Saw this thread, and it really hit a chord with me, as these similar fears tend to constantly weigh on me (for various reasons- being trans, ethnic Chinese, commie, etc).
I think we all (leftists, but also just most minorities) know, shit is bad and will get worse, it’s just a question of how bad it will get. People mention it offhand without usually going further into the details, and similarly in other spaces - non-leftist ones as well, for instance Asian diasporic and LGBT spaces in my experience, these fears come up, but ultimately we keep the bulk of our concerns to ourselves. What are our expectations here, for the west? Not just for the US, but the Anglosphere and Europe?
There’s a lot of defeatism and pretty un-dialectical projections of ‘4-chan-fukuyama’ doom I see in general in discussions regarding the growth of reaction, which not only often erases comrades doing work every day and have been (when people say “there’s no left here to speak of” etc), but which also often have a ‘liberal memory problem.’ Such as in blatantly not remembering how the 2016 fascist upsurge in the US got overwhelmingly smashed and scattered. Leaders of the fascists started eating each other, reporting on each other, there were even a few inter-fascist murders of leadership. To say nothing of the mass Fed-infiltration that they were incapable of dealing with. They’ve only recently been re-consolidating. Which doesn’t mean vigilance can be lost, but active defeatism is rooted in nothing material and comes from opportunist trends of thought (‘why bother’ or ‘I’ll just leave’ etc.). The whole ‘antifa’ panic in the media over how ‘big and dangerous’ the general anti-fascist movement was was a demonstration of ruling class concern and fear at mass mobilizations of anti-fascist militants — and the pigs had to resort to agents provocateur to try to undermine it and pass anti-mask and anti-protest laws, from which in all of these events anti-fascists and communists learned a lot and also grew in strength, numbers, and discipline.
Then there was the George Floyd uprisings. People who were at those protests and riots know what the real score is, and how many masses of people also know what the score is. And I mean the real mass movements of those uprisings, the pigs response against which produced way more left-radicalism, not less. The real movements, not the later-day shift which saw Soros&Co. billionaires finance liberal NGOs, whose same bourgeois-class’ corporate media collaborated to co-opt and divert contingents of the protests in more petty-bourgeois areas taking it out of the eye of broader society’s public (petty bourgeois) view (again, from which people learned a lot of essential lessons). Anyone trying to tell you those movements in their masses, in their real core rather than the bourgeois’ and their media’s narrative-construct of it, were liberal movements — and not the mass and very militant uprisings which they were, with much consciously overt and explicit anti-capitalist and anti-fascist revolutionary politics behind the push against white supremacy and the pigs and their prisons who serve these structures and systems, is telling on themselves that they weren’t in the shit and didn’t know or talk to anyone who was. The state’s response is and will always necessarily be disproportionate to dissuade through terror — but they didn’t come like that out of nowhere. A lot of the explicit messaging of these uprisings and protests and by their leaders were speaking in terms which make a lot of you on HB look like wandering liberals. Those uprisings got so dire for the bourgeois apparatus that they had to pull federal prison guards from DC to deal with the protests there (of which there are many implications for those who studied their theory and history of the struggle in their own country’s borders).
The current sustained and in many cases militant protests against the genocide in Palestine by many diverse peoples throughout the nation, more than bourgeois media will ever report, including even on college campuses which are petty bourgeois institutions (and as such act as a sort of societal ‘water mark’ of the extent-of-reach through the social and class strata of certain phenomenon) who are quoting Lenin and Mao and Fanon didn’t come from nowhere. It is a continuation of this history we are all living in and helping make (one way or another) every day. And this is the ongoing trajectory, from the struggles of the past unfolding today into our immediate future; which is integral to be conscious of and in its dialectical relationships with other movements and the changing material conditions, and not fall into ‘liberal memory problems’ where we are ‘born afraid-and-outraged yesterday’ about every new event and only considering how it relates to our own idealist projections on society 50 years in the past or 50 years in the future with anti-materialist and un-dialectical understandings of how it exists now.
Things ‘getting worse’ is a law of capitalism; Comrades Marx and Engels already exposed the various ways this integrally happen; expanded by Comrades Lenin and Nkrumah to further international politico-economic extents, which, and in their changes, can be dialectically understood in their inward-facing effects, and how those shifting material conditions dialectically interact with, and are interacted with by, the various segments of the masses of people in their class representations. Frantz Fanon and US revolutionaries of the BPP lineage who drew from his and Mao’s works themselves wrote and both in old and new generations still write plenty with which one can ground their understanding of colonialism and decolonization and the material conditions of the United States and the tasks of the struggle today as well, which is the only way to root one’s understanding seriously otherwise one is speaking nonsense. ‘No investigation, no right to speak’ applies to these topics as well.
There are always and have always already been fascistic colonial elements toward its internal colonies and in prisons in the US. This will remain and heighten in crises as they always have done until the system is overthrown. But this discussion in this thread and others about some qualitative shift as a blackshirt seizure-of-power turning all of this bureaucratized colonial terror with a neoliberal veneer, that all of you in the US have always lived in as you do live and have lived, into some overt judge dredd reality led by the myriad Little Eichmanns of twitter with nazi death-camps turning people into soylent green and mass enslavement expanding its infrastructure beyond the current confines and historical bounds of the prison system (which already enslaves people and you’re existing as you do now) into a fundamentally different society like that like people are envisioning, is marvel-brained thinking — the parts of this that aren’t flatly totally unrealistic are themselves not remotely as immediately imminent or likely as the defeatists convince themselves and others. Talking like this is an un-dialectical mode of thinking; only serving to create panic and confusion and deflation, instead of inspiration and focus and steeling ourselves and each other to continue constructing out of the changing material conditions a new antithesis to this organization of society, for which fascism is merely a restatement of the already-existing thesis into the new conditions. To talk in many of the ways people do here is a very un-dialectical mode of thinking, and an idealist conception of things to be focused in this fantasizing in fear about imaginary futures and projecting “hm yes in 2045 there is going to be these death camps and these factions and circumstances blah blah” with no work shown or in earnest actually done to build that proposed analysis. It is an idealist and opportunist ‘dream of the future’ and an exercise which serves nothing of value in dealing with the hard real tasks of today, of which struggles are ongoing every day — against imperialism, against police, against prisons, against lumpenization and gentrification and ghettoization as an extension of settler-colonialism (which even has its own manifestations with its own particular character in the lumpenization of those in old industrial towns creating critical contradictions as well as points of unity), etc.
The defeatism and opportunist doom-dreaming is ill-placed compared to the radical upsurges we saw in response in past uprisings, and which have grown and will grow — socialism has grown exponentially, more than corporate media will tell you, and will continue to. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and in my own groups and actions since 2016. Socialist gun clubs have also only grown since 2016. Fascist street groups have already always been vastly outnumbered by their street resistors even in the US. It is one of the reasons it gets expressed in stochastic terror on soft targets instead, is their otherwise lack of strength and cohesion. This all needs to be understood and worked into our dialectical understanding to continue with our better understandings and so better theory and practice than our opponents; and take these concrete realities as they actually are and are unfolding to be worked into our analyses and practice with rigor toward the tasks of the proletariat today, not in some possible or otherwise imagined future, but today.
to paraphrase myself in a past comment and altered to fit the circumstances
Socialists see that socialism can win and are making it happen, as anyone who has been involved in socialist organizing in the last 10 years has been able to plainly see socialism exponentially grow more than it has the 35 years before it.
The CHUDS and liberals being ideologically incapable of objectivity regarding themselves, their history, or their current circumstances and the conditions of the coming reality [such as with climate crises events, such as with the mechanisms of multipolarization, such as with the nature of US society, and its history and colonial relations, and the real character and interests of the bourgeoisie, etc.] means they necessarily have and will continue to have bad analyses, bad theories, and so bad practice, and be comparatively woefully unprepared to manage the emergent circumstances and contradictions in society and between each other; and be, as we have seen of them in many cases, unable to remain sufficiently disciplined, organized, and focused to stay ahead in the struggle as ruptures and crises continue to throw more and more of the hitherto apathetic masses into politics while the pressures of the coming future massively complexify circumstances. Whereas the socialists, led by the most principled, incisive, and decisive Marxists, firmly rooted in Leninist organizational principles with scientifically sound adaptations to our respective material conditions — and so having the objective ability to organizationally outperform the other socialists in pure mechanical terms, engage with material reality as it is; not as it was or as we wish it would be or as it might be someday in the future, but as it currently is in living reality in its unfolding and in all its constituent forces, accurately discerned through the methodological framework of historical materialism and dialectical materialism which has and has proven in history to have unmatched predictive power when thoroughly grasped and applied correctly.
And it is in this, with an eye to where the masses of people are and are oriented in their class representations in their various movements and circumstances, and where the revolutionary masses are, and where current material conditions find and changing material conditions will alter the positions and interests, and mobilize in different ways, the masses of people; and through discerning how that can be best maneuvered-in to agitate, educate, and break-through into new fronts the ruptured contradictions between the people and the enemy bringing more of the masses of working people to our side — with and as a part of whom, by being the leading tip of an organized spear, us Marxists among and as part of these conscious masses (whose consciousness is our responsibility to develop) can meet the challenges head on and stay ahead of and strike truer than those who remain bewildered, panicked, idealist and delusional, misdirected or directionless, or capitulated to despair.
I mean just think about the large reactionary bourgeois and petty bourgeois populations, upon which fascism relies; which are rooted in no-small-part in suburbs. Suburbs are themselves objectively (and by design) atomized and alienated and inherently cut-off detachments of society, separated from each other and from access to necessities. They’re a terrible organizational and logistical core body for that section of bourgeois and petty bourgeois to stage and organize anything meaningful in resistance to those outside them, while making a good proportion of who makes up that section of society. Mao is a big help here, but we’re not nearly there (quite now). There are so many real actual things to consider in a dialectical sense for the benefit of real planning, which blatantly serve to contradict the realistic building of these ‘doomed futures,’ which don’t exist because futures don’t arise out of peoples ideas, they arise out of how class struggle is waged in changing material conditions and arrangement of forces and relations.
From the perspective of an illiterate peasant in western and central Eurasia, the times from 1914-1923 probably seemed like the end of the world. But the communists weren’t moping ‘it’s hopeless’ or speculating on dreams of ‘what the future of the return of super-Tsarism will look like’ (CONCEDING DEFEAT WITHOUT STATEMENT, which is objectively counter-revolutionary and outright reactionary) — They didn’t embrace despair and reinforce the hopelessness of the backwards masses, they acted as the most advanced segment of the working class, motivated them, pitied and counseled those who were afraid of repression, and instead inspired and led them into acting in material reality, shaking them from their hopeless dreams into the material tasks before them. They engaged with material reality as it was, and from this struggle secured and built all that came after. It was not without death and suffering, just as there is today, and in every great time of change in history regardless, and including in pre-history and the time of life on this planet in general, where there have many times, and always been, great times of great change. Life went on and changed with it. We take the material conditions of our time and engage with their changing as they come, just as all life does when it comes into being and while it goes through its span.
And it is not just the people mobilized right now to consider — every “fairweather” sympathetic-to-communism ‘leftist’ whose agreeance we win who, even if not organizing or currently directly engaged, will be much more likely to tacitly or openly support us and to join these mass movements which are being and have been being built every day by dedicated revolutionaries as they grow, when crises throw more and more of the hitherto apathetic masses into politics (as has been historically and was described by Lenin as symptomatic of every revolution and which we have seen portents of in recent uprisings the past years) — every one of those “fairweather” leftists is worth more to the cause of socialism than 100 vulgar “materialist” defeatist Marxists who convince themselves and try to convince others of defeat because of ‘X Y Z possibility in the future.’ Who will be less likely to join mass movements now as well as when they grow, because they’ve convinced themselves (and even worse, possibly others), just as they often do now, that “it’s not enough, too late, too small, it’s barbarism” or whatever self-defeating dream at odds with reality; convincing themselves the only options are retiring, accepting a fate, fleeing, etc. Which amounts to opportunist capitulation before the battle has even been pitched and encouraging others to do the same, if not in word in effect. This has been true in what I’ve seen of others’ attitudes and potential in my own organizing experience among socialists and non-socialists alike, as well looking objectively in a mass-politics sense, is and will necessarily be true. I would take a hundred eager yet naive or as-yet-uneducated ‘leftists’ before any well-read Marxist making defeatist capitulationist statements and arguments and speaking in ultra-style ‘discouragements-as-virtue’. Socialism is growing exponentially, and will continue to and become stronger; especially if directionless defeatism is not spread through the ranks of who’re supposed to be the working class’ most advanced contingent.
Fear is a natural human impulse; no one is “wrong” to have fear, and deserve compassion for it and to have their concerns heard. But one is wrong to make fear their politics and then choose to spread that fear in their political groups. HB is not an organization, but it is a socialist space where people come and learn things, as well as where people exist who do or will participate regularly in real life organizing (as everyone who is able it is necessary and heavily advised to, not only for the practical reality of building a better future but as well as it actively helps these emotions not fester into directionless helpless fear because they are put towards positive construction for change). This must be held in mind, and cognizance must be taken about what is being said and what effects it has on not just the construction of socialism and peoples ideas and political education and development (which is important to consider), but also the immediate emotional and psychological effects on our comrades. It is not good for them or us personally let alone in a mass-politics sense that some of these un-dialectical and idealism-rooted fantasy-horrors are painted as if they are an inevitable reality and are not just allowed but encouraged and reinforced in a race-to-the-bottom as in some of these comments and many threads. It serves no one. It serves reaction in its effects. It’s part of why I really dislike the existence of the ‘c/doomer’ community, which actively encourages all of the worst strands of these trends both emotionally and politically. But that’s my part on all this.
I can’t add much to this amazing post, other than a small data point:
A pro-palestine group and socialist org were both formed early this year in the red state small city that I recently moved from. Multiple members are MLs, some are anarchists, maybe a couple trots, all independently radicalized and self-educated. Even more inspiring was the trajectory of some of the members from liberal democrat to early-ML, just in the couple months I was there.
Things are happening, just not visibly in the bourgeois-controlled spectacle.