I just went down to our local lib demonstration. All I could really feel was depressed. All those people waving signs but I wonder how many are willing to do anything more than that? Shit most of them were pretty old, tbh. I approached some people I clocked as comrades but I was very awkward and we didn’t have a conversation.
I guess I don’t really have a question here. Just feel like everybody has identified (some of) the problems, but have totally misidentified the solutions. Will these protests ever accomplish anything? Can we radicalize the protestors without them having to get beaten by cops? Or is that what it will take?
I had the same experience at my local.
I used to go to protests and after a couple, I felt the same way. I felt there needed to be something more and I honestly felt alienated at the fact I didn’t know anyone else there and would sometimes go through the whole thing not interacting with anyone. I feel different about it now.
I think this feeling comes from being disorganized and so you go to these protests with no purpose in mind and thus it does feel purposeless, because at the end of the day Trump/the democrats aren’t going to change because of a protest.
What it’s going to “take” to make change is organizing people into a cohesive movement that can actually make an action that Trump and the dems can’t ignore. As someone else said, they are good recruitment events for now.
I just think about how many people are indifferent and apathetic to what’s going on and they are the biggest enemies to me, because they turn hostile when you suggest that there must be something other than apathy. They are honestly to me just as bad as Trump or genocide supporters. People at protests, at worst, are at the start of that journey of realizing that they must do something, but maybe it’s not clear to them what.
We all say we understand these kinds of protests are pointless, but we all are pissing ourselves scared of the alternative.
If someone does start speaking up, talking about actual political violence at a party meeting that shit gets shutdown fast in my experience. Nobody wants that no matter how true it is because we all know people will die, be imprisoned, suffer lifelong injuries, etc.
IDC what party, what org, nobody is going out guns blazing unless they are okay with ruining/ending their own life. How many people do you know at that point? I know 1 person like that (and it isn’t me). You manage to get a group of like, 20+ people like that you can actually start doing the more radical stuff. Until then we are going out doing this stuff and giving ourselves a pat on the back. Sorry if that sounds a bit jaded, but that’s how I feel about it. That depression you’re feeling? It doesn’t go away. You will feel depression and anger after every. single. protest. You’ll keep going so you don’t feel sick to your stomach for not doing anything at all, but it won’t help.
This turned into more of a vent than helpful advice. Sorry.
You manage to get a group of like, 20+ people like that you can actually start doing the more radical stuff.
The problem I see with getting 20 armed radicals together is doing it without one of them being a cop. It requires a level of 21st century secrecy and discipline that I can’t even imagine, because how do you even get to that size while also being so clandestine that the State doesn’t find out before you can act? It’s not like we aren’t all already being watched.
Those are just the breaks unfortunately. I agree with you though.
The only place political violence in the US would lead to at this point is a right-wing coup. The left is not organized enough and the people in the US are neither class conscious, nor educated enough to even know what they should fight for and why.
Ask yourself how libs react to socialism in conversations and if that has improved enough that they wouldn’t oppose it violently? So what alternative will they pick if there is an uprising that is successful? It sure as hell won’t be socialism. They want a return to the status quo of a couple years ago. I have liberal (blue maga) friends who have started speaking up to me about when it’s time for a violent uprising and later in the same conversation saying we need to be more like Israel.
What the people in the US need more than anything right now is education. Education + organization. Without this base education and a shift in culture, we’ll just get USA 2.0 at best.
The average lib is going to go to work for 8hrs 5 days a week, go to their shitty 1800/mo apartment and get high. I vehemently disagree with you that they would suddenly go up in arms fighting a movement claiming to work in their own class interests. Look at how the average lib responded to a guy killing a healthcare ceo. Outside of your chronically online redditors and ben shapiro types people supported that! People in the US may not believe in socialism, but they absolutely would support a militant group fighting for lower retirement ages, changes to the healthcare system, reduced military spending, etc. I absolutely reject the idea that we cannot act at all until the masses are on our side, and this idea that telling people to read theory and join the party somehow builds our movement. People need a reason to want to learn more and join the party, you get that through militant action.
I don’t think they would fight a left militant movement until after the current rulers were toppled because I agree that it would be popular. It’s the moment after this where I see the most danger of a revolution being co-opted by reactionaries. It wouldn’t be hard for them to wrap the popular ideas you mentioned into their own platform that appeases the masses but doesn’t reject capitalism. Social democracy is far more popular in the US due to propaganda-based fears of authoritarianism. I’m not saying that a popular movement can’t support socialism and lead to a socialist revolution, just that people here are so lost when it comes to the subject of a revolution and where to go after that it would be relatively easy for them to lead back to liberalism unless there is some education along the way.
I don’t think direct action cannot take place or precede education to some extent, but if we don’t direct a portion of our efforts towards this simultaneously, we risk any mass movement outgrowing it’s own roots. People need to understand where a movement is going and why if you want them to support that movement through the reconstruction phase It doesn’t mean pushing theory reading onto the masses, but building education into our other programs, similar to how the Black Panthers did. The vanguard should read theory and history in order to pass this knowledge onto others, but that will mostly be by talking to them, in media meant to agitate, and in organizational meetings. It needs to be integrated into the movement early enough to head off the influence of reactionaries. You can’t teach away all reactionary culture before direct action, but you can’t have a revolution and then sit people down to explain why they can’t just go back to how things were a few years before it got bad for them.
When you say people need a reason to want to learn, I agree. I’m just saying we need that education to flow naturally to them through our organization efforts and we need to be deliberate about integrating education into our programs now if we don’t want a popular movement to be co-opted. Simultaneous efforts can be made to organize militant action, but if we ignore this problem now, we are going to run into major problems in the future.
I now better understand your position, and believe that we are in agreement. Thank you for the well thought out response. ❤️
Yeah, sorry. I’m notoriously bad about not fleshing out what I mean as much as I should the first time around in my comments. I agree that we are probably on the same page, I just don’t see the education aspect focused on as much as I think it should be it talks about organizing.
It’s all good. I definitely agree that educational courses should be a big part of organizational work. People just don’t show up to that kinda stuff in my experience though, which is a damn shame.
If you’ve got anything like that going on, feel free to hit me up in dms, I’d certainly go out of my way to attend something over zoom or discord or whatever. :)
I’ve had the same experience. When it’s pitched as education, no one comes, but if you integrate it into other activities (think the Black Panther breakfast program), it’s easier to get people there and you can relate what you want to talk about to the other action you are taking.
as MLs we would all be stupid not to participate in an organized way.
How does a radical org like
develop a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship with a liberal protest group?Tactics:
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Form personal relationships with the most active organizers. If the vanguard party is the most active, radicalized segment of the working class, these folks are in a secondary strata below the vanguard party but above the disorganized and depoliticized general masses. Show them respect and appreciation for their dedication and effort. Do not condescend on the basis of being more experienced or knowledgeable. Understand their particular motivators, views, and political trajectory.
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Offer useful help. Communist cadre are trained organizers with all the skills necessary to pull off the type of actions these movements are interested in getting going. Fill in the gaps for them, do so confidently, and be open about political affiliation - when you set up AV, gice speeches, or marshall crowds, wear your org’s shirt/hat/beret/whatever. There’s no better way to earn trust than by helping folks achieve what they couldn’t on their own.
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Be bold in your politics. Demonstrate the unreliability of Democrat front groups (Indivisible). Hold a clear political line, point out the failures of Democrats without attacking their voters generally, and make correct predictions (they will tell you not to talk about Gaza). We are right all the time - count on people seeing that once you’ve earned enough trust to be listened to.
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Keep high standards of professionalism. Put out the best-designed media. Avoid gossip. Resolve conflicts between other organizers. Be early to your commitments and overperform. Demonstrate high expectations and model delivering. Don’t be afraid to hold non-party organizers accountable, but do so to support their political development, not “put them in their place”.
Benefits:
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Many opportunities to develop cadre. There’s a lot of work involved in intervening in these movements. Assign the work to many comrades, provide training sessions, and encourage folks to step out of their comfort zone to build new skills and experience.
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Finding people in motion to bring into formal periphery or party membership. A meaningful chunk of these fresh organizers will make great comrades. Show them what your organization is capable of and how much more they could achieve in it. Beware of the demographic limitations of this movement (it’s pretty white) and don’t neglect other recruitment work.
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Significantly boost the reach of your political message to the large crowds these events are drawing. Get on stage to speak - if there’s no stage, set it up yourself and you’re instantly the leader. Set up a table with lots of literature and you’ll have tons of good political conversations.
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Keep the Democrats out. If we don’t take leadership of this movement, they will.
How to become trained cadre?
Join an organization that will make you into one.
is the premier one in the USA.
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Liberal contingents at rallies are excellent opportunities for recruitment. Large groups of angry people who are motivated enough to go outside, but have no strong ideas about what they should be doing. I’m genuinely fired up after canvassing the May Day crowd in my town. I met a lot of people who only needed to be told how to get involved in making real change.
Thanks, that is heartening to hear, and a good reminder to take some responsibility. I’ll say I’m new in town (been gone a long time), and only slowly finding “my people” here.
It’s always tough attending a rally where you don’t know anyone! The only thing that lets me be outgoing at events is being able to recharge my social batteries by talking with comrades I know.
Agreed! My org had folks go out and poll people about what they’re most concerned about, which was a great icebreaker for moving to what they’re doing about it.
I also found that having a scripted opener was helpful in making the approach less awkward (something like “Hi! I’m trying to get a sense of the main concerns folks have. What brings you out here today?”). It also helped my nerves to frame it as just collecting data, so each interaction wasn’t make-or-break.
Can we radicalize the protestors without them having to get beaten by cops? Or is that what it will take?
That is exactly what it will take. Historically speaking it is the exact event that has caused every single major escalation by protest movements.
“protests” are networking opportunities at best, at worst they’re the democratic party of activism and make libs think they’ve done something and pack it up.
They can be more than that if you can get them consistent and growing. Protests have to be designed explicitly as a threat “We could fucking take you and guillotine you if you ignore us, you will run out of bullets before we run out of people, but we have decided to exercise mercy and give you the chance to see reason.” But the purpose of protests has largely been lost.
I’m seeing wayyyy too many Ukranian flags and anti communist signs. Russia is apparently still the USSR.
The amount of people that don’t seem to understand that the Soviet Union fell is insane.
we’re all looking for the guy who made modern Russia.It’s frustrating right?
I’ve accepted the Ukrainian flags at this point tbh, but it sucks seeing them outnumber Palestinian ones 100-1.
It’s amazing how media illiterate the average American is
Protests are more of a ritual than a tactic these days. Protest is a tool, one of the tools in a toolbox to get what you want. They are not an end in themselves. If the protests aren’t disrupting anything, if they aren’t organized towards obtaining something or making somebody do something, they’re not any better than a block party or an online petition.
The most you can really hope to achieve is to bring an org there to sign people up and actually have the org do something useful like mutual aid.
yeah they’re a cargo cult of the whitewashed narrative of the civil rights movement.
is this all there is? /rh
in Europe all i ever seem to meet are:
- ‘communists’: chauvinistic pensioners, or uni trots selling newspapers
- ‘syndicalists’: workaholic labour aristocrats and manscapers
- ‘anarchists’: teenage punkers
i’m either too old or too young to hang with any of these groups, and every year i get badjacketed because i wear a mask or have a ‘funny’ accent. i spent most of today having my fashion sense and diction mocked by 80 year old crackkkers. [nb my keyboard is broken and typed the three k’s itself. i’ve unlocked Maoist English autocorrect on my pc.]
all the local orgs are either clandestine anarcho-nihilists, or radlibs adopting revolutionary language but whose praxis begins and ends at petitions and performative protests.
Can we radicalize the protestors without them having to get beaten by cops? Or is that what it will take?
Unfortunately it’s likely what it will take. The July Revolution in France had liberal protestors go from calls for reform to calls for the king’s head literally overnight after the military was called to repress them
The 2014 ukraine colour rev/coup (maidan) was escalated intentionally by the shooting of protestors by nazis posing as cops.
The CIA knows state violence against protestors is a flashpoint for escalation, and actively wields it as part of their internal build-a-revolution playbook. 2014 would have stayed a bunch of protestors waving rainbow flags and listening to bands on stages and sizzling sausages on barbecues (all brought in to keep people there for as long as possible) then eventually it would have fizzled out if not for the escalation.
Maybe we’ll get very lucky and all the guys at Langley who know how to do this took Trump’s early retirement deal
This was exactly the same way I felt walking by the protest in front of the courthouse today. I’m thinking to myself: “what does this performative bullshit really get us?” but also thinking “at least people are saying SOMETHING”, and here I am just being an onlooker. But the cynical part of me is looking back at past “big” movements and how for all the noise, they ultimately did fuck all. The other thing I noticed is that the messaging is all over the place “hands of Social Security”, Ukraine flags? “make america decent again”, “F-Elon”, for a casual onlooker you’d not really nail down a coherent narrative from just looking at the random assortment of signs, there’s no clear messaging, just vagaries.
I was in a nearby store and one woman actually asked the cashier what the protest was about, “Trump”, he said,“you know, about the constitution and stuff,” I held my tongue because I am sure she was a MAGA type and could tell she was waiting to offload on the cashier, but he was just this young guy and not terribly confrontational. It just pains me, because the anger, resentment and disillusion is there, but there is no focus to harness that because (as others in this thread have pointed out) the milquetoast liberal, whishy-washy idea of how to respond to these types of crises.
The poster who talks about the vanguard party and recruiting people is spot on, and I’m ashamed to say that my own efforts on that front have been dismal too due to apathy. It’s easy to get discouraged when the task at hand is so damn big, and seemingly unfathomably immense to undertake (especially with the current state of the left in the US).
“at least people are saying SOMETHING”
I used to feel this way but after living through several waves of these lib performative protests I’ve gotten a bit jaded about them. At best they seem useless, at worst I think it is just a way for Libs to tell themselves they’re doing SOMETHING so they can go home after and VOTE later.
Idk, maybe this is cope because I’ve been too exhausted and depressed lately to do much of anything myself, but I will be very pleasantly surprised if something substantial comes of any of these protests.
Yeah I got this way during the last wave of BLM protests. You’d have a couple cool demos at the beginning, but it’d eventually fizzle out into Harry Potter meme signs. People say it’s an opportunity to radicalize people but I don’t think I’m charismatic or confident enough for that. I ended up feeling pretty isolated at most of them. I’d probably feel different if I went to events as part of an Org but I don’t got one of those right now.
Find someone selling a newspaper and chat with them, that’s what the newspaper is for. They’re probably in a deeply unpleasant org but one thing you learn as a communist is to have a lot of friends in wildly different orgs, it makes large scale action way easier if you can stop dunking on each other over the theory of value or the correct praaxis against Austria Hungary at protests.
Find someone selling a newspaper and chat with them
Tried this and now I just have invites to 20 Trot groups with on average 5 members (all of whom are over 45).
Left unity in action
A lot of my local orgs got people from protests like these, though. A lot of Bernie organizers were from Occupy for example, and a lot of Bernie people are in my local commie orgs. We just need to keep moving them left. Somehow.
I’m not sure of that part. Feel like that’s for someone more charismatic than me, but that also feels lazy and surrendering lol.
Chatting in person. Signs to make them think.
Protests are basically gatherings of people who are unhappy but don’t have an idea on a solution.
As if they had a solution… they would be out there doing that instead.
There’s a reason lib orgs complain about communists “Hijacking” protests. Very occasionally that’s true (usually due to some Trots) but mostly they’re just complaining that someone is offering a solution beyond whining at the government.
