The protests changed me in a lot of ways. One way was, I was by no means a class reductionist before. But the protests really woke me up to the real struggles of oppressed communities in the US and importantly, the revolutionary potential in those communities. I remember listening to Rev Left in my car and had to pull over for a minute to absorb it when Breht said something to the effect of "what did white socialists in America ever give us?! Bernie Sanders!? Fuck that! The real revolutionary potential is with oppressed communities."
The thing that really made me a Leninist over less-centralised tendencies was Occupy. There was a revolutionary moment unlike anything for a generation. All the conditions were there and it came down to how capable the left was at organising around them. Instead of anything coming of that, it was a disorganised mess where the mass unrest was generic enough for liberals to hijack and recuperate. While I get the safety of anonymity and leaderless resistance, the lack of discipline and theoretical foundation to the kind of movement that creates is very self-sabotaging in that it limits the potential to capitalise on messaging or strategy in any kind of coherent way.
BLM immediately struck me as repeating the same problems. You could amass people in the streets but couldn't direct them toward a singular goal or use the success of that goal to pursue a larger one. There were slogans but they were generic enough that they were recuperated into a culture war between black lives matter and all lives matter. Without some kind of proper vanguard, only one cause brought people out into the streets and only with inciting incidents. Because it wasn't overtly socialist that cause didn't seize on the moment to become a wider economic protest in response to COVID's collapse. The reform-the-police wing turned it into a circus- at the Denver protest I remember a white furry setting up a booth right outside of the speaking area and they weren't discussing race relations- which only served to empower the liberals now mirroring the MAGA line word-for-word. Even when real gains were achieved, a chunk of Seattle under people's control, it became hippies planting community gardens instead of the militias calling for repeat seizures.
As it flares up again, it keeps the issue of civil rights in my mind but I have less faith now than I did in 2020 than I did after Ferguson. Some people will break windows, cops will attack them, liberals will defend and increase funding to the cops, the weakest reforms will be demanded by some people in response to them and then probably shot down by the democrats because they own the businesses with broken windows and prize those windows over black lives. That contradiction calls for something more that I don't see BLM being able to pivot to in its current form.
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It's not that I think it's perfectly foolproof so much as I think it has a better chance at being able to scale up. BLM couldn't take on new protest angles or present a unified front that makes its demands clear and actions coordinated. A more centralised effort would be better at those two things. That opens up the activists to assassination like Ferguson sure, but the protests are over those same people being killed regardless of what they do. Without any direction toward something bigger or even the ability to listen to a mass line for direction, what do those deaths accomplish? Another empty spasm of protests that confront the people funding police only through minor vandalism. Socially-focused sentiments that are turned into lawn sign platitudes by those same libs whose politics result in black people being shot.
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Both are valid and complement each other, but I have to contrast BLM against a project like the Black Panthers in their original form. They faced the same persecution but held it off in growing militias which coordinated internationally. They constantly engaged with the local communities to build up parallel structures which gave it cover. We got theory out of it, multiple similar groups and a widening spirit of radicalism, and if not for Reagan and the 80s/90s boom for white Americans they would have been some significant infrastructure for a wider revolutionary movement. There are still radical groups like that around BLM protests but nothing funnels people into them. PSL leaders in Denver were being arrested for the riots but walking around in daytime I didn't see any mention of PSL or NFAC or the SRA or even the DSA. There were some mutual aid setups like water tents and community orgs but none of those build the capacity for escalation or can muster a large enough crowd around a single focus. The depoliticised ones had their funding tied to the state that was surveilling them and the wealthy who abhorred the property damage. The politicised ones could fall in behind the actual BLM org if they're even the ones coordinating the daytime protests, but that group's big tent strategy only gave them as much wiggle room as democrats allow socialists. Whatever organising we do on the more radical fringe, it's still subservient to the movement orchestrating things and setting the terms of affiliation.
Thats an oxymoron
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We need both centralized and decentralized efforts. Without the former, libs will co-opt any movements not directly destroyed by the state. Without the latter, a few well placed bullets could kill our efforts.
We need people explicitly elevated to raise class consciousness, as well as a pool of leaders ready to step into their shoes at a moment's notice.
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No centralized or decentralized revolutionary party in america will gain power through a revolution against the state or through electoral means imo. I think the point is for the revolutionary organization to be the most ready to act, efficient, ideologicaly coherent and with an approach in mind to try and take and yield political power on whatever scale ,connected to the masses and able to protect itself when the entire thing collapses and when everything is under chaos in much more unpredictable and unstable conditions compared to now .
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