you saw what happened with coronavirus

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      What makes you think that point is anywhere close to present? Like, if you want to make the discussion about what a leftist insurgency in the US would look like, you're free to do so in a literary context, maybe if we had some sort of fiction or world building board or something like that. But it is so far removed from present reality that it's genuinely counterproductive and impractical to talk about it.

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          If that happens, it won't be enough for leftists to have, like, a gun and 3 magazines each that they bought 30 years ago. If that happens, there would need to be well organised circuits to resupply the guerrillas, there would need to be broad alliances, there would need to be serious organization. The conditions under which that will happen are very hard to foresee.

          That kind of "prep work" kind of reminds me of doomsday preppers. Like, yeah, OK, who knows, maybe you will live to go through it. But there's more practical things to do now, and you can't foresee the circumstances under which something might happen. If you need a gun to protect yourself today, buy a gun. But setting out plans for what you'd do in an imaginary scenario of an insurgency that you really can't foresee is unproductive, and not just because it is idle speculation at this point, and not just because it creeps people out. It also gives people here the false impression that we're definitely one step before the revolution or something like that, and it makes them divert their attention to the wrong things, and go through manic cycles of "the revolution is here!" and "oh fuck nothing ever happens". I remember when George Floyd started and there were genuinely people here who thought it would turn into an insurgency or revolution or whatever, and shouted you down if you told them that, well, it's super important and you should take advantage of it as much as possible and figure out how to make the gains last, but, you know, it's not really a revolution. And of course they fell into hopelessness after it didn't become what they thought it would. Now it appears like the doomer posting has been dialled back because something is happening again, but it will inevitably start again when this stops.

          If you think a civil war is imminent, you get as armed as possible and see what the best way to organize is with the allies you already have. At that point the situation you are dealing with is something concrete. But this is not how you prepare when a civil war is not imminent. Speculation about civil wars when nothing like that can be foreseen leads to people getting confused and making wrong judgements. Leftist politics shouldn't be driven by unfounded speculation but focused on making concrete, long term gains, dealing with concrete situations. It's the same reason why discussions around, say, how to implement socialism are useless.