I see so many comments saying “voting won’t work”, “protesting won’t work” etc. Anything that has any visible result, works. Because the majority of people follow the herd to a greater or lesser extent. You need to mobilise that majority in order to make a difference. The more you have a movement, the bigger, louder and more visible that is, the more people will join you. People need to feel which way the wind is blowing.
“that doesn’t work” people are just better educated versions of the my-anecdote-disproves-science types. Those people usually need more local engagement because of fuckin-course you can’t tell if voting is working when the gap between the individual voter and federal level reps is so huge. Anyone who’s paying attention to their local elections knows votes matter.
I forget who I was listening to or reading that said something like “political doomerism is the last stage of your liberalism before it dies”
Essentially, the point was that as people become radicalized they will learn all of the problems of capitalism and gain class consciousness and then conclude that any action is pointless.
They’ll essentially sit at home, talk about activism, but judge both people working within the system as well as people protesting or demanding change from the system. It’s a way in which a radicalized class conscious person is held in a state of inaction. Essentially making them useless.
It was a good little one sentence summary of those people. I’ll try to remember who said it.
So, while I agree with the “vote away Fascism” being bull shit I do still think that working class momentum can be built through wins like Mamdani.
I see so many comments saying “voting won’t work”, “protesting won’t work” etc. Anything that has any visible result, works. Because the majority of people follow the herd to a greater or lesser extent. You need to mobilise that majority in order to make a difference. The more you have a movement, the bigger, louder and more visible that is, the more people will join you. People need to feel which way the wind is blowing.
“that doesn’t work” people are just better educated versions of the my-anecdote-disproves-science types. Those people usually need more local engagement because of fuckin-course you can’t tell if voting is working when the gap between the individual voter and federal level reps is so huge. Anyone who’s paying attention to their local elections knows votes matter.
I forget who I was listening to or reading that said something like “political doomerism is the last stage of your liberalism before it dies”
Essentially, the point was that as people become radicalized they will learn all of the problems of capitalism and gain class consciousness and then conclude that any action is pointless.
They’ll essentially sit at home, talk about activism, but judge both people working within the system as well as people protesting or demanding change from the system. It’s a way in which a radicalized class conscious person is held in a state of inaction. Essentially making them useless.
It was a good little one sentence summary of those people. I’ll try to remember who said it.