This is a thread specifically for the war, not a general megathread (use the pinned /c/genzedong thread for that).
Please keep related news in this thread rather than making separate posts. Remember to include sources and avoid spreading rumours.
This is a thread specifically for the war, not a general megathread (use the pinned /c/genzedong thread for that).
Please keep related news in this thread rather than making separate posts. Remember to include sources and avoid spreading rumours.
This is a pretty accurate assessment of the core issue about organizing in the US. Few are willing to commit to radical action and it’s not hard to see why.
For example, I’m sure many here are aware of that one video from the recent demonstrations, where protesters managed to break the door of an ICE facility. Then they simply walked backwards and cheered, not one person choosing to actually go into the facility and escalate.
Many online comrades scoffed at this, noting how neutered the American left is. They were correct in their suggestion that the US left self terminates radical action, which is mind numbing to say the least.
However I’d like to perhaps explain the headspace that these protestors likely had.
For one, there’s the pretty good chance that if they went into the facility, they’d just get shot.
well risk has to exist in every action, so the problem is that Americans still have too much to lose
This works to explain some of the inertia but there’s more.
When those protesters think about getting shot, it’s not just what they have to lose that influences them. It’s the thought of “what would giving my life actually accomplish?” Which I feel is a more paralyzing thought, as he answer is quite simple.
“Not much” is what the protesters will determine.
And it’s for good reason.
I want you to think about how the US public reacts to crackdowns broadly. How they react to their own state suppressing them let alone how it suppresses the Global South.
Americans would see a protestor, or even a score of protesters, getting mowed down in an ICE facility, and frankly, I know they wouldn’t do shit about it.
They’d declare their outrage, but they’d just take it as evidence that this is the result of fighting back.
That thought of “what would giving up my life acheive” followed by “I know my fellow countryman wouldn’t do a damn thing about it” basically completely holds you back from doing something radical.
Americans have no sense of actual community. We’re so atomized and utterly disconnected from eachother that someone could drop dead in our own neighborhood and most of us wouldn’t even know that person’s name.
How the hell do you organize that?! No matter how much time you put into your organization, how do you grow anything on such salted soil?
It’s why the only meaningful organizing that’s happened recently, in my opinion, is the Minisoda/Minneapolis community defense organizations. We saw Americans nanage to run ICE forces out of their neighborhood, burn their vehicles, and seize their weapons. Yet, we didn’t see the mainstream Media say a peep about it.
That to me signals that the US regime found this organizational trend to be very concerning. I want other parts of the US to learn about that recent local shift, learn from it, and adopt its succesful methods. However the issue is that the conditions which bred such a response aren’t being applied to the rest of the US.
This is why I really don’t get mad about it. Not that it isn’t bad. But this is what an abusive relationship is like. I was in one and that’s exactly what I thought. I could stand up to them and yell and whatever and all they’d do is make it worse. I could stop them from hurting our animals and probably not end up doing anything besides get more hurt, or i could sit down and shut down. There are certainly things we can encourage abuse victims to do, and even be disappointed in if they do certain things, but it really doesn’t help to be angry about it
I think this is the most resonant analysis of the US mindset/conditions I’ve read to date. People tend to cover the “giving up” side a lot, the “not doing enough” side as well, and typically the conclusion drawn is that people are too comfortable and don’t care enough to rebel; but those other limited narratives don’t get at what you did, the rationale behind holding back because of the belief that the risk won’t actually pay off and that it will be for nothing.
As an example, we have people like Aaron Bushnell to look at in fear. This guy who martyred himself for Palestine and it was a blip of attention in a sea of spectacle. To the point you make about atomization, if most people in the US saw Aaron Bushnell as a brother, as family, they would not only have been aware of what he did, but been spurred to action. Instead, he’s “just a name.” Some people try to honor what he did, but they aren’t in military buildings, breaking things in them as a consequence for the military creating a world where one of its own would choose to do what he did.
People are conditioned instead to look at things like “I got mine”, or at most, “I got mine for me and my immediate family / circle of friends.” Minneapolis appears to be a situation where that attitude didn’t hold and people started seeing Minneapolis as one and ICE as outsider invaders.
As communists, we like to talk about building class consciousness and that does matter, but this train of thought makes me wonder if the more pressing consciousness is US people coming to understand the US state apparatus as like invaders. Substantively, it is like invaders for the indigenous population, since its inception. And the ramping up of policing/ICE/militarization/etc. may make the US state more like invaders for the general population as well. This is perhaps a reason why Minneapolis stands out.
The conditions are already coming, already there for some people, that the state is turning its conquering nature inwards, but people need to learn still to not scramble to get out of the way and hide, and instead find solidarity with the indigenous and their priorities; they are the ones who have known invasion for the longest time.
This feels a bit rambly, but anyway, great analysis, gets me thinking and is somewhat cathartic to have that feeling named, of wondering how worth it is, to risk.
That is class consciousness. Class consciousnesses is just the realization that the ruling class are a separate group from the workers and that they oppress us and they are the enemy.
Right, but in the case of a settler state, they are also an occupying force, which complicates it beyond bougie and worker, and that’s the part I’m trying to get at that’s important in the US context. In a way, it’s another angle of looking at the patsoc problem: where people view things as working class and elite, but their vision of better is the working class getting more of the imperial spoils. They haven’t internalized/accepted the state as an occupying entity and only see it as one that exploits the working class.
For comparison, current Russia is capitalist, but it is not “occupying Russia”: it’s local bourgeoisie ruling over local working class, but it’s native Russian forces carrying this out, not colonizers. In the US, it is both that and occupation, and the history of the US shows that when the local working class push for better without addressing the settler contradiction, it plays out as mild reforms that struggle to stick, usually at the expense of dumping the needs of a group on a lower rung.