Tbh I would in fact classify individualist terrorism like this or like the RAF or any such group as an ultimately reactionary response to failure or delays in the building and sustaining of a movement, I am personally experienced with the extreme frustrations of how weak the left is in the west and the equally extreme desire to just "do something, make a statement", but indulging in revolutionary daydreams of eating the bourgeoise and tearing down their system has never to my knowledge helped aid the left in any meaningful way, and has several times hurt it in the backlash.
This is pretty much the only tactic I can say I instantly will denounce from any leftist movement, others I will try to look at the viewpoint of the people performing the tactics and strategies but just violence for the message of violence is a tactic that has been dead for over a century and is to a large extent self indulgent.
Edit: Also wanna note that the closest the Bolsheviks came to doing similar acts to the propaganda of the deed people, which is robbing banks and cash transports for funding, they tried their hardest to keep a secret cause it would not only cause friction in their party itself, but waving around guns and grenades was very obviously understood to not be the look they wanted to represent them.
The strain of neo-luddism that ran through their statement also rubbed me the wrong way. I understand that green capitalism is still capitalism, but do they expect people in the imperial core to just willingly give up the benefits of industrialization and post-industrial technologies?
You have to make a case for why things like public transport and degrowth are actually materially good for people (or at least offer a palatable alternative), not just say "hey guys let's go back to living in wattle-and-daub hamlets because it's The Right Thing To Do."
Some of the language definitely read as really weird, in particular the line about "the unbroken belief and adherence of all previous market-dominated forms of society to technological progress", I typically try to avoid commenting on eco-ideology groups cause I usually subconsciously lump them all together as anprims but I am generally sceptical of any leftist ideology that decides to specifically put eco front and center in their name, it just has a tendency to signal weird and impractical ideas about technological progress at best, and at worst end up leading into social darwinism for chronically ill people and others who fundamentally rely on modern technology.
Word. While I do think anprims have a handful of good critiques of the "civilized" imperial core, the thing that always goes unsaid in all of their theory is the fact that scores of people, mostly disabled and elderly, would have to die pretty horrible deaths for their vision of society to come true.
To continue my Devil’s advocacy, your further comments lead me to question whether you are not being arrogant in thinking that you have THE exact perfect analysis (aka party line) that will allow you to know exactly when and how to act that will work perfectly to bring about successful communism. No matter how and when you act/don’t act, there will be critics who say “now is not the right time” or “that was not the right action/tactic/strategy to engage in.” Those critiques apply to organizing unions, strikes, protests, sabotage, assassination, or any other way people try to change things.
To continue your line of thinking about keeping things that are unpopular quiet (like the Bolsheviks robbing banks), every thing communists do is pretty unpopular in the countries benefiting the most from global capitalism, from unions to protests to radical education etc. All of those things are not what I would call universally popular.
And In fact communist groups have a terrible history of labeling every single thing that is not their plan as reactionary. And the Bolsheviks were able to claim that they were right about those they labeled reactionary because their strategy worked- for a while. Yet now that there system has fallen, they are susceptible to the same epithet.
None of us know what, if anything, will work (although we may know what won’t work) until it works. The bolsheviks did not know that what they did would work, and perhaps had they done some things differently, the USSR would not have weakened to the point of being able to be destroyed by the 1990s.
Tbh I would in fact classify individualist terrorism like this or like the RAF or any such group as an ultimately reactionary response to failure or delays in the building and sustaining of a movement, I am personally experienced with the extreme frustrations of how weak the left is in the west and the equally extreme desire to just "do something, make a statement", but indulging in revolutionary daydreams of eating the bourgeoise and tearing down their system has never to my knowledge helped aid the left in any meaningful way, and has several times hurt it in the backlash.
This is pretty much the only tactic I can say I instantly will denounce from any leftist movement, others I will try to look at the viewpoint of the people performing the tactics and strategies but just violence for the message of violence is a tactic that has been dead for over a century and is to a large extent self indulgent.
Edit: Also wanna note that the closest the Bolsheviks came to doing similar acts to the propaganda of the deed people, which is robbing banks and cash transports for funding, they tried their hardest to keep a secret cause it would not only cause friction in their party itself, but waving around guns and grenades was very obviously understood to not be the look they wanted to represent them.
The strain of neo-luddism that ran through their statement also rubbed me the wrong way. I understand that green capitalism is still capitalism, but do they expect people in the imperial core to just willingly give up the benefits of industrialization and post-industrial technologies?
You have to make a case for why things like public transport and degrowth are actually materially good for people (or at least offer a palatable alternative), not just say "hey guys let's go back to living in wattle-and-daub hamlets because it's The Right Thing To Do."
Some of the language definitely read as really weird, in particular the line about "the unbroken belief and adherence of all previous market-dominated forms of society to technological progress", I typically try to avoid commenting on eco-ideology groups cause I usually subconsciously lump them all together as anprims but I am generally sceptical of any leftist ideology that decides to specifically put eco front and center in their name, it just has a tendency to signal weird and impractical ideas about technological progress at best, and at worst end up leading into social darwinism for chronically ill people and others who fundamentally rely on modern technology.
Word. While I do think anprims have a handful of good critiques of the "civilized" imperial core, the thing that always goes unsaid in all of their theory is the fact that scores of people, mostly disabled and elderly, would have to die pretty horrible deaths for their vision of society to come true.
deleted by creator
Couldn't have put it better myself
To continue my Devil’s advocacy, your further comments lead me to question whether you are not being arrogant in thinking that you have THE exact perfect analysis (aka party line) that will allow you to know exactly when and how to act that will work perfectly to bring about successful communism. No matter how and when you act/don’t act, there will be critics who say “now is not the right time” or “that was not the right action/tactic/strategy to engage in.” Those critiques apply to organizing unions, strikes, protests, sabotage, assassination, or any other way people try to change things.
To continue your line of thinking about keeping things that are unpopular quiet (like the Bolsheviks robbing banks), every thing communists do is pretty unpopular in the countries benefiting the most from global capitalism, from unions to protests to radical education etc. All of those things are not what I would call universally popular.
And In fact communist groups have a terrible history of labeling every single thing that is not their plan as reactionary. And the Bolsheviks were able to claim that they were right about those they labeled reactionary because their strategy worked- for a while. Yet now that there system has fallen, they are susceptible to the same epithet.
None of us know what, if anything, will work (although we may know what won’t work) until it works. The bolsheviks did not know that what they did would work, and perhaps had they done some things differently, the USSR would not have weakened to the point of being able to be destroyed by the 1990s.