I was told that it may lead to easier or faster release, and I imagine I might be targeted to be imprisoned if I push it if I don’t bring an ID, but I feel like that’s bullshit but I don’t think I should leave it to chance
Would you bring an ID to a protest?
(Did I accidentally start a struggle session?)
Im never in my life going to go to a fucking protest. I’m just more and more convinced the very concept exists to waste the time and energy of people who want to change society. No protest has ever done shit unless it’s made the ruling class ACTUALLY AFRAID enough to feel they HAD TO respond or get the guillotine. When’s the last time that happened? I’m 34 now and all I’ve seen my entire life is decades of people cramming themselves into the streets to get ignored, brutalized and then arrested for nothing (if not outright murdered). I think protests are explicitly counter revolutionary because that’s all they funnel actual revolutionary people into, getting their shit kicked in and arrested. Having an arrest record or crippling injury isn’t going to help anyone (except the fascists when they decide to finish the job)
No fucking wonder nothing’s ever getting done when the best we can hope to organize is some fucked to death electoralism or performance art where we all go get beat up and arrested
Go read Lenin’s Leftwing Communism an Infantile Disorder, join an org, and start propagandizing socialism to the masses, you fucking lib.
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What in the world? Protestors are pretty regularly let out the next day, a whole month is quite a while. You can also try to avoid getting arrested, even if you do break the law. A lot of protestors that get arrested, get arrested as a statement.
Pickets are a form of protest, often when we strike other workers showing up is appreciated, and it’s something that has definitely lead to real material change. It’s not quite a revolution, but it could very well end up as one in the future.
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My point was that you shouldn’t get arrested as a statement, because that’s why most people get arrested. If you protest reasonably (either don’t break the law, or do break it but make a concerted effort to get away), you probably won’t be arrested.
Yea I protested reasonably and they still kicked my ass and threw me in jail.
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How do you expect those millions in the streets to move further leftwards if you aren’t there talking to them about what would be more effective action for the outcomes they want?
how do you expect them to move leftwards after watching that not happen in real time all this time? Just one more protest i swear
Did you just ignore the words in the parentheses? Getting arrested is not “reasonable protest”, while Palestine Action is “reasonable” action because they weren’t just handing themselves over, they successfully pulled off illegal effective sabotage.
Also, the Russian Revolution featured quite a lot of effective reasonable protests, before it devolved into a civil war.
Yeah they actually did something
Ctrl+F ableism not found fucking liar
Cool it pls
“A statement of the deranged” is ableism so i expect mods to remove every instance of that fucking meme that ends with that right? Oh wait no
You’re missing that the speaker in that meme is meant to be completely unreasonable. There’s no reason to say the meme is ableist by the site’s de jure standard. Not that I like its standard either.
A RUDE COMMENT ISN’T ABLEISM
Comrade, you might consider taking a break from the internet, or hexbear in particular, your hostility is pretty off the charts in this thread
go and do something fun, disagreeing with people online isn’t that important
Clearly you’re very frustrated at the lack of material improvement from these kinds of demonstrations and the pervasive brainworms that infect most of the people who attend them, and I get that. But if you see millions of people in the street manifesting their discontent with the US government and you can’t think of a way to effect your political will, you aren’t thinking hard enough.
We as outright socialists, communists, and anarchists are in the extreme minority in the US and the only way we are going to gain ranks is by engaging with people where they are at and trying to move them leftwards. Often a single interaction is not going to be enough to de-brainworm someone, but a consistent presence of outwardly leftist groups full of normal people with coherent ideas at these demonstrations is going to seed ideology over time and will get the attention of left-curious libs, and even some chuds, who can be won over into allies.
Most people in the US are not going to respond well to a political campaign of murder and violent revolution because they do not want to die or see others killed. I and others here understand the hypocrisy of that while the US empire rains death around the world, but well-meaning, ignorant people at these protests may not yet, and they may need time and guidance to be de- and re-propagandized and radicalized. If libs don’t have a concrete objective for their protests, we as leftists can have that be our objective for them.
I love the fact that in some “free and democratic” countries you are not even allowed to protest outside of parking lots.
Peaceful Protests are a scam, even more so after the fall of the Communist movement in 1991. Lenin had it figured out in fucking 1905.
In response to this someone just told me to “go read Lenin” like Im pretty sure the guy never wrote about how liberal nonviolent protests which explicitly disavow actual revolutionary action and end up doing nothing but absorbing and dispersing the anger of people who otherwise might be inclined to do more than wave around a sign is actually how you build a fucking revolution
Literally less understanding of power and how revolutions work than the fucking Jan 6 people who thought milling around an empty capital building is how you seize the country
You can definitely use peaceful means to get your demands met. Again looking at 1905, the massive strikes broke the economy and forced the Tsar to capitulate although partially which led to the 1917 Revolution.
But strikes are considered “disruptive” and violent in liberalism. They’re literally illegal in some countries.
But Organising can be done peacefully. Russian socialists spent decades organising mostly peacefully under repression which gave them credibility and support that wouldn’t have been there is they used violent means from the beginning. That led to the successful demonstration of socialist unity in 1905 and the eventual full revolution in 1917.
Yeah like a strike is actually doing something though
Whatever i guess im going to get banned because all my shit is being removed for “ableism” woops i’m on some mods shit list because they love protests ig
I don’t think that’s particularly likely, if they were going to do that they’d have done it by now. At least a ban over ableism, since they’ve already removed the 3 comments that offended.
There’s always the chance that they’ll temp-ban you for hostility, but it hasn’t really reached that level, and it’s usually only a few hours.
I only began to be hostile at being told to read Lenin (ironically a work whose title can be seen as both ableism and a backhanded insult depending on how you feel about “infantile” but I wasn’t elected to the ecumenical council on ableism) while calling me a shit lib and I think ive kept my rudeness at a 2/5 personally but that’s just me. Hope you’re right because I like posting
You were born at an awkward time. Too late for the civil rights and Vietnam protests. You’re just in time to see the power that be crush public demonstration after 9/11 so that Occupy and economic protests are reduced in effectiveness. So you’re kind of looking at an unfortunate sliver of time. People did learn from Occupy and went on to build better organization. 2020 protests wouldn’t have been so widespread if not for the networks built after Occupy. But you’re not going to get a sense of that by reading headlines on a link aggregator and forming vibes.
The other part of this is people keep saying “but this will ruin my livelihood.” That’s exactly why it’s not working. Everyone is so scared of losing their jobs and not being able to market their labor in the future that they don’t want to participate. Revolutions happen when there is no job to lose and when there is no future. The fact that you still think there’s a job for you in the fascist future as long as you don’t have a criminal record or serious injury is telling. That is your clue that we are not there yet.
Not sure this is really a great counterexample. The 2020 protests were widespread but had 0 lasting material effect, and any ideological effect of enlightening white people about racism clearly didn’t hold either.
What do you mean? Police funding skyrocketed.
I disagree. That imaged stayed in my mind as an example we can actually do something useful.
Before that I saw the police and state as unbeatable, especially in the US. But they taught people a good lesson that day.
That’s why my post is longer than one sentence. Within the context of what I said, it’s clear I’m not providing the 2020 protests as something that brought lasting material change and especially not that it cured racism is a lot of white people. I brought it up because it’s a recent protest that comes after public demonstrations were neutered over the Iraq War. However, despite that, there were people still building networks and gaining useful skills from the neutered protests. A lot of those people were also murdered by the state afterwards.
I don’t know about your local scene but many formerly Bernie people joined leftist orgs and mutual aid groups around this time, 2020 was radicalizing for many Americans
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That’s functionally the same as what I just said. You trying to maintain physical ability or legal obscurity so that fascists in the future have a harder time killing you is the same thing. You’re trying to maintain a livelihood in case the solution doesn’t spontaneously emerge before fascists come after you. It also disregards people who are already crippled or have a criminal record that show up to protests. That goes to the idea about having nothing to lose.
Besides that the strategy of giving up strength/security for material gain is flawed. This assumes you know what you’re trading and how the trade will turn out. You operate in the present without hindsight. It’s easier to look back 20 years and say that the Iraq War protests were mostly ineffective but the people at the time didn’t know that. You can argue that it would have been effective if they all listened to the good leftists and read more Lenin but that’s just more hindsight talking. The leftists of the time who did read Lenin should have been more active in that space and guiding them.
I was on the street of brussel to protest the iraq war. It taught me peaceful protests were useless.
yeah because sitting at home on your ass instead is really going to terrify the bourgeoisie. Wouldn’t want to waste your precious time and energy that you’re using to organize your armed revolutionary cell, oh what’s that, you don’t have one? Why not? What is to be done about that?
Yes coddled western liberals addicted to 70 years of cheap treats still suck but it isn’t even that hard to just show up to their protests for a couple hours and talk to people about more radical action. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback recently when I do that, and the dissent rhetoric overall is slowly shifting left with decaying material conditions, especially among the libs who have been organizing these things for a while. PSL and DSA with their better theory and organizational power are usually present at these things agitating the people as well.
These are the battles of a war of position to build a counter-hegemony that will form the popular base of a revolutionary war of movement one day. Not every battle is decisive and they don’t have to be. Think I’m just bullshitting you with Gramscian theory? how about the May Fourth Movement Was good enough for the CPC to get their start, but it took them nearly 50 fucking years and a world war to finally seize power, and they nearly all got killed several times along the way. This communism shit ain’t easy, but if the masses are with us our victory is inevitable.
Get your friends to come and talk theory with them at the rally, enjoy the weather and stupid lib’s signs, start some radical chants, have some fun with it instead of complaining that Lenin isn’t here yet to tell you to go outside and loot a police station. It only gets more difficult from here.
friends? in this economy?
i need a gun to get anyone where i live to wear a mask
I hate how real this is
If you aren’t protesting, what’s your plan instead? What are your orgs doing?
I even said recently in the No Kings threads that I have in my opinion better things to further our cause at those times, but that doesn’t discount protesting completely. Protests are really big radicalizing and recruiting events for communist orgs.
Ok so what are you doing instead?
great defense of liberal performance art
I wasn’t intending to agree or disagree until you elaborated more. But I will say that describing a problem without any attempt at a solution is usually not productive.
Personally, I think most protests have no chance at actually accomplishing their demands, but are still useful to attend to find people and orgs active locally.
Ive described how liberal protests present the problem of wasting the time and energy of millions that could be directed towards more revolutionary actions and the solution is “stop entertaining the idea that protests achieve anything more than being liberal performance art” so i would say that actually arguing with me is what’s “not productive”
Again, like what?
“X is useless” and “X is useless, do something useful instead” are equivalent: neither one gives any indication of what should be done.
Like imagine you’re talking with some local comrades, and they want to do “X”, and you tell them that’s a waste of time. You can see how their obvious question would be what to do instead? And if you regularly gave that type of non-actionable criticism they’d probably start viewing your input as non-productive and start to disregard it.
sitting on your couch jerking it is more productive than “going to a protest” i’m sorry you disagree but feel free to go to some No Kings thing I’m sure it’ll depose trump because that’s how things work, you show up and he gives up like it’s a marvel documentary
Yeah, based on your tone I kinda suspected that’s what you were proposing.
If you wanted, instead of protesting, to have a strike at a strategic workplace, or do sabotage, or block a port, or have a general strike, or even an insurrection, then those are at least somewhat actionable. You can find historical examples, even current examples, and study what they’ve gotten right or wrong, and how their context is similar or different from yours. You can start thinking through how you can get from your current circumstances, to that goal, and then what could be next. Start thinking about the material conditions you’re in and what possibilities actually exist and how you can potentially, in some way, intervene in the course of the class struggle.
And if you decide your next step is “find two dedicated local comrades” or whatever, that’s a completely valid starting point. Reading could be a starting point. Getting your personal life together could be a starting point, I don’t know your life. Unproductive criticism is unfortunately not a starting point, unless you find a way to make it productive.
And maybe you’ll decide conventional protest has some role in this process, and maybe you wont. I gave my opinion above, but I don’t really know, and that specific tactic isn’t really the important point. The important part is thinking through questions of strategy materialistically and scientifically, instead of emotionally and impressionistally.
You’re not wrong about thinking we’re in a bad situation and not accomplishing what we need to. But put yourself in your historical context. Communists have chosen one of the most difficult causes in human history. We’ve been at this for hundreds of years, we’ve faced unimaginable defeats and losses, but we’ve also learned some hard lessons and made at least a few important advances. And right now, that process is still in motion, and we all have to figure out what to do and how to do it. Picking one specific thing not to do is completely insufficient.
“My solution is to not do the problem”
Just Stop Oil apparently disbanded because, after all of their protests, they had their initial demands about North Sea oil drilling met. They’re mostly liberals, and their performance art got some results.
You might think that blocking corporations or something else dramatic and non-performance would be a big deal, but when JSO did that they got no media attention, and the corporation successfully ignored them at a negligible material loss.
lol yes just stop oil stopped oil 🙄
sadly, stopping all of the oil isn’t really a reasonable expectation in our current mode of production, we’ll need a revolution really.
but they did indeed stop some oil, something that wouldn’t have happened if they’d just stayed at home.
The legitimate critique is that they only stopped some specific oil, but it was kust replaced by other oil. Protesting with ineffective methods can create a situation where the externalities are just shoved elsewhere
Yeah I used to think we should go to these things to “be with the masses” or whatever but increasingly I’m feeling that it’s just liberal adventurism. If it doesn’t come with an organized threat of violence, boycott, or strike then it is meaningless and we’d be better of spending our time engaging with the people in our lives to build that threat because those are people we’ll actually sway and build something with rather than random discontents on the street.
I definitely agree that, especially with No Kings, it’s a bad way to “be with the masses”. Most normal people don’t really care about dictatorship, monarchy, or abuse of powers, it’s reflected in the number of non-voters. Protests about specific material interests are much more “of the masses”, but also much rarer.
Don’t form your mass line off of these protests, get these protestors to follow our mass line.
Community events, rather than protests, are a much better way to get with a wide range of normal people. Or labor organizing in the worse off industries.