WHAT IS GOING ON AT SOCIALISM CONFERENCE 2026??

Let's talk about body fascism and how fat people are being genocided. There was also something so silly that took place. There are people who spent their entire lives carefully identifying the eugenicist movement and engaging in a Marxist interpretation of health and everything else, and then they are reduced to one singular clip that's not even something I agree with necessarily. I don't agree with the notion that GLP-1s are genociding fat people. I don't agree with the notion that we should be as dysgenic as possible. I don't agree with those things. I think we should be physically fit. I think everyone should be physically fit, socialists should be physically fit as well and healthy. Having said that, we are so easy to turn on one another. We can't have some comradely discourse and discussions around these sorts of issues and immediately gets highlighted by the right, and then you'll see leftists joining in on the pylon to be like, no, I'm not like that. Very frustrating to watch unfold. This is what we're talking about. The incident started with Stu Smith, investigative analyst of the Manhattan Institute. His entire job was to sit around during the socialism panel and watch what people were saying to try to find some clips that sounded strange to the broader American conscious, and he did, and there's plenty of it. Socialism itself is seen as this alien concept in America. Our job as socialists is to make this sound not so foreign, feel not so foreign. That's one of the things that I appreciate about the way Zoran communicates on these issues. It's one of the things that I try to do as well when I'm talking about these issues, to remind people that socialization has already existed on US soil in American governance. Some of our best periods are reflective of a command economy, a central planned economy, and also higher degrees of socialization. Stuff like this, socialism being already seen as this weird, quirky, strange concept that's alien to American tastes, makes it certainly a little bit more difficult, but this entire panel is about, I guess, the panel itself was about health and socialism, and I'm not going to engage in this disgusting pylon that was very clearly designed by Stu Smith of the Manhattan Institute, a reactionary think tank. Sean the Black also correctly points it out. He says, honestly, reading some of these responses, I'm at the position that a lot of y'all are anti-intellectual. I didn't watch the panel, but I got my synopsis from Manhattan Institute right wingers so I can make a value judgment on this person's place in the movement. He also brought up a good point as well. If socialism is not the place to engage in dialogue, then where is? You don't have to agree with this, but I think it's disingenuous to pretend that this is like levying the discussion as record behavior. This is the absolutism demonstrated by those who consider themselves to be on the more pragmatic side. Right. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. And I love Ryan. You know, I love Ryan. It's not a secret. I respect Ryan. I think he does a lot of great work. But in certain instances, I think he sees something that he doesn't agree with and then he just like lands on one side on the issue. So everybody hold it together. Let me just start off by saying that regardless of the thought that was put into this panel, regardless of the tireless work that this person has engaged on the subject matter, I still disagree with them. Right. And it's pretty obvious that I disagree with them. I am Mr. You should be physically fit. Right. So just let's get that out of the way. And that's fine. That's healthy. That's normal. To be able to I mean, to be able to have reasonable discourse around this issue and to be able to say, I don't agree with your assessment. That's healthy and normal. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying my position is healthy and normal. Well, ironic that, you know, I said that. But so here's the thing. Let's start off with the clip. We'll cover the actual conversation around the clip and how it's been received by people. And then we'll move on. Why hedge your position is healthy and normal. I'm not hedging. I'm not. I'm doing meta analysis on the discourse and and the cruelty directed at people who we disagree with. People who are our allies that we disagree with. I am Mr. You have to be physically fit. That much is clear. I think I have enough legitimacy in this space as a prominent socialist who also prominently posts meat pics on the timeline and works out every single ******* day and urges his audience to do the same. So let's take a look at this clip and the surrounding conversation, and I'll give you what my position is. You have to give up the fantasy of being fitter. It's not just that it's cringe or strategically bad, though it is, I think it's also politically revealing. Fitness is a measure of relative disposability under capitalism. Our task is not to become less disposable, to become more useful to the ruling order. What we all need to be doing is rejecting disposability in all of its forms. The point is not to beat the fascists at their own game. It is not to lay a better claim on their own territory by being fitter, more eugenic. In fact, the more dysgenic, the better. I think revolution is not a contest between optimized and properly prepared bodies. That idea is fascist in and of itself and erases the history of left struggles around the world. Is this what engaging in too much theory does without reading to you? No, this person has read more books than you. This person has thought about this issue more than you. You can still disagree with them, which I do, for the record. I disagree with the overarching argument. The overarching argument is to basically take something that fascists put forward as the importance of aesthetics, the importance of being physically fit, and then just reversing it for no reason. That's something that I also don't understand. Sometimes it's better to just refuse to abide by the opposition's framing entirely. I think one of the things that we do on the left is we'll take something that people have identified within fascist movements or something that people have identified within the capitalist structure and we oppose it, and that must mean that we actually believe the inverse of it, right? This is not the case. I think to say it is good to be physically fit is not necessarily a brave take. It's not necessarily a bad take or a good take. It's just a take. It's just a thing, right? It's just a part of human existence. So instead of taking a hyper-focus that fascists put on the way that their bodies look, the aesthetics and whatnot, and then decide, no, it's actually better to be dysgenic, what we should be focusing on is being as healthy as we possibly can be, right? Being fat doesn't mean you're not physically fit. Holy ----. That's not the argument. That's not at least the argument that she's presenting. The argument she's presenting is specifically to be dysgenic, right? But that's not the entire argument anyway. So here. Piss Vortex, ape attack survivor, went through the panel and summarized it, and I think he gives it a fair shake. The correct parts, which in all fairness comprise the majority of the discussion, are as follows. The obesity epidemic in America is the result of our food system's priorities of cost-cutting, profit-maximizing, and hijacking of libidinal desire rather than the actual need. Poor people are the most susceptible to this form of exploitation. Rather than change the systems or the economic system responsible for force-feeding people corn syrup slop, health fascism predicates on healthiness as a moral failing that must be socially punished as degeneracy. This social punishment and ostracization as a method of reshaping the self rather than addressing the root systemic cause is a mirror of how fascism operates in general across society, positioning poverty as moral badness and access to wealth and social prestige as moral goodness. This is one of the foundational problems with the American understanding of wealth and prosperity. Poverty is a moral failure. Wealth is morally good. You're morally righteous. You deserve to be wealthy. You did something good to get there, or your goodness is reflected in your financial success. This is an idiotic concept that many Americans unfortunately believe, and in the health field, they're doing something similar. If you're fat, you're not only a loser, but you're also immoral. And not only that, but also your fatness is permanent. Your immorality associated with your fatness is seen as a permanent failing. That's precisely the reason why when people, when fat people go to the gym, they still get bullied. They'll be like, oh, dude, you were fat at one point in your life, so **** you. You have to brandish yourself with that. You have to brand yourself with that immorality, that failing for the rest of your life. That's why people look at GLP-1 agonists, the Ozempics and the Wigovies and the Zep-Bounds and everything else as also a cheat code. You're cheating. Why? Because you're immoral. Why? Because you were fat at some point in your life, and it was your immorality that caused you to be fat, morally degenerate, a ******* loser. So even if you take care of it by working hard, or even if you take care of it, even if you actually overcome this thing by using medicine, then you cheated regardless, and that immorality should remain. So that's the attitude that people have, and it's fucked up, and it's stupid, and people shouldn't have that attitude. While true, none of this is particularly new or controversial as people have been writing about the moralization and ritual torture of poor people with bad diets at least since The Biggest Loser was on air. Nevertheless, this gets completely overshadowed in the public discourse surrounding the panel by the bad parts, which are of course clipped and mocked by reactionaries such as in the post below. There's the one clip about how GLP-1 agonists are genociding fat people or just another version of the genocide that fat people are enduring or something like that. It's exaggerated. It's an exaggerated claim, okay? That's what it is, right? Speakers claim that since attempting to be healthy without addressing root systemic causes of unhealthiness through revolution requires accepting tacitly on some level that poor health is an individual moral failing slash that it can't be overcome individually. It should not be attempted at all. This leads one of the speakers to bizarrely state jokingly that the more dysgenic you are, the better. So I think it wasn't sincere. That's not like a serious position, right? Because it goes along with the attitudes demonstrated by many who will never want to understand a different point of view on this issue. And if you're asking me what my position is, it's just that's a ridiculous statement, right? The more dysgenic you are, the better is not. It's this thing that we sometimes do on the left where we, like I said, flip the script and we look at something that like fascists are posturing on. And then we decide the inverse of it must be true and we must ride for the inverse of whatever the fascist is representing, right? I think ultimately a lot of people fail to comprehend. One thing that I think that people maybe sometimes on the left get wrong is, where do I begin? How do I put this? Like, this is something that happens with, I think, disability activism in general. And that is when you associate the feeling of sickness or when you associate disease or an illness with negativity, right? Like, we'll use the term lame, for example. That's technically an ableist slur, right? Lame means you have a problem with your gait born out of some kind of issue that you have, right? And over the years, the etymology and the understanding of what lame means has moved away from being considered this ableist language and instead just means you're uncool, right? The way that we function in society as social animals requires us to use universalist values and principles. And of course, there's always going to be need for pejoratives to signal that something is bad. And that badness doesn't come from the fact that the average human being looks at someone who is experiencing some kind of medical issue and associate that immediately with immorality or negativity. It actually stems from the fact that we remember our sickly moments from our personal experiences and associate that with the negative feelings that we have about being sick. A lot of people just say, no, if you're engaging in ableist language of any sort, if you're using any pejorative, if you're saying, oh, this is psychotic, this is sociopathic, whatever, you're doing a disservice to the neuroatypicals in your community and all this stuff. And the reality of the matter is the way that most people approach the issue is not that being disabled is a moral failing. They just think about when they were sick, when they had some kind of disability and associate it with the bad experiences they had as a consequence of that. Now, obviously, there's limitations. This doesn't mean that you should be slinging whatever slurs you want to sling. Obviously, I'm a very accommodating person, and I think some accommodations are good to a certain degree. But speakers claim several times that there's a genocide of fat people when it's both a loose application of the word genocide and a fundamental reordering of the basis structure in this equation, i.e., it is poor people made to be unhealthy because they are poor, not fat people made to be poor because they are fat. Yes, I know that this thinness can be unhealthy and both body fat can be healthy with brush strokes here. Bigger seemingly tacitly accepting the linking of fatness and blackness rather than recognizing being fat and black as a pejorative primarily because of one's blackness rather than their fatness. Standard academic dilemma in which disciplinary procedures and disciplinary language that is often unrecognizable to broader audiences and contributes to overall poor optics. Yeah, when you read too much. This is when you think too much and you read too much, especially in this present media environment where you will be punished for thinking about these issues from a different perspective. Let's be real. So it also has a lot to, in my opinion, like the reception of this conversation also absolutely stems from the reality that we live in clip culture. No one cares about having a nuanced discussion, and also no one cares about understanding the entirety of the argument. I was thinking about this with like Pravda or the discourse that took place on the left leading up to the revolution, leading in the aftermath of the October revolution. What would it look like if that existed in modern day? Because back then, people didn't have TikTok. People didn't have the internet. So they would read the entirety of the pamphlet, think about it thoroughly, and then deliver scathing response, a scathing retort. Like imagine Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Vladimir Lenin sending mail back to one another, sending letters back to one another, critiquing certain elements of their worldview. But instead, they're just lasering in on like eight words and then saying, you said these eight words, you and vice versa. We no longer live in an environment like that because the medium and information sharing has changed, okay? I don't think she was being like super serious about that. That's it. Anyway, people laser in on this stuff, people laser in on whatever comes across as like the most negatively framed viral moment. We saw a similar thing happening during the Q&A portion of your talk yesterday too regarding masking. There are people to the left of you who you engage with in good faith instead of writing off as antisocial. Stu Smith is having a field day with his houry slop. Yes, I think for a lot of people, there is this endless need to come across as one of the good ones. And this is the same for socialists as well. I'm one of the good ones. Look at me, I'm pushing away all the bad ones, all the crazy ones. My standard on this is until someone is genuinely engaging in wrecker behavior, if someone is my ally and I have disagreements with them, I will engage with them. I will talk about our disagreements in a productive manner, but I won't try to cast them aside in an effort to show the rest of the world, the rest of the people outside of our worldview, people who look at us as though we're freaks, as though we're crazy. I'm not going to accept their framing and then show them how good I am. There's plenty I disagree with. There's plenty I disagree with on the left, as you guys know. Sometimes these things come up. They came up in my panel in the Q&A portion. I think it's okay. When do you decide someone is behaving like a wrecker? Maximalist understandings, maximalist approach, immediately ascribing immorality to the actions, and also cynically claiming that you're working for the opposition, you're working to serve a fascist purpose. You know what I mean? But the real issue is that a lot of people have not learned from the Feminist Get Owned compilation era. They enjoy it. Yes, for sure. This genic has nothing to do with physical health. It's the literal opposite of eugenic, the idea used by fascists to push the idea of controlling who can and cannot have children because of supposed genetic quality, often racial in idea. Please contextualize the speaker's comments by reading more of what she said. Yeah. Chris Wilcox says, since some of you are willing to take an actual enemy from the Manhattan Institute at his words instead of Bea's, Beatrice Adler and her statements, revolution is sustained by care works, networks of food distribution, medicine, transportation, shelter, child care, trust, love, education, collective memory. Disabled people have made revolutions. Sick people have made revolutions. Old people have made revolutions. People who cannot run, who cannot see, who cannot fight, who cannot work, who cannot survive independently have made revolutions. Ahmed Yassin, who was an important Palestinian leader and one of the founders and the early leaders of Hamas, was paralyzed at 16. He was quadriplegic. Show me a leader in the Palestinian resistance who does not encounter debility at some point in their lives. Che Guevara had debilitating asthma. He carried really heavy duty inhalers with him into battle, into combat in the jungle because of the humidity in the jungle made his asthma worse. Cabral too. Same thing. Rosa Luxemburg had hip dysplasia. Mao also had ALS. Fanon had terminal myeloid leukemia, and he wrote some of his best work under the knowledge that diagnosis was hanging over his head. Gramsci had tuberculosis of the spine, which sounds incredibly painful. Trotsky was chronically ill throughout most of his life. The point is, everyone has some kind of disability, right? It's true. People have periods of illness, and also people have lifelong debilitating illness as well. You overcome that. The idea that people have to be of a perfect mind and body at all times, obviously, is not the reality. I understand that. I understand that point that is being made. All of that is to say that our debilitated, imperfect bodies are far more threatening to power than we are led to believe. Our revolutionaries claim must not be that our bodies can't outperform the fascists. It needs to be that one should have to prove their fitness in order to belong to the world that we are all fighting for. Come on, man. I'm trying not to yell at you. I will say one thing, and this is going to piss off, I think, a lot of the disability activists. I'm sorry to the disability activists in this community, but y'all do get really annoying anytime we talk about this stuff. You don't let this discourse go through without writing an entire thing about how I am actually engaging in body fascism or whatever the ****. You first start the conversation with, here, we have a reasonable disagreement. Then that reasonable disagreement actually piles on. Then it turns into this major issue. I'm not attacking you. But you also need to understand, it's the same conversation that I have with the ultras. The same conversation that I have with the ultras. I'm not attacking you because I think it's pussy ----. I think it's cowardice to constantly attack your comrades, to constantly attack people who are close to you. That doesn't mean I agree with you entirely, and that doesn't give you an opportunity to constantly ******* yell and make the conversation about, we are getting flamed in your communities, and it sucks. Oh, my God. Stop browbeating. Jesus Christ. It's so tough to get a word in edgewise all the time. Why is this a conversation being had at a public socialism conference? They could be completely correct, but goddamn, what do you mean? Where else are people supposed to have this conversation? I don't think that's an issue either. I think it's perfectly valid to have these sorts of conversations. It just sucks that, unfortunately, the environment that we exist in makes it impossible to have reasonable discourse around this issue because no matter what happens, people are going to obviously lean into. People are obviously going to take whatever they want to take from the conversation and frame it negatively, and then it's going to remind people how ******* annoying it was last time they tried to talk to someone who's a disability activist, and then they're going to go, you know what? It is actually poison for solidarity and organizing, so **** them because that's exactly what's going on here. A lot of the people here either directly disagree with the talking points, or they just got really ******* annoyed on the internet because some of y'all are ******* annoying, and now it turns into hostility. That's it. It turns into ******* hostility. That's why I always say you got to be normal, and I know this actually is the worst time to say this because everyone will go, what is normal actually? Normal and an understanding of normal is body fascism. You are literally a fascist. You're doing fascism by saying, be ******* normal. We have to remember that we have to be our best advocates, okay? We have to be our best advocates. You shouldn't drop your principles, but you should also be somewhat pragmatic. Understand how your opposition is going to understand your worldview, how they're going to interpret the words that are coming out of your mouth. We always have to put our best foot forward. I don't expect well-read academic socialists to become media demons, okay? To become PR-trained messaging demons. I'm not expecting that, but at least please, please just dial it back a little bit. Dial it back a little bit, and being palatable and socially malleable doesn't make you a bad leftist. It just makes your job in the movement a different one. Yeah. Anyway, the right already knows that health politics is mass politics. They've already recognized that they're exploiting it. The right understands that people experience capitalism through their bodies. They understand the sickness, exhaustion, debt, alienation, fear, and suffering. Some of the primary ways people measure whether their life is going better or worse, what health fashion does, organize those experiences into resentment, selfishness, and defeat. Yeah, it's just I am obviously a lot more careful when these sorts of clips happen because I'm the guy who gets clipped all the time. I get clipped nonstop. I get clipped endlessly. Sometimes they don't even clip me. They just say I believe something, and people run along with it, even if I don't believe that thing. You are constantly criticized for your tone when delivering your take, so I'm not sure why you turn and do that to your left flank. I think it's usually a bad idea to tell the more oppressed group that they're annoying for speaking out. Okay, dude, we have to be also aware, while I'm giving credence to the argument itself, we also have to be aware of how it comes across, right? This is the major gripe that I have. Aside from the liberalism of Woke 1.0, the corporate understanding of what it meant to be woke, and the hollowed out identity politics of it all, the thing that actually was very frustrating is the tone, is the moralization of every single point, the idea that we're on the morally righteous side, standpoint epistemology. I have experienced this. You have not. Therefore, I am right, and you are wrong. You need to shut the up and listen to me. The tyranny of the minority that happens to be the most aggressive in their posture. These are the types of things that make solidarity and organizing very difficult, because some of us do not want to think about the world outside of our own immediate experiences, and don't want to think about someone who's never had to go through that process. You have to understand, most people lack empathy, okay? That's it. They lack empathy, so we have to educate them on this issue. One of the examples that I always used for years and years was when people would be like, why are you guys listening to this white dude? **** this white guy. He's a straight white guy. He's reactionary. He's bro-like. I don't like his optics. I don't like the way he carries himself, right? This was a major argument for the last decade from the left. They'd be like, why don't they listen to a trans person on these issues? I tried to always explain to people that of course someone who is transphobic in a transphobic society is probably going to listen to a straight person more than they listen to a straight person, a cisgender person before they listen to a trans person. We don't have an understanding of the funnel. We don't even think about it where we just go, no, we are morally correct, so you need to shut the **** up and listen to us. The problem is most people when they hear that go, ew, **** you, and it breeds more resentment. We do not have the opportunity to generate more resentment against our cause. We have to also put our best foot forward. I think you're strawmanning an opponent here. There's a difference between someone who yells at someone random on the right for not wearing a mask versus asking a public figure on the left to wear a mask. I think it's pretty disingenuous to be honest, or you just agree with what that person is saying, okay? You agree with what that person is saying, and you're not understanding the point I'm making because those conversations do not happen in private in general. Those conversations are happening in public, and every single person that hears that goes, ah, I know exactly what that is. Would you kindly tell me what started this? What started this is the clip posted by reactionary Stu Smith, the ******* ridiculous Manhattan Institute, about someone engaging in a thoughtful discourse over disability activism and the role that people with disabilities play in a socialist revolution. That panel itself bred a lot of hostility because a lot of people also themselves have an element of, like many people even on the left are just ableist. That's it. The ultra is upset with you right now due to understand that the biggest victims of identity politics that were manufactured to divide the left. Yeah, the thing is, there's two points that I have to explain to people all the time. I go back to the Latinx example, right? Because that's one that was argued endlessly, and it was very quickly packed up. I never entertained it, and I explained to you why I didn't do it. If I were to run around and try to organize in Latino communities, for example, in Chicano communities, and I was calling everybody Latinx, they would look at me like I have three eyeballs. They'd be like, what the ****? What are you saying? You're just this out of touch, academic, smug, elitist guy. You're never going to understand my plight. You're never going to give a ---- about what I have to say. You're calling me Latinx. What the **** is that? The expectation that people who are dipping their toes into socialist organizing or into organizing in general all have to immediately come to the understanding that everyone is supposed to be mask-wearing in public settings all the time is unfortunately one of those arguments that it makes sense in theory, but it does not make sense in practice. It's just a barrier that literally makes us impossible to contend with. That's what I was trying to explain, where I was like, look, there's a place. There's a way to do it. There's a place for it. If you're groggy, if you're sick, you should definitely wear a mask. That makes sense. We should be advocating for better ventilation. We should be advocating to make this easier for everyone involved. But having said that, the association of left organizing with a ban or not a ban necessarily, but a rule that everyone has to wear a mask is just virtually impossible to abide by, and it's going to make people not want to. It's just going to be a bridge too far for so many people. This has been exceedingly fair coverage of this. Yes. When someone is woke-scolding another person, your job as a leftist to use that energy and position to explain the position instead of yelling at the woke-scolder. I think we can all agree Twitch chat is the worst place to have this conversation on Twitter. No, I don't think so. I think Twitch chat is probably a better place to have this conversation on Twitter, even though many of these positions will probably get clipped and then posted on Twitter regardless. American history, Latinx is a great movie. Okay. Shut the **** up. Yeah. No country recommends permanent mask mandates. Nothing recommended in public health guidance. Well, people will say no country cares about disabled people, so we have to be better than that. The argument to that is we on the left have to be better than that. We have to be super accommodating and understanding that there are people with lifelong medical issues, and therefore everyone has to wear a mask at all times when they're in public. Unfortunately, it's just not going to happen, right? I mean, it didn't even happen during COVID when it was perfectly valid for it to take place, and I did abide by the mask mandates at the time. Not only is it most likely not going to happen, but I think it also, either we should segment it out or we should figure out a way to, we should figure out how to best manage it. You are not a regular, uneducated person. The fact that other people wouldn't take it well to be mask-shamed doesn't change the fact that it costs you a public figure to wear a mask at little cost to yourself at times like when you went to Cuba. Yehuda, the reason why I used the Latinx comparison is for this reason. I need you to understand something. Socialism also requires you to be social, okay? This is an impediment to socializing and therefore socialism, whether you're building it or not. It is no different than running around in Cuba and getting mad at me because I didn't say Latinx or something because I could have hurt people's feelings. It wasn't mandated by the organizers. It wasn't mandated by the Cuban government. You're infantilizing the Cuban government's position at that point. You're treating Cubans that are 90 miles off of our coastline like they're an indigenous population that has never had contact with the rest of the world in the past. What are we talking about? Also, I've met you, ************. You weren't wearing a mask when we met out in public. What the **** is this argument? Unless I'm mistaking you with something, I'm pretty sure I saw you out at a ******* comedy club and your ass wasn't wearing a goddamn mask. So where are we going with this argument? I think people who believe this are just too online. They got to touch grass. Go speak to the average person. As a physician, I spend all day talking to regular people and I think that gives a very realistic understanding of what the average person would reasonably do. Yeah. Fitness is as in utility. She's talking about historic Medicaid cuts, doge-gutting special needs programs, supplant public health. She's not calling it fascist to have a gym membership. Yeah. I think that's what a lot of people didn't understand about our take, which is that was the intention, right? Sue Smith was making it seem like she's saying it's fascist. There are some who have said that. There are some who have literally said caring about how you look is a sign that you are engaging in body fascism or whatever. She wasn't doing that, but it doesn't matter. That's what it alluded to. And that's the reason why a lot of people reacted negatively to it, right? That's why a lot of people highlighted the right wing nonsense. Now, having said that, there are different schools of thought on this. Some people are saying, why are they having this conversation? Why are they even having this conversation in public? It's like, well, what are they supposed to do? Not have this conversation. You're not supposed to, you're not allowed because other people might misconstrue your perspective. I mean, yeah, it sucks. We should be careful with the words that we choose, especially in public settings. Ultimately, if you have a different opinion, you should be able to have it. You should be able to openly talk about it. It's the f***ing socialism conference put on by Haymarket Books. If they're not going to have a conversation about eugenics and whatnot there, where the f*** are they supposed to have this conversation? This is the place for the conversation to take place before people get mad. So yeah, one of the frustrating elements of this entire back and forth from my perspective always is the idea that we can't just disagree with people. You know what I mean? And it happens on both ends of the left spectrum. It happens on every element, every part of the political spectrum, but certainly on both ends of the left spectrum where someone goes, oh, you said there's a genocide of fat people going on. I disagree with you. F*** you. You're insane. And then on the other side, people go, oh, you want everyone to be physically fit and work out. You're ableist. F*** you. You're a fascist. This is not how people talk in the real world. I'm willing to bet that if we were to get together, okay, and engage one another in a serious conversation behind closed doors without cameras present, we would probably be able to have a much more healthy and much more productive conversation. This is why I always say you got to f***ing touch grass. This is also part of the reason why you got to go to the gym as well. Get a gym membership, go to the gym or work out in some capacity. No offense, but we also tend to consider these people to be standard bearers of the entirety of the movement. No, I don't think so. And also, this could be the thing that we disagree on, but we agree on nine out of 10 issues. So who gives a ---- if we disagree on this? You know what I mean? That's my attitude. I am willing and able to and talk to people who want to kill me, who sincerely want me to die. I want what's best for them. I want to help them out. I want to fight for them as well as all of my closest friends and comrades. That's what being a socialist is all about. That's what universal programs are all about. So if I have that attitude about someone who's like a f***ing neo-Nazi who wants to kill me, then of course I'm going to have a far closer relationship with someone who agrees with me nine out of 10 times. Just because we disagree on the one thing doesn't mean I'm just going to lean into the right-wing framing on the issue and attack them. It feels more one-sided than in person, though. When you go to a conference, people aren't asking questions, yelling and shaming you for talking about some niche academic thing like this, but they absolutely do yell and shame for you not agreeing on that. You saw that yourself yesterday when you got shouted down for not wearing a mask. There's not attendees shouting at people for wearing a mask. Yeah, no, it is. It's because it's accommodation politics, okay? It's accommodation politics. Socialists want to be kind. They want to be as accommodating as possible. And that is precisely the reason why socialists who want to be kind and as accommodating as possible end up taking the position that sometimes might even be the minority position, sometimes might even set unnecessary hurdles against people who want to organize with a broader community of people. But again, just don't lean into right-wing reactionary framing. That's it. You should not do that. We can have reasonable discussions around these issues. It's a real shame that people can't be charitable to those who they are closest to ideologically, even if they disagree with them. I try to do that to the best of my ability until it gets to a degree where people are just like, you're misunderstanding this. You're stupid on this issue. You're not well-read on this issue. Shut the up. And they make it seem as though I haven't thought about how to manage and how to also communicate these ideas to a broader audience. Final word of criticism from piss vortex is the speakers allude to fitness being linked with readiness for militarization under fascism and is therefore fascist and lead the revolution and that the revolution will involve mutual aid, supply lines, food aid, et cetera. Let's not put our thinking. Let's put on our thinking caps though and recognize that in a literal militant revolutionary scenario, we can all be, we can not all be working the soup kitchen. Some of us are going to be doing the long March. Yes. It's also part of the reason why I don't like immediately cast aside people who have served in the military, the imperialist American military. So, I mean, I don't cast aside anybody. Let's be real. No, with a great take. If you engage in all, in almost any way with the right wing hacks, clipping socialism, 2036, you have permanently lost some respect for me. Says Noah Colwin. I think what happens here a lot is that people get mad that you don't communicate the way that they would or want you to, which is weird and egotistical. Yes. Adam Johnson says, I know everyone's tripping over themselves to join the grimy right-wing pile on leftistly. I just want to say that agree or disagree with what Beatrice said. She is not a cartoon, but a real human being. And a deep thinker driven by genuine commitment to justice. Just something to consider. I've had the pleasure of having her on the pod many times to discuss how our media dehumanizes those viewed as surplus. You will find her nuanced, thoughtful, and clearly motivated by a desire to elevate populations often omitted from left spaces of media more broadly. For myself and how I value people's intellectual contributions, I mostly sort them into two camps. Are you trying to expand the circle of solidarity or shirk it? Regardless of if you agree with everything Beatrice says, I can 100% assure you she is deeply committed to expanding it. Whether or not an out of context clip spread by the worst humans on earth make life harder for you or your friends attempts at mass politics, I can't say. But understanding how these viral pylons are very clearly being stoked by Paul Singer's errand boys is a good place to start. Yes. And as someone who has been victim to, or not victim necessarily, I don't even like that language. But as someone who's been at the center of these pylons over and over again, I understand intimately what it's like when you are, when you have the crosshairs on you. And I know what the goals are. The goals there are to divide the working class. The goals are to make the left attack its own left flank. Now you can have disagreements with Beatrice. I do as well to a certain degree. We can have a reasonable conversation without attacking this person. We can have a reasonable conversation around what we believe, maybe our misunderstandings of one another. But of course, it's virtually impossible to do so in this media environment. So obviously, good luck to anyone who tries to do it in this media environment, because unfortunately, our billionaire backed algorithms demand we fight one another off of the most negatively framed clips out of context.