I'm low key not sad that we lost the pigpoopballs cars, my position has always been that we can hand-deliver printouts of pigpoopballs to our enemies using public transport or bikes
I assume communists have sagely recommended not firebombing fraternities.
If you look at the public reaction to the PSU protests within their own community compared to those at UCLA and Columbia, choosing to occupy the library definitely hurt them. Like, kudos to them for doing something, but nowhere near the amount of professors and student groups have come out in support of them as those other schools. Part of that is campus culture and engineering students seething because divesting from Boeing hurts their chances at the golden throne, but they also staged the protest in the most likely place to have staff who would otherwise have supported them materially. Which got them attention, but also got them cleared out a hell of a lot quicker.
Interesting analysis. Haven't been paying granular attention; id have hoped that Portland's climate would've been more amenable to some concerted action across communities.
I would have assumed this too but they essentially pissed off the entire student body because the library is usually seen as neutral ground at worst or a beacon of progress compared to other departments/services at best. They're usually the first people to come to the support of social causes, trying to stop funding from being slashed, offering services that aren't really within their expertise because nobody else will, etc.
For students specifically, its where they might go to study if they have no computer or quiet space of their own, rent textbooks they might not be able to afford, get help with research from librarians. Then there's the sanctity of the books themselves, where even if someone might tolerate graffiti and other vandalism, damaging books in any way or being perceived as someone who might do so flips a switch.
Instead of picking a random class building or an administration building, they essentially occupied friendly territory and united everyone against them, giving the administration an easier excuse to call in the notoriously fascist PPB, since it was being made clear that even students didn't want them there. They're organizing clean up crews and even talking about fund raising to replace the equipment destroyed by the protestors while still paying absurd prices for tuition.
EDIT: There was also a lot of mixed messaging and unclear organization. The PSU protestors weren't laser focused on Palestine and people started independently incorporating a lot of other causes like land back which just confused people or made them seem disingenuous to people who were wanting to figure out what their demands were.
The people who torch police cars, occupy a library, and then say "fuck communists" don't have a coherent ideology? you don't say
People need to unironically read theory. Basically every significant communist from Lenin to Mao has spoken out against and written about the dangers of adventurism and going ahead of the community/society. Hell, just look at the history of fighting against apartheid. Did the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd end apartheid in South Africa? No it did not. Apartheid continued for decades afterwards and Dimitri Tsafendas was tortured in prison.
Non-zero chance some fed provocateur seized on the pigmobile arson to try and manifest the “violent Nazi riots” the media has been hysterically screeching about. Real strong blacks rule energy from this “statement”
Anyone can claim responsibility for anything
this is all extremely on brand from anarchists in the PNW, no reason to fedjacket.
Eh, I've encountered real life anarchist groups with this rhetoric and tactics. It could just be weird insurrectionist types.
Sounds like these people are trying to get them arrested. If you lose the faith of the community you're a sitting duck.
Certainly. These kids aren't guerilla warriors and shouldn't be expected to be.
PPB got called in first, then they moved into the library after the outdoor encampment got cleared, iirc.
Clearing the outdoor encampment was an unforced error, but the protestors in the library defacing books didn't make them any friends.
yeah fuck those commies, its propaganda of the deed time babyBut seriously the student protests have been gaining worldwide momentum, firebombing a frat house or similar action would be the ideal way to kill that dead in the water
They literally disrupted the May Day march this year then complained online about the "tankies" that organized it.
Fucking christ, I don't want to doxx myself more than I may have with the crumbs I've left behind on my current account, but, I've had to deal with these god damn losers to much too. I've made myself a pretty public face in a lot of local scenes which contain a lot of white people calling themselves anarchists; and when I joined PSL and started being open about like "Hey we're organizing this for Palestine" I got nothing but hate from these crackers. They're chauvinistic, deluded motherfuckers who pick on women and minorities because it's easier. I genuinely don't know how to deal with these fucking people, it's bizarre, there's so many connections that I considered friends but as soon as I started actually doing what I've been preaching (I've been an open communist for years, everyone knows) I'm suddenly enemy number one. It's been absolutely fucking terrible and has eroded my mental health, for what it's even worth, severely.
Right now I think we're finding that ML organizations are beginning to gain steam because there's people like me who've become completely disillusioned with the anarchist and "horizontal" organizing that's lead to jack and shit getting done or accomplished. ML organizations are the groups which have been able to articulate most meaningfully how this struggle is connected and have, in my experience, worked most successfully with local Palestinian and other anti-imperialist groups; this is why I joined PSL for god's sake! But jokers like this, useless self-defeating white chauvinistic people like this, I don't know what the hell to do with them. If we're not able to get past people like this as a movement for liberation, we'll get nowhere, their anti-intellectualism and adventurist tendencies (as well as general tendency for dramatic bullshit) are so counterproductive that it will lead to a new failed left if there's not a well-reasoned, articulated, and popular resistance against people like this. Fucking sick of it.
Edit: And to add, I've had to deal with so much paternalistic bullshit from white guys in their 30s who consider themselves "very serious organizers" who after lengthy conversations simply fall back onto thought terminating cliches (authoritarianism) or just outright threats of violence towards me and my friends. I have so much frustration built up it's ridiculous, I wish to god there was a clear solution but I nor anyone around me who's in a similar position can articulate it.
Edit: And to add, I’ve had to deal with so much paternalistic bullshit from white guys in their 30s who consider themselves “very serious organizers” who after lengthy conversations simply fall back onto thought terminating cliches (authoritarianism) or just outright threats of violence towards me and my friends.
What you said is deadass why I stopped organizing with crackers. I save my time, my energy, and my effort for explicitly Black causes at this point because I'm sick of the paternalism, I'm sick of the insistence on assimilation, I'm sick of the tone policing, I'm sick of the liberal optic games. The next cracker to talk down to me in a 'left' offline space is getting his nose broken; so I'm tryna avoid that assault charge for as long as I humanly can.
Like, it fucks me off so damn bad; I used to think my oldheads were just being backwards, recalcitrant oldheads about white folk and increasingly commonly these days, I find myself just "damn, my OGs were really right about y'all". That thought alone pisses me off bc if they're right, that means a solid half of this bullshit society spent my formative years lying that we'd ever get past this together, rather than apart; and I really don't know how to deal with that anymore than to protect my peace, and that of my community.
Yeah, it's depressing as hell. The only "radical" community I know of is overwhelmingly white and filled with these clowns. And it really is just like, a small, annoying, and vocal minority who won't shut the fuck up, but the part that hurts the most is others' indifference to it or eventual compliance after being beat down emotionally. It's making me realizing that recruiting by trying to scrape off the surface of social scenes is maybe a start but not a feasible long term strategy, but, we don't have unions nor connections into them. I feel like we've utterly lost any base as far as I can understand, except for other "intellectuals". We really need to wait until things get far, far worse to begin getting the numbers we need because that's only when our message will resonate, I think, but until then? I'm so fucking lost, personally, but I don't want to depress my comrades with it. This Palestine stuff has been great, but, our victories are for the media, our pressure isn't working. I don't know, I'm so god damn lost.
For the record too, I'm white, I grew up in a small rural town (sub 5k). I've understood the depravity of white people as a result of white supremacy for a while now, but only in short bursts where their mask falls or on an intellectual level. This is the first time I've understood the depravity of whiteness on a real, sustained level. I don't even know how I'd organize outside of that, I don't want to just be like some white person trying to enter other communities I've never been a part of. It's a depressing position, frankly.
Somehow, the reply I meant to address elsewhere ended up going to you, my b sis
our pressure isn't working
That's not true. Evergreen state college is divesting because of student demands. Basically every university in Spain as well, in Belgium the Free University of Brussels is divesting and in Ireland Trinity college as well. This is just the beginning.
I can almost see the pigmentation of the users going to bat for these cracker clowns.
Don't let this get to you, keep working to build a movement. I am sorry a lot of your friends are so unprincipled and have decided to act antagonistically toward you. it actually should be against their interests, but they live in an idealist bubble that is only maintained through policing the morality of other organizers through informal power structures and exclusion. These anarchist/chauvinists are in fact only a small minority even if they are very prevalent in inward-facing organizing circles, it is only a symptom of the defunct history & nature of the US left and the discontinuity in the US communist movement. However "very serious" these "organizers" are, they are not representative of the masses of people which is what we are looking to organize. Don't worry about them. I think their influence in the movement for Palestinian liberation is being very exaggerated in this thread, a lot of it seems to focus on the PNW. Most parts of the country don't have such a large anti-communist-left scene, and the student movement is a real mass movement that has incorporated so many different communities, most of this stuff becomes completely irrelevant day-to-day
Yeah, I just. It's fucking annoying. To be clear too, from what I've noticed, they benefit from red bashing so I don't think it'll end, only escalate. They get both the social credit of moral purity, and if I'm being honest these are mostly pretty comfortable people who if there was a shakeup of how the economy worked, they would lose out heavily, so they benefit by not having to challenge the hand that feeds them fundamentally.
when I joined
I'm glad you finally got in, comrade - I lost access to my element so I wasn't sure how things went
Thanks for sharing, this is really good insight for someone who hasn't interacted with these groups.
- Commit felonies that have little effect but that can easily be traced back to you.
spoiler
Armed community self-defense isn’t smashing the windows of frat houses and uncoordinated property destruction. Firebombing counterprotestors? You might as well kill someone of actual importance.
So these people are adventurists. They say "fuck the communists" and call for acts of individualist terrorism. This is anti-Leninist thought. Do not do adventurism.
Here is a work by Lenin where he criticizes adventurism. As example, he criticizes socialist Stepan Balmashov for assassinating Russian politician Dmitry Sipyagin. Lenin writes, "everyone knows and sees perfectly well that this act was in no way connected with the masses and, moreover, could not have been by reason of the very way in which it was carried out—that the persons who committed this terrorist act neither counted on nor hoped for any definite action or support on the part of the masses. In their naïveté, the Socialist-Revolutionaries do not realise that their predilection for terrorism is causally most intimately linked with the fact that, from the very outset, they have always kept, and still keep, aloof from the working-class movement, without even attempting to become a party of the revolutionary class which is waging its class struggle."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1902/sep/01.htm
Nah the biggest issue is that terrorism, while sometimes based, will not lead to communism
fuck the Communist pieces of shit
Ultra adventurist agent moment time...
The students there in the university are at least fighting it out more bravely by protesting...
If you do must have to commit violence, then at least use it to defend those protests...
yeah i feel similarly about this action.
very adventurist and not constructive really to the current movement and moment.
but i felt it was at least worth an acknowledgement, because these people were willing to put decades of their lives in prison on the line to fight back against this capitalist dystopian settler-colonialist government. it shows how disgusted and fed up and angry some people are, and shows how people with better strategy need to do a better job organizing people with this kind of bravery into effective movements and actions.
people with better strategy need to do a better job organizing people with this kind of bravery into effective movements and actions.
This is exactly what we should take away from this.
"fuck the Communist pieces of shit"? These either some feds or some sectarians; either way, they can go and get fucked right back with they cracker asses.
And no, before someone comes to me talking about "buhhhhhh pwease no fedjacket 🥺" these are not allies, not comrades, not anyone worth uplifting if they're gonna put "fuck the Communist pieces of shit" directly in a manifesto they intended for mass consumption. They want to put out that 'fuck them' energy, can't NOBODY be surprised when everyone around them keeps that same energy.
as a former anarchist, perhaps i can explain.
americans are the most heavily propagandized people on planet earth. this includes anarchists. most don't know the real story of any communist/socialist/AES states.
so anarchists are against any state that imposes "authoritarianism" or police/prisons on anyone, and they don't understand that the reasons those are imposed by socialist states is to protect worker's power, not destroy it. they think that governments in AES countries are oppressive like capitalist governments are, because of the propaganda they have been fed. it is extremely useful to the capitalist states to be able to have anti-capitalists who oppose other anti-capitalists. just because their (meaning CIA, FBI, MSM, capitalists in general, etc) manipulative, divide and conquer tactics are working, is not a reason to blame those anti-capitalists who fall for it. they are potential allies even though they appear to be as against state communists as they are against state capitalists. our project is to counter capitalist propaganda to these constituencies by doing things like pointing out how china kills billionaires, how the USSR and China pulled the most people out of poverty in the shortest amount of time in world history, how AES countries use capitalism to grow their own power so they can one day end it, etc etc.
also there is a long history of communists jailing and murdering anarchists when they dissent/rebel from the party line of the communist party they find themselves living under/with. sometimes this is with good reason, as it protects the stability of the communist project, and sometimes it is a mistake/bad reason, as no political party is perfect and makes only correct decisions all the time.
even if you are feeling personally attacked, i think it is more useful to attempt to de-brainwash anarchists about AES/foreign countries than treat them as enemies.
I've "turned the other cheek" for years now and all it's gotten me has been both sides of my face getting slapped. Someone else, preferably one of their kin in white supremacy and habitus, can do that shit. It won't be me.
It's more productive to just out-organize anyone doing dumb things. And usually pretty easy because the people doing dumb things are usually either small in number of terrible at organizing.
Most of the time, calling people out just draws attention to infighting. Sometimes it's useful and necessary but most of the time it seems to be an exercise in personal validation and a distraction from doing work. This goes for the people with whom you (probably rightly) disagree, but unfortunately they're not going to see this message and they're also not going to internalize it even if they did because it's just some individual saying things.
Instead, imagine being able to mobilize 100, or even 1000 comrades with a unified plan and its own goals. This could be an org or a united front. You will eventually be able to marginalize wrong voices through largesse and progress to a stage of semi-open criticism that is no longer perceived as infighting, but instead a denunciation of and separation from organizations that are screwing up your work. You will no longer be that individual or those 4 people from the weird org fighting with other vague lefties. You'll be a wall of voices making an intentional decision that can't be ignored.
Basically... have a good internal political education program, recruit, and work in coalition. Resist the urge to crit publicly. It usually backfires. Only do so strategically and with intent and while considering your audience. Be prepared to play a longer game than the immediate issue or action. You want to be trusted by and recruit from the people in these spaces. They will care more about you being a contributing member than a person with the better argument.
that's fine.
maybe you argued with me 10 years ago. but here i am now.
so it's probably not the same people you are interacting with over and over again. there are new radicals coming up all the time.
it's not on you personally to have to engage in this type of organizing and education. i'm just saying it is possible as a communist movement to do so and have a positive outcome.
We held a May Day rally, coordinated with other communist and SWANA groups in Portland to make connections with each other and with the local communities directly impacted by the genocide. There were speakers, musicians, posts, it was a lovely Big Red Tent.
Then the black bloc showed up during our march, lit off fireworks and assaulted a few people, so the march got called short. The SWANA groups we organized with were pissed. So many bridges were burned cause some anarchists who had nothing to do with organizing the event wanted to smash some windows.
They disrupted our event then complained online about tankies. Fucking fed shit.
Not as far as I was aware, but there were warning signs and we always could have cancelled the whole thing when we saw them all arrive at the start of the march, but didn't.
Maybe the anarchists tried to tell us through their tried-and-true method of dropping a leaflet on the ground and hoping the right person reads it, but idk.
Yeah thats shitty though and goes against the anarchist principle of diversity of tactics, idk why this stuff can't be coordinated.
Most of the local articles I've seen make no distinction between the rally, the march, or the library occupation. I'll see if I can find anything better from smaller leftist sources.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-state-university-pro-palestine-protest-cleared/283-ef283427-9bb3-442d-a0bd-67f4bd8df9e5
This coverage isn't terrible, and has video.
I'm assuming it's just old fashioned sectarianism, or at least someone trying to make it look like that.
Are you kidding? Those guys are the worst; they used to be Stalinist-Clintonists but have since sold out and now Obama's 'the audacity of hope' is their spiritual Dats Kapital successor and they've moved on to being Obamaist-Bidenists and want to privatize socialism!
This is just reigniting Marxian-AynRandism!
Oh my fucking god, I know it was a typo but I'm now obsessed with Marxist mobsters who go around forcing people to read "Dayts Capeetal" in thick Italian accents and breaking knees of people who won't read theory
- Show
26k follower journalist on Instagram. "Lots of tankies at the march" my sister in anti-capitalism the tankies organized the march.
anarchists love to pretend the results of demcent organizing are actually completely autonomous horizontalism
I don't trust this person to not rat me out for being a communist when they're arrested for burning a bunch of police cars that I as a taxpayer have to replace with better models. Such absolute fed shit that the FBI should hire this person if they aren't already on the payroll.
burning a bunch of police cars that I as a taxpayer have to replace
is cool and good, it demonstrates oppressive power as something that can be weakened and destroyed, it follows through on a form of deterrence, and we shouldn't be yielding to the assumption that the police will stay inexorably lodged in place.It's a legitimate target and a successful action, even though it's a pity they had to be sectarian about it- sectarianism, along with having an identifiable style/voice, is bad opsec.
Seriously, what you said is the same sort of thing that sideliners were saying in 2020. "What are they accomplishing by smashing and burning stuff, we're all collectively going to have to pay to replace it anyway, they're practically smashing MY car/window"
I'm not crying for cop cars and it's a shame they didn't get harder-to-replace buildings instead like Minneapolis. My point is with the third picture:
Raid them before they raid you!
It's a call to action without organisation. Doing this one-time thing immediately puts the state on high alert and it has to be followed by spontaneous escalations by individuals if it's to survive that response. Right out of the gate they're alienating communists by decrying any formal organisation. It just has to be people being inspired by spontaneous praxis to take on a militarised police state through their own spontaneous actions that can never be matched by the state.
When Food Not Bombs rejects that centralisation, the result is that I make soup but there's no ladle unless I personally spontaneously bring a ladle. There's no coordinated menu or guarantee that there will be anything more than apples unless people spontaneously do that between themselves three times per week. There's no buying in bulk or storing things in a common space or pooling resources behind a structure with bylaws. It's praxis without any political education or interorganisational networking like the local DSA events have, and it only works if people see that and then themselves decide to show up three times per week with their own food and utensils while individually doing all the administrative coordinating between their own cliques. Even if I agree with the act in isolation it's an act of faith that it will inspire someone else to also cook. And if it doesn't, all that energy is limited to that specific moment. PSL may be driving people to join PSL at its equivalent mutual aid days, but it's because PSL has a budget for utensils and national network and sign up sheets. The energy fuels a structure that will exist tomorrow and consciously build networks with other orgs using full-time organisers. There's risk-reward calculation between a group so that one anonymous person doesn't personally declare war on the police without a plan B if the following week doesn't have enough copycat response to counter what the state does.
This is a good point; I don't agree with the Bonanno-style exhortations for people to just go out and do more destruction of policing instruments (and also preemptively striking counter-protestors; most if not all university encampments have a strong policy against engaging at all with them, for good reason). A declaration that "they have been revealed as illegitimate and we have demonstrated that they are not safe amidst our escalations" would do.
I cannot believe somebody is condemning burning police cars lmao. Let alone that they're trying to frame it as "destroying tax payer funded property"
I got lectured the other day for being so arrogant I thought I knew everything when I said a revolution wasn't happening in this country because as soon as anybody actually did something it would be universally condemned.
Then two days later somebody actually does something and even this website is in agreement to condemn them for "destroying public property"
There's other comments saying the Portland protests fucked up by trying to take over the library and that was bad optics. Were getting really close to "only protest in the designated protest zones and then go home when asked"
Can't wait to see this revolution that doesn't harm any property or does anything that would make the media condemn them and doesn't inconvenience anybody.
By the way Biden just made some public comments calling these protests anti Semitic after saying hamas started this on the 7th
Can't wait to see this revolution that doesn't harm any property or does anything that would make the media condemn them and doesn't inconvenience anybody.
Nobody is calling for that.
What they're calling for is for the organizing to make the property damage effective and bad press ineffective.
Might as well call for a perpetual motion device while they're at it.
If they're concerning themselves with how the media that is specifically set up funded and maintained to discredit them will react they should team up with the libs saying they can't do anything because republicans will call them communists.
You're talking past my point.
Yes we can't control what the media says and they'll always spread anti-communist bull shit. It's easier to spread our own propaganda to counter them when you have a well organized movement that can plan actions strategically.
Every movement that used terrorist tactics that ever achieved anything was still organized. The Viet Cong didn't do spontaneous terror.
The Viet Cong didn't do spontaneous terror.
John McCain is universally considered a war hero by liberals because of all the "terror" he endured as a poor innocent pow.
This is exactly what I mean the general public still thinks we "won" Vietnam and just got tired of fighting so we left.
Because that's exactly what the media is set up to do.
I cannot believe somebody is condemning burning police cars lmao. Let alone that they're trying to frame it as "destroying tax payer funded property"
The property isn't sacred because it's taxpayer funded. I'm just saying that the action is symbolic but materially counterproductive because the fleet will be immediately replaced with better cars using taxpayer funds. That turns the public against the person who destroyed them, doesn't deprive the police of anything they won't replace by the end of the week, and it leads to nothing larger unless many people in your shoes are so inspired by it that you're willing to martyr yourself for more symbolic property damage.
There are even moments for me when propaganda of the deed has merit. Huey P Newton walking down the street with a shotgun prepared to kill anyone who interferes with him putting up a stop sign at a dangerous intersection because the city refuses to, that's a symbolic action which inspires and educates for decades after. It drives people right to the local BPP chapter because everyone knows who he is and sees that their safety is in their own collective hands. The assassin who killed Shinzo Abe turned an entire nation against Shinzo Abe and destroyed his power bloc because it exposed his corruption in the vacuum it left. No stated ideology I'm aware of, no party to recruit people to, one symbolic action which found public support because the public ultimately wasn't ideologically with Shinzo Abe. I don't know what the right adventurist move would be for the Gaza protests, but watch how this one develops and judge the effectiveness based on that. I think it sets too high of a bar for action, immediately alienates many of the most radical people who'd be doing that action, does an action which only benefits the police while making the non-radical public hate them more, and offers no Plan B if a bunch of people don't individually decide to start a civil war before this leaves the news cycle in a few days. I'm condemning one idealist tilting at windmills because a group of people can swing swords more effectively at other things.
In a left that's been indoctrinated with tankie hysteria brainworms, it's hard to tell what's an op and what's a teenager uncritically watching youtube videos and becoming parasocial friends with podcasters. This manifesto is both something that makes me immediately suspicious and is like the arson version of what frustrates me every time I cook for Food Not Bombs.
not everything is some conspiracy.
but yes the PPB may actually benefit from the insurance payouts.
I just read the title and was like haha pork roast! So didn't see that comin
I guess this is the thread where hexbear learns that the student occupations are overwhelmingly organized by anarchist groups who don't like the PSL. I don't know of any exceptions but would be happy to hear them. Certainly communists participated in the organization but it was predominantly an anarchist show.
It sucks these people are being overtly sectarian but you didn't hear much blowback here before this statement came out. Now it's adventurist this, fed that. Come on!
I guess this is the thread where hexbear learns that the student occupations are overwhelmingly organized by anarchist groups who don't like the PSL
not what I have seen at all. it isn't just being "overly sectarian" it is anticommunism-- literally fed shit. they risk a whole lot to pull this off and then use their statement to shit on communists
Take it from someone who sat in at encampment planning meetings where the specific question "should we involve the PSL" was asked and answered. The perception among organizers was that PSL is using events like this to drive membership instead of organizing to accomplish a specific goal like divestment. I don't agree with that assessment and think of myself as a communist and like the PSL but that is what I saw.
Anarchists when Communists want to support their project
Anarchists when Communists have a project they weren't invited to
idk, that's one example, and even if I disagree I can see why someone might say that. that is something anarchists say about every organization because anarchists don't "recruit" really. but I have more than a few direct counterexamples I have personally witnessed, so I would not say that encampments are primarily organized by anarchist groups. that is probably just something that varies from city to city
And in my encampment PSL was very specifically invited because we are leaders and experienced organizers. If you look at most encampments you'll see plenty of PSL collab on the relevant SJP social media post, which requires mutual approval.
student occupations are overwhelmingly organized by anarchist groups
this just isn't true, there are clearly a lot of communists involved with them as well. what is true is that all the sectarian parties that try to organise in a communist way have failed to play a significant role in them but some of the occupations were very clearly led by Marxists/Maoists lol
basically what this tells us is that none of the strictly communist organisations we have right now are capable of rising to the moment and many of them actually have a bad reputation amongst the advanced sections of the masses bc of a pattern of opportunism, tailism, commandism, etc... other organisations such as PYM and WOL are showing us the way, we have to learn from them.
other organisations such as PYM and WOL are showing us the way, we have to learn from them.
PYM and PSL are attached at the hip
Imo this seems like the best take
Haven't been in a strictly communist org tho so idk
Now it's adventurist this
Probably cuz this specific action was adventurist.
Actions can be both cool and adventurist at the same time. For example, was the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd, the apartheid president of South Africa, cool? Yes it was. It was incredibly brave and the morally correct thing to do. Was it also adventurist? Unfortunately also yes, as the assassination of Verwoerd did not lead to the collapse of apartheid, it continued for decades afterwards. There was no solid plan for what came after, Verwoerd's assassin (Tsafendas) planned to flee the country and seek refuge in Cuba or Greece. While the actions Tsafendas took were commendable, deserve praise, and came at a great personal sacrifice (of being tortured for the rest of his life in prison), unfortunately they did not lead to his desired goal. Adventuristic violence is a very risky strategy that rarely leads to the desired outcomes. This is why many communists throughout history have spoken and written about the dangers of adventurism. I think the only recent example of successful adventurism was the assassination of Shinzo Abe.
If we're gonna condemn every piece of action that destroys tools of oppression as adventurist nothing will be left but book clubs. There's a genocide going on. Shit like this is long long overdue.
Accurately labeling an action as adventurist is not a moral condemnation, but a tactical one
Doing nothing that actually harms the oppressors is the only good tactics.
You know what really harms the oppressors, mass organizing.
You don't see the Czars around anymore do you?
People need to follow Palestine Action as an example. Palestine Action actually goes after the factories making drone and other military parts as well as various financial and legal offices supporting those weapons manufacturers. Some dude sneaking into a factory to smash F-35 engine parts is awesome. Palestine Action smashing the windows of banks and vandalizing law offices to the point where the law office send a letter to Palestine Action capitulating to their demands and dropping the weapons manufacturer as a client is awesome. But smashing the windows of frat houses? How the hell does that help Palestinians in any way? A more cynical reading would say that they just want to fuck shit up and are using the Palestinian cause as a cover to boost leftist street cred. Yes, setting pigmobiles on fire is awesome, but it doesn't directly help the Palestinian cause in the same way smashing drone parts that are being directly shipped to the Zionist entity is.
I agree with the frathouse and palestine action part, but i don't agree that harming the genocidal US state - even with something as "simple" as lighting some cars on fire - isn't helping.
If we're gonna condemn every piece of action that destroys tools of oppression as adventurist
Good thing nobody is doing that. What people are saying is that combating these tools of oppression requires actual mass organizing, not dispersed acts of terror by isolated individuals or small cells. Hence why everyone here supports the direct action of the marches and encampments and occupations since those can facilitate broader organizing but are skeptical of some random anarchist kid burning some cop cars that will be replaced in a week.
Well then they will be burned next week as well. And the week after. And after.
Not if they throw your ass in jail, which they probably will eventually if you keep doing the exact same action over and over again.
Something can be morally good and strategically ineffective at the same time.
It's really not complicated. The burning of police cars is not the problem. Burning police cars is a show of power. If an organized communist party is showing power then it is good. If anti-communist individualists are doing a show of power, then it is bad.
You're really showing your true colors by making a dozen salty posts about why you can't see that anticommunists showing power is a bad thing.
Burning police cars is a show of power to you, since you are not thinking apart from ML panels. To me and most anarchists burning police cars is a way to make it way more expensive to the state to participate in genocide in any way we can.
In another "salty post" i already clarified that if they are not coordinating their stuff with communists, fuck them. But if burning cop cars is indeed not the problem why do i have to make a dozen salty posts explaining that burning cop cars isn't a problem? Why can't y'all chalk this up as a broken clock being accidentally right?
the insurance payments on these burned old junker training vehicles may actually give PPB a bigger budget to purchase new and fancy weapons and vehicles to replace these old junkers.
this action may end up increasing the power of PPB to project force on the community fighting for divestment from genocide in the long run. the budget office of the PPB and the police chief are probably secretly happy this happened.
just FYI.
Direct action is adventurist, internet posting is praxis. K.
Yes that's really a good summation of the analysis people here are presenting, thank you for engaging in good faith discourse.
No, in my experience, despite anarchists still being the vast majority of the irl left (including sectarian jokers who, in my experience, will limit their work to admittedly awesome adventurist bullshit like this), in my area they completely dropped the ball and haven't sufficiently worked with SJP, whereas PSL has.
To be fair, I've also seen a ton of work being done with these encampments by SDS and FRSO, not as much PSL, but they're definitely there too.
if an anarchist isn't a communist they're not a real fucking anarchist lol
Certainly communists participated in the organization but it was predominantly an anarchist show.
This is remarkably common in 21st-century social movements in America.
western anarchists seem to spew a lot of red scare propaganda online. dunno about irl because i'm not in the us, but this can be a factor.
In the US I've seen anarchists and MLs working together no problem, during any action I haven't seen much disagreement, it seems more theoretical IMO.
As @infuziSporg@hexbear.net said, there are a lot less differences between us than feds and wreckers would have us believe. Food Not Bombs is one of my go-to examples of a space where anarchists MLs and Maoists collaborate and cooperate with far more ideological overlap than conflict.
I made a whole twitter thread about this but my account got banned.
Assuming that the same old hundred year past ideological beefs will or must play out exactly the same as they did in the early 20th century is defeatist, anti-materialist, and smacks of book worship and dogmatism. Mao would be ashamed of these people. After all, he was an anarchist himself in college.
I used to be one of those anarchists, until I started to get a better sense of the history of revolutionary movements and of the completeness of Western propaganda. Eventually I came to see anarchism and Marxism less as delineations and more as foundations.
The world is a lot friendlier without dogmatic grudges against leftists.
I dunno, but the way some of this statement is worded leads me to believe that it was written by someone that likely wasn't involved in any of the protests to begin with.
The "blowback" isn't against the actual protestors.
What these people have done is brave, but if you are going to do adventurism, you might as well have fried some bacon as well, to really prove to me that you are serious. These people are just as afraid of confrontation with the larger problem as the current Communist parties are. They think property damage to completely unrelated parties is enough to bring about divestment, when any university that 'stands firm against chaos' has the potential to receive millions of dollars in endowments (bribes) from the powers that be.
I am going to use this little sideline action here to finally say what I say about ALL student protestors or any kind of action like this. What they are doing is commendable, brave, and I would never tell them not to do it. But it will not change things.
The only thing that has even an iota of possibly changing things is long-term organized labor coupled with the threat of revolutionary violence and the will to follow through with that threat. It has to be both! The reason why you have to have both is because those that control labor control the wealth of the nation, and can prevent the state from just immediately rebuilding their losses. If you cannot do that, you will always, inevitably, lose. Fidel won not because of his revolutionary violence, but because everyone in the region he was in was willing to use their labor to support him and his movement, the same goes for the Viet Min and any other revolutionary organization that has ever been successful..
I think burning cop cars isn't bad, and it can actually be helpful if it's timed to impede an encampment raid or something. You're right that student protests can't win alone. The power of the proletariat ultimately comes from our low-level control over the means of production, and students don't have that yet. So short-term I think our task is to link the student protests with organized labor. Campus unions (faculty/staff/student workers) have already been waking up: CUNY did a wildcat sick-out on May Day, University of California employees have a strike vote next week. Some of the more militant general unions are stirring; some UAW members are pushing Fain to rescind his Biden endorsement and SBWU (maybe just the IL ones?) released a statement in support of the encampments.
Note that, for instance, UAW actually has a bunch of grad workers. Imagine if UAW 4811, the one at UC, authorizes a strike, and UAW members in other industries are so fired up that they call (illegal) solidarity strikes.
What these people have done is brave, but if you are going to do adventurism, you might as well have fried some bacon as well, to really prove to me that you are serious. These people are just as afraid of confrontation with the larger problem as the current Communist parties are. They think property damage to completely unrelated parties is enough to bring about divestment, when any university that 'stands firm against chaos' has the potential to receive millions of dollars in endowments (bribes) from the powers that be.
You can criticize these people all you want, but when our Communist leaders are traveling the US and Europe in the middle of a crisis while praising Kissinger on his death bed, I'd say I'll give these guys a tap on the back, they cleared a very low bar.
Nobody has cleared any bars yet imo. Nobody is actually doing what is required of the moment and we are all shitting the bed. The hope is that we can take these moments, learn from them, and not give in to reactionary sectarian stab in the back nonsense when we inevitably fail.
You think the "fuck the communist pieces of shit" part is directed at the CPC?
Lol
Lmao even
obamna
