Barx [none/use name]

That is probably true, yeah. Most people don’t intrinsically see the value in organizing because they don’t understand the oppositional attitude of the employer and/or they are afraid of retribution (and retribution will happen if they organize, that part is true).

You can agitate using those small actions I mentioned, though of course there are no guarantees. Asking some open-ended organizing questions (“if you could change something about this place, what would it be?”) over a few weeks’ time and taking notes might reveal that people are not hapoy about some things but just don’t think of them as things to complain about yet. If you take notes and some topics come up a lot, you can turn this into an (anonymous at first?) petition and watch it produce results. Also, try to make a list of who seems most receptive to this kind of discussion and allow the subject to change if a person doesn’t seem that interested. That list us a first draft for making an organizing committee and would identify those most likely to be agitated by the petition either working or failing.

Basically, you can carefully do a test balloon and make an initial list to get a better sense for where people are at. It’s important to ask the kind of question I suggested. If you ask a workplace of seemingly happy coworkers if there is anything about the workplace that is bothering them, most will say no. Ask them to name something they would change and most of the time they will suddenly they have tons of complaints and are willing to go off about them. And taking notes of responses will let you chart out the workplace to ask yourself questions about how to proceed.

Oh, and if you spread out the conversations and ask the question(s) casually from receptive-seeming people then they may not even know it is you who then compiles the survey. They may not even realize their own answers to your questions had anything to do with it! Also this is all much easier if you can identify one other person that would be ride-or-die by your side, as you can then distribute the tasks and therefore make them diffuse and harder to recognize.

This is the right idea!

In my opinion the best thing, if it is an option for you, is to join a local left organization and develop yourself and the organization in terms of your theoretical understanding and practical efficacy, which basically to say reading and gaining expertise at taking action. And to be clear, when I say left, I mean something socialist.

It can be difficult to recommend a specific org because I don’t know where you live and you shouldn’t tell me. But I can suggest some things to do to help guide you:

• Pick a socialist one.
• Pick it by attending an action that they organize and getting a sense for the people and their positions.
• You can discover events by looking for posters in hotbed areas (college campuses, downtown) and social media.
• A good rule of thumb is that if they are anti-imperialist and name the US as imperialism’s exemplification, their other positions will be better as well.
• Avoid Trotskyists and anything associated with Avakian.
• Once in an org, focus on building positive relationships with people, being dependable and active, and reading and then teaching once you feel confident enough.

If you use these tips you should end up in a good enough org and can help build it. It’s okay if you end up leaving your first org. They are often just a way to get a sense for what exists locally and where energy and good practice are centered.

For a second I got Mike Duncan confused with Michael S Judge and got excited.

By constantly reminding myself that I’m looking to shape outcomes, not express myself. Not that it’s easy but for me at least it becomes more natural with practice.

As another commenter mentioned, you can think of it like a hostile space you’re infiltrating. I also think of it in comparison to how I act at actions when there are people telling heinous things at left crowds, trying to disrupt, or with cops present. I want to yell things back and insult the cops. But I instead try to adopt a role that improves outcomes for the action and those participating, which means deescalation and avoiding talking to cops at all. If someone is being made uncomfortable, try to get attention on me instead but via distraction and conversation, not being aggro but smiling.

Your power in workplace organizing comes from people liking and trusting you and being able to see the necessity of organizing. This is why the best first steps are often small and popular things like a little petition to keep coffee free or let people park in some lot or something. When management accedes, you are trusted as an organizer. When management balks, they start to see the necessity of organizing. Obviously there are ways this can be derailed and there’s more to it in terms of organizing conversations but this is what success ends up looking like.

Yes that is the main book I recommend to people to get them started on a left pipeline!

If you want to gauge the group itself, their sentiments on China are a good barometer.

How about Capitalism, Coronavirus, and War by Radhika Desai? It is modern, relevant, and has substantial portions about the new cold war against China. If a group is particularly anti-China, they will let you know by taking this opportunity to tell you that Chiba is imperialist or something.

Don’t forget the important questions when it comes to messaging!

1. Who is your audience?
2. What do you want them to think / feel agitated by through this?
3. Is there a follow-up action you want them to take?

If working with an org, some of these questions become easier to answer because your audience is usually local and you usually want them to attend an upcoming event like a rally or march or teach-in. The overall goal is usually something like organization building, coalition building, or moving a space in a direction.

My self-crit will be that I don’t tell others to self-crit often enough.

I have always lived on Liberal Mountain and met hexbears there.

I stay because it is entertaining, informative, and has a good smattering of people that know theory and/or irl practice. And because it’s vehemently pro-trans, anti-white supremacist, and so on, although of course there is room for improvement.

The paint has probably improved its structural integrity.

Racists that spend all their time playing Fortnite and [new fad] aren’t the Hitler Youth, they are just atomized reactionary liberals.

Fascists arose in opposition to socialists. They were supported by the bourgeoisie, particularly the petty bourgeoisie, to fight a left that was ascendant and asserting people’s power, taking over cities and taking over factories. With the liberal institutions failing to guarantee bourgeois control, the armed right wing gangs bringing violence against the left were the only other game in town and were funded accordingly. This is how organized crime basically functions as well - it is just filling a space where the state monopoly on violence has been undermined. And later fascistic groups filled a similar role, like with Pinochet, who restored the (largely international) bourgeoisie’s capital control in Chilé through a coup and terror.

Nothing like this is happening in the United States. The United States does not have a left, there are too few of us. All of this is happening without a left and without a bourgeoisie that has been dispossessed. Accordingly, there are no brownshirts, not in any real numbers. They have nothing they would defend in retribution anyways.

But there are other factors that rhyme a bit so that you see what we have in front of us. There is a material decline, particularly for the least marginalized groups, and it requires a false consciousness under liberalism. The classic scapegoating of minorities is not a fascist invention, liberals were doing this long before and after European fascism. And with no left, the only people who could be mass opponents to violence against the marginalized are liberals, and they do so in an ineffectual liberal way. Providing no solutions, not addressing the underlying dynamics at play, destroying the education system, funding and owning social media that blasts right wing conteny while doing their best to censor left content, emphasizing electoralism for their ghouls, these are the liberal “solutions”. They create the conditions for reactionaries to exist, feed into their scapegoating (Dems have always been racist and xenophobic, e.g.), use their power to punch left instead of right.

So what you see today is more the typical liberal order in empire where no left exists. It is a resetting of the terms to the more typical arrangement. “Progress” is not inevirable, it can be crushed and reset, all it tajes is for those in power to have no real fear of the people. And the American people are almost the least fearsome they have ever been, though there are undercurrents of riots that could break out during a recession. If left organizations were just large enough and just ready enough, they would be able to provide direction and longevity for the next mass expression of pain and frustration.

Why are you posting memes, liberal? This is a theory instance.

Drop down and give me 20 Gramsci recitations from memory!

You seem to be unable to not simply make things up on my behalf. I do, actually, get to decide when something is not worth my time and set my own conditions on reading or replying to what you say.

Since this is 3 times in a row I’m not gonna expect a change. Let me know if you change your mind, but otherwise I won’t be replying.

lmao they are amazing

This is the problem with internet Bolsheviks you envision yourself as Central Committe members in 1949 at the height of the glory of the Soviet Union

I set my conditions for engaging and you seem uninterested in honoring them. Namely, that you reply to what I actually say and not go off in straw men instead, which is clearly just a pattern of dishonest guessed-at sectarian insults.

Please do your best to engage in good faith and in a comradely way.

Dang I thought this was going to be the “as a black man when you hold a starbucks cup the cops leave you alone” bit.

Instead it’s just a train of selfish losers with bad taste in coffee.

In terms of counterpropaganda I do think making fun of their shit taste is the order of the day because they already declared they don’t care about genocide. Just make fun of the absurdity, don’t take people like this seriously.

A powerful way to get people to be receptive is to get them to like you and consider you a font of wisdom. This does not require pushing them, just being available and usually correct and a person they enjoy spending time with. I would recommend honoring their wishes and reading more so that you’re ready when questions do come down the pipeline.

Also you don’t need to convince them all by yourself as a first step. You could try to get them involved in events they would find worthwhile instead and let the radicalization happen socially. If they are borderline anarcho-syndicalist then maybe they’d want to support a picket line, for example. Maybe there are people looking for help on projects your friend would find interesting.

Hell yeah.

Cook them extra long to get softer hummus. If you are very dedicated to getting a perfect texture also remove the skins once cooked.

Mao had the means and ability but chose not to out of respect for the mass line.

YOUR BODY BETRAYS YOUR PROBLEMATIC HOT TAKE