I love how the lib is like
(non-violently) beat Fascism.
Which, is funny because THIS is defeating Fascism?? Really? Sure, it’s good for aesthetics and image, but resistance… well, not that I fault the funny gafs and goofs at the protests, it’s just very little in terms of what change it’s moving, but if the libs can be convinced to do more then maybe…
I think there is definitely a place for this kind of non-violent ‘resistance’. It’s an easy way to move public sentiment and bully fascists in a way that can’t really be reframed by the media and such. No one is going to think people in these costumes are doing violence because it’s absurd. Onlookers will start to understand that the idea of riots, gangs, etc is simply a lie.
That said, non-violence is not a long-term solution to fascism (obvious to most of us I imagine). The US people just aren’t in a position to do much else. Any real resistance would be crushed at the moment because the numbers are simply too small.
Edit: should also note these people are still doing something good by wasting ICE resources just by being there. They can’t be ignored by ICE or other cops, so they can even serve as a distraction for other activities and any time a cop is dealing with these goofy antics is time they aren’t doing something much worse.
a couple days ago there was a video posted here of a cop spraying pepper spray directly into the air intake of a person’s blowup costume.
Yeah, and that is amazing propaganda for our side. Now more people are showing up in these costumes because of that video. The most important thing to do right now is increase our numbers. There is no real resistance until that happens.
should also note these people are still doing something good by wasting ICE resources just by being there. They can’t be ignored by ICE or other cops, so they can even serve as a distraction for other activities and any time a cop is dealing with these goofy antics is time they aren’t doing something much worse.
This is a good point, many of us want there to be stronger resistance, but like the aid flotillas for Palestine, the enemy was forced to use resources to monitor and harrass them which allowed people to fish on the coast where they couldn’t before. It seems until the US proletariat is more class conscious and unified, it will have to be these sort of antics combined with underground work that won’t get published as much.
I’m pretty sure the fish stuff was a reposted video from earlier this year
I admit I only heard people mentioning that happening, I didn’t see a good direct source for it, and there has been tons of misinformation so that would make sense
I only have hearsay that it was from february, so it could be real, just saying it has been disputed
Another point: they are claiming that these cities are dangerous warzones. Showing up in silly costumes disarms this.
You’ll never convince me making fun of ICE agents, demoralizing them and humiliating them, is not a net positive.
Any focus on “controlling the narrative” or “sending a message” is naïve when the neolibs and fascists govern the media.
Sure, maybe some libs are sympathetic because of images from stunts like these, but to believe they move the needle in any meaningful way is idealism and not grounded in material reality. After two years of watching malnourished women and children crying while caressing their dead family members, Israel still has significant support amongst Americans.
Our enemies do not have a conscience. Appealing to their sympathy is futile. Their efforts must be directly frustrated by changing the material world. Force and profit are the only languages they are capable of understanding.
Protesting should only be seen as a networking event for finding comrades to build dual power with. If there is no org to sign people up for changing the material world, all you are doing is putting a target on your back for the sake of symbolism.
If we had the masses overwhelmingly on our side and could bring commerce to a halt, this would be an entirely different story.
Until we have the means of information distribution not subject to the whims of capital or the state, “messaging” is negative praxis because it encourages idealistic thinking, which further entrenches liberalism. Outside of exploiting the brief periods that occur immediately following some spontaneous event, we will not be allowed to speak to the masses directly in any way advantageous to us.
PR effort would be better spent training and educating cadres on how to exploit those brief opportunities and building institutional knowledge on how to develop, secure, and maintain our own communication infrastructure.
Speaking directly to the masses is a core challenge for revolutionaries everywhere at any time period, but the context of the 21st century and the suburban sprawl of the imperial core means prior art from successful revolutions will have to be heavily adapted before being useful to us here and now.
That said, non-violence is not a long-term solution to fascism (obvious to most of us I imagine). The US people just aren’t in a position to do much else. Any real resistance would be crushed at the moment because the numbers are simply too small.
Ya, I think the real issue is that the silly is the vanguard at the moment. The fash are mobilizing at a level that realistically require us to have guerilla orgs out there ready for when they escalate and we very much do not seem prepared in that way.
This is the kind of engagement Allen Ginsberg advocated for during the anti-war movement in the 60s and 70s. He wrote an essay entitled “Demonstration or Spectacle as Example, As Communication, or How to Make a March / Spectacle” in 1965, which is more of a loose list of ideas and thoughts about how to engage in marches and protests. It resulted in some of those more iconic photos from the protests at the time:
Showing up in a plate vest and standing next to cops who, in turn, are in their plate vest creates an image that says “war,” which can easily be twisted into a violent thug narrative. It plays into the existing narrative about protests and protesters broadly. These photos? Those dorks in their dino costumes? Hard to take those images and slap a “violent criminal immigrant’s invade the streets” tagline across it. Since almost all of these national guard deployments are at their core spectacle for the couch sitters across the country (there is obviously very real material harm being done as well, but we can’t discount the spectacle it creates moreover), why not show up in an outrageous outfit to short circuit the pre-established narrative?
We understand how media manufactures consent or invents reality, but when people hit the bricks and protest, they become active participants inside the reality that is trying to be spun. If we are aware that the media and the state are already attempting to deem any form of resistance as the actions of the “violent left,” why should anyone play into that idea at all? You could have your plate vest and gas mask on inside your outrageous inflatable T-REX costume. Is it defeating fascism? Not by itself, that’s for sure, but one has to wonder how much more difficult it makes the talking heads jobs and what kind of impression it leaves on people who only experience these things through their screens.
Reminder though. The hippies and beatniks lost, and lost badly.
Yes, did they accomplish anything actually? It’s a theory that has never been put into practice with successful results as far as I can tell.
If you applied this in Venezuela it’d work to get the US to invade. But without such a thing, idk how this will lead to any victory?
People argue that they helped end the Vietnam war, but they are ignoring that the Vietnamese are the ones who ended the Vietnam War, demonstrating their effective control of the countryside during the Tet Offensive.
Mostly what this movement did was sell clothing, books, music and movies.
Edit: and pretend that ‘real communism’ is when you do utopian socialism on a compound in the woods.
Exactly
Mostly what this movement did was sell clothing, books, music and movies.
Which invests bourgeoisie into your movement as their eyes turn into dollar signs.
These colour revolution projects can be compared to startups in a way, except the CIA are usually the first of the angel investors.
yea i dunno how someone looks at those images and thinks it was effective at doing anything. The only thing that ended the Vietnam war was people getting sick of it going on for forever.
And the Vietnamese demonstrating that despite nearly a decade of war, the U.S. was no closer to achieving any of its objectives.
They didn’t really lose because they were not committed to a specific left cause in the first place. They were about aesthetics and self-gratification, which included avoiding barriers to that, i.e. the draft. As the war on Vietnam wound down, they simply continued their project by getting professional jobs, doing drugs, and buying shiny objects. Importantly, they were not organized, so “they” doing anything is not a concerted action taken on purpose, but was itself the result of wider social forces and of course capitalism. They were manipulated by these forces originally and continued to be manipulated by them afterwards. Their “counterculture” came complete with branded clothing and millions of hot-off-the-presses vinyl to listen to at the local bead door-bedecked sexpest house party.
Fair enough, but my point is that why should we be looking to them for a strategy that actually affects change on the world, not to quibble if these people lost or not.
Understanding them as not even trying to effect change, but rather satisfy their personal wants (which were slightly reduced by capitalism/imperialism), explains why not to look to them. They weren’t on the left exercising a failing strategy, they were using a successful strategy for their own needs, Vietnamese (and black) people be damned. This should change how we think about their approach: it worked for a different goal, so it could be strategically deployed by us given appropriate circumstances and needs. If a restoration of some liberal norm or PR move serves us, then have at it. If it is instead better to agitate, then it is to be avoided.
In that light it is better to look at the current protests as achieving a similar aim.
Maybe aimed at something similar but I don’t think they are succeeding even by the self-soothing metric. Everything seems like more of a toned down prelude to something worse or, similarly, a way to let off steam while ICE raids ramp up.
Yeah what happened to them?
seems like most of them are republicans now
They are the biggest libs ever now.
Those dorks in their dino costumes? Hard to take those images and slap a “violent criminal immigrant’s invade the streets” tagline across it.
bit idea: big fluffy fursuit with a plate carrier and powered exoskeleton underneath
pig goes in for a bit of police brutality and the sparkledog crushes his head like a beer canYou could have your plate vest and gas mask on inside your outrageous inflatable T-REX costume
Ooh, that’s a pretty good idea.
So there is a case to be made for this from that perspective. Good to know
Remember back in 2020 during the George Floyd protests when there were constant demonstrations and people were smashing shit and set a police station on fire?
Record numbers of police quitting
Can’t just use the one prong, gotta use at least two
I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.
But until then, its fine to be silly in the face of horrific danger.
This kind of thing can actually be effective, but only in conjunction with actual militant resistance. Part of the reason that 2020 (briefly) went as well as it did for us is that the BLM protests had liberal wine moms showing up en masse along with black bloc folks willing to throw down with Proud Boys and cops (
). To ordinary people, black bloc looks scary. A bunch of people who are clearly ready to fight and light cop cars on fire–as cool and good as that is–feeds the narrative that this is a “war” against a dangerous, violent, scary group. It’s a lot harder to sell that narrative when the same movement includes grandmas and people in silly dinosaur costumes. Footage of the cops brutalizing “antifa” members actively fighting back doesn’t resonate with the public the same way footage of Cathy from your bookclub getting maced in the face for standing quietly does.However that militant wing is important too. Without people who are willing to actually fight back, you’re just feeding people to the meat grinder in the hope that it’ll eventually gum up the works enough to shut the whole thing down. That’s never, ever worked before and it won’t work now. Building a mass movement of resistance is important, but there are different roles to play within that. The mistake that liberals make isn’t in thinking that this kind of performative protest is useful, but rather in thinking that it’s the only thing that’s useful, or that it’s capable of stopping the death machine on its own.
The important thing to recognize about black bloc is something you describe in your commrnt, but I want to highlight it: they are escalatory. Black bloc is generally not a carefully organized and principled group that carries out operations with the wider community strategy in mind. They are pissed off “autonomous” (read: unorganized) people who want to intimidate their enemies (usually cops) and destroy private property.
Both of those things are awesome in most contexts, but in situations like, say, Portland being targeted for fed harassment, black bloc is solely helping to manufacture the feds’ excuse for being there.
Another example: blacl bloc folks love to set dumpsters on fire and build flaming barricades. Those are cool by themselves, yeah nice fire and such. But most often I have seen this, again, simply become an excuse for the powers that be to enter community-organized spaces. Fire is a safety concern, etc etc. Did the flaming dumpster really provide protection? It didn’t stop the cops from entering the space at all. Surely there should be some kind of evaluation of whether you are ready to defend the flaming dumpster before creating it as a supposed deterrent. Usually black bloc seems to “disperse” or retreat at those exact moments when cops and firefighters show up in numbers to put out the flaming dumpsters and invade the community space. They didn’t organize sufficient numbers to actually hold the space, did not understand6 their capacity, and simply escalated.
The problem with the Germans under nazism is they didnt use humor and ridicule to defeat Hitler
You jest but this song was written in 1939 and the Nazis lost just some years after, the British imported their singing humor to finally defeat fascism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball
It’s hard to make fun of people who think lederhosen and toothbrush mustachases are cool
they imagine a nazional guard dude being like “haha wow i cant curb stomp you! you’re too wholesome chungus keanu!”
we’re gonna reach out to their hearts and minds. has fascism has ever been defeated with non violence? i wanna say no.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ice-pepper-sprayed-protester-frog-230000372.html
There’s a video circulating of some ICE goon filling the air vent in one of these with pepper spray. You get your fun little selfie, but you hotbox yourself with a concentrated dose and have to rip this off while panicking and exposed. Maybe it’s a bad tactic.
A follow-up video features the frog claiming they ultimately just “coughed a little” and confirming that they returned to protest the following night.
“I’ve tasted spicier. I’m Mexican, what do you expect?” they said, before doing a little dance.
Brick Frog forever!
Publicly demonstrating the savage and pointless cruelty of ICE is useful, but I hope they have a ready and waiting media apparatus to pounce on examples of brutality in the press or online.
maybe put a filter on the intake?
Probably easier to just have a gas mask on inside the outfit.
five decoy intake ports and one real one
Fascism being the highest form of imperialism (and thus capitalism) is pretty good at appropriating aesthetics and spinning things like this against it into a superficial strength, and in this case they’ll probably make up bs about violent furries and scalies and do the most ridiculous false flag you can think of to manufacture consent.
Ffs at least dress up like the real Godzilla instead of the Rugrats knockoff
No fuck you, Reptar is cool
Halt! I am Reptar!
At least a few times a year, the songs from the Reptar musical get stuck in my head. They’re awesome.
The Red Army beat the nazi fascist beasts through wearing animal costumes, not with guns right?
Rock on, freaky bro
LUBE THE STREETS!
