This comment made my day, just felt it was something more people should see. Thank you, @[email protected]
The primary is finally about to hit my home state and people are talking about doing an "uncommitted" campaign like our neighbors. Local org was debating whether to sign on. Pro position was standard local DSAish stuff. Con position was "voting at all legitimizes this genocidal regime".
I'm inside the "progressive death star" of this swing state that swung it from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. It ain't happening. I'm sorry sweety genocide is unelectable.
I really don't see how voting for "I'm explicitly saying this is all horseshit" legitimizes voting.
If you don't vote theyll just ignore you, it's a lot harder to spin the fact that 20% of people voted for "go fuck yourself"
If you don't vote theyll just ignore you
This has been proven over and over and over again; I can't believe it's still a topic of debate.
Yeah, I'm regularly involved in pro-Palestine events and one constant is that we always get massively higher turnout than the organizers anticipated. Like, 3-4 times the expected turnout showing up on weeknights, in freezing weather to picket and protest.
I'm only skeptical because that's what people said during BLM and we can see how that turned out. This is obviously different because it's harder to co-opt and it's people expressly caring about another country and not a vague self-interest, but I still worry it'll just get spectaclized and moved on from in 1 year.
People may have said it but 2020-era BLM honestly was always full of anti-Trump libs. It was clearly not radical to me, although 2012-era BLM was much better. Occupy was probably a more radical movement generally but, also, watered down by too many libs.
I was too young to participate meaningfully but the Bush anti-war movement was also probably full of libs mourning Gore's loss. I can't say myself, but I do hope this time it really is pushing people into the Left's cutting-edge.
It didn't turn out to be radical but it was the most radical thing a lot of us have experienced in our lifetime. A police station got burned to the ground. Giant crowds of people blocking bridges.
It did at least accomplish the goal of cops becoming national villains. Their ranks have thinned at least 
That's true. I mean, a lot of people who participated in 2020-BLM were too young for either Occupy or 2012-BLM so it makes sense as a matter of course.
But, other than the burning of a police station (
), as far as I can remember all those things were done many times in both Occupy and 2012-BLM too despite the presence of libs. Libs do sometimes like to riot porn as a phase of youthful indiscretion.
BLM 2020 ranged. I also remember events with the police to prove they weren't ACAB but just wanted police reforms and an end to racial brutality in particular. There was also one video I saw of a large group tackling and dragging someone in Black Bloc and handing them over to cops to appear to maintain civil, peaceful protest which really left me speechless.
I think the spectacle of the Trump presidency did a lot for organization, whether they were libs or not.
That momentum was killed almost immediately after Biden came into office. But now there's a new spectacle, that cannot be written off as the fault of the orange man. My bloomer take is this new momentum is built on something more material and visceral that can maybe transcend the effect that killed the momentum with Biden.
Just a hope. I have this weird vibe that trump was vaguely better for the country in the way a fever is "good" because its your body fighting off infection. If you take an asprin to reduce the fever, you're not addressing the cause of the fever, just the symptoms, but now you'll take longer to get better, just in comfort. This isn't really based on theory, but shit man, a lot more people were in the streets when fascism was loud n proud.
With Trump there was a multiplication effect. The liberals wanted to cause havoc. They wanted to cause problems and spectacle. They fed into leftist organising and agitation as part of that.
As soon as Trump was gone, the liberals went back to brunch and their impact on boosting leftist organising was immediately felt.
Liberals also didn’t just go back to brunch. They became much more actively hostile to organizing.
I think the spectacle of the Trump presidency did a lot for organization
I almost saw the opposite, Trump made Libs feel like their were the resistance and a lot of younger leftists fell for it and basically became Libs themselves. All energy was directed at fighting Trump and anyone even slightly to the left of him became an "ally".
I mean, CHAZ also happened under trump which was sorta nuts. But I also understand what you're saying.
Are we hopeposting?
My wife came back from a bible study group she had been invited to and someone there said that he was in the bundeswehr, then private sector but finally got tired of busting his ass for capitalists and now does social work. Not necessarily a socialists but this is from a congregation that I had (maybe wrongly) clocked as very lib.
Yeah I'm thinking it's bloomer hours
this is true, a hundred or so of us marched in Honolulu, and we even had people on the street join us. Multiple joined our organizations. Communists are growing in power each day
Yeah it sometimes feels like summer 2020 again, just less intense and more of a spread out discontent feeling. I know times are different and the conditions are different, but I try to remember that the Communist Party of China was founded with 50 memebers in July of 1921. By 1949 they had complete control of the country. The Cuban party was even smaller at its outset, only around a dozen people, and only something like 150 members during the mid 1950s when they were actively fighting an insurgency.
Something's gotta give eventually. I know there were other times in US history like this. Anarchists kidnapping wealthy people in the 1890s, the coal wars, Haymarket, the weather underground, giant antiwar protests against the Vietnam war then again against Iraq.
But my disco elysium style Shivers skill keeps activating. I keep hearing whispers there's something going on, or something's gonna break soon. No idea what. Maybe I'm still young and naive but I smell something
Fuck yeah hope
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