I will preface this by saying I understand that I am more radical, revolutionary, and extreme of a leftist than most. Despite that, I still ask that you actually engage with this as I’m asking in good faith.
When is enough enough? We have elected a fascist into the highest office and handed the keys to him and his friends. Is now not the time to actually get organized, involved, and armed? In my opinion, the time for peaceful, democratic means of avoiding fascism was before the election. But we have failed to do so, and as such there will soon be a tyrant in power. Are we going to wait until troops are rolling down the street to stage any form of resistance, because by then it’s far too late. Now I want to be clear that I am not advocating for random acts of violence or an insurrection like January 6th. But is this not a point of radicalization? Is this not where we start organizing within our communities and getting involved in mutual aid and resistance? How much more do we need before people are actually ready to stand, fight, and maybe even die to avoid continuing down the path that we are on? Fascism is not on the horizon, it is here. Are we really to do nothing about it as a society except lay down and accept our fate? Because that doesn’t jive with me. That makes absolutely no sense to me.
ETA: To the people responding, I will admit that I was heated and frustrated when writing this post. Having had time to cool off, reflect, and get some differing viewpoints my stance has changed to focus more on what needs to happen first and what’s practical. You may have seen that in my responses. That being said, I don’t disagree with what I said here, and I’m still frustrated we’re at this point at all. I’ve linked a comment though that elaborates upon what I actually want to see done though, which is a lot more reasonable and is still inline with this post.
Seems like you’re advocating:
I don’t really know if this is a “I can’t really say what I’m advocating for because I’ll be banned, so I’m dancing around the issue and hoping you’ll stochastically pick up on what I’m not saying” thing either.
Without knowing more concretely what you suggest we do, I don’t really have a take on whether I agree or not.
Are you expecting someone to provide you with all the answers?
Organize literally anything; a labor union, tenant union, alternatives to capital, a community garden, etc. Getting involved means doing whatever you have the capacity to do. Sometimes organizing is long and challenging, sometimes it’s short and sweet. The thing is, there’s different recommendations for different types of organizing. A post like this really can’t get any more specific, because organizing is actually that broad of a topic.
Arm yourself to defend yourself and others from random acts of political violence. Use the arms to defend drag time story hour. Use the arms to protect the people you care about. Use the arms to watch cops. Get a gun, learn how to use it, and then only use it in emergency self defense. Having a substantial presence of guns at a protest against capital is already self defense, because cops know they can’t push the crowd too much. That’s why you shouldn’t wait for tanks to be rolling through before you arm yourself.
Mutual aid is part of organizing, and will become incredibly important over the next few years. If you want more insight then I recommend reading Kropotkin’s book on the matter.
If you’re looking for someone to follow, I recommend following yourself and your ideals. It’s very obvious that the point of the post is to take action, not to follow OP.
Only to explain the answers that they’re already bringing up.
And, honestly, your answer and OP’s answer are exactly the sort of answers I needed. Thank you.
I guess the short restatement is something like “work with others to create an alternative to depending on the capitalist/fascist system for crumbs and then protect that alternative system on a self-defense basis with firearms. (And be ready to before you actually have to.)”
Get involved with local organizations, preferably radically left (because otherwise your options are more centrist or conservative, which imo is how we ended up here), that will help you set up mutual aid networks for basic resources and protection. Organize your communities so people have a support structure that isn’t dependent on our broken and corrupt system so that they feel comfortable protesting and resisting tyranny. Build it up so that within the networks you have access to secure communications, free access to information, basic necessities and resources (i.e. food, water, healthcare, medicine, etc.), and planning for resistance and direct action.
Get armed, trained, and be prepared to fight so that you can protect those mutual aid networks when the fascists come to dismantle them. Be prepared to fight and lay down your life for those in your community who are bigger targets (i.e. women, people of color, queer and gender non-conforming people, immigrants, etc.) just as you would want them to do for you. As much as possible, become a unified force against the tyranny.
I’m not advocating for random acts of violence or Jan 6th like action because yes that would get me banned, but that also will not be an effective form of resistance. Effective resistance will need to be directed, organized, and focused with specific goals. At some point that may look like fighting a revolutionary war or a coup, but the American people need to crawl before they start walking, let alone run. We need to build strong communities, whether virtual or physical, where we can support each other and try to minimize the harm being done.
Yeah, good answers. Thank you.
No problemo, i welcome the feedback and criticism. Thank you for engaging in a good discussion