1. We are, unbeknownst to basically everyone and ignored almost entirely by the left, in the middle of the largest wave of revolutions, general strikes, riots, and mass protests since 2013, a wave which seems to be both moving and intensifying.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
2. If we limit ourselves to the start of 2019 and and ignore the first wave of protests in Haiti, we have had revolutionary situations in Reunion, France, Honduras, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Sudan, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Papua, Egypt, Indonesia,
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
3. 3 DIFFERENT movements in Mexico (Mexico City feminist riots, Zapatista expansions, Yucuquimi de Ocampo, the latter of which has had basically no news coverage whatsoever in the English press, even on the left), TWO ADDITIONAL waves in Haiti,
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
4. a 600,000 general strike of largely Indigenous campesinos in Peru, smaller protests in Russia (and by smaller I mean like 50,000 and not a million), mass protests that were partly responsible for driving the UAE from Socotra, riots in Iraq and
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
5. Iran, and even the brief return of protests to Deir ez-Zor. The fact that this constitutes a wave has been consistently ignored by the bourgeois press outside of occasional inane mutterings about how the revolutions in Sudan and Algeria are the
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
6. beginning of a new Arab Spring and a spate completely absurd of articles comparing the protests in Hong Kong to the ones in Russia. On the left there has been some connection between the protests in Puerto Rico, Papua, Hawaii as the beginning
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
7. of a new wave of anti-colonial movements and an article from months ago in @commune_mag about the wave that I swear exists but can't find for some reason, but almost no one seems to be willing to put the entire picture together.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
8. Part of the problem is the incredible heterogeneity of the movements themselves, which unlike the movements of the squares don't even share tactics and range from left-wing anti-colonial movements with demands like this
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
9. to movements like Sudan and Algeria, which are essentially about the end of the rule of a military-bureaucratic elite, to a quintessentially liberal protest mixed with a fervent hatred of the police that produced these demands in Hong Kong.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
10. Left-wing response has been further hampered by the complete lack of coverage of the movements in Peru and the declination of the free municipality of Yucuquimi de Ocampo and subsequent invasion by the Mexican army.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
proceso.com.mx/600715/yucuqui…
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
proceso.com.mx/600715/yucuqui…
11. What are we to make of this widespread unrest? I'm not entirely sure. It's possible to divide the movements into rough categories based on what started them. Sudan, Algeria, and France were triggered by massive increases in basic commodities,
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
12. most notably fuel, that spread into larger anti-government movements. Puerto Rico, Papua, Indonesia, and the Mexico feminists were set off by actions or statements that revealed the raw arrogance, sexism and racism of the government, which
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
13. served as the final straw that caused people to take action against essentially colonial and patriarchal violence. The Zapatista expansion, Yucuquimi de Ocampo succession, and the Peruvian general strike were loosely indigenous mobilizations.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
14. And finally Zimbabwe, Honduras, both 2019 rounds in Haiti, Egypt and to a lesser extent Russia saw the corruption and violence of dictators and the military become intolerable as the economy continued to collapse.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
15. This is, I must note, an incredibly rough taxonomy. I don't really know what to do with Hong Kong, nor the anti-pension cut protests that spun out of control in Nicaragua and seemed to contain, by the end, every conceivable political faction
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
16. There are a few things I will say. The first is that this seems to be a sort of inversion of 2011. There thunder of a million boots (no exaggeration is even necessary) followed the lightning of economic collapse, here the thunder precedes the
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
17 lightning. This is, I suspect, because the global economy is has actually collapsed in much of the world, but like Wiley E. Coyote run off the edge of a cliff, it will not fall until the bourgeoisie realize they have run off the edge.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
18. With the exception of France, where austerity was self-inflicted, and Hong Kong, where de-industrialization has created a hellish service economy to meet the demands of its financial sector, the collapse has hit the global periphery first.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
19. The case of Puerto Rico, which was left to die by the Trump administration after being looted by Obama, is a particularly acute example of the dynamics at work here, though the kind of "restructuring" inflicted in its population was likewise
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
20. inflicted on the people of Sudan. We can also note the dramatic failure of attempts to call political general strikes. The stay home strike in Zimbabwe, as we've mentioned, was crushed by police storming people's houses and arresting them
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
21. anyways. In Sudan, after a massacre killed more that 100 people in June ended the Sudanese occupations in Khartoum, the Sudanese Professionals Association called a general strike as a way to continue the protests. Initial turnout was enormous,
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
22. said to in the millions, but without strike funds many in the Sudanese informal economy were left without incomes and the strike was called off in a few days. An attempted general strike in Hong Kong collapsed from lack of support after the
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
23. first day. I actually have no idea what happened to the Peruvian general strike (which differs from the other two by virtue of it starting as a strike from the beginning) because despite my best efforts I haven't seen a report in the English
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
24. media nor in any of the Spanish language outlets I checked that described how it ended, so if someone has information please tell me and I'll tack it on to the end of the thread. More broadly, the revolutions have been a complete mixed bag in
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
25. terms of tactics. While the general strike was broadly ineffective, there's been everything from urban barricades and molotovs to road blocks to square, military base and airport occupations to flash mobs to interrupt traffic to mass kayak
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
26. flotillas to burning banks, embassies, cars, and trucks of foreign coronations to demolishing toll booths with backhoes to anti-tear gas teams with traffic cones and water bottles to destroying surveillance cameras to literally just declaring
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
27. we control this territory now and daring the army and police to try to take it from us. There's a pretty large gradient in violence between the almost entirely peaceful demonstrations in Puerto Rico and what is essentially a running series of
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
28. battles in Honduras, France, and Haiti. What’s notable is the seeming lack of factory occupations or really any workplace activity altogether outside of Peru and the political strikes, which seem to indicate that the horizon of these movements
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
29. even in their left-wing anti-colonial forms a la Indonesia and Papua is political, not social revolution (though it can be argued that the Zapatistas and the Yucuquimi de Ocampo movement constitute a social revolution of a certain type).
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
30. You can see even in these tweets the difficulty of making generalizations about the movements. All of them have their own local specificities and even I do not possess the breath-taking arrogance necessary to attempt to unpack them.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
31. But we, as a left, NEED to be putting effort into figuring out what is happening here, not just for the sake of our comrades in the streets of Jakarta, though that alone is a great reason to do so, but for the sake of understanding what seem
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
32. to be profound geopolitical, economic, and tactical changes that are defining a new era of global politics that we are barely even aware is even happening. When the economy collapses in full I am CERTAIN we are going to enter a period of
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
33. generalized crisis that looks an AWFUL lot like what's happening right now, and if we fail to learn the lessons of these movements even as we push them to succeed we will be utterly and ruthlessly crushed when it's our turn on the barricade.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
34. Finally, and this is something I've noted elsewhere, the modern left has essentially lost its ability to actually build international solidarity, something that was the left's great strength less than 2 decades ago during the Global Justice
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
35. movement. If we continue to fight the forces of reaction alone in our own countries we are going to be crushed one by one by a fascist right that has out-internationalisted us. Even 2011 had Anonymous, which while often a mess at least had
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
36. revolutionaries talking to each other. Now there's absolutely nothing and we can not, and must not, allow that to continue to be the case.
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
37. Addendum: I opened this thread by noting that the above all, the revolutions are moving. In the three weeks since I wrote this, new fronts have opened up across the world. The revolution in Haiti has intensified, the clenched fist rules the
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
38. streets of Equador, and all of Iraq is consumed in an insurrection that even the hails of gunfire have been unable to quench. I suspect even these revolutions are only the opening act of a new wave of struggles that will unfold as the global
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
39. economic crisis reaches the core. The left, unfortunately, is completely unprepared these events. It remains unable to even even understand the wave is happening, much less offer material solidarity or take the lessons of the current struggle
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
