& girl boss power hour

Next thing you know these SOCIALISTS will try spreading propaganda for Dihydrogen Monoxide

Ah gotcha.

Despite how cool it would be, wouldn’t ordering the NYPD to apprehend ICE agents be a direct act of sedition aka grounds for the military to invade the city?

People are gonna protect their own heads first no matter their politics.

Deactivation Phrase?

Yep, fat finger problems

But sometimes there’s an anti-aircraft missile waiting for that bomber.

Or just do things Vietcong style and dig some hidey holes to shoot invaders from 😉

I am part of an org and am pushing us to do more outward-facing political education.

Reply is late, sorry about that. It’s been a good thread.

propaganda works because they have rational intrests in believing the propaganda. highly recomend masses rebels and elites, im sure it gets old seeing people on here reccomend it but it seriously fits my experiences in life trying to even convince my friends and family of my views and how they seem so eager to hoover up complete BS. TLDR is that they believe capitalist propaganda because they want to believe capitalist propaganda in order to receive economic and social benefits.

I have read this one a couple times. Where I have to have hope is in the business class here failing to act in a way that keeps the illusion going for us burgerlanders. They’re not working in tamdem and because the system requires them to be ruthless about squeezing profit from anywhere they can, they lay off people, replace people with AI and self-checkouts, offshore jobs, convert full-time jobs to gig jobs or part-time, etc. That’s where we have to come in.

I just can’t go with the idea that things have to get SO bad that all of these people have to be literally starving or gunned down by troops before they will demand better. I’m hopeful that even in my suburban, “comfortable” surroundings that I hear a lot more class consciousness around me. There has to be a point where people realize, despite all of the propaganda and despite that subconscious notion that they benefit from the global imperialism, that “hey, I’m getting screwed over too! Not as bad as in Africa, but still”. If life isn’t good for the average American what does that say about the people in other countries? The American Dream is a nightmare. Imperialism only goes so far when you can’t afford a house, a car needs a 15-year loan to purchase, everything costs too much, and wages aren’t going anywhere. I have to believe people will break sooner than the point where they can’t afford food, right?!?

Organizing is weird here in the states because the people who can afford to take time out of their days to organize are mainly white, mainly middle class, and have fairly comfortable lives. People aren’t organizing out of “desperation” because for all intents and purposes that’s not what’s happening on the ground here. Of course our orgs being full of these people means that we have a hard time interacting with the people we are trying to help and who are truly destitute such as the folks on SNAP, homeless people, chronically unemployed, etc.

I am aware of my privilege and the privilege of those organizing with me. We still are doing ICE watch, are still organizing mutual aid and such, but I don’t consider us future leaders or any revolution.

Responding to the “vanguard” bits people are commenting on:

I have had some bad IRL experiences with people who considered themselves “vanguard” and that has soured my opinion of the concept. On one occasion a “revolutionary vanguard” group disrupted my org’s reading group because apparently we weren’t left enough for their liking. That’s what the reading is for! They were very disruptive and basically forced the room into a shouting match and a lot of BS for almost an hour before leaving.

Another time a small Marxist org wanted to run some political education night schools. Our chapter decided to try working with them on a joint program since we wanted to hear their perspective and keep trying to unite with other left groups locally. That turned into a disaster! Long story short, the main instigator at this other org tried to break apart couples, saying so-and-so “wasn’t supportive”, caused a trans comrade a lot of mental anguish, and was a complete jackass to everyone that wasn’t 100% on board with their very narrow view of Marxism. And they pushed the same “vanguard” points and of course thought they were going to be that vanguard.

To me if there is going to be a “vanguard” it has to come from the people organizing on the ground, not from study groups. Unfortunately theory and practice are showing me that while in theory this is how the vanguard should form, in practice it just ends up being the loudest people in the room or the people who already have hangups or personality issues gaining an ego and defending it with this theory. People twist things to fit their personal needs and biases all the time. I mean look at all those Christians who love to tell everyone how to live but clearly haven’t read what Jesus was all about!

Forgive me for leaning more towards my Anarchist friends’ views on this. I believe if leadership forms it should form organically and should be people that are heads down doing the work, not the people who have read the most theory. Theory is great and important to understand, but I don’t value it as highly as having on-the-ground experience. I see others posting that the vanguard needs to be organizers. Hopefully ya’ll have had better experiences where you live.

Why are these people so obsessed with controlling everyone else’s lives? Just leave people alone ffs

The cake is AI

Thank you for the thoughtful replies. I will have replies later probably tonight.

Maybe I misinterpreted the last comment. I don’t believe in making things worse, more working with the conditions we have now vs. waiting for things to get worse. We are far off from a general strike when workers here are so effectively split among every possible line Capitalists can come up with. Age, race, gender, sexuality, where someone was born, which Capitalist party they support, and so much more. And I fear it will get worse for a lot of people as the social media they’re addicted to become worse echo chambers with fake AI people telling them stories that are curated to their particular interests.

What I want to see is a whole lot more concerted effort on educating/deprogramming people. Theory is not compatible with the average burger lander. There’s good resources out there that explain what’s going on in more accessible terms but I see a lot of people on the left focusing more on the “vanguard” before focusing on the workers. Sure, study theory personally but we need more Hasan Pikers and they need to be everywhere, especially at the local level. I’m focusing my time and energy on educating locally, creating & spreading propaganda, and building mutual aid networks around me. If SHTF I want people around where we can trust each other and help keep our needs met.

I apologize, my screen didn’t show your whole comment and I just saw the first few lines.

I get where you’re coming from. I think based on where you’re coming from, and if I see the same thing after more reading (Lenin is on my to read list) then maybe I am just a “sympathizer” or a Democratic Socialist or whatever left-lite term you want to use. I know in my personal life that I am the most radical by far, but that doesn’t mean much in the global sense.

You’re also right that I’m not comfortable with wanting my material conditions to get much worse for something that isn’t a guarantee. For all I know if conditions really get bad here we will just become a fascist hellhole and the guys with the $90k pickup trucks with flags hanging out the back will start shooting anyone that’s any shade of brown. People like me aren’t going to take up arms unless there’s literally no option left. My life IS comfortable despite being jobless and having to resort to weird side gigs to get by. Life could be a lot worse.

If Capitalists knew what was good for them they’d keep YouTube free and make the “treats” cheap and plentiful, but IDK if there’s enough of them that can be that forward-thinking. The circuses are getting enshittified, and we just hit the edge of losing bread…

I’m not your kind of Communist. I don’t want suffering anywhere, but we’re not going to get past suffering if we just sit around and wait for things to get bad.

It’s a core complaint I have with a type of “ultra” leftism I encounter on this site. I don’t believe in a “vanguard”. I believe in empowering everyday working class folks, not some nebulous core of “leaders” who people will magically follow when things get really bad. This whole vanguard concept comes off as wishful thinking. Thinking that the American Revolution is going to look anything like what happened in China or Russia or Cuba is not realistic. Thinking that American leftists have to follow the same steps as in other places is also not dialectical.

If we want to see good changes happen we have to work with the people we have now. That means more mutual aid, more on-the-ground ICE watch and court watch, cop watch, etc. More spreading propaganda. More educating and having endless patience for the American worker who has been fed Capitalist propaganda and beaten down with Capitalist Realism their whole lives. It means figuring out how to make our ideologies work under a tapestry of individualism, because there is a cultural selfishness that I don’t believe people in most other countries have. And if that means we have to take baby steps into Democratic Socialism and elect a bunch more Mamdanis, hold a lot more Food Not Bombs, and do a lot more patient educating then so be it.

History repeats, but it doesn’t always have to. I have to believe that a solution without bloodshed can work, because tbh I’m not going to push for conditions to get worse. That’s not going to happen. The whole point of politics is to improve peoples lives, not hope they get worse to the point that they start burning things down!

There is only a handful of people who need to shed blood. I will not elaborate and break site rules. We absolutely can, and will, make change happen if we can get a nationwide strike that sticks and replace the people at the top. We know the US government caves when their precious flights get delayed, so imagine how far they’ll go if they can’t get anything done because all us working folk stop working for them?

I’m not going to let my family starve for a chance at history repeating itself here. No one will. Self-preservation trumps all ideology.

This whole “hustle” mindset is a cancer. I hate how so much of our species got the idea that work is all that matters and treats people who want some free time like they’re some sort of inferior species.

I don’t like the idea that the only way for things to change here is to see a bunch of my friends and family die first. I totally get keeping one’s head in the sand if the alternative is death and starvation.

If you want the left to grow in times like these you have to give people a path that doesn’t require mass death.