if they want to have lasting positive interactions with people IRL

You don’t seem overly concerned about this. Why would you care?

Hey, found this comment from searching my name (I’ll fully admit that I do so from time to time, out of morbid curiosity). I’ll clarify 2 things:

I can also address @[email protected]’s claims. The “alt” they can’t see me on is my Hexbear.net alt. I cannot mass downvote them with it even if I wanted to both because we cannot downvote on Hexbear, and because I can’t even see Lemmy.world accounts from Hexbear. I also don’t upvote myself, that takes too much effort and I only care about upvote/downvote ratios so far as it helps me gauge the effectiveness of my argumentation, so that would get in the way of that.

I cannot verify that others are not using alts to up or downvote comments, but at the same time I don’t think anyone can verify that the reverse is true, either, except perhaps admins looking at up and downvote history. SoftestSapphic has already accused several other accounts that in no-way speak like me of being alts of mine, without any proof.

What this means is that SoftestSapphic has nothing more than a gut feeling asserted as an unchallengable truth, the idea that the “tankies” are using deceptive measures to manipulate public opinion. Moreover, said user regularly gets banned for general hostility even on non-Lemmy.ml communities, just check their modlog. No proof is ever offered for their claims, but they will certainly parade their theories around in an attempt to discredit me, which is why I am even responding to this character assassination in the first place.

Sometimes SoftestSapphic is 100% correct, and I’ll frequently upvote them when they are. Calling out the ineffectiveness of Leftists trying to work with the Democrat Party in the US, rather than build up our own working class parties and orgs, is undeniably correct in my opinion. Fascists should be opposed violently as well. I also like this comment, for example, going over the ineffectiveness and disillusionment with voting in the US Electoral System, especially because the system itself is the target, not the whims of individuals subject to it. This is good Materialist analysis! The issues start to arise, in my view, when they lose sight of Materialist grounding and resort to gut feeling and what I would consider conspiracy theories.

This form of “Left-dogmatism” has been a long-running problem within the Marxist current (no idea what SoftestSapphic personally ascribes to, just speaking from what I am familiar with), and has manifested in movements like the Peruvian Shining Path under Gonzalo, which focused more on assassinations than building a legitimate and inclusive party, accomplishing little more than terrorism. When you abandon consistent materialist analysis, you run into errors in judgement that do more harm than good. Mao summarizes this problem quite concisely in On Practice:

We are also opposed to “Left” phrase-mongering. The thinking of “Leftists” outstrips a given stage of development of the objective process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future. They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurist in their actions.

SoftestSapphic, if you’re reading this, I do think you have a promising future as a good Leftist. You have a very strong will, and your heart appears to be in the right place. I recommend you make it an effort to focus on theory and materialist analysis right now, perhaps join an org if you aren’t in one. On the off-chance you decide to take my advice, I can recommend theory for you if you let me know what you’ve already read, or answer questions you may have about Marxism-Leninism. Or, you can just check out the introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list I made, it even has audiobook equivalents if that’s your preference.

Hope that answers everything!