Sunday, April 26, 2015

Sometimes social media freaks me out: News reports of police killing black people, hate legislation against women and LGBT folk, consolidation of wealth, bought politicians. our society is regressing back to fascism. The USA didn't succumb to fascism in WWII times because of the influence of the USSR and the Red Army ultimately defeated the fascist threat. I really do believe that. I ook for solutions to these problems and i don't see any other realistic option than socialism, whatever your tendency might be, if you're left wing you're ok with me. Why do we leftists deny ourselves victory by bickering? Why do we allow capital to exploit us and white, male, straight, xtian reactionaries to oppress all of us who don't fit their idea of the pure, the holy, the powerful, the straight? 
We are told there are "good cops," but where are they?



And one thing all these incidents and the countless others around the country—reported and unreported—have in common is silence. We don’t hear from the “good cops.”
No press conferences denouncing the actions of a few bad apples. No open letters putting the bad guys on notice that abusing the color of authority will not be tolerated. No public petitions demanding action from higher-ups and local government—and absolutely no change in police-union leadership. Sure, there are the requisite pressers after an incident by a police chief and possibly the mayor, but nothing from the rank and file, nothing from police groups and associations.
The Blue Wall of Silence is deafening.
http://www.theroot.com/.../08/where_are_the_good_cops.html

In these times when it is necessary to insist that #blacklivesmatter and people still don't listen riots are the only tool left in our arsenal. They are the only thing that gets attention, results. It reminds me of what Bobby Seale said on why the named the Black Panther Party that name: 

A couple of days later, Huey Newton and I was trying to figure out why was that on a Lowndes County Freedom Organization, it was Lowndes County, Mississippi, a pamphlet that we had, why they had this charging Black panther as logo. And, Huey come up with some notion that if you drive a panther into a corner, if he can't go left and he can't go right, then he will tend to come out of that corner to wipe out or stop its aggressor. So, I said, "That's just like Black people. All the Civil Rights people are getting brutalized across this country for exercising the First Amendment of the Constitution which is the law of the land, they can't go left. Other people have tried to control the police with law books and tape recorders and have been brutalized. They can't go right. Even the young Whites who were protesting," I said, "Who was in support of the Black people, can't go left, can't go right. So we just like the Black panthers and in effect Huey P. Newton and I named the organization the Black Panther Party. But at first it was the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.
http://digital.wustl.edu/.../sea5427.0172.147bobbyseale.html

Class warfare will always be waged as long as there is a ruling class. The question is, at what point do we as the exploited and oppressed class fight back? If we don't fight in this war it is a one sided war. They war is already waged, we just aren't fighting back.

Class antagonism has existed since feudalism. When there is a class that has and a class that has not there will be no justice until the have class is eradicated and equality established. Class consciousness is the first step to engaging in our own defense and liberation. Additionally, systems of oppression and privilege (racism, sexism, heterosexism, nationalism) will not be eradicated by ignoring them, but by recognizing they exist and struggling against them. This liberal notion that if you ignore exploitation and oppression it will go away is profoundly beneficial to the ruling class. Most of us would like to live in a society without class warfare, racism, sexism, heterosexism, nationalism, but it's not going to exist without liberation struggles (proletarian revolution, black/red/yellow power, feminism, gay pride/liberation, revolutionary nationalism/national liberation struggles) because the powerful aren't going to voluntarily give up their power. Don't you think they would have already if they were going to? What is clear from history is that they will brutally, violently defend their power.

Spontaneous, violent acts of frusteration have their place as what Zizek calls an expression of that which is unarticulated, but change does not come from spontaneous violence or terrorism, it comes from agitation, education and revolt. It comes from an organized, coordinated, subversive effort by the exploited class to undermine the foundations on which the ruling class builds their exploitation and oppression:


Svoboda advocates terror as a means of “exciting” the working-class movement and of giving it a “strong impetus”. It is difficult to imagine an argument that more thoroughly disproves itself. Are there not enough outrages committed in Russian life without special “excitants” having to be invented? On the other hand, is it not obvious that those who are not, and cannot be, roused to excitement even by Russian tyranny will stand by “twiddling their thumbs” and watch a handful of terrorists engaged in single combat with the government? The fact is that the working masses are roused to a high pitch of excitement by the social evils in Russian life, but we are unable to gather, if one may so put it, and concentrate all these drops and streamlets of popular resentment that are brought forth to a far larger extent than we imagine by the conditions of Russian life, and that must be combined into a single gigantic torrent. That this can be accomplished is irrefutably proved by the enormous growth of the working-class movement and the eagerness, noted above, with which the workers clamour for political literature. On the other hand, calls for terror and calls to lend the economic struggle itself a political character are merely two different forms of evading the most pressing duty now resting upon Russian revolutionaries, namely, the organisation of comprehensive political agitation. Svoboda desires to substitute terror for agitation, openly admitting that “as soon as intensified and strenuous agitation is begun among the masses the excitative function of terror will be ended” (The Regeneration of Revolutionism, p. 68).  - Lenin, What is to Be Done

The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organisation and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilich (July–August) [1903], "Second Congress of the RSDLP: Drafts of Minor Resolutions", Collected Works, 6, Marxists.


Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti and others have warned us about it and I'm afraid fascism is fast upon us. Podemos, Syriza, Socialist Alternative, they have achieved some advances in the electoral arena, but we all know deep down that revolution is the only solution. To me it seems clear that at this time in history we have a choice between fascism and socialism, rule by an elite class of sadists, or rule by a dictatorship of the proletariat. Which side are you on?

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