We must make this system untenable if we want to save ourselves.
Great! Lemme just let the trans folks in my life know that alls we gotta do is elect the fuck who threatens to erase their existence entirely!
Bc the untenable systems at play in Russia, S Arabia, DPRK, RSA, etc. have done wonders towards the citizenry in those countries rising up and rebelling… oh… wait… thats right… its damn near impossible to rise up the closer your state is to the fascist mark. Congrats, ur right that the liberal system blows. Replacing it with something worse will only make things worse.
How successful have you been at bringing ur fellow comrades together to organize for direct action? And thats going to go better after we go full fascist?! After our minority allies are straight up outlawed?
You have the same level of comprehension for nuance as maga cultists. We are on the brink of fascism because liberals are useless.
But me? Oh, I organized an antifascist groups that organized one of the largest antifascist protests in the US the day after the murder of Heather Heyer, helped organize an antifascist self defence training group, I organized a police oversight group that de-anonomized thousands of complaints about police allowing for the identification of highly problematic officers, one of whom was fired after our efforts. I helped get the data for SPD.watch. I organized several public records request trainings. I started a food security committee that helped a bunch of people get food when they didn’t have money, which expanded to canning food for houseless folks and supporting camps. oh, I also organized the protest where I was shot by a fascist. That and about a hundred other things, all of which I did with my trans comrades who were organizing for their own survival because they knew that liberals would not ultimately protect them.
What the fuck have you done?
Edit: your vote against murdering the trans folks is great, but you know what would help the people in your life when the voting eventually fails to stop fascism? Why don’t you talk to them about what hormones they need and work on figuring out a plan to smuggle it in. As a cis person, you’re the right person to risk yourself for them. Even today you could work with them to organize a safety group that they could call for support if they don’t feel safe walking home or end up in an unexpected sketchy situation. You could organize a hate watch group to track fascist activities. You could do a ton of shit RIGHT FUCKING NOW instead of waiting to vote and then just seeing what happens.
Oh boy, let me try and reply here without losing my cool. If youre actually putting in effort into direct action, u deserve a serious reply. I have infinite respect for that, please keep that in mind as you read this.
You accuse me of a lack of nuance, while implying that i am against direct action and only favor voting, all in the efforts of getting upset at someone because they encourage others to vote and still ignoring the crux of their point. But its easier to compare me to maga. That way, the onlookers now know to side with u, after all u just egoized about all these wonderful things that i never told u not to do! This is hardly fostering comraderie between the working class. Please check my (admittedly short) comment history. I am in favor of always more direct action, but i am always against disparaging ppl ffom voting.
You say things like smuggle hormones, great. I am in favor, but guess what? That very word implies u are taking something from somewhere where it is legal, to somewhere where it is not. You are still beholden to the laws of wherever it is you are smuggling from. I.e. you need hormones to not be outlawed everywhere.
Im not trying to tell you your actions are useless. Far from it. Clearly u do more than most, certainly more than me, and i concede that. Your actions would only be more meaningful if done by more people. What i keep trying to hammer thru to all you other leftists pn here isnt to stop, but to simply understand that these efforts are NOT more easily undertaken in a system that is “untenable.”
You didnt address that point for a reason. You complain about how awful libs are. Who? My shitty coworkers? The ones who believe in this system bc thats all they know and are exploited and taken advantage of and made to think their neighbors are the problem? 50+ yrs of very concerted propaganda have gotten them to this point. Hate em all you want, when u talk about the things that need to happen to topple the system, thats who you are depending on awakening. These same brainwashed folk who want nothing more than to end the day knowing their families are still provided for.
And again, look at the countries that do tend towards fascism harder than the States. Do you see more enlightened proles? More direct action? Because reality tends to disagree. Youre sitting here shitting on another leftist bc god forbid he votes, ur shitting on the liberals who perpetuate the shitty system we’re forced into, but youre espousing values that all predicate on working together. Do you not see the dissonance there? We are NOWHERE near revolution, further still from utopia. We can cry that the climate is killing us, or that the system is too slow. Great. But right now, that system is only out to exploit you, not make your existence unliveable. If we get to that point, which under trump, it is likely, no amount of direct action is going to help. Not in a time when all the powers that be need do is take a look at their preferred mass surveillance system to find the rabble rousers and send out a drone or two to quell whichever protest gets to crazy.
Tldr: Thanks for your efforts, please dont disparage voting.
I literally said “Voting helps,” and talked specifically about how it helps. At no point did I ever say not to vote. I even kind of said that I think people should vote. Why the do you think I’m telling people not to vote? Take a look at my post and ask yourself where this is coming from and maybe you’ll understand why I’m calling you out.
I’m not saying anywhere, at any point, that people shouldn’t vote. I’m not saying anyone is bad for voting. I’m not even hinting at the idea the voting is not at least a little helpful. I’m just fucking sick of everyone focusing on voting when it’s one of the lowest valuable type of action you can take after canvasing and posting shitty memes.
I organized, I got shot, I kept organizing. The whole time I watched liberals tell queer and trans folks, black and brown folks, and all kinds of other marginalized folks and every intersection of those to vote harder any time they’d call out liberals. Liberals got Biden, stabbed radicals in the back, and went back to brunch. They had fucking years to organize, and instead they just got disappointed again and again by the failure of the system they believe in to address existential threats against it. Whenever they get called out for this shitty behavior, or whenever anyone points out that voting isn’t enough, they hold up those same marginalized people they’ve been throwing under the bus between election years.
When I’m saying “make the system untenable” I’m meaning that you have to make oppression impossible by organizing. You have to make ecocide impossible by making it so expensive to extract petroleum that it stops being an option.
You think that you have to be close to revolution to make the system untenable? It took one person attacking an immigration facility to stop Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan. Slavery didn’t end because people voted against it. It ended because people formed a guerilla resistence that attacked plantations and smuggled people out, illegally. The civil war started because John Brown lead an armed assault on Harpers Ferry with the intent of creating an armed slave insurrection. They, and a lot of other people carrying out direct action, made the system untenable.
You know how they got to the point of making the system untenable? They organized. You should absolutely vote if your conscience lets you. I will shame you for not voting if you’re as privileged as I am, but I won’t if you’re not. But for fuck sake, organize. Organize small groups. Organize too many groups to infiltrate. Go fill jails like XR until they can’t afford to put people in jail anymore. Make this shit expensive. Organize locally to abolish free parking.Make perpetuating climate change so expensive that every oil company is forced to invest in renewables. That’s what making the system untenable means. The fact that you jumped immediately to assuming I could only have meant something like “don’t vote,” even though I explicitly said voting has value, says something. Please take a minute to reflect on why you’ve spent this much time and effort arguing against something I did not say.
Very fair points, theres been a lot of ppl on this site yelling at me in a short period of time. I got a little fixated on making the system untenable bc in this very same thread theres no shortage of shitheads arguing against voting, all while countless other russian shills all across the web eg them on in hopes of enabling russian imperial interests.
Im just very frustrated, as i can tell u are. Im looking for leftists to come together regardless of how far left they swing. Ur points on making the system on tenable sound more like the types of direct action i seem to most believe in. Its about making life untenable for the capitalist owner class, not the poors foghting for their lives down below.
On that point tho, i still would urge you to find room for some more sympathy/empathy for those, erm- lets say, highly misguided poors still simping for the neoliberal way. With the amount of propaganda they consume, its no wonder they are the way they are, but that doesnt mean that theyre entirely lost. Ppl are fickle and change their minds drastically all the time, especially when their ego is in play. Ive gotten far right wingers to agree with me on dismantling insurance agencies, enacting a maximum wage, shit even to abolish currency altogether and trans rights. Its about how its presented to them, and by whom. Im not going to tell u to waste ur time convincing them actively, that is a waste of time.
But a newly found culture based on sympathy and kindness isnt necessarily all that far away. Anarchist theory is largely based on assuming that humans are naturally inclined to cooperate with one another. Theyre just never going to if u call them out for being the hypocrites that almost all of us naturally are. My 2 cents, anyway.
Thanks for ur time, but more so for ur energy irl with what u do. Continue yelling at everyone else in here, ur energy is wholesome.
Thank you for this. People are using short term fear to try to trump the long term fear and it’s such a backwards perspective. It’s like someone who is afraid of the kitchen being a mess while you’re trying to stop the leak in the roof. And the moment we try to explain this to people they act as if we’re signing their death warrants not realizing they’re signing their own.
Great! Lemme just let the trans folks in my life know that alls we gotta do is elect the fuck who threatens to erase their existence entirely!
Bc the untenable systems at play in Russia, S Arabia, DPRK, RSA, etc. have done wonders towards the citizenry in those countries rising up and rebelling… oh… wait… thats right… its damn near impossible to rise up the closer your state is to the fascist mark. Congrats, ur right that the liberal system blows. Replacing it with something worse will only make things worse.
How successful have you been at bringing ur fellow comrades together to organize for direct action? And thats going to go better after we go full fascist?! After our minority allies are straight up outlawed?
You have the same level of comprehension for nuance as maga cultists. We are on the brink of fascism because liberals are useless.
But me? Oh, I organized an antifascist groups that organized one of the largest antifascist protests in the US the day after the murder of Heather Heyer, helped organize an antifascist self defence training group, I organized a police oversight group that de-anonomized thousands of complaints about police allowing for the identification of highly problematic officers, one of whom was fired after our efforts. I helped get the data for SPD.watch. I organized several public records request trainings. I started a food security committee that helped a bunch of people get food when they didn’t have money, which expanded to canning food for houseless folks and supporting camps. oh, I also organized the protest where I was shot by a fascist. That and about a hundred other things, all of which I did with my trans comrades who were organizing for their own survival because they knew that liberals would not ultimately protect them.
What the fuck have you done?
Edit: your vote against murdering the trans folks is great, but you know what would help the people in your life when the voting eventually fails to stop fascism? Why don’t you talk to them about what hormones they need and work on figuring out a plan to smuggle it in. As a cis person, you’re the right person to risk yourself for them. Even today you could work with them to organize a safety group that they could call for support if they don’t feel safe walking home or end up in an unexpected sketchy situation. You could organize a hate watch group to track fascist activities. You could do a ton of shit RIGHT FUCKING NOW instead of waiting to vote and then just seeing what happens.
Oh boy, let me try and reply here without losing my cool. If youre actually putting in effort into direct action, u deserve a serious reply. I have infinite respect for that, please keep that in mind as you read this.
You accuse me of a lack of nuance, while implying that i am against direct action and only favor voting, all in the efforts of getting upset at someone because they encourage others to vote and still ignoring the crux of their point. But its easier to compare me to maga. That way, the onlookers now know to side with u, after all u just egoized about all these wonderful things that i never told u not to do! This is hardly fostering comraderie between the working class. Please check my (admittedly short) comment history. I am in favor of always more direct action, but i am always against disparaging ppl ffom voting.
You say things like smuggle hormones, great. I am in favor, but guess what? That very word implies u are taking something from somewhere where it is legal, to somewhere where it is not. You are still beholden to the laws of wherever it is you are smuggling from. I.e. you need hormones to not be outlawed everywhere.
Im not trying to tell you your actions are useless. Far from it. Clearly u do more than most, certainly more than me, and i concede that. Your actions would only be more meaningful if done by more people. What i keep trying to hammer thru to all you other leftists pn here isnt to stop, but to simply understand that these efforts are NOT more easily undertaken in a system that is “untenable.”
You didnt address that point for a reason. You complain about how awful libs are. Who? My shitty coworkers? The ones who believe in this system bc thats all they know and are exploited and taken advantage of and made to think their neighbors are the problem? 50+ yrs of very concerted propaganda have gotten them to this point. Hate em all you want, when u talk about the things that need to happen to topple the system, thats who you are depending on awakening. These same brainwashed folk who want nothing more than to end the day knowing their families are still provided for.
And again, look at the countries that do tend towards fascism harder than the States. Do you see more enlightened proles? More direct action? Because reality tends to disagree. Youre sitting here shitting on another leftist bc god forbid he votes, ur shitting on the liberals who perpetuate the shitty system we’re forced into, but youre espousing values that all predicate on working together. Do you not see the dissonance there? We are NOWHERE near revolution, further still from utopia. We can cry that the climate is killing us, or that the system is too slow. Great. But right now, that system is only out to exploit you, not make your existence unliveable. If we get to that point, which under trump, it is likely, no amount of direct action is going to help. Not in a time when all the powers that be need do is take a look at their preferred mass surveillance system to find the rabble rousers and send out a drone or two to quell whichever protest gets to crazy.
Tldr: Thanks for your efforts, please dont disparage voting.
I literally said “Voting helps,” and talked specifically about how it helps. At no point did I ever say not to vote. I even kind of said that I think people should vote. Why the do you think I’m telling people not to vote? Take a look at my post and ask yourself where this is coming from and maybe you’ll understand why I’m calling you out.
I’m not saying anywhere, at any point, that people shouldn’t vote. I’m not saying anyone is bad for voting. I’m not even hinting at the idea the voting is not at least a little helpful. I’m just fucking sick of everyone focusing on voting when it’s one of the lowest valuable type of action you can take after canvasing and posting shitty memes.
I organized, I got shot, I kept organizing. The whole time I watched liberals tell queer and trans folks, black and brown folks, and all kinds of other marginalized folks and every intersection of those to vote harder any time they’d call out liberals. Liberals got Biden, stabbed radicals in the back, and went back to brunch. They had fucking years to organize, and instead they just got disappointed again and again by the failure of the system they believe in to address existential threats against it. Whenever they get called out for this shitty behavior, or whenever anyone points out that voting isn’t enough, they hold up those same marginalized people they’ve been throwing under the bus between election years.
When I’m saying “make the system untenable” I’m meaning that you have to make oppression impossible by organizing. You have to make ecocide impossible by making it so expensive to extract petroleum that it stops being an option.
You think that you have to be close to revolution to make the system untenable? It took one person attacking an immigration facility to stop Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan. Slavery didn’t end because people voted against it. It ended because people formed a guerilla resistence that attacked plantations and smuggled people out, illegally. The civil war started because John Brown lead an armed assault on Harpers Ferry with the intent of creating an armed slave insurrection. They, and a lot of other people carrying out direct action, made the system untenable.
You know how they got to the point of making the system untenable? They organized. You should absolutely vote if your conscience lets you. I will shame you for not voting if you’re as privileged as I am, but I won’t if you’re not. But for fuck sake, organize. Organize small groups. Organize too many groups to infiltrate. Go fill jails like XR until they can’t afford to put people in jail anymore. Make this shit expensive. Organize locally to abolish free parking.Make perpetuating climate change so expensive that every oil company is forced to invest in renewables. That’s what making the system untenable means. The fact that you jumped immediately to assuming I could only have meant something like “don’t vote,” even though I explicitly said voting has value, says something. Please take a minute to reflect on why you’ve spent this much time and effort arguing against something I did not say.
Very fair points, theres been a lot of ppl on this site yelling at me in a short period of time. I got a little fixated on making the system untenable bc in this very same thread theres no shortage of shitheads arguing against voting, all while countless other russian shills all across the web eg them on in hopes of enabling russian imperial interests.
Im just very frustrated, as i can tell u are. Im looking for leftists to come together regardless of how far left they swing. Ur points on making the system on tenable sound more like the types of direct action i seem to most believe in. Its about making life untenable for the capitalist owner class, not the poors foghting for their lives down below.
On that point tho, i still would urge you to find room for some more sympathy/empathy for those, erm- lets say, highly misguided poors still simping for the neoliberal way. With the amount of propaganda they consume, its no wonder they are the way they are, but that doesnt mean that theyre entirely lost. Ppl are fickle and change their minds drastically all the time, especially when their ego is in play. Ive gotten far right wingers to agree with me on dismantling insurance agencies, enacting a maximum wage, shit even to abolish currency altogether and trans rights. Its about how its presented to them, and by whom. Im not going to tell u to waste ur time convincing them actively, that is a waste of time.
But a newly found culture based on sympathy and kindness isnt necessarily all that far away. Anarchist theory is largely based on assuming that humans are naturally inclined to cooperate with one another. Theyre just never going to if u call them out for being the hypocrites that almost all of us naturally are. My 2 cents, anyway.
Thanks for ur time, but more so for ur energy irl with what u do. Continue yelling at everyone else in here, ur energy is wholesome.
Thank you for this. People are using short term fear to try to trump the long term fear and it’s such a backwards perspective. It’s like someone who is afraid of the kitchen being a mess while you’re trying to stop the leak in the roof. And the moment we try to explain this to people they act as if we’re signing their death warrants not realizing they’re signing their own.