This is the second old thread I’ve bumped but I searched r/communism to see what people’s thoughts and experiences were here on Lemmygrad. Not long ago I had some free time and added some new books to my collection, mainly some of Stalin’s writings that I hadn’t read and I went along with my partner who was working to stay in the middle of nowhere - perfect for study. But I wanted a platform for asking questions/aiding my study and checked out reddit for the first time. Was banned in r/communism fairly quickly for a couple of days for helping a newbie with some suggestions for reading on a certain topic which was basically some ML theory supplemented with a couple of texts that were from bourgeois media sources and a book in which Chomsky had written a fairly decent account of the basic history of the topic, but these sources were relevant and helpful in understanding the topic in question (I can’t remember what the topic was).

Later I was banned for quite a well-thought out ML analyses/comment in a thread that was “upvoted” many times but the mods didn’t like it and banned me without giving a reason. I saw other subreddits and found the “you’re not a real communist until you’ve been banned from r/communism” thing being said and found decent comrades but initially I felt really sh*tty about it. It started to make sense to me in that they embody the worst stereotypes about “communists”: disagreeable, hostile and all the rest of it which obviously isn’t true at all given how much of our work consists of education - education never ends. I saw other people suggest that it was a fed-run operation to turn people - especially newbies - away from understanding communism/communist theory and to put them off entirely. If it could even make me momentarily second guess myself then I can’t imagine what kind of effect this would have on someone just starting out.

But yes, fed-run and they have an unreasonably dogmatic rule which is something like: “mandatory: read Settlers” as in you must read what is a disputed work or you are not welcome.

For such a hostile environment supposedly run by and for communists, I can only understand it as being designed to put people off of engaging with communist theory/praxis etc. and this makes me think that its a psyop/fed run or whatever. The J. Sakai thing being “mandatory” was a major sign that something was wrong IMO, regardless of what comrades think of that text.