I had a lot of fun with some of them that day after the rally, the people are great.

But yeah. They showed up, set up a table off on their own, tried to sell newspapers (but that one is basically Free Space on “Trotskyists being lame AF” bingo, because I don’t think there’s such a thing as a Trot who isn’t trying to sell you a newspaper), gave a speech out of sync with the general tone of the rally, and then, as the rally broke up, they held an open meeting right there in the park, which lasted their customary two hours, and one guy spent the entirety of their customary portion for talking about action plans discussing their goddamn newspaper! I mean, it was a nice day outside, and a Trot meeting was less boring than going home and sitting on my couch watching trash TV or doomscrolling on my phone, but still, two hours of complete disconnect from reality. I’d never been in a room full of commies IRL before, but even I know these guys make Lenin look like a centrist in terms of the Overton Window. Which, y’know, it was nice for me, to not feel like a total whack job for a little while, but like, I’m aware I’m an extreme leftist and that people who say exactly what I’m thinking half the time are gonna come off that way to the vast majority of people around us.

Look, they’re neat people, and I think in not very leftist areas, like mine, a lot of people who aren’t really Trots might throw in with them because they’re the party that exists, and those are probably the ones I enjoyed talking to that day. But yeah, an organisation that doesn’t understand the material conditions on the ground and can’t effectively organize anything without piggybacking off others and engaging in tailism… is probably the thing on the left that infuriates me the most.

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