This is precisely the wrong approach. All it’s going to do is generate sympathy for Elmo. One of the most basic tenets of any resistance is to be sure you don’t make the other side martyrs.
It’s too bad the crazies can’t control themselves, they just harm the cause for the rest of us. I would love to see Tesla collapse, not because it’s a bad product (I love EVs), but because Elmo deserves it. This is not the way to go about it.
To the person responsible: get help, read a few books, maybe you’ll be able to avoid doing exactly the wrong thing from now on. You’re not helping us, you’re helping Tesla.
I hate this fear of making the opposite side a martyr. I’ve been hearing it for arresting and prosecuting Trump for so long. People making that claim basically let him face no consequences and look where that got us. As opposed to “making him a martyr” and who knows where we’d be. At the very least, they’d have had to regroup and change their game plan.
We can’t keep being paralyzed into inaction by the fear of “making a martyr.”
What a crock. I love this thing that has entered the discourse where, “disagreeing with me is advocating doing nothing.” As if not shooting up a car dealership is equivalent to just letting fascists take over. Get a grip.
I’m not going to hand-wring about it, I’m not a pacifist. I don’t advocate for doing nothing in fact I spend almost all my free time organizing, educating, preparing and mobilizing. I wish I did nothing, instead of watching the smartest, most committed and hardworking leaders in our movement burn out one after another.
What is shooting up a dealership going to accomplish? What’s the political message? “Elon bad, break his stuff.” Keep pretending that a single shooter will make a silent fart worth of difference. Anarchists tried this bitd, it was called propaganda of the deed. How many revolutions did it win? Zero. How many gains did it win for the working class? Less than zero because it justified the use of violence against leftists, and the huge swaths of well meaning but slightly backwards people who are conscientious and see what is happening to the world, can be turned against the left. The right will call us terrorists no matter what, but we shouldn’t give them the ammunition.
The fact that you are so politically underdeveloped that you can’t imagine any solution that isn’t an individual committing a single gun crime should make you worry.
Who won the Russian revolution? Was it the Narodniks, the political terrorists? Or was it the Bolsheviks who were the political organizers? And before we litigate the atrocities of the soviets after 1921, let’s not pretend that the Narodniks wouldn’t have just handed political power back to the bourgeois and monarchists, wouldn’t have become even worse. But you don’t have to read thousands of pages of Trotsky and Lenin to know what happens to a country when political terrorists seize power.
The point is we need to organize, and yes, part of that means organizing workers militias and community defense. But a single half cocked act of terrorism is, at best, misguided reformism – but usually it portends something much, much worse.
Believing that individualistic political violence is ineffective and arguing that it is counter productive is not doing nothing. disagreeing with you is not doing nothing. Don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about. There’s a lot more to being an effective radical than just advocating for the most radical position. In fact, often the most “radical” sounding arguments come from the people who are the first to capitulate to power. I see no evidence that your position is anything but misguided, underdeveloped, idealist reformism.
Getting politically educated, as the first commenter suggests, is doing a lot more than shooting up a Tesla dealer ffs because it actually improves political consciousness. Political action without political theory is worse than a complete waste of time, it can have negative effects on our movement.
Instead you wanna go off like some right winger kicking down the door to a pizza shop demanding you and your gun are allowed into the pedo torture basement.
I think you misunderstood. I don’t think shooting up a dealership was useful.
My issue is in the fear of making a martyr has been a big discourse which has lead to inaction. In the hundreds of political discussions I’ve been a part of leading up to the last election it became a recurring theme that people thought Trump couldn’t even be arrested or held accountable for the many crimes he has committed.
Which lead us to a duality where either Trump was a martyr persecuted and having it stimulate his base or we let Trump continue to not experience any consequences and continue to rally his base unimpeded. It became a no-win situation at the outset when we started being afraid of making a martyr.
While we don’t want to do anything that will unduly increase support of Trump or Elon. The use of words like martyr doesn’t do much to help us. I agree we need to be smart about what we do, but I also think we need to be mindful of the language we use and the connotation that it has.
Your theoretical knowledge is so non existent that the only left wing “theory” you know well enough to quote, is in fact, right wing political theory
So quick to jump on this… Neither Marx nor Lenin said it.
Who said it? The working class created that “meme”, and spread it widely.
So, about your purported “knowledge superiority”… Its not false. Where do you think the firearms the working class will use are going to come from? Capitalists are more than happy to sell them to us.
As I said, the working class did not invent it, it was invented by a right winger and picked up by leftists who want to feel badass. Go ahead and feel badass for being a leftist, you are. But action without theory is a death sentence.
Again, I’m not against armed resistance, don’t try and strawman me. The Deacons of Defense and Justice, the Black Panthers and various other armed movements are worth studying and in part emulating.
We check the source for our info, and the source is the right wing political establishment not the “working class,” who has a right to defend itself – but this ain’t it.
You’re damn right I’m quick to jump on it, and for good reason.
As I said, the working class did not invent it, it was invented by a righg winger and picked up by leftists who want to feel badass.
That’s… Just not true. It might have come from a somewhat similar expression purported to be written by Lenin in a letter… Maybe. It has since been picked up by those on the left, and made into what it is today.
But action without theory is a death sentence.
So it theory and no action. Propaganda of the deed works. Like, in this case, it is serving to show the working class that the time to really act is NOW, not later. The more of these happen, the more people jump in.
Again, I’m not against armed resistance, don’t try and strawman me. The Deacons of Defense and Justice, the Black Panthers and various other armed movements are worth studying and in part emulating.
So, do you think they never shot at people?
We check the source for our info, and the source is the right wing political establishment not the “working class,” who has a right to defend itself – but this ain’t it.
What source do you have for that? Historians completely disagree on your claim…
You’re damn right I’m quick to jump on it, and for good reason.
I know, the irony is I’m criticizing people for not bothering to learn history and theory, and then you call a few paragraphs that I wrote in like 5 minutes “a novel”. Please try and keep up, or actually contribute to the discussion, smart guy
This is precisely the wrong approach. All it’s going to do is generate sympathy for Elmo. One of the most basic tenets of any resistance is to be sure you don’t make the other side martyrs.
It’s too bad the crazies can’t control themselves, they just harm the cause for the rest of us. I would love to see Tesla collapse, not because it’s a bad product (I love EVs), but because Elmo deserves it. This is not the way to go about it.
To the person responsible: get help, read a few books, maybe you’ll be able to avoid doing exactly the wrong thing from now on. You’re not helping us, you’re helping Tesla.
I don’t believe so… Most people are laughing at this story.
But, on that note: What are you doing? Propaganda of the deed has a long, and storied tradition amongst the left.
I hate this fear of making the opposite side a martyr. I’ve been hearing it for arresting and prosecuting Trump for so long. People making that claim basically let him face no consequences and look where that got us. As opposed to “making him a martyr” and who knows where we’d be. At the very least, they’d have had to regroup and change their game plan.
We can’t keep being paralyzed into inaction by the fear of “making a martyr.”
If we make enough of them Martyrs, there won’t be any more of them.
What a crock. I love this thing that has entered the discourse where, “disagreeing with me is advocating doing nothing.” As if not shooting up a car dealership is equivalent to just letting fascists take over. Get a grip.
I’m not going to hand-wring about it, I’m not a pacifist. I don’t advocate for doing nothing in fact I spend almost all my free time organizing, educating, preparing and mobilizing. I wish I did nothing, instead of watching the smartest, most committed and hardworking leaders in our movement burn out one after another.
What is shooting up a dealership going to accomplish? What’s the political message? “Elon bad, break his stuff.” Keep pretending that a single shooter will make a silent fart worth of difference. Anarchists tried this bitd, it was called propaganda of the deed. How many revolutions did it win? Zero. How many gains did it win for the working class? Less than zero because it justified the use of violence against leftists, and the huge swaths of well meaning but slightly backwards people who are conscientious and see what is happening to the world, can be turned against the left. The right will call us terrorists no matter what, but we shouldn’t give them the ammunition.
The fact that you are so politically underdeveloped that you can’t imagine any solution that isn’t an individual committing a single gun crime should make you worry.
Who won the Russian revolution? Was it the Narodniks, the political terrorists? Or was it the Bolsheviks who were the political organizers? And before we litigate the atrocities of the soviets after 1921, let’s not pretend that the Narodniks wouldn’t have just handed political power back to the bourgeois and monarchists, wouldn’t have become even worse. But you don’t have to read thousands of pages of Trotsky and Lenin to know what happens to a country when political terrorists seize power.
The point is we need to organize, and yes, part of that means organizing workers militias and community defense. But a single half cocked act of terrorism is, at best, misguided reformism – but usually it portends something much, much worse.
Believing that individualistic political violence is ineffective and arguing that it is counter productive is not doing nothing. disagreeing with you is not doing nothing. Don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about. There’s a lot more to being an effective radical than just advocating for the most radical position. In fact, often the most “radical” sounding arguments come from the people who are the first to capitulate to power. I see no evidence that your position is anything but misguided, underdeveloped, idealist reformism.
Getting politically educated, as the first commenter suggests, is doing a lot more than shooting up a Tesla dealer ffs because it actually improves political consciousness. Political action without political theory is worse than a complete waste of time, it can have negative effects on our movement.
Instead you wanna go off like some right winger kicking down the door to a pizza shop demanding you and your gun are allowed into the pedo torture basement.
I think you misunderstood. I don’t think shooting up a dealership was useful.
My issue is in the fear of making a martyr has been a big discourse which has lead to inaction. In the hundreds of political discussions I’ve been a part of leading up to the last election it became a recurring theme that people thought Trump couldn’t even be arrested or held accountable for the many crimes he has committed.
Which lead us to a duality where either Trump was a martyr persecuted and having it stimulate his base or we let Trump continue to not experience any consequences and continue to rally his base unimpeded. It became a no-win situation at the outset when we started being afraid of making a martyr.
While we don’t want to do anything that will unduly increase support of Trump or Elon. The use of words like martyr doesn’t do much to help us. I agree we need to be smart about what we do, but I also think we need to be mindful of the language we use and the connotation that it has.
That’s a fine response, so I’d just caution against saying that people are advocating doing nothing when arguing against ineffective violent tactics
“The oligarchs are not safe. You sold us the rope, and now we’re looking to use it.”
Who said “the last capitalist will sell us the rope we will use to hang him”? Was it Marx? Lenin?
Or was it an American right wing nut case politician giving a speech meant to slander and demonize the left?
Your theoretical knowledge is so non existent that the only left wing “theory” you know well enough to quote, is in fact, right wing political theory
So quick to jump on this… Neither Marx nor Lenin said it.
Who said it? The working class created that “meme”, and spread it widely.
So, about your purported “knowledge superiority”… Its not false. Where do you think the firearms the working class will use are going to come from? Capitalists are more than happy to sell them to us.
As I said, the working class did not invent it, it was invented by a right winger and picked up by leftists who want to feel badass. Go ahead and feel badass for being a leftist, you are. But action without theory is a death sentence.
Again, I’m not against armed resistance, don’t try and strawman me. The Deacons of Defense and Justice, the Black Panthers and various other armed movements are worth studying and in part emulating.
We check the source for our info, and the source is the right wing political establishment not the “working class,” who has a right to defend itself – but this ain’t it.
You’re damn right I’m quick to jump on it, and for good reason.
That’s… Just not true. It might have come from a somewhat similar expression purported to be written by Lenin in a letter… Maybe. It has since been picked up by those on the left, and made into what it is today.
So it theory and no action. Propaganda of the deed works. Like, in this case, it is serving to show the working class that the time to really act is NOW, not later. The more of these happen, the more people jump in.
So, do you think they never shot at people?
What source do you have for that? Historians completely disagree on your claim…
Maybe not so much mate…
Which letter did Lenin say it? Produce the letter and I’ll send you $50
Congrats on wasting your time writing this novel
Congrats on calling a few paragraphs qualifying as a novel, telling on yourself here homie
that was a joke.
I know, the irony is I’m criticizing people for not bothering to learn history and theory, and then you call a few paragraphs that I wrote in like 5 minutes “a novel”. Please try and keep up, or actually contribute to the discussion, smart guy