Burning things is like masturbation. It feels good to you but it doesn't achieve anything but a mess for everyone else.
Also it further justifies expansion of the security state, crackdowns, targeting of anyone vaguely anti-capitalist as a terrorist, allows easy infiltration by feds who proceed to commit acts of unpopular violence to tarnish the name of any movement against capitalism, etc.
There is a reason why the feds are okay relegating management of anarchists to the local police. There is a reason why the feds have historically not suppressed anarchists as hard and that is because their acts tend to be either gestures which the ruling class couldn't care less about (mutual aid, which I am not claiming to be useless but you also can't claim on its own it's a threat to the status quo or ruling class) or adventurist violence easily spun for sensation on the nightly news and round condemnation by all ends of the liberal spectrum. That plus as I mentioned, anyone can put on some black clothes, wear some anarchist symbols and then say burn down a library or rob people near a demonstration at gun-point, and it goes on and on. Not that they can't stage false flags against ML's, it's just easier with anarchists as there's no central authority to at least condemn the acts and state they were not carried out by anyone among them.
I'm not saying any revolution won't have burning things, I'm just saying you're not going to set one off by starting with that and expecting it to inspire anything more than at best copycat acts of burning things for personal pleasure and chaos.
Without some rhyme or reason, some justification among the masses violence and acts of fire and terror don't do anything but harden a lot of ordinary citizens who are frightened of you and your movement and push them into the arms of state repression to make it safe so they can thoughtlessly go about their lives again. There's a difference between say the type of things the Black Panthers did which wasn't actually just going around doming cops or other acts of adventurism for fun but standing as a line together against the violence of the state, threatening the ability to engage in retribution or hit back but couching it in discipline and a knowledge they couldn't be too easily drawn into just fighting and burning and alienating communities from them.
Because if burning shit is what you're after, you'll attract hoodlums, you'll attract criminals who want to use violence and chaos as a smokescreen to commit crimes under, you'll attract people who will harm those in your very movement, who will attack marginalized communities without thought because the car of a local black resident burns just as well as a cop car.
Burning things is like masturbation. It feels good to you but it doesn't achieve anything but a mess for everyone else.
Also it further justifies expansion of the security state, crackdowns, targeting of anyone vaguely anti-capitalist as a terrorist, allows easy infiltration by feds who proceed to commit acts of unpopular violence to tarnish the name of any movement against capitalism, etc.
There is a reason why the feds are okay relegating management of anarchists to the local police. There is a reason why the feds have historically not suppressed anarchists as hard and that is because their acts tend to be either gestures which the ruling class couldn't care less about (mutual aid, which I am not claiming to be useless but you also can't claim on its own it's a threat to the status quo or ruling class) or adventurist violence easily spun for sensation on the nightly news and round condemnation by all ends of the liberal spectrum. That plus as I mentioned, anyone can put on some black clothes, wear some anarchist symbols and then say burn down a library or rob people near a demonstration at gun-point, and it goes on and on. Not that they can't stage false flags against ML's, it's just easier with anarchists as there's no central authority to at least condemn the acts and state they were not carried out by anyone among them.
I'm not saying any revolution won't have burning things, I'm just saying you're not going to set one off by starting with that and expecting it to inspire anything more than at best copycat acts of burning things for personal pleasure and chaos.
Without some rhyme or reason, some justification among the masses violence and acts of fire and terror don't do anything but harden a lot of ordinary citizens who are frightened of you and your movement and push them into the arms of state repression to make it safe so they can thoughtlessly go about their lives again. There's a difference between say the type of things the Black Panthers did which wasn't actually just going around doming cops or other acts of adventurism for fun but standing as a line together against the violence of the state, threatening the ability to engage in retribution or hit back but couching it in discipline and a knowledge they couldn't be too easily drawn into just fighting and burning and alienating communities from them.
Because if burning shit is what you're after, you'll attract hoodlums, you'll attract criminals who want to use violence and chaos as a smokescreen to commit crimes under, you'll attract people who will harm those in your very movement, who will attack marginalized communities without thought because the car of a local black resident burns just as well as a cop car.