This is from part of the book I’m writing, which will be called “When Tears Can’t Save Them: Why the pro-Palestine movement failed to stop a holocaust, & how it can still win.”
The decline that PSL has experienced since its initial post-October 7 momentum, where we’ve seen enough of its members leave that the org has started shrinking, is critical for the pro-Palestine movement to learn from. The lessons from its failures go far beyond a need to reject the surface-level forms within PSL’s politics. Problems like its shallow posturings on identity, or even its tailism of the Democratic Party, are byproducts of an even deeper issue.
The core reason why PSL has led its followers down an ineffectual path is the egotistical driving mentality of its leadership, which has displayed toxic personal traits that are extremely common within organizing; not so common that you should be discouraged from organizing itself, but pervasive enough that we should always be on the lookout for them. Because a leader doesn’t need to share PSL’s specific ideology in order to embody this toxicity. Manipulation evolves, adapting to the ways that people think; this happens every time our ruling class switches up which ideological camp gets to have cultural dominance. Right now we’re seeing this with the rise of “progressive” Zionism, which is the only way that Jewish supremacy can maintain perceived legitimacy after the masses have come to hate “Israel.” The manipulative actions by PSL can serve as a guide for which tactics future opportunists will use as the conditions force them to change their rhetoric.
On a macro level, the PSL leadership’s way of operating has the effect of undermining sustainable coalitions. Walter Smolarek, the longtime PSL writer who defected from the org in June 2026, explained how Becker’s management style does this type of damage:
Members learn that having other groups around the PSL that follow our lead is worth the trouble because it provides a shield against red-baiting from the right wing and identity-based attacks from the left. These expectations put a short expiration date on the partnerships the PSL pursues, especially those that have any responsibility to a social base, and indeed members are repeatedly instructed that "breakups are inevitable" and cadre should avoid forming too close a bond with anyone outside the PSL. In reality, no organization that represents real social forces will forever be content to accept direction from an external "anchor" that expects the level of subservience that the PSL does.
This sectarianism is not just petty; it results in the squandering of historically important opportunities. In the 2024 election, for example, the Stein campaign came to the PSL leadership to propose that the Green Party and PSL unite their presidential campaigns. Because of paperwork deadlines and restrictive ballot access laws, it would only be possible for Stein to be the formal presidential candidate and Claudia De La Cruz would have to be vice-president. But Stein was willing to organize the campaign in a way that she and Claudia would be presented as co-equal candidates running in an alliance, both equally empowered to speak on behalf of the campaign. This proposal was met with emotional meltdowns by multiple top Party leaders. The offer was rejected. This was the basis on which the PSL killed the possibility of a powerful third-party unity ticket, in an election in which the two major parties put up a repeat of the most quintessentially detestable capitalist candidates — Joe Biden and Donald Trump — for the second time to the American people.
In organizational terms, the explanation Smolarek gives for why PSL acts like this is that its goal is not actually to be a party; its true purpose is to be a tendency, with its ideological positions being almost unilaterally decided by the central figures. Therefore, it doesn’t practice democratic centralism in a way that can genuinely allow for dissent, and it fosters a culture of paranoia about the danger of other organizations destroying its tight inner cohesion. This central motivation—to make sure the ideals of the leadership are always the sole determining factor—is something that we should all examine in relation to self-criticism. Because any person or organization is capable of falling into idealism, and believing they can manifest success through sheer will.
This reality that arrogance and opportunism have the potential to appear anywhere is illustrated in the story of CPUSA’s (doomed) struggle against these dangers. During the “Third Period,” when the global communist movement was engaged in its battles with the social fascists, the party made an error by hubristically concluding it could build a mass movement on its own; this was effectively the mindset behind the “dual union” strategy it embraced at the time, in which communists tried to build “red unions” that could only divide the workers struggle. But after the Nazis gained power, the party corrected itself by adopting a resolution on building a mass labor party; a real mass labor party that doesn’t seek to subordinate the other coalition partners to the CP.
This move had everything to do with the urgent need for a popular front against fascism; not Browder’s “popular front” that subordinated the party to the Democrats, but an authentic partnership based around building working-class power. There is a difference between these things, and recognizing it is crucial to avoiding the hubris where you isolate yourself out of “principle.” About the reasoning behind the resolution, Foster explained that
Only the Communist Party is the consistent revolutionary class party of the proletariat. This does not mean, however, that a labor party can be of value to the workers only if the Communists are in complete organizational control of it. On the contrary, one of the surest means of defeating the labor party movement would be to build on the basis of Communist control as an imperative condition. That would surely strip the labor party, from the outset, of its character as a mass united-front organization. The labor party must be a real united front on the political field. The labor party must be based upon the broad-mass unions, while the Communists must stimulate the unions to link up with the movement for a mass-labor party.
When your organizational presence is weak, and you’re in no position to be making demands, entering into these alliances is critical in order to avoid irrelevance. And even when your movement is strong, it will be your downfall if you reject coalitions that are objectively essential. Look at what happened when Hasan Piker, the popular DSA-aligned streamer, refused to enter an alliance with Candace Owens after both of them had reached major prominence in the summer of 2026.
Hasan was so sure that the DSA would be able to beat the other wings of bourgeois politics, while cutting itself off from the anti-Zionist conservatives and independents who follow Candace. Yet even as the socdem tendency got new victories in 2026 with the election of figures like Abdul El-Sayed, all the signs were there that the Zohran wing would be crushed by the neoliberal Democrats. It was the old guard Dems who overwhelmingly gained from the midterms, simply because the system was designed to let the bulk of the victorious fall into their laps; Zohran’s politics are designed to only win inside the big metropolitan centers, so by default the neoliberals became dominant. The personality cults around Zohran, Sanders, and AOC have all served to alienate Hasan’s camp from the masses, like PSL alienated itself from them. These tendencies committed the same fatal error: believing they could succeed while not partnering with the potential allies who could have helped them at the most critical times.
We can’t assume we’re immune from repeating this mistake, or from following someone who does, just because we have superior politics to PSL or DSA. If and when we encounter this kind of self-defeating arrogance in other places, our response must not be to passively stand by it; act in a disciplined manner, but don’t let yourself be manipulated into not speaking up for the sake of friendship or “loyalty.” The types of actors who seek to undermine good community alliances have innumerable tactics they employ for gaslighting others into going along with their wrecking projects. Weaponization of the Palestinian cause is one of these tricks; watch out for anyone who conveys the message that “if you criticize me, you’re betraying Palestine.”
This was certainly one of the justifications that Becker used for intimidating any members who presented alternative strategies as PSL’s protest model failed to deliver on Gaza. And this same “criticism is betrayal of the cause” logic can be applied to any other rallying point, whether it’s the working-class struggle, racial justice, or anti-imperialism; someone who’s acting in bad faith will abuse whatever noble ideal they need to in order to keep you on their side.
When this kind of manipulation inevitably alienates allies, the rationale the manipulator will use is that they were always going to leave—as in “breakups are inevitable.” If you find yourself caught up in a situation like this, consider that while splits are indeed inevitable, you need to investigate the reasons behind why a split has happened. Whose interests does the division serve? The movement, or just the person who initiated the split? These are the kinds of questions that Palestine’s resistance needed to ask in order to become unified, and they’re what we’ll need to confront if we want to succeed.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures from our era of accelerating inflation, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment