I think it’s a good statement, short and to the point. The replies are absolute poison though, hasbara bots really honing in on them. Feds will try and make something stick but it doesn’t sound like he was even a member.
I’m already written too much in this thread, but I just made the mistake of reading CPUSA’s statement and it (as usual) makes PSL look like Ansar Allah by comparison. To hear CPUSA tell it, apartheid was apparently defeated in South Africa exclusively through legal nonviolent protest and violence has no place in the “fight” for Palestinian liberation. This probably is the best statement PSL could realistically make in this deeply evil settler colony.
Liz: don’t do it
Brace: but if you do…
Liz: we disavow
If anyone actually reads this and thinks “ah they should’ve praised the guy and said they supported him”, please don’t
Imagine being upset by this, LARPers. Imagine not understanding why this is a problem and even in terms of ill-advised adventurism was badly done with bad targets. This was not a planned act of some disciplined person, this was an individualistic act of despair and anger likely made with very minimal planning and highly emotional thinking. Movements cannot afford that kind of thing. Demcent exists for a reason.
If you care about something you owe it to that cause to be rational, to think clearly through your actions and their consequences and what they can and cannot achieve. Ask yourself are you doing this out of a selfish desire to be a martyr in the easiest way possible? Or are you trying to maximize the good you can do, the effect you can have. I think arguably if this person had gone to California and spent the next 6 months harassing Google employees for their company’s participation in genocide they would have had a bigger impact. But that’s not grandiose, that’s not satisfying to the ego and martyrdom drive. It’s not dramatic enough.
I really, really hope this person wasn’t at any point a member. I really hope that they haven’t been organizing with ANSWER lately. I hope they dropped out entirely because the zionists will use any excuse however tenuous to enable a harsher crackdown on what is very much a BDS movement not based around violence but economic and social pressure.
why are they bad targets? they were zionist pieces of shit…
one was a German evangelical christian
That’s by no means exclusive with being a Zionist piece of shit
They were consulate workers, so in lib eyes civilians^2
They were pieces of shit who deserved it, but this is extremely unlikely to bring about any actual change. Imo, the best case scenario is just that some zionists are slightly more scared.
“do not support it” can also be they just dont support adventurism, which is in line for them.
Ngl though I badly want someone to drop a “the chickens are coming home to roost”
I’m sure this is somewhat the sentiment of most PSL members and leadership. They aren’t mourning two random Zionists. But publicly they have to keep distance from it and obviously this type of adventurism is not in line with their tactics
Not condoning adventurism is principled ig
while they were absolute ghouls, a couple staffers were probably not very effective targets, and they could be more easily twisted into “victims of anti-Semitism” because of their distance from the levers of power
One of the DSA chapters I was in had some things going down before I joined. I didn’t know what it was but learned a bit through my time there. In short, they were infiltrated and some members got put on some list. And that’s just DSA, way before the more visible Palestine movement.
I know of some people during the occupy movement who had their calls tapped and put on list.
Orgs/people in them will be targeted and hit regardless no matter how tame, minor, powerful etc. I think covering your ass is fine, especially because this person wasn’t an active member and it’s just libel, but being so scared of feds that you end up burying your head in the sand is turbo lib shit. We all knew feds were a thing before organizing, we should have been had opsec and failsafe plans for things like this. If everytime someone on our side, even if not in an org, does something like this and gets condemned for being tired of waiting. Then what movement are we building? I vaguely remember Aaron Bushnell getting condemned for his choice in resistance.
I think this event will change things, I’ve seem mostly positive takes personally, and maybe organizing can change for the better to be at least more secure when[it’s not if because if we’re serious then they’re coming] the fed fight comes.
Like I said, it’s good they covered their ass and the statement is relatively tame but this is something we all should’ve been thinking about decades ago.
I vaguely remember Aaron Bushnell getting condemned for his choice in resistance.
people thought it wouldn’t be effective.
Yeah I don’t think there’s a reason for an aboveground political org to put a target on its back to explicitly support this guy but you’re 100% correct. Anecdotally I’ve also heard of infiltration, in both anarchist direct action groups and more tame socialist groups. And with DSA in particular I constantly see people behaving like wreckers, though it’s hard to distinguish kids getting into petty drama and taking it too far from fed wreckers sometimes.
Opsec concerns… it’s going to be hard. Every other door has a goddamn ring camera on it. Almost everyone carries a smartphone everywhere. Traffic lights all have cameras. And you can’t erase the past, if you’re already on a list from being related to DSA or food not bombs or doing local mutual aid, are you just inviting further scrutiny on your org by being involved? I guess the idea is to blend in. But it’s hard to not end up on the radar of local cops if you’re doing anything remotely cool, and already being on their radar seems like a mighty fine way to get popped when doing any more serious actions. We need mass mobilization I guess, it can’t just be the same old activists doing everything.
I will say though, it’s at a point where its probably more important to do something than to not get caught (though both is ofc the goal)
Opsec is very hard these days. But it’s harder for them to find bodies to infiltrate people than it is for them to just login to a website and pull any info they need. Going offline or even off of public social media is one of the easiest ways but this should be org discussions
yeah I just don’t see going offline as a total solution at all (I assume you don’t either)
I mean yes it’s a good thing to do but you still exist in the built environment with all the things I mentioned and more all surveilling you, and you don’t even get to reap the benefits of modern communications. I think you need community buy in on some level to deal with some of these. mass shaming and defacing of cameras would go a long way. We are at a point where not having a phone or taking even mild precautions makes people think you’re a drug dealer. That level of penetration of society means cops can just look for anyone they can’t track rather than find a needle in a haystack. or at least I fear we’re there.
I get why this is their statement and I agree that it’s the best they can say in this situation, but I wish the Western left was big enough and militant enough that they could add one more sentence like “those zionists nevertheless deserved it” to the end of it.
He had a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017.
Not surprised. The sort of person who would do this kind of individualist adventurism doesn’t last long in the PSL.
Makes sense, PSL shouldnt risk their org over a based act of adventurism, especially since they dont really have the support and infraestructure to go underground
Well made statement. Says as little as possible and gives minimal meat for adversaries to latch on to.
I think the “correct” statement would this is a negative externalities of genocide and that when you do evil people aren’t going to respond well to it. As that will get someone arrested I think the equilibrium statement is something to the effect of, " we have nothing to say because the government is not respecting first amendment rights at the moment" They chose the safest option and I am not mad about it.
I initially thought otherwise but, nah, you know what, I already disagree with myself. This was a fine statement and didn’t really veer into any Zionist apologia. They’re still going to be targeted though, probably unavoidable.
Anyway, I hope they make it but it won’t be because this statement saved them.
Hope comrades here in the PSL stay safe.
Smart response since this isn’t a free speech issue but a state security issue that could create severe legal blowback for them
Those last 5 words will not save them.
