ITT:
Everyone thinking that the only two options are being quiet or being violent.
Strikes are currently making those in power very uncomfortable, and are resulting in genuine progress for workers.
In my area, people camping out in thousand year old trees has protected them time and again from being illegally logged.
Black Lives Matter protests were loud and made the powerful uncomfortable, and despite media narratives it wasn’t “violent protesters” that made the powerful uncomfortable.
It is true that any form of protest that is loud and inconveniencing enough to actually be productive will be met with state violence.
It’s also true that some working for progress do use violence. But make no mistake, it’s not guns that made those in power uncomfortable when it came to Malcom X and the Black Panthers.
The most radical and intimidating (to those in power) things the Black Panthers did were to give free food to schoolchildren, and free healthcare at their People’s Free Medical Clinics.
Building community and mutual aid is subversive.
Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.
Building community and mutual aid is subversive.
This. Both the government and the major corporations depend on being able to extract wealth from real people getting what they need. If we build dual power structures, help one another out and cut the owner class out of the transaction entirely, we weaken them. Growing food in your garden is revolutionary. Clothing swaps are revolutionary. Cutting the old lady next door’s lawn, then eating the soup she made is an act that strikes at the fundamental underpinnings of the power structure set up by those who think that they should be entitled to our labor because they’ve been arbitrarily designated as the “owners” of things. We can and should remove them from the equation entirely.
If you wrote a book I’d read it.
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Canada’s treatment of first nations is just as bad as the U.S.'s, and we won’t win every time; But neither will the fascists.
People are waking up to the fact that many governments we were raised to trust are committing active genocide, but the protests that will win will not be spontaneous. They never truly are.
The people that are organizing and building community now learned (usually quite directly) from those that made real change decades ago.
The constant cries of “general strike!” (almost exclusively from white people who refuse to learn from those that have done the work) always fail.
They fail because it’s not about just setting a date and announcing it; It’s about having the community, infrastructure, expertise, and experience already in place to care for the people that simply would otherwise starve if the communities of care weren’t in place.
The trust from very reasonably scared people that they will be cared for rather than abandoned.
Successful movements always come from years to decades of building a foundation.
Every protest is an opportunity to build that community, even if individual actions “fail”.
And yes, people will die on the path to real change. But more will die if we simply remain complacent.
I know you weren’t suggesting to give up, and I assume you also weren’t suggesting perpetrating violence to achieve progress.
Even though you weren’t suggesting either, I think it’s worth laying out the bigger picture explicitly.
Also, for anyone who read this far, I highly recommend reading any of Mariama Kaba’s books, https://mariamekaba.com/ https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1922-let-this-radicalize-you .
Why wasn’t I taught about the free food and medical care part of what they did?
You were quietly taught that armed black people were scary. That’s what they wanted you to remember, not what they armed themselves for.
Ugh… this just makes me feel all sorts of awful. I struggle to find the exact words.
Shit, at least you were taught about them. Never even heard about the Black Panthers until later in my adult life on a random reddit comment.
Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.
Small mutual aid for local communities grow out into large social aid organizations that have political power. Politicians can make them redundant by unemployment, healthcare and pensions, or try to nip them in the bud.
Politicians can try.
That can’t stop us from trying though.
One of the most subversive things you can do IMO is move your life and wealth to China
or get hired for a gubment job and slack off/sell seekrits
if you can’t do those two, then comes the 5 finger discount and IRL minecraft
IRL socialist networks need to be secretive and disguised as something else. Maybe even “community watch” or something
Anytime I hear people say dumb shit like this I just start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit, they absolutely didn’t give a single fuck about any of this struggle session bullshit wreckers like to trot out to sabotage effective resistance
Then I end with the date Roe got overturned, but they still somehow cannot connect the dots and want to talk about registering new voters or some fucking bullshit
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit
The problem is that this form of violence is implicitly endorsed by the state and by a majority of the ruling class. They don’t see it as competition to their monopoly on violence.
However, if leftist groups were to emulate this level of violence it would be condemned by every media outlet for weeks. Liberal politicians would rush to condemn the violence and lay the groundwork to justify an even more violent retaliation.
I’m not saying that violence is never the answer, but if you are not on the side that has a monopoly on violence then you have to be much more aware of how your actions may validate the state’s ability to do violence upon yourself and your cause.
minecraft pigs
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Anytime I hear people say dumb shit … out to sabotage effective resistance
Great points here
Then I end … some fucking bullshit
Still going strong
white people bad
Audible disgust
First things first: white people bad! If you have questions I’ll try to answer em, but the settlers in a settler colonial state are unequivocally bad.
With that out of the way, the person you’re replying to is assuming you are already aware and recognize the ways that protest and direct action are coded and racialised in media. Pictures of white people are used with captions about a peaceful protest, pictures of black and brown people are used with captions about them “turning violent” and looting.
The narrative that creates is one where white people are nonviolent and it’s the black and brown people who are associated with direct action.
The point the person you’re replying to is making by saying
turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like
Is that the media narrative about white forms of protest being nonviolent is a lie.
Ah, I see the point. I didn’t realize it was a commentary on how media portrays these issues.
I struggle with the idea that all white people in the U.S. are somehow bad.
When I, or anyone else for that matter, talk about how white people are bad I’m talking about how the position they occupy in society is bad, not how an individual has committed some original sin of whiteness and must atone.
Whiteness is a social construct used to enforce racialized class society.
A person can no more atone for the classification society created and laid upon them than they can shake off that classification itself.
The thing that is bad about white people is their position in racialised class society in the settler colonial state. An individual white person can uphold all the rules and morals you could name but will still occupy the role of oppressor in the hierarchy everyone lives under.
The usual response people give to me is something along the lines of “well what if a white person fought against racial oppression, they wouldn’t be bad and you would be wrong!” Combined with usually either Lincoln or John brown as examples. Those are great examples of how the settler colonial state will protect itself and will find an outlet for its appetites. Lincoln fought against the Dakota uprising and brown was killed for his insurrection.
I don’t bring that up to make an easy dunk over the head of some guy I made up, but to preempt the response that seems to be on everyone’s lips.
If a person is raised as a certain type of person with every aspect of society behaving towards them with respect to that typification, included in which is the normalization and reification of the relationship that type is a part of, the person will “be” what that type is within that relationship.
Remember the funny dub king fu movie, “we trained him wrong as a joke”? Imagine “we trained him to ~be white~ as a ~way to ensure the propagation of class society~”
All of what you’re saying makes sense, and I believe you believe what you’re saying.
I don’t know if I buy that everyone that says white people are bad have this much thought going into it. My experience with people suggests that this simply can’t be true, as there are far too many individuals (especially with the access to information we have these days) that seek others to think for them and act according to their declarations.
What you’re saying, however, all adds up. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
It may come as a surprise to you, but my views are not birthed fully formed out of my forehead.
It took years of reading, conversation and consideration to reach that place. A huge part of that wasn’t even reaching the conclusions but was instead figuring out how to put them into words and how to express them under the sort of violence and history averse liberal framework of polite discussion that people expect.
All that is to say: Very little of what I’ve written are my own original ideas and thoughts. Am I letting others think for me? I demonstrably have. Am I acting according to their decisions. I am at this very moment doing so.
So I’d say it’s less important that people have thought and read deeply than it is for them to recognize and accept the correct understanding.
To put it another way, if you holler “think fast!” and toss a ball to someone, does it matter if they trained extensively to recognize that it’s better for them to make that catch than the third baseman or just whipped around and caught whatever was coming reflexively?
It doesn’t matter in that case, but it would be best if a person figure out weather it’s a kitchen knife, water balloon or baseball before they move to make the catch. The analog to our trained catcher there maybe would be a vanguard party, whose members train and study to be able to lead movements and recognize and counter any reactive or reformist tendencies within those movements.
Maybe when a person who doesn’t express it like I have or in the context of the settler colonial state says “white people are bad” it doesn’t matter if they can do so or simply responds “I hate them” when pressed.
The onus is on all people of right mind and heart to hear the cry of the colonized, and not upon the colonized to fit their protest into the presuppositions of their oppressors.
I know this is a late response, I did just forget to respond, but looking through my past conversations lead me back here.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with utilizing information uncovered by others to guide your worldview. I think it’s elegant, why reinvent the wheel?
However, we live in a world filled with people that have been trained by social media to find the fastest route to justifying their personal views.
Think of it the same way as the “20% of the population, 50% of the crime” statistic. Big number better than small number. Small number responsible for bad big number, small number bad. No nuance, no context, they see the statistic and think “me me no number good, but I don’t like black people so this tracks”.
You can clarify all you want after the fact. When your message is “yt ppl bad” you cannot expect that every person reading will go through your detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad. The average person will see the surface level and go no further.
Just food for thought. This isn’t just about “the colonized fitting their protests into the presuppositions of their oppressors”. Think about all these white people suddenly behaving like they’re being “oppressed”. I’m sure you’ve heard about it, despite it being fucking ridiculous considering it’s entirely online.
When Billy the inbred sees “yt people bad” do you think he’s going to give a shit when you give a detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad ? No, he’s going to take 5 minutes learning what “yt” means, then be insulted. Then he’s going to experience more of that shit, and come to the conclusion that he’s oppressed. But he feels fine! He gets to fuck his sister everyday, if that’s being oppressed then sign him up!
Suddenly, there’s -1 person that thinks oppression is 1) still a problem and 2) really as bad as people say it is.
Seems like a recipe for two sides that hate each other. Don’t know how you see that ending in anything other than bloodshed.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease
Exactly. The louder and more obnoxious you are, particularly towards those in power, the more likely they are to actually listen, even if just to get you to fuck off
That sounds dirtier than it should be.
The entirety of history also shows that a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.
So, still feeling up for it?
Far more people than you seem to think so are feeling up to it, risk of bodily harm nonwithstanding. That same history shows that whole lots of people do and have gotten that fed up.
The current challenge imo is the hyperfocused and extremely well funded tools to disorganize and fracture populaces globally.
They are so abstract, so psychologically targeted and so pervasive that they enable the rise of fascism again even though many of the players are frankly cartoonishly inept (more so than in the past; fascism is cunning and bullish, but seldom clever) to the point that the banality of evil of yesterday is nearly preferable to the bumbling cruelty of today.
Yes, still feeling up to it, but while the precipice nears, there’s still both time to turn the car around and get ready to violently brake. We’re just careful drivers until there’s a need to maneuver.
Joke’s on you, I already wish I was dead
When doing nothing becomes so intolerable and the potential gain is high enough to make the risk of death is worth taking then the answer becomes “yes”. That’s why people don’t take extreme actions easily.
Putting it another way, if enough people are willing to take big risks, then the status quo must be pretty damned awful in their view.
They’re gonna kill me if I don’t
If you live inside the heart of the West, your life is still good enough—yes, even those struggling and clinging on the edges of poverty—and the bread and circuses still mostly work as distractions. But the world isn’t only the West. There are plenty in the other 6/7 of humanity who are willing to die for the hope of change. Life was hard before, but having endured impacts of a global pandemic, wars, and starvation, people are getting pushed to their limit. We are seeing many sparks of revolution starting to light on the dark prairie.
How many of them are fighting for the “right” reasons? How many of them will end up in a better place? Nobody knows. But if even one or two turn into full-on fires, things will certainly get shaken up. And thereafter, unlike the Arab Spring days, there are Global South countries arising that are strong and wealthy enough to lend a hand, whose national interests lie toward helping regions to transition toward stability after any social blowups.
At some point, change will come upon us, and we won’t have any say in how peaceful or violent it will be.
a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.
For the change to not happen, a whole lot of people need to be ready to keep dying from the status quo. It’s incredible that some people still think a war isn’t being waged when we don’t resist the oppression and exploitation. Here you are implying those who are ready to fight for themselves—and for you!—are your enemies, when your real enemies know the lesson you refuse to learn:
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.
—Warren Buffett
So, still feeling like leaving us all to continue being slowly murdered as you sit and do nothing?
The question is, do you think more will die from the status quo or from a revolution?
Nope. That’s really not the question, in fact. What a shitty, boring, “utilitarian” view of the struggle for liberation. Why are you even in this community, liberal?
Yes, it’s exactly the question that needs to be asked in relation to my original argument. If people feel that more will die from a revolution than from the status quo then good luck convincing people to increase their chance to die.
Heck, the fact that we’re here and able to discuss this in the first place shows how spoiled we are even if things aren’t as good as they could be. People that are really poor don’t have a computer or a cellphone to communicate on a niche website.
People in first world countries are walking with a pebble in their shoe and some are complaining that we need to stop and remove it, the majority doesn’t care when they see people from third world countries walking with a broken foot.
Yes, I get it. Already got it, in fact. But thanks anyway for reporting on yourself.
Reasonableness is for the status quo.
I think there was a guy who once said where power grows from, but I can’t remember the quote
uhhh… eenie… meenie… miniey… mao
Why is Hunter S Thompson in there?
Honestly, because it has a gun in it and I didn’t really think about it much. I improved it now.
People didn’t get their rights asking for them nicely.
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I think mao said something about this
This reminds me of the Douglas Adams thing from ‘last chance to see’
It depends on the kind of change you are attempting to make. Revolutionary changes aren’t going to be accomplished without someone getting hurt, but if you are trying to change the name of your town from Lincolnville to Frankville that likely won’t require injury.
I just want to change the name St Petersburg back to Leningrad.
Look at the US, they begged England for representation. Even after they gave an ultimatum they begged to stay but it didn’t work and they had a war that France won
Very effective gaslighting by those in power.
It’s amazing how a perspective can change when one’s head is rolling around on the cobblestone.
Its time to sharpen the guillotines
Dull is fine.
