Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio.

On today's episode we're going to do something a little different.

Allison and I decided to kind of team up and put together a response to a debate that's

going on.

It's been going on historically, of course, but it's really taken off on left social media

in the last week.

And that is this argument around patriotism, the use of patriotic aesthetics on the left,

what is sometimes called red patriotism or proletarian patriotism, and basically the argument

is between whether this is a viable strategy to reach working class people or not, and

that argument has been bouncing back and forth.

There's a lot of perspectives on this argument, but all Allison and I can do is try to engage

with it in good faith, put together an honest response to it, and articulate what we believe

to be the principled Marxist and communist positions on the topic as best as we can.

And we think it's a worthwhile debate to have if it wasn't and if it was something that

didn't have some sway with some amount of people on the Marxist's left, it wouldn't even

be worth addressing.

But today we think it is worth addressing and we want to go through these arguments.

And so yeah, with that said, I'll just ask Allison, maybe upfront the best thing to

do here is just to sort of articulate what we want to accomplish with this episode and

then what we are and are not saying because I think clearing the path of some obvious and

ready-made strawman might be helpful as a starting point to this overall conversation.

Totally.

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