Adventurism works
Removed by modAt least when the target is generally regarded as evil by 90% of people. Just look at the front page of reddit, it's wall to wall shitting on UHC and being oddly supportive of violence for civility liberals (i'm assuming the astroturfers don't have a coherent line yet)
Otherwise known as propaganda of the deed.
Although without a larger political project to take advantage of this energy it will just dissipate and be memory holed.
👏 Regularly 👏 Scheduled 👏C 👏 E 👏 O 👏 Assassinations 👏.
Although without a larger political project to take advantage of this energy it will just dissipate and be memory holed.
Yep, command of the economic heights means control of the governing and societal superstructure
Furthermore, there's the potential for these ghouls to simply hire a ton of security, etc. Now, against a true mass movement no amount of security will save you, but there's going to be diminishing returns on this kind of action very fast.
It depends
We won't know the consequences of this for some time
We saw with
the total distancing of Japanese politics from the Unification Church, but Japan is a far cry from the USA and you can already see the media attempting to corral the message being put out thereThere is an opportunity here though, because people across the political spectrum hate the current system of health insurance
Use this moment as an opportunity to point out that Brian Thompson, as CEO of UHC, was responsible for thousands, if not more, deaths
Deaths that could have been prevented if they hadn't chosen to put their profits above people's health and well-being
Expose that inherent evil and get people on the path to becoming class-concious
hypercompetent spectacular adventurism is beloved by 85% of the american population
No it does not. Violence is meaningless without organized action that can lead to systemic change. The only thing that will result from this individual action is some extra police crackdowns in NYC and more cop budget. Possibly even CEOs hiring bodyguards for a while. Adventurism does nothing. Don't do it
I disagree
The only thing that will result from this individual action
Sure, if you ignore literally all the people talking about it, agreeing with it, being inspired to share comics and stories illustrating the depredations of the insurance industry, etc
The only thing that will result from this individual action is some extra police crackdowns in NYC and more cop budget. Possibly even CEOs hiring bodyguards for a while
Sounds like a fear response to me, which, in addition to above, sounds like a whole lot of "nothing"
Also, the guy's dead and not coming back. Even more tangible change. Waow
Also, the guy's dead and not coming back. Even more tangible change. Waow
The health insurance company will keep on doing the same exact thing, that's why their stock price didn't move at all yesterday.
Propaganda of the deed is just that, propaganda. No revolution without organization.
"Propaganda is useless" says someone living in one of the most heavily propagandized societies in history
You act as if one dude with a gun can magically undo decades of extremely well funded society wide international propaganda campaigns
I'm acting like I'm watching terminally civility brain-ed redditors chomping at the bit for insurance CEO blood, a widespread sentiment this action has exposed, while you look at the same thing and go "this isn't anything"
Okay, well if the end result of this is a bunch of copycats murder hundreds of CEOs leading to widespread systemic change I'll admit I'm wrong. Do you really think that's going to happen?
I posted above - the biggest issue is that if any sort of copycat meme starts, these ghouls will just hire a bunch of private security and the odds will go way down.
I'm willing to be proven that
is wrong, but right now I just don't see it going anywhere without real organizing. If we got people with medical debt, denied claims, together in one room, etc. - then maybe this will galvanize something. On its own it's fun, but it's not a political movement yet.Why's that the only outcome where you could see yourself acknowledging it having any effect whatsoever? choose your goalposts i guess
I've been seeing this incident spawn a lot of discourse about political and social violence which seems to be causing some "progressive Libs" suddenly have oddly materialist takes. Even r/neoliberal had some people discussing the brutal reality of the health insurance industry and the failure of the US system to do anything about it (while condemning the violence of course).
We can't say anything for sure yet but it does seem like this incident has triggered something in some people.
I guess I've seen it before enough times to know the libs always fall back in line eventually. By this time next week they'll all be "the rule of law" and "yes we need change but that's why you vote this isn't the way". Nothing ever happens it's always the same shit forever without actual organizing.
If he's literally gigachad and spends the rest of his life doing the same then maybe
I said propaganda is propaganda. It's not useless. But it will not win the class war alone. The working class is propagandized, but it's held down primarily by the state - economic coercion and actual organized violence - and not ideas that somebody has put in our head. Most people don't kill CEOs not because they believe the ads they see on TV, but because they don't want to be jailed or killed and there is no movement to prevent that outcome. Propaganda is a useful tool that can help us organize our class, and the organized class is what will carry out a revolution. I think what this guy did was great. But until there's a mass movement to go alongside adventurism - which can't be built by lone wolves - we're just gonna have narodniks.
If posters on this website aren't doing adventurism we should be doing mass organizing to create a climate where violence will be more effective. We should use this to call for public healthcare, tell everybody about social murder, etc. Build a huge public force for M4A so that a healthcare CEO killed makes you think "right, M4A" instead of speculation about it being a mob hit or whatever. Calls for more assassinations - although they'd be good news! - are "easier" versions of Twitter leftists calling for strikes. It'd be nice but it won't work unless we make it possible.
But it will not win the class war alone.
I never said it would, but things like yesterday are part of what causes revolutions to happen, people need to be radicalized, they need to be exposed to new viewpoints and ideas, and that's what happens when you have half of reddit circle jerking over the evils of the health insurance system while lauding the assassin as a hero. It's not nothing, and the people telling me it's nothing are really fucking annoying me honestly.
Especially when, like that one dude, they want "hundreds of copycats" to be satisfied that the adventurism "did anything." They're literally arguing against those copycats taking action! It's incoherent! Do you want mass copycats or do you want to tell people it's useless, stay home? Ugh
this site tends to be on the vulgar materialist side. But I really do think our spectacular society makes us tend to overestimate the effect of propaganda. The left loves marches, flyering, stickering, blocking a highway for an hour to get on the news, and we reach for these things before collective action aimed at material conditions. Multiple people burned themselves alive to protest Israel's genocide of Gaza and it did not slow the bombs at all.
Propaganda of the deed is a little different, you're supposed to actually do something, but the problem is that killing a CEO actually doesn't improve anyone's insurance coverage. There's no material effect, it all depends on invigorating a mass movement. If it was during the height of Bernie's M4A campaign I bet it would have done something material. But what's today's call to mass action, go kill a CEO? That won't be heeded by more than a handful of people, and if that's all that happens there won't be material change. I would love for this to ignite a popular uprising against private health insurance but that only works in movies and color revolutions. I think that deeds aimed at high-value capital targets, oil pipelines and bomb factories (shout out Palestine Action), are better because if there's no accompanying movement at least they do get a smidge done on their own. They also lend themselves to propaganda about systemic change, not individual greedy CEOs.
Nothing good will systemically change from this. It's why individual action isn't meaningful. Only through organized action can systemic change occur.
I feel like the truth of this matter lands somewhere in-between what has been said. Nat Turner's rebellion was also an isolated act that changed nothing materially. However, the propaganda aspect of the event inspired Harper's Ferry Raid, which also had little effect systemically (though it had some measured effects locally). Then after John Brown was hanged, there was a direct causal line into the American Civil War.
Sometimes, when the conditions are right, isolated events can be the catalyst for much larger cascading events which lead to revolutionary change. And when I say the conditions have to be right, it doesn't mean they have to be right in the moment that the first event goes down; there wasn't much fertile ground for the abolitionist movement to achieve major victories in Nat Turner's time, but several years later things started to fit into their place.
I would add that none of the above just happens; people do a lot of hard work organizing around these events that slowly change public opinion. Now is the opportunity to talk about how shitty insurance is, and how many people are negatively affected. This is how we can use somebody's individual :adventure-time: to our advantage without getting burned in the process.
Only through organized action can occur
And if this action inspires said organizing?
this guy shooting this CEO didn't happen in a bubble, dawg, and I am witnessing the rippling effects of this action in real time even as you go "ummm actually there's no effect from this"
Maybe you should take the opportunity to radicalize redditors further, instead of ignoring the opportunity which has presented itself
If it really does, I'm willing to be proven wrong comrade. Like, I'd love for real organizing to come out of this. But the organizing will be what won the day, not the adventurism.
won't CEOs be scared for their lives when they do evil things?
Why would they? Unless everyone starts axing CEOs they won't feel anything. And if that DOES start happening they'll just use their immense capital and power to protect themselves.
No, they have a point. Propaganda of the Deed is a tactic not a strategy. Going in blindly with any and every tactic is just like an army going into battle disorganized. Likewise an individual action cannot fix a systemic issue.
States routinely use adventurism to crack down on dissidents. Look at Haymarket where they rounded up leadership, even when several members weren't there, and had them executed. It is very easy for Mass Media and the Police to manipulate public opinion towards their narrative and justify crackdowns. Worse none of it led to any real revolutionary action among the masses.
The death of a CEO is entirely vibes, aka Idealism, without a corresponding Materialism. I doubt the shooter was motivated by class consciousness or a polling of public opinion. A CEO dies and the world moves right along, just as Capitalism intends. The corporation will still deny claims at the same rate, a new CEO installed, and investors will get paid their cut. Capitalism recycles individual Capitalists all the time.
The only thing that will result from this individual action
Sure, if you ignore literally all the people talking about it, agreeing with it, being inspired to share comics and stories illustrating the depredations of the insurance industry, etc
So far the shooter has no mass movement. It's pure vibes. We need to turn this Idealism into actual Material changes. Very literally Praxis. My advice is the same: Get organizing, capitalizing on the legitimacy, and save the adventurism for a shooting war. We can start by pointing out all the evidence that United is shitty, and capture all this energy towards a mass movement that gives us actual material power. Time is ticking because people will rapidly fall back into their previous thought habits, and this will be just another shooting in America.
So we've entered the propaganda of deed phase of history repeating itself. So we're in a re-do of the late 1800s early 1900s.
Now we just need a horrible global war to break out, and some plucky group of commies lead by a bald guy with goatee to have advantage of the situation.
IMO we will see more of this, and I believe the kid that shot Trump opened the can of worms. People saw how easily a teenager was able to take a clean shot at a US president while under SS protection. If that guy can get a shot off on Trump, then how hard can it really be?
It works to do what though. It works if your goal is to make people excited for a bit
