it’s so simple, literally gonna become one of the most liked people in human history with this one small trick.
😆 “Wow BRO, since I stopped being an Asshole, I’m POPULAR as fuck with the bros and the ladies! Who woulda thought? Click on the sponsored link to know how.”
In China, the State prosecutes corrupt businessmen. But in the West, corrupt businessmen prosecute the State!
Written like a Russian reversal joke but sadly true, though.
Still trying to find tears which mysteriously don’t come out when I hear of millionaire crooks being sentenced to death in the PRC. Must be where I left the other tears for the United Health CEO.
Lots of wonderful advice in the thread as is typical of Lemmygrad :) Let me add my 2 cents:
When online, post memes with anti-capitalist, anti-fascist content. But you know, memes of the fun types. Then see who get the joke and who don’t. Those who do are more or less predisposed to listen to further ML stuff. Those who immediately attack you for the memes are based fascists, they know what you’re trying to do because that’s what THEY have been doing for 10+ years. Humour is the “plausible deniability” which gives you some room to maneuver. Add wtf, it helps a lot in bringing down emotional barriers.
Join an org and get to know like-minded people in person. You’ll quickly forget you are the “odd one out”. Feeding the homeless, trade unions, political party… anything goes. As soon as you see you’re fighting the good fight, your confidence will multiply a thousandfold. When they mock you for feeding the hungry, the joke’s on them. You’ll remember the smile on the hungry person’s face, you will know you stand on the right side of history. And that’s just 1 example.
Last year I read Comrade (2019, Verso) by Jodi Dean. It’s a very based book by one of PSL’s leading ideologues. So I can recommend both the org and the book.
It’s a tough read, though. Being a revolutionary socialist means total commitment to the cause. I’ll add it can never come all at once. It’ll come in baby steps. But even then current geopolitical events can accelerate those steps. Weeks where decades happen.
Regarding criticism and faults, no org is perfect. It doesn’t have to be. Bottomline: better together than alone. Congratulations on wanting to join an org. I think it’s brave of you, especially being in the US.
I think of this a lot as a teacher. So let me add successful careers are built on the willingness to defend the people, too. But for that to happen, we all need a good dose of reddy redsome class consciousness.
Allies
This, I second that. Excluding theMilei types of the “anarchist” right, of course (in truth they are turbocapitalists).
I keep thinking of Durruti in the Spanish Civil War. Someone who fights fachos deserves respect in my view.
The debate around what future is the best communism, if Lenin-style or ancom, is largely academic. Top-bottom and bottom-top politics are two sides of the same dialectic (socialism vs communism). It needs to be solved dialectically, but only after the Trumps of the century have been buried in the dumpster of history.
Therefore, thinking from historical materialism, I prefer to think of anarchism as part of a socialist or leftist tradition and not as an ideal society. The first is useful (Durruti), the second is political fiction. Fun but fantastical.
Great post.
All I can add for now is that Biology is not Anthropology. This is a basic distinction I learnt years ago in Philosophy.
The fundamental question of Anthropology is “what are human beings?”. Biology’s basic question rather is “what is life?”.
So be careful. Insects and plants are life. So are humans. If one equates everything, we’re leaving out of Biology only rocks.
Someone who is very, very technical (and tech-bro minded) will answer humans beings “a collection of organic molecules in human form”. Which does not answer the question. Wtf is then “human form”?
Then they fall into the idealistic rabbit hole and spout social-darwinistic stuff, which is Malthusian economics plus protofash shit. At the end of the day, rightist biologists will not treat a cockroach differently from a human. Unless said cockroach is worth a billion dollars.
The US 1776 revolution never was about FreedomTM. It was about New England saying “Daddy, can I play some imperialism like you?”.
“When you grow up and have more warships than I do”, must’ve been the answer.
If it had truly been about freedom, why weren’t slaves freed since day one, like Haiti? Why wait 100 years and a civil war for freedom to exist only on paper in the South anyway? Why does all the hate and racism exist today?
So it was a matter of time the US wanted to play with opium wars like daddy Britain. Opium to do a classicide in working class neighbourhoods. Opium wars and opium class wars.