I like how they are also starting to mix in some labor messaging - that's a solidarity!

  • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    3 years ago

    not that I know of, they're just heavily decentralized with some chapters/parts/whatever doing some cringe shit, like the 'let's smash a bank window and let ourselves be arrested after'-action that got rightfully lambasted all over the internet.

    There's obviously some good stuff going too, like this or when they blocked the Murdoch press. Sure, they're not explicitly anti-capitalist which gives 'em some cringe-points, but I figure it's mostly a strategically pragmatic stance, since you'll get a lot more state oppression thrown in your face as soon as you start talking commie-stuff here in europe.

    • Vncredleader
      ·
      3 years ago

      decentralized? They started off with a Business Wing. They also are not just not anti-capitalist, they are anti anti-capitalist.

      I think Trueanon summed up a lot of the misgivings around them pretty well https://youtu.be/i9plIJNXC8Y?t=2784

      Or for an enviromentalist source tearing into their fucking Business website and open connections there is this https://winteroak.org.uk/2019/04/23/rebellion-extinction-a-capitalist-scam-to-hijack-our-resistance/

      Yes they closed it down after getting shit, but I'm sorry no non-astroturfed op would start off right away with that shit. The whole thing is full of connections to corporations and virulent anti-communists and industrialists with their own "eco-friendly" green washing attempts https://winteroak.org.uk/2019/04/25/so-who-exactly-is-christiana-figueres/

        • Vncredleader
          ·
          3 years ago

          Say what you will about Liz, she is fucking savage

      • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        3 years ago

        :shrug-outta-hecks: good info generally, so thanks for that. I'm not here to celebrate XR in any case, I just thought it was a cool action worth sharing. In any case I figure it's a more material threat to amazon's bottom line than whatever is going with r/antiwork's Black Friday General Strike. And as I said, they're starting to throw in some labor messaging, which I think is going to be absolutely crucial for the climate movement, if it wants to have any hope to move above small-scale, local action and grow into a popular movement.

        Also, don't you think movements can radicalize internally and run away from whoever initially may have seeded them? Not saying this is necessarily what happened, just that it's a possibility to keep in mind, especially when looking at decentralized, highly permeable movements such as this. Like, these articles are years old, and I haven't seen them doing this shit as of late - the 'business website'-thingy also hasn't come back online after being rightfully criticized, right?

        The second article you linked ends on this:

        If we really want to save the future of our living planet, we need to bring down the capitalist system.
        And we are never going to bring down capitalism by collaborating with capitalists.

        and I just wanna ask: What happened to buying the capitalist's ropes to hang them with?

        • Vncredleader
          ·
          3 years ago

          The point is that an org that started obviously as another NGO, with clear signs of being an op, is forever stained with that. I don't think there is a possibility for the business website to be a mistake you make in earnest and then learn from. It makes it clear that foundationally they are an op or greenwashing. Being from a few years ago doesn't change that they got in bed with corporations big time and asked activists to get themselves on the books. If your intro to radicalizing people is a liberal, third-way group that has gotten you arrested and booked before; you are in some deep shit.

          As for the rope quote, much as I like it, it never came from a communist. It was attributed to Lenin via anti-communist US politicians https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/ I know I know, I was disappointed to. But the thing is even if that was true it still does not mean we should align with capitalists AS our activism. Getting the rope from them means they create the conditions for communism or declare wars so awful that millions are trained to fight but willing to die to make their country end it. If XR was an example of that, it would be more like the majority of socialists on the continent who went to war anyways and killed one another in order to appeal to their nation's patriotism. That's hanging ourselves with the rope we buy from them.

          XR is fundamentally pro-capitalism, and it can only really take support away from from stuff like the Greens in the UK who for their incredible flaws, are at least more developed ideologically. Letting capitalists greenwash themselves and launder their capital through "eco-friendly" activism is to the detriment of activism. You end up building their movement, getting yourself on the books on their behalf, etc. Their open goal of cross-class climate activism, and not blaming individuals (read industrialists) is pure opportunism

          Per Lenin's Class Collaboration With Capital, or Class Struggle Against Capital?

          That is how history puts the issue—and not history in general, but the economic and political history of the Russia of today.

          The Narodniks and Mensheviks, Chernov and Tsereteli, have transferred the Contact Commission from the room adjacent to the one the ministers used to meet in to the ministerial chamber itself. This, and this alone, is the purely political significance of the “new” cabinet.

          Its economic and class significance is that, at the best (from the point of view of the stability of the cabinet and the preservation of capitalist domination), the leadership of the peasant bourgeoisie, headed since 1906 by Peshekhonov, and the petty-bourgeois “leaders” of the Menshevist workers have promised the capitalists their class collaboration. (At the worst—for the capitalists—the whole change has a purely personal or clique significance, but no class significance at all.)

          Let us assume that the more favourable eventuality is the case. Even so, there is not a shadow of doubt that the promisers will be unable to fulfil their promises. “We shall—in co-operation with the capitalists—help the country out of Its crisis, save it from ruin and get it out of the war”—that is what the action of the petty-bourgeois leaders, the Chernovs and Tseretelis, in joining the cabinet really amounts to. Our answer is: Your help is not enough. The crisis has advanced infinitely farther than you imagine only the revolutionary class, by taking revolutionary measures against capital, can save the country—and not our country alone.

          The crisis is so profound, so widespread, of such vast world-wide scope, and so closely bound up with Capital itself, that the class struggle against Capital must inevitably assume the form of political supremacy by the proletariat and semi-proletariat. There is no other way out.

          You want to have revolutionary enthusiasm in the army, Citizens Chernov and Tsereteli? But you cannot create it, because the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses is not begotten by a change of “leaders” in cabinets, by florid declarations, or by promises to take steps to revise the treaty with the British capitalists; it can be aroused only by acts of revolutionary policy patent to all and undertaken daily and everywhere against almighty Capital and against its making profits out of the war, a policy that will make for a radical improvement in the standard of living of the mass of the poor.

          Even if you were to hand over all the land to the people immediately, this would not end the crisis unless revolutionary measures were taken against Capital.

          You want an offensive, Citizens Chernov and Tsereteli? But you cannot rouse the army to an offensive, because you cannot use force against the people today. And unless force is used against them the people would undertake an offensive only in the great interests of the great revolution against Capital in all countries; and not merely a revolution promised and proclaimed, but a revolution actually in process of realisation, a revolution which is being carried out in actual fact, and is tangible to all.

          You want to organise supply, Citizens Peshekhonovs and Skobelevs, the supply of goods for the peasants, of bread and meat for the army, of raw material for industry, and so forth? You want control over, and partly even the, organisation of, production?

          You cannot do this without the revolutionary enthusiasm of the proletarian and semi-proletarian mass. This enthusiasm can be aroused only by taking revolutionary measures against the privileges and profits of Capital. Failing this, your promised control will remain a dead, capitalist, bureaucratic palliative.

          The experiment at class collaboration with Capital is now being made by the Chernovs and Tseretelis, and by certain sections of the petty bourgeoisie, on a new, gigantic, all-Russia scale.

          All the more valuable will be its lessons for the people, when the latter become convinced—and that apparently will be soon—of the futility and hopelessness of such collaboration.

          https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/06.htm

          In Leninist terms everything about XR is opportunist and counter-revolutionary. It is fine that they exist I guess, but they are the epitome of what Lenin spoke against

          • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            3 years ago

            Good post. I agree with most, but I'd like to add a small note to the point about XR being 'forever stained'; and only, that there's nothing unstained in this godless world.

            • Vncredleader
              ·
              3 years ago

              Sure, but most stains are not of ones own volition and as an introduction