DC last night:
- https://twitter.com/loran076/status/1323907767887867904?s=19
- https://twitter.com/FranceNews24/status/1323917050369245185?s=19
- https://hexbear.net/post/47055
it’s more likely in the next few days that the fash will take the streets, especially as trump announces how he will contest the election. after all, chaos is his best bet for getting the powers that be to allow him to retain power without a fight. so don’t fucking tell people to stay home. it’s absolutely critical that everyone pays attention to what’s happening in their own backyards and steps up to engage in appropriate community defense.
the election is just a stage. stop confusing it with the conditions that compel people to act.
not dyin’ for biden. sorry but not really
if there are fascists trying to start shit in your town, you’re going to stay home because someone might think you’re dying for biden? what a bad fucking take.
Imma let libs take the lead on this one. I sure as shit ain’t gettin my head blown off by a chud just for Biden to cave like every lib before him.
protecting your community has nothing to do with biden… god damn, there’s more to politics than the fucking election.
Right on! Too often have Communists been dying on the front lines to save the cowardly libs from their own folly. It’s high time to fight smart, let the libs be the cannon fodder this time!
Any Marxist going out in defense against fascism this month should make it crystal clear that they don’t support Biden or Trump and should instead agitate by making demands in defense of democracy in a more abstract sense, and calling on voters to continue organizing for the shit they actually want (M4A, GND, accountability against police, etc.) after the election is decided.
I agree in principle but disagree on the specifics. this is a damn good time to agitate AGAINST the false democracy, to point out the ways in which it robs people of meaningful choice and agency in their own lives, and to advocate for a new system. this isn’t the time for milquetoast socdemism.
My phrasing might have erred a bit too close to opportunism. Given that the US left is still extremely scattered and tiny relative to the working class as a whole (even if the left is growing more quickly now), we should strike a careful balance between crafting a message that will reach the DSA-adjacent progressive libs and anarchists and other newly radicalizing layers - who might still be terrified to death of Trump while only somewhat scared of business-as-usual neoliberals like Biden - while retaining a hard line against the two bourgie-funded parties, putting forth a clearly articulated alternative and a path to socialist revolution from existing conditions. This means condemning Trump’s obvious contempt for democracy while reminding them of the Dem ratfuckery during the primaries, and arguing for the necessity to organize and build an independent workers’ party - not just the smaller revolutionary party, but a mass party as well.
If that last part sounds like succdem shit, unfortunately it’s still a necessary transitional step in between our current situation - one in which there’s no real political representation for the working class at all - to one in which we eventually have a large enough revolutionary core within a larger grassroots independent left united front/mass movement to actually carry out the tasks of revolution. The tasks of the 1st and 2nd internationals were prerequisites for the tasks of the 3rd - and in terms of organization we’re still arguably on square one here in the US.
None of my working class shit head friends nor any of the suburban wine moms are going to riot to install Biden. It will be as feckless and useless as all of the BLM protests have been. Great optics, exhilarating even, but ultimately impotent at creating revolutionary potential. Dont riot for Biden.
forget people rioting to install biden. I’m talking about fascists threatening a harder coup to make the pill of a softer coup go down more smoothly.
it’s not the coup itself that matters. it’s the power these paramilitaries build by getting to demonstrate force with insufficient opposition.
You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks.
Mark Bray
I’m just imagining how the resistance would have gone in WW2 if chapos were in charge of the communist parties of Europe.
Not our fight. We’ll just hunker down and wait for the fascism to pass.
maybe we should do a Clara Zetkin “Fighting Fascism” reading group or something. people seem to not even be aware of the actual threat in the next few weeks, how to analyze it, and how to fight it.
may i ask what you see the upcoming threats to be in the next few weeks? maybe it’s too complex to get into, but i’m curious on what you have to say!
so trump is going to just barely lose the election and take it to the courts (that he’s rigged) to fight the case for his coup. this part is interesting in that it’s a another several steps towards war, especially in that it forces the urban/haute bourgeoisie to make a choice - step in and stop the coup using the institutions that will respond to them or allow trump’s coup to happen, knowing that the person they’d very much prefer, biden, clearly won the election. there’s a huge pressure against action - it’s very clear to most observers that if they choose to try and stop the coup, they stand a very high risk of precipitating a war. (they might be forced to this war by further action by the national bourgeoisie, but that’s a separate matter.)
so wanting stability and the chance to continue profiting on the covid crisis, they prefer biden. but that preference is easily abandoned if the risk of war looks too severe. enter our fascist paramilitary friends, funded and trained by the national bourgeoisie. the more noise they make, threatening a hard reprisal to any response to the coup, the less likely such a response becomes.
so make no mistake, they will be out all over major cities in the coming weeks as the soap opera plays out on TV.
our problem is that shows of force by fascists must, under all conditions be sufficiently opposed. their source of ideological influence is primarily aesthetic - if they look powerful, they garner support from their cowardly, but sympathetic would-be followers (i.e. fascists, but those who are cowed into staying home). the more support they garner, the more they escalate the amount of force they’re willing to bring to bear.
so, expect increased fascist activity in the next several weeks. and expect it to get worse if the response is sloppy or inadequate. we’re not very far off from pograms in this country.
leftists are already at risk and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. we do ourselves no favors by allowing fascist paramilitaries to gain propaganda victories by murdering people as a direct threat to the whole nation. it’s not the trumpist coup itself that matters here - the idea that we can allow groups that wish to exterminate us gain any foothold of influence or power only makes sense if you (falsely) believe that you can escape their next escalation in violence.
antifascist victories involve turning out the whole community against the fascist threat. we don’t want another battle for Charlottesville - compare that to its anniversary rally in DC where the libs absolutely showed up and the whole city shut the rally down. this idea that we can separate liberals and leftists is idealism and the product of severe atomization.
forget what people believe. it’s your damn community. no one is coming to protect it for you. any neighbor who will help you with mutual defense is a comrade whether you or they know it yet or not, whether they’re anarchist, communist, lib, or recovering chud. mutual aid and defense do not respect lines drawn by cultivated identities.
you should be focused on organizing so that libs put their lives on the line
there are two kinds of organizing - building capacity and acute crisis management. I’m talking about the latter as for a short while, we don’t have time for the former.
They are not going to come out for you when you get your comrades murdered. They’ll call you violent rioter socialists.
this is ignorant of the history of antifascist organizing in this country over the last twenty years. people do absolutely turn out in sufficient numbers to shut down fascist actions.
it’s advocating that everyone stay home that I’m objecting to - that accomplishes nothing but diminishing the strength of any response to fascist activity.
Why put your body on the line for liberals? America is an evil empire, let it burn and protect yourself and your comrades, don’t waste a breath on the liberals.
Honestly you don’t have to stand outside to defend your neighborhood. Most likely if the fascists see just a bunch of houses, unless they know that a bunch of antifascists live there they’re going to keep on rolling past elsewhere in their trucks while hooting and hollering. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t think you shouldn’t have contact with a self defense group if they do stop at someone’s house or neighborhood. But just standing around does little, at most it tells the fascists where to find you and where to find the confrontation they’re craving.
America is not Germany of the 1930s. There is no large communist movement. There is no reason to step up and go to war with the fascists and let the feds pin all the blame on the left. Let the fascists do stupid shit to liberals and get a state response. Why the fuck should communists allow the media to both sides the blame? Let them do ignorant shit and get an FBI gunship up their ass. Why would I want to get between two enemies of mine about to fight and let them both turn to fight me instead? Tactically ridiculous.
Something you people don’t understand. Fascism arises out of material conditions. A bunch of fucking yahoos running around with guns and explosives shooting is not going to result in hard fascism arriving. It’s going to result in the FBI murking their ass with military hardware and these fascists having to resort to more subtle insurgent terroristic attacks or go home. Plain and simple for you: Trump is not favored overwhelmingly by the American national bourgeoisie. They see Biden as equally or more palatable as he is stable and probably not so bad at imperialism. Given this they are not going to support any kind of in the streets fascist coup nor will US government institutions. The US military is going to sit on the sidelines and the cops and FBI are going to grab anyone who steps out of line with a strong preference for grabbing any anti-capitalists they can get their hands on. So don’t be there. Leave them to either have to blatantly ignore the fascists and further deepen anger of the Democratic base at the enforcer class (and bring them closer to our side) or to engage with them.
