Gonna go ahead and say it.
A think tank that uses the image on bottom is, well, racist.
Someone who works with a think tank full of feds and cops can at the least be suspected of right-wing tendencies.
What about their publishers and friends? Are we still using that broad brush?
Obviously, I think it's a bad brush: it makes us allergic to complexity and prone to sectarianism and purism. But the people who wielded it when the shoe was on the other foot, will they rectify? I'm not holding my breath.
For a long time, I've been saying the antifascist model had some inherent flaws, there are better ways for fighting the Right. As these flaws become undeniable, remember those who never admit to being wrong. Keep them at a safe distance. crimethinc.com/2018/11/05/dia…
All of us make bad calls, all of us fall into stupid positions sometimes, no one can predict every danger up ahead. We need to be able to admit mistakes and also be gentle with those who make them. We take care of us.
Also, trust no one who makes a (comfy) living off the struggle
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#OtD in 1919, the Cheka assault the Putilov factory in Petrograd, executing 200 striking workers.
Exactly 2 years later the Bolsheviks are preparing their final assault to massacre the Kronstadt rebels.
Are "extreme measures" justified in a revolution?
A thread.
Many on the left excuse Lenin's widespread massacres & jailing of opponents on the grounds of urgency, the extreme danger that gripped the land as the White Army advanced. The actual timeline & particulars of Bolshevik repression do not support this thesis crimethinc.com/2017/11/07/one…
The Bolsheviks' first actions after the October Revolution was to consolidate bureaucratic power within their own party. Their interests became the interests of state power. That is how they inherited the imperialism of tsarist Russia and
Strategy notes.
If the Republicans decide today to remove Trump, Democrats will embrace them and the renewal of democracy will feature extreme centrism. Fascists will be left without electoral expression and will seek other avenues.
If Reps don't, Democrats will pursue...
Thread
legal action in 2 weeks. They will strongly differentiate themselves from Reps through some progressive policies and mostly symbolic action that includes repressive measures against all "extremists", Right and Left. Either way, they will find ways to increase repression against
antiracist & anticapitalist rebellion, with greater use of cooptation in 2nd scenario.
Trump is done for now, but if he and his principals aren't punished/banned, electoral Trumpism could come back in 2 years.
On the ground: important to thwart fascist attempts
I hope everyone is making a distinction between feeling worried about what these fascists might do after they leave the Capitol (legit), and being troubled by what they are doing at the Capitol. We're not here to defend politicians or symbols of power. And we shouldn't be...
surprised anymore that fascists get kiddy glove treatment from the cops and unarmed National Guards. Seriously.
Also, I hope anarchists aren't spreading the hyperbolic rhetoric that this is a coup. A real coup takes organization and strategy. It's not a coincidence that...
Republican politicians were some of the first to call this a coup. Because the antidote to a coup is a renewal of democracy. It's a chance for all these politicians to give themselves a face lift.
Remember, democracy has been doing genocide, repression, and immiseration for
The US has selective amnesia for the violence of white supremacists, so the far Right won't be marginalized in the long term, but this half-assed MAGA riot will present Republicans an opportunity to distance themselves from Trump and clean up their image, wash away...
...their sins of the last 4 years and opt for reinventing their Party (and the Right). They'd still have to win a war for the rank-and-file. Or they may try hedge their bets, which would allow Trump to hold onto influence in the Party.
For a long time Republican pollsters have...
been saying the Party's been betting on a shrinking demographic. Now that they're in the minority across the board, they may decide on a shake up. The Democrats on the other hand will call for renewed centrist unity.
So the fascists are going to be more isolated but more extreme,
#OtD in 1960, Catalan anarchist guerrilla Quico Sabaté was finally shot down by the fascists after thirty years of combat against capitalism. As a teenager he joined the CNT to organize his workplace (several factories, working as a mechanic), and with his brothers...
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he created an affinity group within the FAI. In Jan 1933, he participated in the insurrection organized by the CNT, in 1935 his affinity group carried out their first expropriation to raise money for prisoners. When the Civil War broke out in 1936 he went with a FAI militia to
the Aragón front, he was accused of killing a communist commissar who was withholding armaments from the anarchist columns, allowing the fascists to take Teruel, was imprisoned, escaped, went back to the front to continue fighting the fascists, escaped to France
This visual aid helps demonstrate why "dictatorship of the proletariat" is such a nonsense idea.
The bourg in the blue triangle, after the rev: are they dead, totally expropriated? Then there's no more bourg, no blue, no one to dictate to.
Is there still a bourgeoisie...
...dominated by the State? Then capitalist relations and means of production still exist on some level and what you have is state capitalism. This is what Lenin did, it was great for economic growth, neither capitalism nor the state "withered away." This is a loss for specific...
...capitalists but a win for capitalism.
What about the red base? Are the means of subsistence communalized & alienation abolished? Then necessarily ALL the proletariat participates in the organization of society, relations are horizontal, reciprocal, there is no dictatorship.