I’m reposting a comment I made to open up a broader discussion now that it looks like Burgerland is about to go full McCarthy again…
So what are we supposed to do? If elections are useless and lead to state violence, and organizing leads to state violence, and doing nothing just means the Fascists win by default… I hear the doom-and-gloom but we need solutions. How did the Bosheviks survive? Heck, how did left organizers survive the McCarthy era?
I don’t want to die on their terms.
I also don’t want to regret my life when I look back on what I could have done.
IDK… I feel like we’re in a sort of “checkmate” situation. Fascists have figured it all out and there doesn’t appear to be a path forward for the left that doesn’t end in tragedy. OTOH the kinds of fascist death squad actions that are “expected” for impoverished “third world” countries will yield a very different reaction in the core of Capitalism. Instability in burgerland affects the whole world and the entire non-China global economy can crumble if people went on strike en-masse.
Stand guard amidst the places where you have strength in numbers; dissimulate in the places where you don’t.
The failure of Operation Metro Surge suggests that they won’t have successful campaigns in cities where leftists are strong. If the federal executive literally sieges its own cities, it maims its own economy and cuts the hinterlands off from resupply.
The places that are more dangerous are the places where there isn’t a strong anti-Trump consensus. If you’re going to be on one of those frontlines, then at least don’t be alone.
You don’t need to broadcast that you’re a communist to the world to be able to recruit people. Onboarding/pipelining people usually means feeling them out and building them up before putting two and two together. Sure, it’s not as fast as having people make contact in a public or online setting, but it’s the one-to-one connections you make that are the strongest and most trustworthy.
If you look like just a regular homesteader or something, the government is not going to crack down on you not buying things in the stores. If you operate a business, they have a disincentive to crush you.
The truth is that if there’s another civil war in America, its status as a global power is finished. Liberals intuitively understand this and that is why they aren’t interested in fighting the right; reactionaries know this somewhere deep down and that is the main reason why they’ve been all bark and very little bite.