Someone told me today that acts of terror achieve nothing. I had to remind him that the whole reason we were having this conversation was because of a country that was built on acts of terror.

    • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Sabotage by one person can do a lot if you are selective in your methods and targets. There are parts makers and suppliers that age bottlenecks for military production, for example.

      But organized sabotage is a much better idea.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      That’s kind of how settler colonialism works. The state deputizes settlers to act as shock troopers and occupiers, but they’re not necessarily state-level actors following orders. They’re mostly independent and kept at a bit of distance for propaganda purposes, but when the natives strike back the army can come in and protect the settlers while pretending their actions are defending civilians.

      That’s half the point of the 2nd Amendment - the other half being a concession to slave owners that needed guns to maintain order.

  • SovietyWoomy [any]@hexbear.net
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    There was a spike in approved health insurance claims when luigi-dance took out a mass murderer. Adventurism only provides a temporary solution, but it can be effective at that and pave the way for a more permanent solution.

    • Blakey [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Yes, a more competent head of the MAGA movement, and transforming the current one into a martyr, would surely make things better

      • OrionsMask [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Yeah, a magical new guy with the same cult following that Trump had groomed for 8 years would spring up suddenly and take over with the same degree of support.

        And “more competent”? We’ve already got concentration camps and gestapo in the US, I daresay a “more competent” (less egomaniacal) head might have thought twice before kidnapping a fucking president of a sovereign nation.

        But who knows, all of this is make believe. The point though is that acts of terror could in theory very much achieve things if done right.

        • The point of being against adventurism as a ML is that acts of terrorism not rooted in a mass worker’s movement are useless for revolution. That conclusion was reached after watching decades of several groups fail to work with proletariat and get nowhere. Instead those groups eventually betrayed the workers or were opportunists who did it for kicks.

          At this point people have been reading the gloating comments of libs and chuds all day. They’ve been doom-scrolling and their blood is up. Now they’ll push the boundaries of fed posting until it wears off and then we’ll go back to baseline. We’ve done this before.

          • OrionsMask [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            At this point people have been reading the gloating comments of libs and chuds all day. They’ve been doom-scrolling and their blood is up.

            Just going to amend this to: “At this point people have been watching the extermination of a people that has been rubber stamped by the entire western world. They’ve been doom-scrolling and their blood has been up for over 2 years”

            Now they’ll push the boundaries of fed posting until it wears off and then we’ll go back to baseline. We’ve done this before.

            Yes, this is true. Until the next bloodboiling, mind breaking war crime happens, and then those feelings will all rush back again.

            • Look, you’re the one playing devil’s advocate for something that is clearly wrong. If people who are angry don’t know the difference between adventurism and an organized militant vanguard, then that’s a good reason why they shouldn’t be directing people towards action. A person on the other side of this argument was saying we should set wildfires and induce factory accidents (in a nation famous for caring about workers’ injuries) as direct action. That’s the exact kind of silly shit defending adventurism gets you.

              I don’t even think you or OP understand the word. I think you all are under the impression that adventurism is just a funny word for doing cool stuff like shooting CEOs and becoming a meme. You should want to label yourself an adventurist as much as you want to label yourself a liberal or reactionary. Imagine someone making a thread “Reactionary time” and then arguing that nothing can be done but being a reactionary. That’s why I’m arguing with you. It’s that ridiculous.

              This isn’t about anger being valid or not. Of course people should be angry. Purposefully using that anger to meme adventurism or drive people towards opportunists is shitty.

              • OrionsMask [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                I am not playing “devil’s advocate” - if you can’t take what I’m saying in good faith, don’t engage with me. I don’t need to be spoken to condescendingly. What your post boils down to is the semantics of adventurism and once again, you people fail to understand people who feel the need to strike out and try to make a change (which is what we’re talking about, regardless of which word you feel like using).

                If people who are angry don’t know the difference between adventurism and an organized militant vanguard…

                https://hexbear.net/post/7235453

                Here’s a thread you might benefit from reading.

                • Devil’s advocate is a perfectly applicable term for what you’re doing. You’re saying you’re not an adventurist but that you understand them and see where they’re coming from, then argue with people who disregard adventurism as a valid tactic. What else should I call it?

                  Here’s some actual theory you might benefit from reading:

                  https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/09.htm

                  “When Marxists say that certain groups, are adventurist, they have in mind the very definite and specific social and historical features of a phenomenon, one that every class-conscious worker should be familiar with.”

                  The history of Russian Social-Democracy teems with tiny groups, which sprang up for an hour, for several months, with no roots whatever among the masses (and politics without the masses are adventurist politics), and with no serious and stable principles. In a petty-bourgeois country, which is passing through a historical period of bourgeois reconstruction, it is inevitable that a motley assortment of intellectuals should join the workers, and that these intellectuals should attempt to form all kinds of groups, adventurist in character in the sense referred to above.

                  “Workers who do not wish to be fooled should subject every group to the closest scrutiny and ascertain how serious its principles are, and what roots it has in the masses. Put no faith in words; subject everything to the closest scrutiny—such is the motto of the Marxist workers.”

                  The term has a real historical meaning. This is like calling the distinction between communists and dem socs petty semantics. Lenin goes on to speak about the historical context. I encourage you to read it.

                  you people fail to understand people who feel the need to strike out and try to make a change

                  I’m a communist so, no, I don’t fail to understand the need to strike out and make a change. It’s why I’m a communist. Adventurism is not synonymous with communism. The thread you posted has nothing to do with what I’m saying. You saw the word “organized” in my post and assumed I’m being vague. Nope, I have posted specific texts explaining what I’m talking about. Just because you refuse to read them doesn’t mean I’m being vague or evasive.

                  I’ll post from this once again as it precisely explains this whole thread and attitude.

                  https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1902/sep/01.htm

                  There is no need, of course, to engage in a serious analysis of this theory of deviation from socialism (in the event of disputes proper). In our opinion, the crisis of socialism makes it incumbent upon any in the least serious socialists to devote redoubled attention to theory—to adopt more resolutely a strictly definite stand, to draw a sharper line of demarcation between themselves and wavering and unreliable elements. In the opinion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, however, if such things as confusion and splits are possible “even among Germans,” then it is God’s will that we, Russians, should pride ourselves on our ignorance of whither we are drifting. In our opinion, the absence of theory deprives a revolutionary trend of the right to existence and inevitably condemns it, sooner or later, to political bankruptcy. In the opinion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, however, the absence of theory is a most excellent thing, most favourable “for unity.”

                  If your goal is to reach and bring people who feel the “need to strike out and make a change” into the fold, then dropping theoretical rigor won’t help you do that. It makes you weaker as a revolutionary. Even though Lenin is talking about a split between adventurists and communists, this applies to any crises. Revisit theory, use it to sharpen your analysis and place a nice thick divide between you and the elements that aren’t dependable. In our case it’s adventurism.

                  In their defence of terrorism, which the experience of the Russian revolutionary movement has so clearly proved to be ineffective, the Socialist-Revolutionaries are talking themselves blue in the face in asseverating that they recognise terrorism only in conjunction with work among the masses, and that therefore the arguments used by the Russian Social-Democrats to refute the efficacy of this method of struggle (and which have indeed been refuted for a long time to come) do not apply to them. Here something very similar to their attitude towards “criticism” is repeating itself. We are not opportunists, cry the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and at the same time they are shelving the dogma of proletarian socialism, for reason of sheer opportunist criticism and no other. We are not repeating the terrorists’ mistakes and are not diverting attention from work among the masses, the Socialist-Revolutionaries assure us, and at the same time enthusiastically recommend to the Party acts such as Balmashov’s assassination of Sipyagin, although everyone knows and sees perfectly well that this act was in no way connected with the masses and, moreover, could not have been by reason of the very way in which it was carried out—that the persons who committed this terrorist act neither counted on nor hoped for any definite action or support on the part of the masses.

                  We are going through something similar. Adventurists claiming that they are working as communists do, and in conjunction with mass organization. Meanwhile they want to disregard the dogma of communism as being too stuffy, too rigorous, too theoretical. They view adventurism as the more practical approach, which is exactly what people here are entertaining. This is not because the people here are bad or evil, they just lack understanding and rigor. That’s why I’m posting these works from Lenin. Let’s revisit the theory and reestablish our understanding of adventurism and why it doesn’t work. Let’s not disregard theory in favor of focusing on anger as if communists are not angry or focusing on pragmatic change as if communist are not pragmatic.

                  Lenin points to how the adventurists use an example of an assassination to prove they’re helping the working class. But it’s specious upon investigation and act itself was carried out in a way that could never be considered as working with the masses. This is people who bring up Luigi as proof that adventurism works.

                  In their naïveté, the Socialist-Revolutionaries do not realise that their predilection for terrorism is causally most intimately linked with the fact that, from the very outset, they have always kept, and still keep, aloof from the working-class movement, without even attempting to become a party of the revolutionary class which is waging its class struggle. Over-ardent protestations very often lead one to doubt and suspect the worth of whatever it is that requires such strong seasoning. Do not these protestations weary them?—I often think of these words, when I read assurances by the Socialist-Revolutionaries: “by terrorism we are not relegating work among the masses into the background."After all, these assurances come from the very people who have already drifted away from the Social-Democratic labour movement, which really rouses the masses; they come from people who are continuing to drift away from this movement, clutching at fragments of any kind of theory.

                  Adventurists claim they are not sidelining the main work of communism yet they stray further and further away from the cause. Why does this happen? Once again, they lack rigor and are ready to disregard theory in favor of their supposed pragmatic work. You can again see flavors of this in praise of Luigi. Disregard that Luigi himself has no communist principles and that he acted completely alone and isolated from other victims of the healthcare industry let alone its workers or workers of any kind. Don’t focus on that. Just focus on the headlines that came after, use vibes to show that it changed something. No rigor, no investigation, no critical support. This becomes the norm among adventurists and they become decoupled from communism. Only a movement grounded in rigor and discipline can push the needle.

                  Just listen to what follows: “Every terrorist blow, as it were, takes away part of the strength of the autocracy and transfers [!] all this strength [!] to the side of the fighters for freedom.” “And if terrorism is practised systematically [!], it is obvious that the scales of the balance will finally weigh down on our side.” Yes, indeed, it is obvious to all that we have here in its grossest form one of the greatest prejudices of the terrorists: political assassination of itself “transfers strength”! Thus, on the one hand you have the theory of the transference of strength, and on the other— “not in place of, but together with”… Do not these protestations weary them?

                  This is in reply to pamphlet from an adventurist party. He’s quoting what is printed. The party is advocating for more assassinations. Lenin notes a problem with their logic. They claim to be working in tandem with, not in place of, mass organization by communists. Yet they then describe their assassinations as the means by which power is transferred. This means that they don’t actually believe in communism. They don’t view change as something of the masses or democratic. This is why words have meaning. Communism is something specific, that describes a science or revolution. The science relies on certain ideas from which all others follow. If you fundamentally contradict or disagree with those ideas, then you’re not talking about communism. The adventurist, unwittingly or otherwise, do not take the fundamentals of communism to be true. They don’t see a value to mass organization because one person with a gun can just as easily, if not more easily, affect change. All the social engagement stuff goes out the window.

        • Blakey [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          I think in the wake of Trump’s assassination and martyrdom someone really would be able to seize that momentum. They wouldn’t need to come out of nowhere, it would be Vance or someone else high up. Trump’s actions I mostly doubt actually originated with him - I believe he’s a figurehead, a very ill and likely senile figurehead, and a different one could hardly be less competent. But yeah it’s all pointless speculation of course.

          • OrionsMask [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            Sorry but there isn’t anyone who comes close to having 1/8th of the weird charisma that Trump does. Of course he’s a figurehead, but the puppeteers are making good use of the unique world he’s cultivated. Not everyone can get away with doing the most heinous things and just brushing them off with dismissive one-liners or incomprehensible rants.

            It’s that brovado that might be emboldening them to push forward with more and more brazen acts where someone else who was leading the charge straight up could not command the needed degree of overconfidence. (Again, hypothetical, pointless, because we’re talking about a parallel universe, but I do think Trump is not so easily replaced like for like.)

            • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              We’ve already seen what a Trump replacement looks like, though. It was Joe Biden and he’s the one who started the genocide in Palestine. He also wanted to fight Russia to the death of every last Ukrainian.

              Reaction in the US isn’t exclusively republican. Had Trump been assassinated or lost reelection, a democratic president would be sitting in front of us talking about how Venezuela is a threat to US sovereignty and security. The Gulf of Tonkin was a lie by a democrat. Pol Pot was backed by a democrat. Libya has open air slave markets because of a democrat.

              So the point still stands: adventurism is just adventurism. Violence has a place and is not only justified, but necessary. But it has to have revolutionary organizing behind it with changes that are systemic.

        • Le_Wokisme [they/them, undecided]@hexbear.net
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          i mostly agree but when they shot mckinley the state responded by creating the FBI and it’s impossible to predict whether trump is worse than the crackdown we’d get if somebody actually got him

      • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        a more competent head of the MAGA movement

        I don’t think this exists. If Trump had got got we would have seen a TPUSA/Candace Owens style split on the right times a thousand. JD Vance would not have been able to hold the coalition together.

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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    Adventurism defenders are the exact same as vote blue libs. Yes let’s keep trying the same thing that has literally never worked! It’ll definitely work if we just do one more adventure! The only reason it hasn’t worked is because we just need to do one more! Just one more adventure and this time, unlike literally all of the other times, we’ll see widespread systemic change! Just one more bro! Just one more adventure!

    Ridiculous and frankly reactionary ideology. Random acts of violence against individuals alone do not and cannot and have not solved any widespread systemic issue. There are real solutions that can exist and do exist. Go do those things rather than daydream about something that doesn’t accomplish anything meaningful.

    • Dirt_Possum [she/her, undecided]@hexbear.net
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      downbear

      The assassination of CEO Brian Thompson accomplished quite a bit. It galvanized lots of people, showing everyone that not only are these billionaire CEOs not untouchable, but that there is widespread approval for using violence against them. It showed millions of people that they aren’t alone in thinking “yeah, those capitalist fuckers who exploit us and profit off our misery really should die.” I know several mostly apolitical people that before that would have said “violence is always wrong” but afterward started saying they think people like Thompson deserve what happened to him and never would have felt comfortable saying so before.

      Adventurism defenders are the exact same as vote blue libs.

      Yes, many radical leftists are no different than this other group we all agree are bad. Great argument.

      It’ll definitely work if we just do one more adventure! The only reason it hasn’t worked is because we just need to do one more! Just one more adventure and this time

      What does it mean to have “worked”? Has it overthrown the bourgeoisie? No. But neither has all the organization efforts ever conducted in the imperial core. If that’s what it means for a tactic to have “worked,” then when you say “Yes let’s keep trying the same thing that has literally never worked!” then you have to say the same thing about organizing, which we all agree is absurd. But if you change your definition of “worked” to “helping move things in the right direction,” then individual acts HAVE worked many times and in different ways. They’ve failed and had a negative effect at times too, but so have organizations and attempted vanguard parties. Red Army Faction being an example.

      Random acts of violence against individuals alone do not and cannot and have not solved any widespread systemic issue.

      Disingenuous to call them “random,” because specific individuals being targeted is anything but random. And while these acts may not be able to “solve” systemic issues on their own, that doesn’t mean they can’t be powerful demonstrations or have any positive effect.

      There are real solutions that can exist and do exist. Go do those things rather than daydream about something that doesn’t accomplish anything meaningful.

      What are those real solutions, then? If they were complete solutions then either they would have solved things by now, or they haven’t been tried yet. If they haven’t been tried yet, then enlighten us all and tell us how to free ourselves from capitalism. If they HAVE been tried then obviously they aren’t complete solutions and you aren’t on any better footing than people who do advocate for adventurism. It takes all kinds.

      • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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        The assassination of CEO Brian Thompson accomplished quite a bit.

        Name a positive long term systemic change that happened as a result of this

        • kureta@lemmy.ml
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          Whenever positive systemic change happened in history, the events were rebranded as “fighting for freedom”. Literally all positive systemic change happened this way throughout the history. French peasents beheaded soldiers, that’s how they got democracy. If they had failed, the events would have been known as a “terrorist attack”. But the important thing is, there has to be a social movement behind the actions. Individual attacks may spark the initial flame, but if there is no movement behind it the flame won’t last for long. That’s the thing you are right about. No matter how many times this happens, it will not result in any change unless there is also a social movement behind it.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    Adventurism is worse than organized violence but better than doing nothing. The real question is whether adventurism is better than organized nonviolence. You’re not going to take down the war machine by killing randos, but you’re also not going to take down the war machine through peaceful marches either. Which is less effective, killing cogs that are easily replaceable or holding protests that can be easily ignored?

  • OrionsMask [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    I am not advocating for adventurism and I am not saying adventurism works - but I understand the desperation, the defiance, and the rage. People who only mock or dismiss these feelings don’t help anyone and do not make a compelling case to not do adventurism.

  • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Adventurism is a symptom of oppression with no organized outlet for the pain and frustration. It means the fields are riper than we can currently harvest, and we should put our efforts into harvesting.

  • How well we know this Language of people who are free of the constraint of firm socialist convictions, of the burdensome experience of each and every kind of popular movement! They confuse immediately tangible and sensational results with practicalness. To them the demand to adhere steadfastly to the class standpoint and to maintain the mass nature of the movement is “vague” “theorising.” In their eyes definitiveness is slavish compliance with every turn of sentiment and … and, by reason of this compliance, inevitable helplessness at each turn. Demonstrations begin— and blood thirsty words, talk about the beginning of the end, flow from the lips of such people. The demonstrations halt— their hands drop helplessly, and before they have had time to wear out a pair of boots they are already shouting: “The people, alas, are still a long way off…” Some new outrage is perpetrated by the tsar’s henchmen—and they demand to be shown a “definite” measure that would serve as an exhaustive reply to that particular outrage, a measure that would bring about an immediate “transference of strength,” and they proudly promise this transference! These people do not understand that this very promise to “transfer” strength constitutes political adventurism, and that their adventurism stems from their lack of principle.

    Amazing how some guy wrote about people freaking out over big events and calling for adventurism only for it to pass and they get bored until the next big event and call to adventure. How those people think adherence to a mass movement is some kind of weakness in initiative.

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        There’s really no substantial way in which the differences in conditions between the US today and Russia in the 1910s make it more suitable for adventurism as a strategy.

        In fact, the present conditions mean adventurism has higher costs and less benefit. Any propaganda value of adventurist acts is more easily neutralized because the media has complete control over the narrative (sometimes slips a bit but is recuperated or memoryholed). Higher surveillance makes an adventurist operation less likely to be successful. The government has more legitimacy than Nicholas II’s.

        If I’m being as balanced as possible, I could possibly see the value of adventurism being that all other options are poor anyway, so why not gamble? But I’d still argue having more comrades alive and free where they can be ready to act should better opportunities arise is always better than contradicting the lessons past revolutionaries have learned out of desperation.

        You can participate in creating some kind of safety mechanism for your community, keep tabs on which people aren’t joining orgs yet but are sympathetic, agitate people you talk with. None of these things are revolutionary, but they’ll be useful once revolutionary organization is more viable.

  • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
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    I just want to say one of the things I really appreciate about Hexbear is sitting in on your struggle sessions. I am not educated enough yet to actually participate, but reading the opinions of leftist on things I’m really conflicted about has served my education and thought process on many topics. ❤️

  • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Depending on what you define terrorism as, it can certainly achieve something (though it is more often counterproductive unless you’re a warlord or something of the sort), but even then only really in a larger campaign that is ready to capitalize on it with non-terror measures, which is completely different from adventurism.

  • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    I know I shouldn’t say this but I’m angrier than hell against the US

    So fedposting alert

    spoiler

    If you know of any USians traveling / US expats living in your country, don’t make it safe for them. Maybe even get a little bloody or fire-y. But make them think twice about stepping out the US ever again. Fuck’em.