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Iraq War was preceded by the largest worldwide non-violent protests in history and the war happened anyway.

Those non-violent protests shook them so bad they wanted to charge non-violent Quaker protestors with terrorism.

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  • Individual, spontaneous acts alone are not sufficient either. This is adventurism, which is fun to celebrate but does not actually change the equation. The answer is neither peaceful organizing nor individual aggression, but mass, millitant organizing! Throughout all of history, there have been no successful changes in the status quo without a mass, organized movement. Read theory and get organized. If you need a place to start, I suggest my introductory Marxist reading list.

    • The answer is neither peaceful organizing nor individual aggression, but mass, millitant organizing!

      This is true, but also extremely difficult, especially in an era of mass media induced paranoia and alienation. Mass militant organizing requires a large cohesive social class that has a center of gravity - a church house or a social club or a workhouse floor - that increasingly no longer exists.

      Social media was supposed to be the new venue for mass mobilization, and we saw the beginnings of it in the early '00s. But media consolidation, saturation from automated marketing accounts, and counter-programming have largely washed it out.

      Read theory and get organized.

      One is significantly easier than the other.

      That said... go look for local unions in your town or neighborhood. Look for chapters of the DSA or the PSL or other labor-friendly organizing groups. Go to your local PTA meetings and city council meetings when you can, and get to know the people who show up there regularly. Get out of the house and meet people where they are.

      That's all good advice. But its also hard, exhausting work. And its done in the face of enormous headwinds. Don't mistake the failure of leftism as a simple failure of "human nature" or whatever. We're in an entrenched system and attempting a Herculean feat to change it.

      • Revolution, rather than being easy or impossible, is simply and truthfully hard. I agree, and that's why it is important to start building that and contribute to those who have already started.

    • If enough individuals do it, it will be collective.

      • I disagree that that would accomplish anything. Assassinations do not "transfer power" as the SRs once claimed, but create a void that is filled by the next in line, always bourgeois or bourgeois adjacent. What is required is revolution, but through organization, so that there can be dominance over this sphere entirely, and the working class wrest its Capital permanently and gradually.

    • One observation several have made is that audiences are defying their conservative influencers over this issue.

      Maybe it’s not individually important, but I think it could be a “start” that finally gets through to so many otherwise impenetrable minds and captive audiences.

      • I agree, I came to the same conclusion. However, that only further necessitates taking advantage and striking while the iron is hot by pressing a correct line, there's no benefit to letting this end in celebration alone.

    • politics is not about morality. it's about power & control.

      🌍🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀

118 comments