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That's functionally the same as what I just said. You trying to maintain physical ability or legal obscurity so that fascists in the future have a harder time killing you is the same thing. You're trying to maintain a livelihood in case the solution doesn't spontaneously emerge before fascists come after you. It also disregards people who are already crippled or have a criminal record that show up to protests. That goes to the idea about having nothing to lose.
Besides that the strategy of giving up strength/security for material gain is flawed. This assumes you know what you're trading and how the trade will turn out. You operate in the present without hindsight. It's easier to look back 20 years and say that the Iraq War protests were mostly ineffective but the people at the time didn't know that. You can argue that it would have been effective if they all listened to the good leftists and read more Lenin but that's just more hindsight talking. The leftists of the time who did read Lenin should have been more active in that space and guiding them.
That's why my post is longer than one sentence. Within the context of what I said, it's clear I'm not providing the 2020 protests as something that brought lasting material change and especially not that it cured racism is a lot of white people. I brought it up because it's a recent protest that comes after public demonstrations were neutered over the Iraq War. However, despite that, there were people still building networks and gaining useful skills from the neutered protests. A lot of those people were also murdered by the state afterwards.
All these late mid-century Frazetta adjacent guys are horny as shit. It's no coincidence at all that children of the 80s and 90s have problematic sensibilities. All of your comics, cartoons, and video games were created by dudes who love leering and placing women in precarious situations that expose them. Gooner culture is not new.
You were born at an awkward time. Too late for the civil rights and Vietnam protests. You're just in time to see the power that be crush public demonstration after 9/11 so that Occupy and economic protests are reduced in effectiveness. So you're kind of looking at an unfortunate sliver of time. People did learn from Occupy and went on to build better organization. 2020 protests wouldn't have been so widespread if not for the networks built after Occupy. But you're not going to get a sense of that by reading headlines on a link aggregator and forming vibes.
The other part of this is people keep saying "but this will ruin my livelihood." That's exactly why it's not working. Everyone is so scared of losing their jobs and not being able to market their labor in the future that they don't want to participate. Revolutions happen when there is no job to lose and when there is no future. The fact that you still think there's a job for you in the fascist future as long as you don't have a criminal record or serious injury is telling. That is your clue that we are not there yet.
He wouldn't have spared me AIDS just to take me out like this
Um have you met God? The guy would absolutely do something like that.
I saw a pic on reddit I wish I had saved. It was on r/rising for a local sub. The people leading the parade had a sign saying "No
kingsBillionaires" and then people carrying a huge banner that was a bit more communist-y than what you see on r/all. But in the bottom corner of the banner was the CPUSA logo. The banner was professionally printed, so obviously that particular protest had been co-opted.I think the lesson to start taking is that it simply varies too much from location to location. In some areas it's all libs. In some areas it's more PSL types. And in some it's the communists you don't want co-opting stuff. People said this already, it's not a revelation. America is simply too big and too varied to draw one 128 character conclusion. And really, that makes sense. It also aligns with theory in regards to analyzing your local conditions and historical moment. So people just need to monitor what's going on right now in their area, see what comes from this, and busk it from there. I just can't see a way to axiomatically declare all these protests as the same thing, based on the different experiences and photographs I've seen.
Several people, with no real history of pushing higher level Dems to do anything, have promised that there will be trials for some ICE agents as soon as Trump leaves office in 4 years. The action is direct and the goods have been gotten.
The year is 2028. Presidential hopefuls graciously prostrate themselves before babyskibidi67 -- a streamer who spend 18 hours a day playing Call of Duty: Domestic Warfare while reviewing different kinds of babyfood. He is 35 years old and makes $40M a year. He was mentioned in the manifestos of at least 5 different mass shooters. However, without his block of votes, it is difficult to gain an electoral lead.
I'm speaking against the tendency to split hexbear into good and bad leftists around issues like this. I don't think people who are critical of these protests are ultras and I don't think the people who engage in the protests are lib collaborators.
I can see Trump, apropos of nothing in particular, saying these protests are embarrassing and that they need to end. Then some waffling for a few days before making an EO to ban mass gatherings. To which the response, I can only guess, would be a lot of posting and late night comedian monologues.
I'm gonna be a bit pedantic and mention that the Lenin quote comes from 1921. He's writing to Pravda for the anniversary of the October revolution. He's celebrating by being a big fucking nerd and writing about the problems not solved by revolution. He mentions that they're facing a problem where they think that using revisionist solutions will work better than revolutionary ones. This is in regards to rebuilding industry after the revolution. He says they have been trying a revolutionary approach for a few years (completely break the old system to its foundations) but that they're turning to reform (break as little ass possible and slowly remodel it). He's talking about letting the capitalist businesses and petty production continue but slowly regulate them out of existence.
He's addressing the criticism that revolutionary methods got them there, they were successful and continued to be successful, but now they were turning toward reform. He doesn't really give a shit what his enemies think about the flip-flopping but he says the comrades do be having struggle sessions about it.
Then he goes on to talk about this unrealistic view of revolution as this grand, divine thing that must be absolute in it's outlook towards reform at all times.
True revolutionaries have mostly come a cropper when they began to write “revolution” with a capital R, to elevate “revolution” to something almost divine, to lose their heads, to lose the ability to reflect, weigh and ascertain in the coolest and most dispassionate manner at what moment, under what circumstances and in which sphere of action you must act in a revolutionary manner, and at what moment, under what circumstances and in which sphere you must turn to reformist action. True revolutionaries will perish (not that they will be defeated from outside, but that their work will suffer internal collapse) only if they abandon their sober outlook and take it into their heads that the “great, victorious, world” revolution can and must solve all problems in a revolutionary manner under all circumstances and in all spheres of action. If they do this, their doom is certain.
Whoever gets such ideas into his head is lost because he has foolish ideas about a fundamental problem; and in a fierce war (and revolution is the fiercest sort of war) the penalty for folly is defeat.
He's saying that even real heads get off track sometimes and start to idealize revolution but you have to stay woke and know when change course.
That's when we come to OP's (or the OP being quoted) section quoted.
What grounds are there for assuming that the “great, victorious, world” revolution can and must employ only revolutionary methods? There are none at all. The assumption is a pure fallacy; this can be proved by purely theoretical propositions if we stick to Marxism. The experience of our revolution also shows that it is a fallacy. From the theoretical point of view—foolish things are done in time of revolution just as at any other time, said Engels,[2] and he was right. We must try to do as few foolish things as possible, and rectify those that are done as quickly as possible, and we must, as soberly as we can, estimate which problems can be solved by revolutionary methods at any given time and which cannot. From the point of view of our practical experience the Brest peace was an example of action that was not revolutionary at all; it was reformist, and even worse, because it was a retreat, whereas, as a general rule, reformist action advances slowly, cautiously, gradually, and does not move backward. The proof that our tactics in concluding the Brest peace were correct is now so complete, so obvious to all and generally admitted, that there is no need to say any more about it.
Which leaves out the last part where Lenin talks about the Brest peace. The most important part here is that even though he admits it was revisionist, and a retreat, it was right in the end because they won. If they hadn't won, then that tactic wouldn't have been correct.
I think we should be careful in reading theory like they're parables. This has a bit of a specific context and I don't know if it applies to modern day US, or even collaborating with 2025 US Democrats on protesting. For much in the same reason I am softer on electoralism than other Lenin-quoters here, I am harder on this issue. We're just not there yet. What guidance can Lenin give us on wearing a frog suit for 6 hours on a Saturday every 6 months? Questions dreamed up by the utterly inane. I think Lenin would be mostly kind about it, he would be like "oh yeah? that's nice" like a parent looking at their kid's scribbles. I don't think it's as dire as we need to separate the Mensheviks from the Bolsheviks on Hexbear.net.
pretty much. they push everyone into these virtual spaces to the point of causing pathology, as some sort of manifest destiny on the internet. but then they can't handle the things that come along with it like friction-less humiliation. So now they need to reroute real social structures in order to avoid being owned in the simulacrum.
- JumpDeleted
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Never visit a ravine with someone who would have a financial stake in your death.
At some point over the last few months these people sat in a room, behind closed doors, and came up with a strategy. They see it as a tremendous opportunity to capture the pro-police, pro-order conservatives who are outraged at the government overreach occurring. After 2020, they want to further rehabilitate the image of Democrats hating police. If they win in 2028 they will tell ICE that they were just following orders. The dept had been taken over by unsavory bad actors and that's over now. They will push actual diversity hires so that cover up the inherent racism of ICE. They will say a lot of stuff about how this isn't who we are as a nation and that ICE can serve a better purpose, combating foreign threats than domestic. Dems will show their commitment to law and order by expanding ICE in regards to contracting big tech. They will push that agents be unmasked and that they are to identify themselves as agents. That will quietly disappear from the media and never be implemented. They will re-appoint at least one person from Trump's appointments.
You can trust that the Democrats-as-2004-Republicans under Trump 1 are fading away to be replaced by Democrats-as-2008-Libertarians under Trump 2. They will frame any investigation or act on Trump in constitutional bullshit and limited government philosophy. They will slide to the right.
They have invented their own version of woke out of economic necessity as influencers.
What's your plan though? I'm all ears!
Kill one hostage per hour until it sorts itself out.
"Do you have a dog Mr Mamdani?"
Does it though? "And some of them, I will know about their thoughts on Zionism." He's saying he will know their thoughts, not that they support it. We all have thoughts on Zionism without supporting it. It's a back-handed way of saying he knows some of his admin are anti-Zionist but he's going to end up with some Zionists too because he's just looking to fill a position like sanitation commissioner where Israel/Palestine doesn't come up. The complaint then is why doesn't it come up? Shouldn't he bring it up with everyone and make sure his admin doesn't contain any Zionist? I can't defend him on that point nor do I care to.
real fast growing National socialist movement across the west
Yeah and AIPAC endorses them every year. Dave Taylor received $35k from AIPAC as of August 2025. His legislative correspondent was just busted with a Nazi American Flag: https://hexbear.net/post/6443031
Getting worse? Reddit is now having problems with image hosting.