Like, sorry for obviously doomer posting. Sorry if this sounds like a fed-post to deter people from protesting/organizing - which I don't mean to do by any means. But like... honestly, how is anything going to change? Materially. Logistically.
We're living in a country and a time where you can literally have your life ruined for simply taking your phone with you to a protest. Sentenced with fines or imprisonment. Or at the very least charged with all that shit, and having your life completely fucked over by it. Idk about the rest of you, but I don't think my job would keep me around if I didn't show up one morning because I was arrested at a protest, much less because of the stigma of "unprofessional behavior" that has. And it took months to get the job in my field I have now, and I'm just barely getting by - and this is as someone privileged to have some help from parents and no dependents.
On a larger scale, how the fuck is any protest or action by anyone gonna change things? Anything that ideally would be influential enough to change things (ie [REDACTED] style things) would probably be prevented the moment anyone even considered it, the feds descending on those involved the moment any email sent or plan spoken aloud. How the hell can anything change in this country short of an all out intervention by China or some sort of a unified South American socialist coalition? How can any movement on the ground in the US change shit at this point from inside the oppressive police state we live in? How is any sort of "organizing" or protesting done right now any more effective than electoralism? I mean, remember 2020? Literally shit all came from that.
I just feel so hopeless and conflicted. Is it really worth it going on on the street to a protest and getting my shit rocked by a cop in the fucking juggernaut's armor with a metal baton and bean bag gun, or run over by a pickup truck chud plowing through an intersection if nothing will change like it didn't with 2020 or Ferguson? Is it wrong to have thoughts in my head worrying about the conflict of wanting to have some sort of successful artistic career VS abandoning any sense of bourgeois societal participation and spending my time and what little money I have solely focused on "revolutionary" organization in a country that will ruin me if I do anything besides silently hold a sign, alone, in a public park between the hours of 9am and 5pm?
How do we/I find hope of winning when we live in a literal country-wide panopticon?
I wish this was a fed post. I wish I was getting paid for this. I wish I didn't feel hopeless. I wish I was one of those evil, ghoulish fuckers toasting champagne rn over their hegemonic control as they repress us more and more each day. Instead this is a cry for help from someone who literally doesn't know what they should be doing or risking as we sink deeper in the shit.
No one really knows what will happen in the future. Capitalism is imploding on itself. People are mad. Anything could happen.
Think about how many times the power of the US has been defeated in recent history by so-called "primitive warfare"
If a tiny country like Vietnam didn't give up against the supposedly most powerful country in the world, shouldn't we at least try?
The big difference is that Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba and all the other poor countries that have successfully resisted US imperialism all have a people that backs the liberation movements. The imperial core is vastly different, as most people here are effectively propagandise to support the empire. You won't have sympathetic villagers who will help hide revolutionaries, you will have hordes of howling fascists clapping their hands like trained sealions every time the imperial goons crack some skulls.
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So we send wave after wave of liberals at them until the chuds hit their pre-set kill limit.
Send the KHive hopped up on PCP and some vasodilators and point at the chuds are agents of Brianna Joy Gray who posted memes at them on facebook
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I’m sorry I can’t relate to this at all
Those countries had far more than their fair share of reactionary counterrevolutionaries.
Yeah lets not forget that south Vietnam was basically their version of the Confederacy, not to mention a fascist Catholic theocracy where child prostitution was legal and openly practiced
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This is why being at protest matters now, its not because the protest can or would change anything, its because for every person active in resistance you inform and revolutionize others.
Its often more about how after the protest you tell everyone you know you went and then proselytize your beliefs to try to radicalize those you can influence.
Right now we are firmly still in the "get more people on our side and to our cause" of revolution. Its not about protesting fascism for the end to end fascism today, but to have the mindshare to end it eventually.
This is why optics matter. We need more people on our side, and the fascists have been winning the optics war (to radicalize AND normalize) for the longest time because leftism preys on empathy and rationality while fascism preys on fear and hate, and in late stage capitalism its hard to feel empathy and easy to hate, as the system intends.