PARTISAN!

Avery, Online

[See also: want to change the left? start winning]

Dear Partisan and FMQ, in response to a letter ‘want to change the left? start winning’ by FMQ, published on June 17, 2025, As the Editor noted: ‘Unclear if this is a critique of the RCO or any particular organisation, or The Left in general.’ Let’s assume FMQ is critiquing the RCO as well as the wider left. Is action and success charismatic, and is that what it takes to win the socialist revolution? Are the RCO ‘dorks’? Is the Left filled with ‘dorks’?

‘Nerds’ or ‘geeks’ are common terms some activists use to dismiss the RCO and their magazines, especially in late 2023 when Direct Action’s articles about Rising Tide and Blockade Australia spread through word of mouth in the Sydney climate left (In depth: the “People’s Blockade, Direct Action, Dec. 2023 #8″). The magazine’s barbs of ‘adventurist’ and ‘seemingly defunct’ to describe Blockade Australia caused umbrage like reading the latest gossip paper from Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton.

The RCO and Partisan have developed since 2023 and their critiques of the jocks (my terminology) undertaking blockades or pickets are more nuanced. In turn, the ‘adventurist’ leftists are getting older and more reflective, perhaps more open to critique. Most of us want to improve.

FMQ writes: ‘There’s an undeniable charisma to those who can actually make change that can cut through the spectacle of pointless debate and get to brass tacks. That’s what online theory dorks who do nothing but talk cannot have.’ My caution is that if leftists take too much action, with inflexible and conservative messaging, we become blockheaded and uncharismatic, lacking creativity and reflection, with actions on loops like a festival circuit. Police see us coming and we are too boring for the media, who have already reported on our stories.

RCO members do engage in protests and pickets, some of a street-fighting kind: see Disrupt Land Forces (https://partisanmagazine.org/2024/09/16/on-the-ground-at-disrupt-land-forces/). The Land Forces conference is scheduled to return in 2026, so perhaps that protest failed and falls in the ‘ineffective activism’ FMQ writes of, but I suspect it will always look like failure until we win the revolution for an Oceania socialist republic in twenty years, in which case everything will be re-evaluated as successful all along.