This would have been much better directed at the arrogant Student Grant pompous cunt who started off by going in with two feet. Had there been any indication that a genuine discussion was being sought, the response may have been different.
Read back over the thread.
This "arrogant Student Grant pompous cunt" actually started off by asking "how is the IWCA currently doing in its attempts to build a political alternative?" My next post pointed out that it seems that the IWCA is smaller than it when started out. And my third post consisted of the question "even if everyone was currently shrinking, aren't the IWCA supposed to have a better way than the "failed left"?"
The idea that an IWCA supporter, a supporter of a group which is absolutely routinely dismissive of and insulting about everyone else on the left could describe this as "going in with two feet" is laughable. The thing is though that these questions, which were not particularly aggressive, were immediately met with snidey shit, insults and the defensiveness which so characterises IWCA members when they are asked about their own organisation's difficulties.
You are the ultimate example of a group which absolutely loves doling out the stick to everyone else, yet goes totally mental if anyone criticises your own record or even asks a question you might not like the answer to. You can dish it out, but you can't take it.
past caring said:
One possibility might be that the IWCA wants (needs) to arrive at its own conclusion to those questions before sharing any answers with people outside the organisation.
Finally, an honest answer: You don't know why the IWCA has declined in recent years, you don't know how to reverse that and you don't know what the way forward is. But you're willing to think about it and you'd rather not do that thinking in public.
And it only took a few dozen posts of random abuse, personal insults, accusations of hysteria, misdirected aggression and general fucking idiocy before one of you got there.
The problem is that the position you eventually take above isn't really compatible with the IWCA's characteristic sneering towards every other left organisation. Which is exactly why most of your supporters prefer to keep the conversation focused on what you see as everyone else's failings and away from what might be seen as your own failings. You don't have answers (at least at this point) but you don't want to give up your favourite political pose of "everyone else is stuck in the past, only we have the way forward".
Despite the best efforts of some of the people in this thread, I'm not particularly hostile to the IWCA. I think that the braggadocio and sneering is pretty unattractive and wholly unearned by your actual achievements, but I also think that the IWCA have had some interesting things to say and I would actually be interested to know more about the successes and failures of their approach on a local level.
If you are going to go around telling people that your model is the way forward, you have to expect people to ask questions like "how come your branches almost all seem to follow the same pattern of quick success on a small scale followed by a gradual fading away?" Or "how exactly is the model supposed to spread out of the initial small area?"
) 
