jack

Hi, I'm here to announce that everyone pushing the standard Hexbear party line on the protest movement is a loser and wrong. I already know the weak-ass arguments you're gonna make and every single one of them reveals your disconnection from any actual organizing. Let's go through them one by one. If you have another that you think Marx Failed to Consider, please bring it up and I will explain how you are wrong in that way as well.

This was funded by the Waltons

No, one Walton bought an ad in the NYT. Who fucking cares? It has no material bearing on the movement whatsoever. There's no organization money is being funneled to other than the Democratic Party and Indivisble, which is not different in any way. The on-the-ground organizers in most cities and towns are not receiving a penny from the left's George Soros conspiracy. They're just normal people (and, to the next point, lots of leftists).

The Democrats are using this to steal the leftist energy of the masses

The Democrats certainly want to do that, but on the ground reports indicate they are losing all over the country. That's because leftists (especially ) are not leaving this space uncontested. I have spent an enormous amount of time putting in the work to earn the trust and legitimacy necessary to place a bunch of literal revolutionary communists in the leadership of the local movement. Not in some sneaky, behind the scenes way, but out in the open, succeeding specifically because we are literal revolutionary communists who never shut up about it. The Democrats, by my accounting, are losing the struggle in more places than not. If you refuse to engage because you're afraid the Dems will suck your leftist soul, you're just conceding the struggle and granting them victory. They don't co-opt by pressing a button, they co-opt because they have the resources to take leadership and then defuse. So far they have failed to do so specifically because the space is not empty and the communists are fighting harder to reach the masses (since we actually have an appealing program).

The attendees are all Kamala-loving liberals who just want to go back to brunch

If you had ever bothered to go to one of these events and talk politics to people, you'll discover a very broad array of political perspectives, including a strong trend towards explicit support for socialism. Yes, of course, the PMC bug-eating libs are there - who cares? They are by no means the only attendees. Maybe you're just Too Cool to be around someone who reminds you of your mom, but the rest of us are finding deep political discontent and activating it. When one of my comrades gets on the mic and says "we need to break from the democrats and do a literal socialist revolution", the crowd response, by and large, is incredibly positive. The retired dentists and accountants in the crowd grumble and whine, but they are a minority - and they don't leave. They stay and listen to the arguments we make. They say things like "you're right, I just don't think it's possible". They very, very rarely say "you're going too far".

This is a disorganized mess that's going to fizzle out

50501 and other decentralized spontaneous protest movements never last, but they do give an opportunity for dedicated political organizers to intervene on a stage where thousands of disaffected liberals and Democrat voters are asking "what is to be done?". If you decide not to show up and answer that question, the Democrat machine will coordinate the demobilization of this movement. If you do show up and you deliver the political argument you believe in. If you show up with the AV equipment, safety marshalls, march route, signs, and speaker list - the bare minimum for a halfway serious organizer - then you don't just hand out flyers and talk at a table but set the entire political line of the event. And in doing so, you demonstrate the leadership of the socialist movement and win a lot of those attendees to your side. If you can plug them into actual organizing work, you can bring them into permanent political motion. Does it matter if 95% of these people just go home and never bother to do anything besides another protest? If those 5% join the movement in a meaningful way, that's half a million new comrades.

Mao says: "All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the masses. Unless they are conscious and willing, any kind of work that requires their participation will turn out to be a mere formality and will fail."

Stop thinking about what you want to do and achieve and start thinking about the fact that we needs tens of millions of people to support revolutionary socialism in the US in order to get anything done. They are out in the streets begging for you to explain this to them.

These are just peaceful protests that won't achieve anything because they aren't revolutionary.

Lenin says: "What grounds are there for assuming that the “great, victorious, world” revolution can and must employ only revolutionary methods? There are none at all. The assumption is a pure fallacy; this can be proved by purely theoretical propositions if we stick to Marxism. The experience of our revolution also shows that it is a fallacy. From the theoretical point of view—foolish things are done in time of revolution just as at any other time, said Engels, and he was right. We must try to do as few foolish things as possible, and rectify those that are done as quickly as possible, and we must, as soberly as we can, estimate which problems can be solved by revolutionary methods at any given time and which cannot."

You're doing the ultra-leftism of conflating tactics with strategy. Our tactic in this moment is to intervene in these protests to convince people of the necessity of a revolutionary socialist political organization as the only solution to our sick society. Right now, mass revolutionary socialist consciousness and organization does not exist in the USA. Therefore, it is impossible to carry out open revolutionary militancy. If the current crop of people who are in some way directly involved in revolutionary socialist organizing (certainly a lower bar than revolutionary guerrilla warfare or sabotage) turned today to armed struggle, all ~100,000 of them would lose. The broader periphery of people who semi-passively support that objective through attendance at events and monetary contribution is probably a few million. The masses who would passively support probably number in the tens of millions, but that passive support is not particularly useful. And the number of people who would simply sit by and watch it happen is probably over 100 million. Every one of those groups needs to be elevated to the next stage - observer to passive supporter, passive supporter to semi-passive periphery, semi-passive periphery to revolutionary organizer, revolutionary organizer to doing the literal revolution. Each of these layers of the movement have a symbiotic relationship with the others that strengthen the entire struggle.

Here's the key lesson: WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE TO WIN VIOLENT STRUGGLE AND YOU NEED TO GO WHERE THE MASSES ARE TO RALLY THEM TO OUR CAUSE.

Amerikkkans will never do a revolution because they are labor aristokkkrauts

Ok, thank you for you contribution, you can resume sitting in a hole since your prescription is inactivity.

Please tell me your other weak-ass reasons why you're correct to sit on your ass.

wtffffff

they are so yummy and actually pretty nutritionally good, fucking israeli scum

anyone got good boxed mac and cheese recommendations?

First, Hexbear is proud to take its support for refugees and migrants seriously in material terms.

Already, initial reports suggest that somewhere between 45-53% of lemm.ee users have begun the difficult transition to a new home after the apocalyptic devastation of their old servers. It is a trying time for these innocent, siteless people, many of whom fled reddit under conditions of political and economic repression, ballooning the fledgling server to the status of a respectable middle power in the Lemmy fediverse.

Internal turmoil and a crisis of leadership shattered their dreams after just a few short years. Now, adrift and desperate, the bulk of lemm.ee users have started to adapt to a third home. Amidst the fear and uncertainty, these users have received a warm welcome. In the bustling registration pages, many maingrants sang hopeful hymns, spontaneous expressions of the longing for a brighter, more stable future. One version of a common verse is below:

The brilliant purple shores bring peace from Lemmy wars

so we gaze on high to the hex-sun in the sky

Meanwhile, the long-time residents of Hexbear, who largely date from an earlier era of Reddit emigration and have constructed their own unique nation over the half-decade of their independence, have mourned openly the loss of the younger server, despite the sometimes contentious relations between the two. "I couldn't believe the news when I heard," one Hexbear poster, who asked to remain anonymous, said. "This is gonna fucking suck if they all go to .world and become fascists." The user then pecked and scratched at the ground before shitting and pissing all over its feathers. Prominent and highly respected poster @jack@hexbear.net, often called "World-Historical, Light Itself", could not be reached for comment on the matter.

By and large, the people of Hexbear have been eager to welcome in new countryfolk. Though some cultural friction is inevitable in such large migrations, the lost people of lemm.ee have quickly adapted to new cultural and political norms without shedding their traditional ways. "It's important to have free speech above all else," one of the thousands of new migrants said. "That's why I realized we need to support Xi Jinping Thought."

Hexbear continues to extend her arms over the netizens of the Lemmyverse, and few can resist her clarion call of freedom.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5127169

On Feb. 1, after seven months of public pressure from organizers and community members, Summit County, Ohio allowed a $1 million investment in Israel Bonds to mature without reinvesting.

Israel Bonds are unrestricted loans to the Israeli Treasury. These bonds provide direct economic support for Israel’s apartheid and military infrastructure by funding the military occupation and illegal settlement expansions, as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

On Feb. 1, after seven months of public pressure from organizers and community members, Summit County, Ohio allowed a $1 million investment in Israel Bonds to mature without reinvesting.

Israel Bonds are unrestricted loans to the Israeli Treasury. These bonds provide direct economic support for Israel’s apartheid and military infrastructure by funding the military occupation and illegal settlement expansions, as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The world's most evil hegemon and the future hope for humanity have a few things in common, one of which is an astounding array of incredibly diverse, beautiful geographic regions.

Who's got the edge? Is the Grand Canyon better than Zhangjiajie?

Damn this is a good video! It's amazing how clear and cogent materialist history is compared to liberal, idealist history. This video lays out the way the transition to capitalism was disastrous for the peasantry, who resisted proletarianization at every step of the way. It also gives a lot of attention to capitalism's invention of modern gender roles as means of economic warfare against women. It's class conflict all the way down.

I really strongly recommend you take the time to give this a watch, it's good shit.