https://x.com/dsa_intl_comm/status/1951729710821712221
The DSA doesnt deserve the comrades that work in the international committee 
Are they going to be rude as fuck again? Hope they’re not sending the same dipshits they sent last time.
I think that was just one person, who acted against the wishes of everyone else and without disclosing their plans before they were already there.
If there was any justice, that person would be expelled from the org with prejudice, but at least they probably won’t be on this delegation.
Edit: I hate the DSA, but I think the rest of the delegation showed due respect to Cuba
Right but just one person can be very damaging to the potential of working together. They should be cozying up to them and asking for help, their country may have its own struggles but they have enormous resources and experience that they actively contribute to foreign groups.
The US removed Cuba the list of countries not fully cooperating against terrorism, also known as the Not Fully Cooperating Countries (NFCC) list, State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel confirmed on Wednesday. Patel said that the circumstances leading to Cuba’s designation as an NFCC have changed since 2022.
The NFCC list is part of the State Department’s annual assessment of international cooperation in counterterrorism efforts, and countries on this list may face restrictions on certain types of aid and exports of defense-related goods and services.
Cuba was initially placed on the NFCC list in 2020 due to its refusal to collaborate with Colombia on extradition requests related to members of the National Liberation Army (Spanish: Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN), a designated terrorist organization. The Cuban government did not formally respond to the extradition requests for ELN leaders filed by Colombia after the group claimed responsibility for the 2019 bombing of a Bogotá police academy that killed 22 people and injured 87 others.
https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/05/us-r
Cuba are willing to directly help foreign groups and these trips should be taken extremely seriously as potential opportunities to make contact with the right people to get that support. Delegates should act professionally and understand just how important and beneficial these connections can be.
I don’t see why the DSA should care about this one way or another, at least from the standpoint of their own benefit. They aren’t building an armed insurrection and most of them don’t want to. They don’t commit crimes that merit fleeing the country forever and don’t plan to.
I also feel like you were talking past me a bit. I said this member should be expelled with no appeal or chance of return, and I guess I should have added that they need to have a better vetting process. But ultimately, a rogue member is a rogue member and even a much better group is going to get an event like this now and then. I’m sure that the other members and official channels in America were deeply apologetic to Cuba and to Diaz-Canel personally, so besides what I had already mentioned (which is important and has no chance of being done), I don’t really understand what you want from them.
Edit: Incidentally, are we endorsing ELN? I’ve read some about guerilla factions in Colombia and it seems like there aren’t communists anywhere who pass basic hurdles like not terrorizing civilians, but perhaps all their civilian targets are bourgeois (I don’t think this is the case).
But ultimately, a rogue member is a rogue member and even a much better group is going to get an event like this now and then. I’m sure that the other members and official channels in America were deeply apologetic to Cuba and to Diaz-Canel personally
But was it really just one rogue member though? As I remember it, it was a faction of a number of members from the group that went to Cuba who chose to follow the lead of that one “rogue member” who held a leadership position within the organization in attending a meeting with an opposition group instead of the planned meeting with Diaz-Canel.
https://redstarcaucus.org/cuban-links/
Throughout the trip, members of the delegation from the Reform & Revolution Caucus (R&R) and the Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) criticized the Cuban government both to our Cuban hosts and other DSA members, and skipped out on multiple delegation events. Most shamefully, both Maria (representing R&R) and Renée (representing SMC, and a member of the current NPC) skipped out on meeting with President Díaz-Canel, who spent more than 2 hours in a frank discussion specifically addressing the critiques these very same DSA members brought up to their Cuban hosts earlier on the trip
This behavior from the R&R and SMC delegates is anti-democratic, disorganizing, and chauvinistic. For a resident of the imperial core to go to a socialist state that has survived a U.S. blockade for multiple generations and critique its achievements as incomplete is the height of chauvinism. To reject the democratically-decided purpose of the delegation – which was to support Cuba against the U.S. blockade – and instead insert their individual political goals of making connections with opposition groups and advocate for Cuban government reform is anti-democratic. If the delegates from R&R and SMC wanted to make connections with government opposition groups and advocate for liberalization they should have applied to other delegations instead of the socialist one. Or they could have stayed at home; many other applicants who were aligned with the delegation’s goals were not able to attend due to limited seats on the delegation.
And as for other channels since then being deeply apologetic, I would hope so, but not an insignificant number of other DSA members at the time were defending the actions of the snubbers, going so far as citing Cuba’s “authoritarianism.” Hell, even here on hexbear there was a long-standing regular poster got permabanned (or perhaps temp-banned but chose never to return?) for insisting these actions were either not a big deal or were the correct thing to do. This gross betrayal goes a lot further and deeper than a single rogue member.
Thank you for the corrections
I’m only using this example as an extreme. A demonstration of just how far Cuba will go these days, even with their circumstances, they are still committed. If they’ll do this for extreme examples then lesser stuff is a far easier yes.
Edit: Incidentally, are we endorsing ELN?
Cuba seem to be protecting them. I’m not endorsing though, just pulling an extreme example.
I’ve read some about guerilla factions in Colombia and it seems like there aren’t communists anywhere who pass basic hurdles like not terrorizing civilians, but perhaps all their civilian targets are bourgeois (I don’t think this is the case).
I think it’s a messy thing. What one side calls dealing with traitors and snitches, the other side calls terrorising the local population. That and the fundraising options are either drugs or extorting local businesses.
However messy it might be, we can still try to understand it without falling into relativism.
Kneecapping traitors and snitches, sure, that’s not something we should be uncritical of, but it serves strategic goals and is not incompatible with communism (even if in many cases, from a communist perspective, it is an inferior option), but that’s very different from extorting middle and lower peasants who aren’t collaborating with reactionaries, and it’s very different from drug trafficking.
The major socialist revolutions that we usually hold up as examples avoided those behaviors. Typically, they are able to secure funds or supplies because they have the support of the people in some locations (and/or rob the rich and powerful), and their revolution is predicated on some construction of dual power and integration with these communities (they also imposed taxes on controlled areas, which the ELN also does, though it then uses this as a pretext for hostage-taking).
I think that if it’s true that their only options for continuing their revolution are banditry, then it shows that the conditions simply don’t currently support them engaging in revolution, and they should be more concerned with labor organizing than killing cops (though they might sometimes still need to kill cops).
Have you considered that when it comes to the reliability of this information there is little difference between information detailing their great misdeeds and information detailing the misdeeds of Hamas?
I’m not going to register an opinion in either direction on them because I do not have enough reliable information. Plain and simple. I am not going to take the state and its police or military at face value.
but that’s very different from extorting middle and lower peasants who aren’t collaborating with reactionaries
Extortion is just another word for a tax levied by people with control or contested control of a territory. How much of the excesses are propaganda designed to turn peasants against them and how much is true is entirely impossible to judge.
and it’s very different from drug trafficking.
EZLN has been losing territory to drugs traffickers with overwhelming money and resources for a while now. I suspect that in these regions it is nearly impossible to match the resources (and overwhelming violence) of the drugs traffickers without being involved. I think it’s notable that this tendency of socialist groups to dip into drugs trafficking is localised in south america and nowhere else in the world.
I don’t agree with the assessment that the conditions are not right. I think you’re underestimating how significant the drugs cartels themselves are in preventing revolution by being utterly ruthless. Replacing them as a power is a necessary part of taking over. Getting dirty to achieve it is going to be a necessity.
Have you considered that when it comes to the reliability of this information there is little difference between information detailing their great misdeeds and information detailing the misdeeds of Hamas?
Some of the differences being that there is actually counter-coverage in Hamas’s case, including Hamas generally being better at communicating their goals, policies, and practices, along with independent journalists and sometimes literally the Israeli government contradicting hasbara. I think there is better substantiation as well of accusations against the ELN, even if a number of their actions are ones that we obviously interpret differently from the neoliberals doing the reporting.
Extortion is just another word for a tax levied by people with control or contested control of a territory. How much of the excesses are propaganda designed to turn peasants against them and how much is true is entirely impossible to judge.
When I said extortion, I wasn’t referring to taxes. I already acknowledged that the ELN taxes people and that’s fair enough. When I said “extortion,” I mean things like taking hostages for money, which of course they often justify on the basis of unpaid taxes, but it’s silly to then force other people to pay those taxes (plus whatever fines are added on) while dedicating your own manpower to making someone economically unproductive for the time that they are imprisoned.
EZLN has been losing territory to drugs traffickers with overwhelming money and resources for a while now. I suspect that in these regions it is nearly impossible to match the resources (and overwhelming violence) of the drugs traffickers without being involved. I think it’s notable that this tendency of socialist groups to dip into drugs trafficking is localised in south america and nowhere else in the world.
Since revolutionary groups are going to be recruiting a lot from criminal elements, it should be unsurprising that in a place so mutilated by drug trade as many SA countries are, that’s how they would think to solve their problems, but I don’t think that that makes them right. Look at China, for example, where opium trade (and consumption) was a huge problem. The solution of the communists was to fight drug trafficking and rehabilitate addicts, weakening the profits and influence of their enemies, gaining the support of the people, and making the labor force more productive.
I don’t agree with the assessment that the conditions are not right. I think you’re underestimating how significant the drugs cartels themselves are in preventing revolution by being utterly ruthless. Replacing them as a power is a necessary part of taking over. Getting dirty to achieve it is going to be a necessity.
How much more ruthless are you going to say they are than Japan? I don’t think such a claim could possibly be advanced.
It seems like an extremely charitable position to characterize a large part of the organization as Blanquists, revisionists who aren’t concerned with things like democratic support (this varies by region). Once you really consider things like drug trafficking, which functions here to turn the people into prey to harvest profits out of at the expense of their own well-being, the credibility of the branches engaged in such activity actually building a revolutionary movement and not just a rival gang starts to severely deteriorate. You can’t build a system with such perverse incentives on the assumption that you’ll just drop your incredibly lucrative policies and pivot to being pillars of your community once you have all the power.
The 2 rude delegates were from SMC and R&R the first one which is the biggest causus so probably
Ooo you’ve got the docs lmao nice nice
I just seach for my old post about the cuba trip drama, maybe they will send other delegates that wont break basic diplomatic etiquette but who knows
They better humble themselves and make up for the shitshow that took place last time
Oh, God. The fact that they’re not banned speaks of Cuba’s totalitarianism.
The DSA IC is the least Trot committee and therefore the best one.
That’s awesome.
