LeninsLinen

I'm not a video gamer personally, but isn't this owned by microsoft, a company on the bds list?

I never got into social media. Lemmy is one exception because almost all the independent small time forums got eaten up by closed-down, insufferable and pointless corporate platforms such as reddit and the like. I guess IRC counts too in a sense, but even then I'm a pretty sparing user of that.

Truly remarkable, you found a pizzacake comic that didn't make me immediately recoil in utter cringe.

That's not true, anarchists regularly allow themselves to be infiltrated by cops and closet white supremacists.

Right, sorry I figured that if you know the EFF and Malema, you'd probably know Shivambu. Floyd Shivambu was a close friend of Malema going back to their time in the ANCYL, and later helped co-found the EFF. MKP was formed by former president Zuma and really ate into the EFF's votes during the May 2024 elections. Subsequently Shivambu and a bunch of other prominent EFF leadership figures defected to the MKP under the guise of "coalition building", but I personally suspect he did it as a career move.

Oh I know. It's just that I was sure someone was going to invoke Manoel's words on the western Left's Christian-esque celebration of defeat and martyrdom. EFF being opportunist would be disappointing, but I'm not sure where it's trotskyism comes from. Trots in SA are unfortunately a thing, but I feel it might've taken root partially because of the biggest ML formations (with exception of SAFTU) getting too comfortable with post-Mandela ANC's rightist turn. Trots are still wrong of course, but I don't think it gained prominence out of nowhere.

Agreed, local movements always were somewhat skeptical of the EFF and Malema. Seeing this along with the other legitimate controversies, I can't say I blame them.

Yep, I expect as much from westerner libertarian "socialists" but not an ostensibly ML org in a country where the liberation movement was greatly advanced with the support of the Soviet Union and the PRC. Nonetheless, props to the EFF for making Afrikaners and US white nationalists angry.

Neither were dictators and both were subject to democratic oversight. The CIA itself admitted as much, about Stalin at least

Yep, the South African left has been in some dire straits, and "kinda cringe", since the late 1990s.

EFF are trots who flip flop on Zuma, GSM rights, and xenophobia. SACP have been largely silent on the ANC's rightward neoliberal shift since Mbeki, though recently fractures between the two have become quite public since the SACP's announcement to independently contest local elections later this year. SRWP was weird but I was nonetheless optimistic about it, seems to have gone quiet unfortunately.

Personally, I think AbM (leftist but not ML as far as I know), SAFTU (explicitly ML trade union federation), and as far as I can tell KAAX (anti-xenophobia formation founded by a former SACP member) seem to be the only good options without the major problems mentioned earlier at the moment. Nonetheless, I would encourage SA comrades to join the local EFF or SACP chapter, as there is no perfect leftist formation and anyone who claims to be is either an academic with no history of activism or a charlatan.

I mean, I knew that already about the EFF. I'm personally not sure what to say, in my experience Trotskyism seems weirdly common outside of SAFTU and the tripartite alliance. By no means do I think the EFF or whomever are a psyop, and I think it'd be erroneous to attribute this to some fetish for matyrdom and defeat given the actual platform of the EFF.

I actually did link the FAQ, but will hyperlink it here for your convenience.

I'd agree that there is some chance of opportunism being a good explanation for this. I think that Shivambu being the author of the FAQ would be a good explanation for this, he deserted the EFF for the MKP despite the former's previous opposition to the latter's leader some years ago. That said, I find it strange that this doesn't come up more often given the praise the EFF tends to get on many online ML spaces, including here on grad. I don't think this makes the org any less worthy of support of course, Malema is pretty much the only mainstream South African politician I trust to pick up where the tripartite alliance gave up in terms of decolonisation and land back, but it is nonetheless strange given how often I've heard of Trotskyism being a largely first world phenomenon.