Just need to vent, I swear to god the revolutionary potential in America is just not there. So many people just have zero ideological conviction and because we’re not subject to the worst of the empire’s violence many feel no constant need to fight it, an encampment can end and so many people just go to brunch. The constant need to fight against the empire’s propaganda, infiltrated orgs, and most of all the powerful combination of privilege and individualism is so incredibly exhausting. All that feels good to do is sit home, read theory and talk with my closest comrades, I can’t be led into another unprepared police raid by people who had just collaborated with the kops, or in an org led ultimately by some undemocratically elected leader, or talk to another “ML” or anarchist white boy that can’t even admit racism and imperialism still fuckin exists.
People who saw the George Floyd protests do absolutely nothing:
I’m normally a pessimist, but I’m gonna go against the grain a bit here. The George Floyd protests didn’t result in a revolution, but that doesn’t mean they did nothing. As someone who’s maybe a little older than a lot of people here, the George Floyd protests were the largest sustained protest movement in the US I think I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and compared to how events in the 90’s (like the Rodney King beating/trial) were treated, there was a world of difference in the response, and especially coming from young people. Also, let’s look at the Gaza protests going right now. I would have never in a million years imagined I’d see so much support for Palestinians in the US, and this is especially true when compared to the early days of the “War on Terror”.
So yeah, these movements aren’t turning into revolutions. I don’t think anything has a remote chance of turning into a revolution unless things get really bad. However, I do think these movements are laying better groundwork for what happens when things do reach that point. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like each time a movement like this comes up, the people pushing back get a little more bold, a little more organized, and a little more aware that something more radical needs to happen in order to fix these problems.
somewhere between the 60s and now western states have realized you can just ignore protests. protesters sadly haven’t come to that realization yet.
Not coincidentally, this is the same period where the western left takes a turn for a disintegrated, spontaneist approach, with plenty of encouragement from Gladio, COINTELPRO and the like. Protests work as a prong of a greater strategy.
Protests are the compromise, and if they don’t get the compromise they’re supposed to blossom into revolution.
The Western powers have so thoroughly defanged the left though that the second stage of protest is basically never a threat.
A protest is meant to be brandishing a weapon, but our weapon is a banana.
I didn’t know why protests were sometimes called demonstrations until I’d learned a bit about military strategy
politics is NOT a banana!
Is this sorta calling for a nonviolent form of protest like the situationalists?
It’s deliberately unclear. Nihilists have extensive debates about this text and many others, ACs like myself fold it into an exhortation to get serious about attaching ourselves to an accumulating counterpower.