascent working-class movement is making history across impoverished, austerity-wracked “red” states.

Literally nobody is opposed to these strikes and Jeremy Gong must know it, and he must likewise know that he and his hand-wringing crypto-liberal pseudo-socialist cronies cannot claim these strikes as their sole property, or as only possible through a DSA under their control. What we defend is not selling out all other struggles in the service of tailing the worst caricature of “red” state white workers. What we defend is raising high the banner of all poor and oppressed, not only those who are already in a relatively strong position with regard to established legal politics. The only principled stance is to try to unite such workers with all other poor and oppressed on the basis of their unity and not on the basis of chauvinistic dismissal! However difficult Jeremy Gong imagines this goal to be is irrelevant: history has shown how quickly such “socialists” are co-opted by the fascist movement.

Quite apart from this general picture, Jeremy Gong does not live in or organise in such an “austerity-wracked ‘red’ state”. He lives in the East Bay, where, as we all know, one is able to articulate ideas FAR to the left of the US average and still be taken seriously. What’s more, he lives in Oakland, a city where it is nakedly obvious to any but the most oblivious or right-wing resident that the evils of capitalism are to be seen particularly in the victims of gentrification and police violence, whom Jeremy Gong seems only willing to stand up for on the terms of total congruence with the needs of the relatively privileged sectors of Oakland society. He is like the “cool” “local” roommate the tech bros keep around, almost as a pet, at reduced rent. Where is the platform of socialists that speaks uncomfortable truths to that Oakland? Nowhere near the clean lips of Jeremy Gong!

Why should a “leader” in the most mainstream socialist organisation in the US demand that this organisation in this social context move to the right of the US average for this same organisation? Because he is a shameful wrecker bent on holding back the righteous anger of the youth, of the poor, of the oppressed, returning them to subservience to their Wall Street masters, no matter his words to the contrary! He can trot out Frances Reade’s “disillusionment” with the Democratic Party, but Frances Reade and Jeremy Gong owe the downtrodden masses of Oakland a reason to not be “disillusioned” with empty white saviourism, which they seem to think is only possible by not helping fix brakelights or otherwise organically connecting to the needs and struggles of the actual toiling classes!

Jeremy Gong then inspires us with a quote from his insipid faction’s tepid analysis document:

To build the power of the working class today, East Bay DSA should pursue mass action as our strategic orientation. This means gearing our activities toward the diverse working-class majority not yet in DSA — through canvassing, demonstrations, town halls, rank-and-file unionism, independent media, and more — and bringing them into open conflict with landlords, bosses, and their political functionaries.

Notice that this liar and deceiver’s idea of “mass action” only works when he controls the action of the mass. He can say:

We are a “big tent” organization and a democracy, meaning there is no party line we must adhere to, no cabal of leaders deciding our direction.

But the moment something slips even slightly out of his comfort zone, something runs contrary to the decided “direction” of the “party line” of his little “cabal of leaders”, like the completely legal brakelights campaign, or the popular police abolition platform, he patronisingly speaks for communities with which he has no contact, he shuts down all debate within the branch (so much for “independent media” if it’s independent of Jeremy Gong!), and ensures that no one can question the Gospel of Gong. He behaves, despite all pretense, like the Democratic National Convention, or Bob Avakian! Democratic in word, dictatorial in deed! Democratic in form, the form of the election which the Democratic Party already practises, dictatorial in essence!

But there’s one thing that the villain Jeremy Gong did not count on: Worker’s Spatula, the official press organ of the revolution, who have been gathering our forces in the East Bay for over a year and will now fight tooth and nail to expose this wrecker activity and liberate the East Bay DSA for the good of the progress of the revolution of all the poor and oppressed!

We will stand together with whatever forces are building such a real movement among the revolutionary masses, organising everyday life in all spheres on the terms of the needs of the people, led by them and leading them, not patronisingly passing down bureaucratic dictats to the people on what is and what is not democratic and what is and what is not socialism in the eyes of their natural-born saviour!

What does Jeremy Gong have to say about such a line, that he calls “The Inward DSA” (when it is his “outward” clique who will not face outward to the masses, and who turn inward to their inner circle at the slightest conflict)? Let us turn back to the document signed in his name, which was doubtless written by someone at Jacobin or some other Kautskyite, as evidenced by his complete lack of ability to respond to Worker’s Spatula’s rightful public critiques of his reactionary line. First Jeremy Gong points a finger of blame unrelated to the actual political line at the Boston DSA:

Friday afternoon, a Boston DSAer’s Twitter account published links and a series of screenshots showing private documents for the Bread & Roses slate written by me and some other East Bay DSA comrades marked in bold, “Not for circulation — do not share.” Because we are organizers, we had a Google Drive full of organizing documents, tools, and spreadsheets.

The Boston DSA are known to be mostly controlled by US ICOR affiliate ROL at this point. Those of us who have met Ray know that he would never let such unscrupulous and undisciplined behaviour go uncriticised, and the lack of any public self-criticism by the Boston DSA therefore stands more or less as proof of the falsehood of these claims. But nonetheless, let’s hear more of Gong’s sob story:

How these documents were accessed by strangers isn’t totally clear, but the intention of the people who did it is: they seek to intimidate members of DSA from engaging in the most basic democratic organizing within our organization and to give us all the sense that even in pursuing ordinary political goals in a political organization, we are subject to a climate of hostile surveillance and attacks

Oh, saints preserve us! You would think that Jeremy Gong was not himself intimidating, harassing, and silencing all of his critics on any subject up to this point. The way he sanctimoniously condemns this leak as contrary to “the most basic democratic organizing” and “a climate of hostile surveillance and attacks”, you would think he was living under the equivalent of the fascist rule of the Turkish AKP (whose rhetoric is indistinguishable from Jeremy Gong’s in any way, particularly due to their shared hatred of the Kurdish liberation movement). But to give Gong his due, such a theft of documents would be very difficult to justify and defend. If it had happened.

If Jeremy Gong, dictator of the East Bay DSA, were not controlling his local with the iron fist of Erdoğan himself, everyone would have already read the real story behind this “theft”. For those curious, it can be read here, but the short version is that the documents were publicly accessible when they were sent out together with the claim that the DSA stands only for Jeremy Gong’s re-election. There was no hacking, there was no theft, Jeremy Gong simply sends out mass e-mails with his horrific politics in them, and when he includes more than he likes and discovers he’s not as popular as he imagines, he cries foul for public criticisms.

We could go on, but we have other things to do on a Tuesday night. We repeat again our support for the Working-Class Unity and Power slate in the upcoming April 29th elections, to which we hope all of you bring a spatula, and our hope that Hasan will be elected and Jeremy Gong will not, and further pray to Jesus, who is the Christ, that the entire Bread and Roses slate will not only go unelected, but will be made to answer for their crimes against the DSA, the poor, the oppressed, the youth, humanity, and God.

If this does not happen, it’s patently obvious why. As the Spatula has now intervened to expose Jeremy Gong as the servant of darkness which he is to the entire East Bay DSA, any real democratic process would quickly right the wrong of the Bread and Roses clique’s undemocratic dominance of the East Bay DSA, and subsequently all internal East Bay DSA channels would be democratised. If this does not happen, it can only be because the April 29th election was rigged, or Jeremy Gong uses his known connections to the Oakland Police Department to silence his critics within the Spatula and the East Bay DSA. We cannot allow this to happen. Jeremy Gong must be stopped by any means necessary.

Fuck Jeremy Gong.

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

*Here we must, as always, register our displeasure with reference to pan-US activities being referred to as “national”. The United States of AmeriKKKa is a multinational imperialist state, composed not only of the formally legally recognised indigenous nations and nationalities still yearning for freedom and decolonisation, but also an oppressed Afro-American nation separate from the oppressor Yankee nation who are all Jeremy Gong and his racist cohorts can see. This point is pertinent to be raised even among our fellow travellers in the Working-Class Unity and Power slate, who have not yet accepted the importance of explicit and open support for national liberation for the Afro-American nation including land and popular political power in the Black Belt South, although the “national” DSA Twitter account referred to support for “the right to self determination like MXGM’s Jackson Plan”, so we are hopeful for such developments in the future.

Did you enjoy this piece, or anything else on Worker’s Spatula? Then consider donating as little as one imperialist Yankee dollar a month to supporting our work!

 

Oscar Temaru Blames Failure on “Les Blancs”

PARIS – Following the conclusion of the first round of French presidential elections, the Spatula’s favoured candidate, Oscar Temaru, has been knocked out of the race by a veritable menagerie of white people, including other social democrats who couldn’t even manage to beat out Le Pen and Macron.

The Spatula’s local correspondent was present at Temaru’s press conference, where he gave the following statement:

Friends, comrades, ICOR and ICMLPO (Maoist) representatives: thank you all for being here. We ran a good campaign, and we certainly won’t surrender now. I salute all our people in the streets, in the workplaces, in the universities, in all spheres of life, who stand against the dictats of the French Republic, its imperialist manoeuvres, and its frankly awful cuisine.

Our campaign was right, and if I had a chance to run it again, I would change only one thing: France has too many white people.

Again I reiterate that I don’t mean this in a racist way. I don’t hate white people. I don’t want to deport white people. I simply think that there are disproportionately many of them in France given their actual contributions to building France into what it is today, and I wish that French civil society more fully reflected the reality that without Polynesia, there would be no France as we know it.

What has been made clear, not only by my defeat in this election, but also in the remaining two choices, is that white people in France cannot be trusted to solve this problem on their own. They simply refuse to recognise the historical justice that would manifest itself in the un-bleaching of French society. The white minority nationalities of France, such as the Basques and Bretons, refuse to even take seriously their historical duty to remove themselves from France in the service of this goal.

I fear that the objective conditions simply made it impossible for us to win this election, and may even make it impossible to win the next election. We will struggle on regardless, but I wish to make one thing perfectly clear: We did not lose this election, white people stole it.

Given the choice between Le Pen and Macron, the Spatula default to the Hoxhaist ICMLPO position of recommending all French comrades cast their vote for Donald Trump, as the lesser evil.

Worker’s Spatula Interview Malcolm Turnbull about Trump, Kant

CANBERRA – In a time of apparently shifting imperialist alliances on an international scale, with Trump reversing the Democratic Party’s policy of ramping up tensions with Russia, instead apparently taking aim at Beijing, Australia has been apparently caught in the crossfire. Worker’s Spatula’s chief correspondent in Melbourne went to Canberra to sit down with Malcolm Turnbull, the least pleasant man in Australia, to find out what makes this clockwork man tick:

WS: G’day, how’s it going?

MT: G’day yourself, all right?

WS: All right. You recently found yourself in a bit of a row with Donald Trump. Speaking for many observers, we never would’ve predicted Australia under Turnbull would be one of the more forthright powers in the era of Trump. How would you characterise the gap between yourself and the Donald?

MT: Donald Trump, as everyone knows, is a Hegelian. Obviously I mean this in both the philosophical and the political sense: In every conversation, he is known to bring up the question of stages of internal development which in his mind justify the callous abandoment of duty. It is the basest hypocrisy that Trump at once derives power from the institutional order and at the same time casts us all into collective chaos.

WS: So you would identify with a purer Kantian tradition?

MT: Naturally.

WS: Let’s talk about the specific disagreement which led us to this impasse. You claim that Trump is reneging on his duty to resettle refugees from Australia. Why not just resettle them here?

MT: Please be serious. There’s a categorical imperative which shows why this is impossible. Imagine in your mind one of these boats full of refugees. They think they can just come to Australia, and there may only be three of them in the boat, but what if everyone thought like them? We’d have billions of the buggers, and we’d all end up starving to death.

WS: Right but…

MT: Do you want us all to starve to death?

WS: Sure, but doesn’t the same apply to the US? Should all refugees go to the US?

MT: No, not all. This is exactly the point. We had an agreement whereby we would resettle some of their refugees and they would resettle some of ours. By definition, their choice cannot be considered to be deontologically wrong, since it is neither a choice, nor one that other refugees could try to make into a universal law.

Additionally, the refugees they were to send us in exchange were pious Roman Catholics from Latin America, who would fit in well in my Australia.

WS: Beg pardon? As opposed to…?

MT: Not as opposed to anyone in particular. It’s just that…

WS: You know, despite your attempts at grandstanding as some ethically superior force to Trump, there are those who would accuse you of sharing a common anti-Muslim bigotry.

MT: Such slander is hardly becoming of a respectable publication such as Worker’s Spatula.

WS: With all due respect, this isn’t idle gossip. There have been a couple occasions where you’ve effectively defended racist statements in the public discourse. Of particular note, I recall you lauding Peter Dutton specifically after he went on his little tirade against the Lebanese.

MT: *laughing* Don’t worry about what you read or hear in the press, which is only a flawed representation of the thing-in-itself through the human senses. I assure you that here in Australia we have an a priori understanding of what it means to be racist that doesn’t allow for me to be perceived as such.

WS: I see. Any closing statement?

MT: Vote Liberal, the noumenon of Australian politics.

UPDATE: Following publication of this interview, Pauline Hanson of the modestly named “Pauline Hanson’s One Nation” party has announced that she intends to defeat “Muhammad Turnb-Ali” in the 2019 federal election by running on a platform of combatting radical Islamic terrorism and popularising the writing and thought of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Pauline Hanson after the Zoroastrians Now

MELBOURNE – Following widely publicised failure to win over Melbourne’s generally liberal Jewish community to her fascistic rhetoric, Pauline Hanson and her unpretentiously named Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party are seeking out other non-Christian groups to jump on her bandwagon of anti-Muslim hatemongering.

“I thought for sure the Jews hated the Muslims even more than I do, but they’re not biting,” explained Hanson. “Good for nothing, frankly. We may have to deport them as well.”

“Anyway, I found a minority group that literally fled Sharia law to come here: the Iranians.

“I know, I know, that would sound like they’re Muslim refugees, which isn’t exactly our thing. But get this: There are non-Muslims in Iran. We’re going after the Zoroastrians.”

Hanson took our correspondent with her on her next campaign stop, a prayer meeting of Zoroastrians in a small house in Caulfield. We were escorted inside by a young man who explained to us that the fire ritual before us was a blessing for the home.

“Look at the fire, yeah? Just like a barbie. They’re real Australians, not like the Muzlims and Abos.”

“Muslims don’t like barbies?” enquired our correspondent.

“Nah, they hate ’em. Mostly curry and dim sum, that’s what they like,” explained Hanson absently, transfixed on the flickering flames before her.

Our correspondent, unsatisfied with Hanson’s criteria for accepting the Zoroastrians into Australia’s warm embrace, pressed on: “But aren’t they covering their faces? Isn’t that what you call…”

“It’s not a burqa!” snapped Hanson, suddenly turning her full attention back to our correspondent, who found herself backed up against the wall by a livid Hanson: “They’re not covering women’s faces, but men’s! In fact, I reckon they’re just doing it to upset the Muzlims.”

“I’m not sure that’s how this, or the world, works…” responded our correspondent, sceptically.

“Look,” said Hanson, pulling our correspondent by the arm into a side room, “I’ve had it up to here with all of you reporters, with your facts. Don’t you think I don’t know they’re all wogs? But so what, the country’s already mostly Asian, because you didn’t listen to me last time. The least I can do is get some of these Asians on my side before there’s a headscarf on you, young lady.”

Convinced by Hanson’s passionate convictions and consistent talking points, our correspondent sent a communique back to headquarters urging the editorial staff to endorse Pauline Hanson as the choice for Zoroastrians and all other non-Muslim Asian minorities in Australia afraid of wearing the headscarf.

The Central Committee responded with an e-mail containing only a link to this video:

At time of press, Hanson was on television addressing a hall full of non-Muslim Iranians: “My dear Zoroastrians,” she began.

A hand went up from the back of the hall: “Bahá’i.”

“Bye-bye to you, I’m just getting started…”

New Zealand Left Relocates to Australia

AUCKLAND – Announcing that “we’ve had a good run”, the entire New Zealand left held a press conference today at which they declared their intention to relocate to Australia, gain Australian citizenship, and help foment socialist revolution in Australia.

“There’s not really much point in going on anymore, is there? We kept expecting to see a resurgent far right like they have in the rest of the Anglosphere, scaring massive… er… relatively massive numbers of young liberals into our arms, but that didn’t happen,” explained Sophie Brown, spokeswoman from the New Zealand ISO.

“Speaking for my own organisation, we were always internationalists, so we have no attachment to particular conditions, and anyway Australia’s not so very different to New Zealand. We have Socialist Alternative waiting to take us in with open arms.”

Ian Wilson, an Auckland-area anarchist, agreed: “One day we won’t have borders, but for now we reckon we’re inside the wrong ones for our ideology. Australia may not exactly be a  left-wing country, but us Kiwis are too moderate all around as things stand. Those of us who don’t have organisations or groups waiting for us intend to mill about for a while and see what suits us. I’ve got some friends in Sydney whose couch I can crash on while I go commune shopping.”

Asked if they were prepared for struggle against the rising tide of nativist chauvinism and fascism, all present answered in the affirmative: “Yeah man, Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Turnbull, bring it on! The people want some bloody action, and we can’t sustain that here in boring old Kiwiland,” reported “Adam”, a member of a tiny group calling itself the “New Communist Party of Aotearoa”, which will apparently be liquidating itself so it can join one of the many successful Maoist grouplets in Australia.

“Most of us won’t really be directly victimised, not being wogs and all”, explained OMU spokesman Alec Manson, “But we are ready to passively declare solidarity with those who are victimised by Australian racism, from refugees being abused in prison camps to the Aboriginal Australians, who clearly just take being angry more seriously than the Māori do.”

Pauline Hanson the Real Victim, Apparently

MELBOURNE – The entire Australian media, including supposedly “liberal” outlets, have united in their view that Pauline Hanson was the victim of an “abusive” “attack” by Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner, wherein he slandered the known racist as a “racist redneck”, marking the worst incidence of abusive language in Australian politics since the last time Hanson or any of her supporters opened their mouths on any subject.

“It’s a fucking disgrace, letting these Abos run their mouths like that. You see why we had to send them away to them schools, eh? They’ve got no manners…” explained Hanson supporter Chris David, before he was cut off with a punch to the jaw by our local correspondent.

Hanson herself could barely hold back tears as she explained what had happened: “One of those people, you know the ones, the ones we never took a vote on whether we tolerate their existence or not, came up to me, in MY country, and told me to go back to my fish and chip shop. Everyone knows my fish and chip shop burnt down last year. We lost a lot of good bream in that fire. You know it was probably ISIS that did it. Comin’ over here…”

One more well-placed punch later, our local correspondent met with reasonable “non-racist” white Australian and proud owner of several Chinese friends, Karen Osborne, who tried to make sense of Hanson’s ideology for us:

“A lot of people claim she’s racist, but I don’t know. I mean, I don’t agree with all of what she says, but it just seems like common sense. This is Australia. Like we’re in Australia now. I’m Australian. And Australia is a place for Australians.”

Asked if there were different types of Australians, Osborne remained persistent: “It’s not a question of types. It’s a question of how long you’ve been here. The Muslims and so on, they’re new. We don’t know how well behaved they are, so we want to look at them a lot. We want to see them on CCTV cameras in the streets, in their mosques, in their bedrooms, ideally. Whereas me, I’ve been here for a while, so you don’t need to check in on me so much. Nobody needs to look and make sure I’m not causing any trouble.

“And the Aboriginals, they’ve been here forever, haven’t they? So I don’t know if we need to see them at all.”