In another lifetime, I actually met the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) and the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), the two Trotskyist groups mentioned in the links below. The IBT seemed nice as persons and their message was indeed known as "Spartacism with a human face". The RWL were more weird, but not *that* much weirder than any other hyper-activist leftist group I was familiar with (read: the CWI section in Sweden). Or so I assumed...
The links below show what was *really* going on behind closed doors in the IBT´s New Zealand (sic) section, and the RWL in the United States. I´ve heard the accusations against the IBT before, but the RWL stuff was news. I assumed the RWL was just a bunch of petty bourgeois kids from the local art college who couldn´t tell semi-Stalinophilia from pro-paedophilia, but clearly I didn´t know half of it!
It´s interesting to note that both groups are splits from the super-cultic Spartacist League, although it´s not entirely clear whether there is a direct connection. After all, these kinds of practices, bizarre and deeply *unserious* at the same time, exist in all kinds of outfits...
And since you wonder, I don´t know who Samuel Trachtenberg is (was?), nor have I ever met Bill Logan...
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