• 5 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’m not denying fear, violence, or victimhood. And I’m not equating oppressors with the oppressed. I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.

    I’m talking about how societies slide, not about who deserves what. Those are different conversations. I’ve been on the receiving end of state violence. I’ve marched, been gassed, watched movements radicalize too fast and burn themselves out. That’s exactly why I’m saying this: jumping straight to existential framing and armed horizons doesn’t protect anyone it only narrows the future until only catastrophe is left.

    You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless. Yes, fear is justified and preparation is understandable and necessary. But when fear becomes immune to critique, it stops being a warning signal and starts being a steering wheel.

    My point hasn’t changed: there is still space, Real Political Space, for non-violent (not peaceful!) resistance, that can be powerfully disruptive. Once that space collapses, it doesn’t reopen because people were right about how bad things felt. I’m arguing against that collapse, not minimizing what’s at stake.


  • The reasons you outlined are why you are in trouble. As in, if they weren’t the case you would be in trouble. It’s a bit of a circular tautology. But they are not things that doom you. They are the shape of the whole you’re in. And it’s on you guys to find a way out. There’s no way around that. And no, the world is not coming to save you: there is no cavalry.

    I don’t think you guys are doomed. I think the opposite, that the American people are a sleeping giant that can shake the world. And no, I don’t think you need to jump straight to shooting reach other.



  • On the one hand yes you are behind on some kinds of labour organizing.

    On the other hand, it’s not that simple.

    a) you have a very long history of minority organizing. Black Americans, Chicanos, indigenous people, and other minorities have survived for generations. It sounds like a leftie cliché, but you guys should really take leadership from them.

    b) you don’t have the baggage that comes with entrenched left wing politics. There is a thing like too much left wing politicking. In Greece for example, land of spectacular antifa riots, the left is absolutely paralyzed and completely fragmented. Too much history, too many reasons to blame this or that left faction for what they did 10,20,30, sometimes 60 or more years ago. You have a chance to build on a green field.

    c) one thing you Americans actually have going for you is that you guys actually believe in democracy. You’re true believers. It’s a thing we in the rest of the world have always kind of being weirded out by you that you want to be electing judges and sherrifs and school boards etc. And you actually have this libertarian steak in you that’s kind of interesting when it comes to resistance. You have so much democratic institutional hardware just lying around.

    d) you actually are close to some of the powerful economic structures, institutions, and pop culture centres in the planet. Anything you do will and already does reverberate globally in ways that others don’t.

    So, while you do have very big challenges you also have very big opportunities. And friends man, you have friends. I know we give you guys shit all the time, but trust me, when Americans rise up and stand up we all feel a bit taller. I’m telling you this as someone who listened to RATM on the way to weekly marches getting gassed by the police, thinking we were trying to be as cool as the WTO protests in Seattle.


  • Not American, so feel free to stop reading.

    It’s ridiculous to me how you yanks go from zero to a hundred like this. Either normality or civil war. Like there is no in between? You have an authoritarianism problem. So resist authoritarianism. What makes you think that the only way to resist is shooting people? Resistance is a spectrum, and you have barely started using democratic means to fight back (you just started electing democratic socialists), much less active procedural and institutional warfare (is Bernie demanding a vote for every procedural point requiring a vote? Are the Dems actually using any rat fucking tactic to make the state ungovernable? Are your local and state governments really resisting beyond making angry noises?). You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions. Wtf. Those come at the very end, if everything else has failed. Has it? Nowhere near. So this talk about civil war, is that really useful?




  • Canadian here: it is important to us that you resist your fascist regime. We need you to do that just as much you need to do that for yourselves. It is also extremely important to deeply understand that resistance is NOT a binary switch that flips between “nothing” and “armed resistance”. At this stage in the game, in the US, you guys need to be doing a whole lot more of non-armed and institutional resistance. You need extreme pettiness. Make the trumpofascists pay a price in annoyance every step of the fucking way.

    For example, call your senators and congresspeople, even the more radical left ones, and ask them why they are not calling for votes for every fucking little thing that depends on unanimity.. Then threaten to primary those that don’t. RESIST OR GET OUT OF THE WAY.

    Then, the question goes to the mayors the ones that bluster with “gtfo ICE”. Why are they not doing road reconstruction in front and round ICE facilities? Why are there no incessant pipe maintenance requests at the sewers and cables and water mains that feed those compounds? RATFUCK THEM.

    Then the question goes to the merchants. Why are there no “we don’t sell to ICE” signs on shops around their compounds? Why is it commercially viable to NOT have a policy like that? Why are they contracting work to them? Why is any private entity in the ICE supply chain not being constantly threatened with boycotts and divestment? MAKE IT TOXIC TO WORK WITH THEM.

    Do I need to keep going, or do people get the idea?

    Beyond that, realize that you have to start small, then build up: https://youtu.be/vvaquOcNEKI Armed resistance is the worst case scenario endgame. Not the start.