How bad do we let things get? Should we wait until the planet can’t sustain life anymore? Should we wait until it’s 100 degrees F in the Artic? Until wildfires blanket entire continents or the last glacier is gone? Should we wait until fascist billionaires take even more from us? Until there are Flock cameras at every mail box? Maybe we should wait until the wells run dry or the tornadoes never stop. When is it going to be enough? I’m so tired of seeing things getting worse. Every. Single. Day. I’m ready. I’ve been ready. How about you?
How do we coordinate? How do we look after each other? What is the signal? If we don’t work together then we are just continuing our slow march to destruction to the drum of the parasitic billionaires. Please, for us, for the cats, the dogs, the birds and trees. The fish and the whales, the beatles and the centipedes. Please tell me it’s worth it to you, that you’re willing to get uncomfortable, that you’re willing to fight. There are more of us than them, and we are rapidly running out of time to make that mean something.
Its when people have nothing to lose.
I tell people all of the time
“I won’t throw the first brick, but when the bricks start flying give me a call”
The thing that broke me wasn’t data centers or hot weather, it was when I had to pay $7 for hot dog buns
The business men who put a $7 price tag on hot dog buns during the 4th of July are not nearly as afraid of the public as they should be.
It’s fucking bread. Bread!
When stealing bread to feed your family is almost a felony… burn it down.
Problem is, if it happened, you would need to choose your targets wisely for it to be effective. Looting a Target isn’t the answer. The point is not to get yourself a new TV; it’s to advocate for real change. Don’t burn down your own place of business, don’t burn down your own neighborhood… burn theirs
Find the motherfuckers in the Epstein Files, sink yachts, tear down the walls surrounding billionaire neighborhoods, etc…
You’re spot on with identifying “bread” as the general problem. The issue with your perspective though is that people are burning things down in order to get bread. They know where the bread is in their neighborhoods, and “their” businesses. At the point they’re burning and looting why not grab a circus(new TV) on your way out?
Do you know where the bread is on a megayacht? I don’t! It’s not where the rioting is going to start. It will start at where there is know bread. If you have the understanding that that the fires need to reach the billionaire enclaves you can’t be shaming people for getting their bread however they can and then burning the evidence after. That will always be the initial spark.
I’m not rioting for bread, I’m rioting to tear down a broken system
If I want bread, I’ll just steal it. I don’t have to burn down Target to steal bread now, why would that change?
I do need to remind the people in charge who they work for though… and if they’re not willing to share what they have, then I’ll take it from THEM. If they’re not willing to get rid of their shit to save the environment then I’ll get rid of it for THEM
I don’t want to steal a TV from Target, I want to steal the TVs from the CEO who decided bread costs $7
The rioting needs to target the capitols and in my opinion, not the grocery stores. Down with the parasites!
The grocery stores are capitAls too.
Grocery stores are also a parasite who’s entire existence is in order to ration food/supplies/materials at the barrel of a gun to see how much extraction people will put up with.
However, I agree. Killing the canary doesn’t close down the coal mine. Ideally the canary wouldn’t be harmed but you’re going to need to dramatically change your relationship with the canary first, starting with setting it free.
Rioting is illegal and usually it’s poor people smashing the windows of other poor people’s shops.
The word you’re looking for is “uprising” or “revolution”
I see where you’re coming from, but that’s why we need targeted action and leadership. An uprising or revolution would be just as illegal.
Any group with a serious leader gets co-opted and the leader killed or imprisoned. Small underground groups of 10-20 people or fewer can do a lot. Many components of things like Patriot missiles are made in average workshops and factories with relatively little security. With a little know-how a small drone is relatively easy to construct as well.
The issue is that the powers that be did learn their lesson and they learned it well. If you keep the masses JUST sufficient enough that they still have something “to lose” they’ll be to busy chasing that to be able to mount any kind of resistance to their exploitation. It’s the splash and dash mentality. It’s also why they are so against abortion. they frame it as a moral issue, but it’s really about ensuring a good crop of fresh people to exploit when the current crop wears out. It’s a common fascist tactic: Concentration Camps were usually billed as “work” camps where people would be set to menial or meaningless tasks, so they would waste away on purpose, and the deaths could be logged as “by natural causes” and not murder. (only what the regime defined as “undesirables” were sent to be euthanized.)
Competing Lords owned the land and extracted labor from the peasants, and this was feudalism. Then peasants overthrew the lords so they could seek ownership of those lands, but that only benefited those who already had the means to fill the vacuum left by the lords. Capitalism only shuffles the deck of Feudalism. it doesn’t solve the underlying flaw in the game, namely that there will always be someone with more means than you extracting value from people whose only asset to sell is their labor and time. Eventually a group of gentrified individuals will emerge that fill the rolls that the old lords did, and given that nepotism is rampant in industry, it’s not even really that different at all from feudalism. The idea that a CEO should be president of a democracy is such a perversion of the idea of public rule that it is anathema to it. Extreme wealth should be disenfranchising in of itself, as if you are that wealthy, you no longer need the protections of a popular government, but rather, you are what that kind of governance is supposed to be protecting against.
For years I’ve held the view that slavery never ended, they just made the entire country and most of the world of the plantation, with the illusion of mobility and free choice. All you are really free to do is choose what cog to be in their machine, and as soon as you are used up you are replaced with another. I agree with you on abortion, but I think it also goes deeper. Parents have even more to lose, and are more likely to be good little wage slaves to protect their children in the short term, unable to see the long term.
The second paragraph answers the first. We wait until we’re coordinated.
If you want to speed up the process, get out there and coordinate. You might be ready, the people here might be ready, but a few thousand geographically isolated people on a left-leaning niche forum aren’t gonna do it. Getting out into the community and getting active, that could actually shift sentiment.
Find a local organization with at least a hundred members. Even if you don’t align 100% with the DSA, join and go to meetings. That’s where you’re going to find people to coordinate with. Network with people, find out who has which skills, and volunteer your own. Participate in mutual aid. Canvas for leftist politicians. Even if you only care about revolution, going to these events and interacting with these causes will bring you in contact with the people who will coordinate with you.
Smallscale you want a laugh?
10 odd yrs ago we and a friend were exploring and abandoned building…had 13 squaddies and a chopper on us…had reportd we were stealing lead (we werent…obv) yet when our forests burn our gov cant send a chopper with water…shits been burning over a week now.
Priorities!?!?!?
I guess you don’t live in an area surrounded by the wealthy. You and I both know that if you did, those choppers would be there a week ago. Our government doesn’t serve we the people, and that’s why we are in this mess and desperately need change.
Part of the problem is that there’s a thing called “Co-opting the Revolution” that’s been figured out, that you can neatly repackage dissent as a product to sell.
Like how you get Che Gueverra as merch now.
And it’s done an incredible job at making people feel like they’re doing something, whilst actually doing nothing.
I’ve done my part! I wear a ACAB pin that I purchased from Hot Topic
Or
I’ve done my part! I participated in the Reddit Blackout, and then bought the memorabilia
And the sad thing is, IT FUCKING WORKS
Psychologically, for many people, it silences the parts of the brain that are like “FIX THIS! DO SOMETHING!” for quite a lot of people
The technical term often used is “recuperation”. Any innovation in radical evolution of culture is seen as a threat to the status quo, so recuperation comes in to co-opt the radical impulse and funnel it back into the status quo in a manner that is not destabilizing to exist structural power.
The classic example is media piracy like napster, bit-torrent, etc being co-opted into streaming services, itunes, etc. Service the desire that animated the radical impulse while reinforcing the existing power structures, foreclosing the potential threat. Enshittification often follows shortly after the enclosure has been successful.
Ooh neat!
this is not an argument against the need to fight. just giving up the future because the enemy will be underhanded in how it fights back.
No one REALLY feels the threat posed by the polycrisis. It’s all complex, intellectual worries about things that FEEL like they’re still just a little ways out, not quite here. People are mostly focused on the here and now and the very near future. The riots happen when people literally can’t feed their kids in the here and now. As long as it’s just difficult, and not impossible, people will struggle on with their nose to the grindstone. Watch for rises in unemployment. CoViD showed what can happen when millions if people find themselves with mountains of free time to use on political action. When enough people are hungry and have no job to distract them, the fires will come.
Part of the issue is that everyone I know that wants to do something is terrified that it’s going to place targets on vulnerable members of their larger communities. A lot of trans people, queer people, black and brown people, disabled people, immigrants, and indigenous folks I know want to DO something. They’re just scared that if they do, then it’s going to only accelerate violence against their marginalized communities and the greater population isn’t going to fight for them.
Nothing is going to happen until we weaponize the cishet white dudes and get them on our side.
This 100%. It’s the only demographic that can do any heavy lifting if we’re talking raw manpower, and they’re currently being heavily courted by fascists and death cults. That tide needs to turn.
I get that, for sure, as one cishet white dude.
We couldn’t organize enough people to go stand in a line for 20 minutes and scribble in a few little pencil bubbles to prevent the hell upon earth that is currently happening.
Unfortunately there will be no revolution or uprising or meaningful riots until things are far, far, far worse than where they are now.
Our citizens couldn’t sacrifice 20 minutes out of their lives to prevent what appears to be the beginning of the end of the USA; they’re certainly not going to give up their homes and livelihoods and freedom anytime soon.
A small group of very passionate people can move the world, in fact its the only thing that has ever moved the world.
Sounds like you should consider working to get out the vote. I certainly will be.
Are you guys fucking nuts?
You can’t even utilize the tools giving to you to muster a solid defense online. You’re all just showing up everyday giving up/down votes and reading your daily alloted news article about Trump in your over moderate hug box.
You probably had to review multiple rules just to post this message in case you pissed off some almost homeless 18 year old moderator. I know the instinct is to say fuck me over this stuff. But think how moderation is actually a tool to destroy creativity, originality and effort. Moderation is a tool created by corporations to sanitize the internet so it could be sold piecemeal to advertisers. But what this also does is prevent us from keeping events in the forefront. If i have a political content community that only allows one type of content, that is fucking boring and stifling. When we separate our politics into [discussion], [political memes] [news] it may look nice but you kill free form thought and how people actually communicate. This is what feels different from the internet back in the day and the internet today. We have moderation sanitize our efforts. Compare this to MAGA or the right whose spaces are more creative. They combine multiple types of media into a menagerie that keeps things alive and interesting. Their spaces are filled with new, memes, in jokes plus calls to action. Because that’s exciting. That’s how content works. There’s collaboration and mixing of media to create new stuff, like we use to before 15 years ago.
The left has been boxed in on purpose. We are in a snuff box. MAGA seized every platform that’s full of kindling and energy while we placed ourselves into a snuff box. Until we fix some core problems and understand how the internet works to engage people then nobody should be encouraging any kind of revolution. If you cannot fight in an online digital space and get measurable victories in a low effort maximum impact environment then a revolution is just going to get people killed and laws that push us towards more authoritarian state.
And maybe I’m wrong. Could be full of shit. But if you want things to change we need to look at us as a whole and address our faults because we all fucked up big time. For decades the left went from a dominate culturally relevant position to a fucking joke. We’re still using the most outdated playbooks and refusing to adapt to a new world. MAGA fucking sucks. But their victories is directly related to how we reacted and interacted. How did we show up for no kings with millions and nothing happened. How did we show up to BLM and only thing that lasted was the idea that the organization was corrupt and stealing millions. How did we show up for the woman’s march and still they’re dying in states because they can’t access abortion. What we did is not working and I think it’s a systematic problem in the left that needs to be reviewed before attempting anything.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
But think how moderation is actually a tool to destroy creativity, originality and effort.
I see what you’re trying to get at, but you picked the wrong target. Moderation is a tool to keep a community that is focused around a specific topic from devolving into flame wars, trolling, spam, and co-opting. I don’t know if you have see what happens in large, unmoderated online forums, but it isn’t pretty. Tin-pot despot mods are a big problem, sure, but getting rid of moderation is not the solution.
Even 4Chan has mods.
Mods today are not what mods where originally used for. Hell does anyone remember what the original point of up and down voting was for.
Originally we held a strong belief that the community should control moderation while mods were there to make sure nothing illegal or crazy was posted.
We also didn’t call people arguing “trolling” but that changed so mods could remove anyone they didn’t agree with. It’s disgusting that we accepted it.
Moderation is abused quite literally everywhere, including on Lemmy. I just got banned from Lefty Memes by diva because I said Mao killed millions of people. Reasoning: transphobia/chauvinism.
This user is 100% correct in their assessment.
last interaction we had you were transphobic as fuck to me, called me a troglodyte, clanker, mentally ill, fake trans, all sorts of gross shit. obviously it never got moderated because .world. I even posted my fucking sharps container, some good that did.
then i see your name pop up in an anarchist space doing apologia for US empire.
spoiler
obviously it’s on sight, go pollute some other space with your presence.
death to america btw
How was I transphobic? Because I assume everything you say is a lie?
You can say whatever you want, the reality is that you have a personal grudge against me because I don’t accept your bullshit and I call you out on it.
Imagine suggesting that detailing the millions of deaths in the great leap forward is ‘U.S. Empire apologia’. Like I said, you’re 100% mentally ill - and you routinely lie or sweep for countries responsible for millions of their own peoples deaths.
Choke on it.
Dude you were being extremely transphobic. I actually went and read your convo. You were using the fact that Diva is trans so say some really horrible shit. No wonder she doesn’t want you posting in her comm.
Even if you differ in opinion. You actually do have to be nice to people and you do have to treat everyone with respect.
Bullshit, post the comments - I don’t need to be nice to anyone, especially not people who sweep for mass murderers.
That wasn’t very nice.
question, are you a police officer? or just cop-brained?
If you cannot fight in an online digital space and get measurable victories in a low effort maximum impact environment then a revolution is just going to get people killed
Has anybody an idea of what is lacking?
One thing comes to mind: overcome or circumvent “the algorithm.”
Retreating from spaces like X and Reddit has had one big drawback: we are choosing to not engage with people that have bought into propaganda and right-wing rhetoric. There’s no winning anyone over or changing minds if you’re not there to speak.
At the same time, those spaces have elevated the generation of echo chambers to an art. Social media algorithm drive feeds of all kinds of media that strongly reinforce this. Breaking into those spaces would be a useful ability to bring change. Again, we can’t even begin to address that kind of a problem if nobody is there.
Alternately, we need a vehicle that can go around all of the above. What does that look like? I don’t know. Alternate media like print perhaps? Or maybe just an outrageously good youtube channel? Pooling some cash and buying advertising space? Anything would be better than nothing.
There’s no winning anyone over or changing minds if you’re not there to speak.
I totally agree.
Alternately, we need a vehicle that can go around all of the above. What does that look like? I don’t know. Alternate media like print perhaps? Or maybe just an outrageously good youtube channel? Pooling some cash and buying advertising space? Anything would be better than nothing.
This is a valuable idea. How can we grow it?
Wasn’t this the purpose of zines?
Which kind of zines?
Zine zines.
They are a solution people took back in the day to self publish. Publishing company’s act like moderators did back in the day. They rejected this arbitrarily and gate kept what people saw. So people would create zines of their interests and leave them all over town. Some became super popular
This is pretty much what I had in mind. Circumvent censorship, and put paper directly into everyone’s hand.
I have no plan. Only a few concepts and tactics.
Print newsletters keep coming to mind. Perhaps that’s me romancing a bygone era where sweat equity gets you distribution and readership, even if it’s just a single page. Then again, print has never been cheaper for the common-man, and sitting on top of global digital distribution would create an impressive reach.
We can also start making “conservative alt accounts” in social media, in order to penetrate those spaces. Build a profile that gets you into echo chambers that you don’t want anywhere near your real life. At the very least, before all these damn photo ID features and laws go into place.
There really needs to be a playbook for dismantling propaganda, and how to handle people that are programmed to parrot talking points. Like some kind of conversational aikido.
Social media rides on optics, tagging, and vibes. It might be possible to co-opt the style and tagging of existing content, say Newsmax, and provide a palatable lean for recent topics for a conservative audience. This is nothing like going full-bore "The Onion"1, but rather, providing a positive framing or just undercut the lies that are in the same space. Report the exact same stories - move for move - just without the hyperbole, lies, and vitriol. Facts should speak for themselves. Buy a blue suit and rip off their look.
In fact, more positivity online in general might be a big help to everyone. The algorithm rewards engagement, and while rage bait is 100x easier to create, stuff that makes people feel good (e.g. kittens) gets good traction too. Granted, that’s a high-effort and talent-focused operation - not for everyone.
Lastly, it’s possible that we could see a great firewall go up around the US, or find de-facto censorship and de-platforming a huge problem to any attempt to better organize digitally. Once you’re a legit problem, the ban-hammers will come out. I think it prudent to be prepared to use mesh networking, radio, sneakernet, private couriers, (again) print, anything that works around a complete fascist takeover of the internet. Fortunately, the bandwidth and storage requirements for truth and information are shockingly small. It won’t take much.
Edit: Lastly, attend rallies and protests and fucking network. You won’t find a better place for like-minded people that actually want to do something about all this.
- InfoWars has it right by laying out a massive all-onion buffet, but man is that a tough watch.
Good points. I think the biggest obstacle is that these require reliable structures from voluntary engagements.
I don’t think it’s quite as bad as you suggest, but I understand where you’re coming from here. I think it’s also worth considering who stands to benefit from our lack of organization. When the right wing wins, the billionaires win, but when the left wing wins, the billionaires lose. Left wing leaders are systematically targeted and repressed. MLK Jr wasn’t assassinated until his message started to reach more than just poor black people. When he started encouraging all people to throw off the yolk of the ruling class, by providing for themselves instead of being good little capitalist consumers, that’s when he became so dangerous it was worth it to murder him. We need leadership, yes, but we also need a message that endures through whatever they throw at us. I think it’s possible, and I hope we can make it happen.
I never read the rules before posting btw, I just went for it.
*Yoke, btw. Just in case you want to use the word again in the future.
:::
Ah, you’re right, that was actually a mental typo so thanks for the catch.
When death is no longer the worst alternative, there will be revolution.
- my favorite high school history teacher
climate change can be stopped with solar energy, and the amount of installed solar power has grown exponentially in the last few years. so that’s something positive.
All renewables will help here. And new storage options. And nuclear as a base power.
We can’t stop the current impact but we can reduce it and start turning the tide around.
This shit has gone on for way too long.
Best way to start it off is with a symbolic figure. Some greedy CEO, board of directors member, police chief, or corrupt politician. Whatever is done has to involve being publicly displayed.
I find myself being pushed closer and closer everyday to jumpstarting it myself, but the reality is, it is highly unlikely that one person is going to accomplish it. Coordination with others is key.
…or so I’ve heard.
It’s simultaneously mindblowing and completely believable that no major action has been taken yet. So many sheep heading to slaughter.
Its less about starting to riot and more about stopping to buy. Cancel your accounts, throw away your credit cards, stop paying taxes, start a fucking garden ( now is perfect btw) and build a network of friends and neighbours.
We all want to have a good life lets just live it.
I have pulled back from consumerism as much as possible, anything I can buy used I do, and I have been gardening and planting fruit trees since before covid. It’s not enough, not in the face of the problems before us, and the greed that has brought it about. Everyone should start a garden if able, if nothing else to find out just how hard it is to get viable crops thanks to our erratic climate.
