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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.