Lot of responses talking about Leon Trotsky himself (none that I saw which focus on his time before the Bolshevik band breaks up, someone should write that one!), lots talking about collaboration with anti communist groups by Trotskyist organizations and their development path due to being the only game in town over here in the west at least. Not much talking about their mass media focused strategy.

A part of the Bolshevik revolution that never gets enough attention imo is the newspapers. All kinds of political movements all over the world had presses, but what made communist newspapers interesting during the revolution was that they represented a powerful political tool that would ultimately become, and arguably already was, mass media. One of the leading edges of the movement to overturn social order was what would become, and arguably already was, a force for social control in the imperial core’s development into consumptive economy.

So it’s easy to understand why mass media plays such a big role in Trotskyist actions and strategy in the 20th century.

The failure of it comes from still fighting on that terrain when it’s already lost. Bolshevik newspapers did fantastically well to disseminate their ideas to people because people were willing to read them with an open mind. The states media organs were underdeveloped and the consumers were partaking in a form that, while it had been in existence for hundreds of years, didn’t have the perfect delivery of ideas mastered yet. There were rough edges to be expected in mass media and the state couldn’t credibly just call something stupid and have everyone believe it.

Once the state was credible though, once the craft of media was so perfected that every poison pill slipped right down our gullets, once the blip of American postwar production passed and everything faded to consumption, it was over. We could have the gulf of Tonkin, contras, nayirah, anthrax, wmd, viagra soldiers and beheaded babies. There’s no socialist newspaper that could stand against that machine.

I forgot what I was talking about.