More and more people are saying it
I have a few younger friends who have definitely been radicalized** by tiktok.
**My caveat is that these people aren’t going out and reading theory or really engaging with anything beyond surface level critique. However, they have been far more willing to listen, and are less likely to backslide into liberalism. This is certainly in contrast to the older, lib friends I have.
So many people hate capitalism and know it’s destroying the earth and our lives, but they’re unwilling to step outside the box and embrace revolutionary thought.
Those who haven’t decided that change is impossible still put their faith in our democracy. If we can just vote the right people in, we can address the problems with capitalism and make it work more fairly.
They don’t realize that our democracy is super hollow. That the ones that are allowed to get into office are the same ones keeping us poor, pushed to our limits, and picking fights in culture war bullshit. That we fight our imperialist wars for securing resources, and it’s because of those measures that allows us to live our somewhat comfortable lives.
The system can’t be changed without more people becoming revolutionary. I’ve come so far in my understanding of the world and theory in just the last two years, so I know it’s possible. I just don’t know how we spread it fast enough to make a difference.
It’ll take very drastic measures to fully radicalize the rest of the population. War coming home to our doorstep, massive inflation hikes that we feel down the street at our local grocery store, almost apocalyptic economic conditions for people to actually think different. Sadly. But I try to be hopeful
The problem is that America is almost impervious to those things. There is 0 chance of any war ever coming home, unless the American millitary decides to start shit and just overtly start murdering people at random. The American state has spent the past 80 years destroying the earth and everything on it, just to prevent that exact thing from happening. I know that we currently see a lot of the contradictions laid bare, however unless americans actually start learning how to read, then the struggle seems almost insurmountable.
It’s a combination of organizing whoever’s willing to organize now, and preparing for when things get so much worse that people are disillusioned and desperate enough to embrace revolutionary politics on a large scale.
I wonder: what percentage of the Russian Empire’s public supported the Bolsheviks, say, three years before the October Revolution?
I’m pretty sure Lenin said in 1913 or 1914, that there was no chance of a revolution ever happening in his homeland while he was still alive. Of course he didn’t quite foresee the absolutely idiocy the Tzar would display in the Great War, or probably even that a war of such destructive proportions could even happen.
Millions of people living in poverty conditions under a Tzar is the gunpowder that sparked the October revolution.
In America, too many people are comfortable with their adequate material conditions to really ignite a class war. Capital knows this too. Keep the leash just long enough to grant just a little bit of freedom
