Not too much really, the downside is that they actively reinforce a lot of anti-communist stuff by agreeing with the right on it.
Socialist Appeal is also kind of cult-ey. I worry that their methods end up turning off a lot of the young student crowd that they burn through who get a bad taste for “organising” because all they do is rock up to events organised by other people, set up all their highly visible branding to make themselves look associated with it and then sell newspapers and shit. Their member turnover is extremely high. But that’s just my experience with one specific group of trots I suppose and might not be the case for all of them, but it’s a big group here.
The old Labour Militant members are fucking good organisers though.
Yeah, I’ve been looking into joining an org and I was all for joining socialist appeal because they were the most prominent org in my area until I looked at their recent news thing about the accomplishments of the national org and it was basically all just various thing about how [local wing] went to a protest organised by other people and sold almost two dozen newspapers or got some other people to copy their chant, or managed to get two people to say they’d join up or whatever. From the outside it kind of just looked like a really rubbish MLM for selling newspapers.
Good luck with CPB. They’ve got some real brainworms about trans people and it will be a serious struggle to steer that org back to being right. But someone has to do it. The only way it will steer away from reaction is with people putting the work in to do it.
Not too much really, the downside is that they actively reinforce a lot of anti-communist stuff by agreeing with the right on it.
Socialist Appeal is also kind of cult-ey. I worry that their methods end up turning off a lot of the young student crowd that they burn through who get a bad taste for “organising” because all they do is rock up to events organised by other people, set up all their highly visible branding to make themselves look associated with it and then sell newspapers and shit. Their member turnover is extremely high. But that’s just my experience with one specific group of trots I suppose and might not be the case for all of them, but it’s a big group here.
The old Labour Militant members are fucking good organisers though.
Yeah, I’ve been looking into joining an org and I was all for joining socialist appeal because they were the most prominent org in my area until I looked at their recent news thing about the accomplishments of the national org and it was basically all just various thing about how [local wing] went to a protest organised by other people and sold almost two dozen newspapers or got some other people to copy their chant, or managed to get two people to say they’d join up or whatever. From the outside it kind of just looked like a really rubbish MLM for selling newspapers.
I’ve decided to join CPB instead
Good luck with CPB. They’ve got some real brainworms about trans people and it will be a serious struggle to steer that org back to being right. But someone has to do it. The only way it will steer away from reaction is with people putting the work in to do it.