Recent comments in /f/vote_satan

rain wrote

The only reason I’m inclined to believe the number is the specificity of it. Despite it being “worse” if he had said a million, or one and a half million, I’d believe a round number was made up. 1.8m is a little to specific. I think he heard that number from someone in a briefing and liked it so it stuck.

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neku wrote

this assumes that 1. accurate and timely population numbers stick in donald trump's head and 2. he is able to reliably retrieve those population numbers and deliver them aloud. i don't find it unrealistic that israel has murdered 300 thousand in gaza since oct 7 but using donald trump as a source for anything seems extremely dubious to me

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rain wrote

Anything good you're doing is probably illegal, so only talk about it if you have to.

Even if it’s not illegal loose operational security can compromise the whole point of your action. Some things need saying out loud, somethings need to be kept quiet. Think before you speak, and if in doubt, shut the fuck up.

Public sites like this one are archived by the feds - and everyone else. Discord works with cops. A dozen or more companies know every place your phone has physically been used since you got it, and will sell this information for virtual peanuts to anyone who asks for it. VPNs have been caught logging ips. Your data is not safe, and in a time of fascism, that means you are not safe.

Communication may be critical to our success in the upcoming years, but it can just easily be our undoing. Learn to secure your phone, disable biometrics and use end to end encrypted messaging. Don’t take your daily phone to sensitive locations, and be prepared to wipe and abandon any device you do carry with you.

And seriously, like OP says, practice just not talking about some things.

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Moonside wrote

Not yet, but its hegemony is definitely weakening. No one else is there to step up either. Russia has had its set backs in Ukraine and Syria. China is suffering from an economic bubble of its own and soon will have a declining population. India will be fucked by climate change sooner rather than later. Europe is mostly a threat to itself and migrants.

Anyways rightoids today are much too clownish to run a hegemony properly. Like Elon thinks developmental aid to neighbors of China from the US is DEI and not hegemonic bribes.

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cowloom OP wrote

For example, no matter what else they do, Food Not Bombs feeds hungry people, and that is worth doing.

The point the video made was that while it is a good thing to do, it isn't toppling the conditions that give rise to starvation or homelessness in the first place, so it's not the most effective thing to do. Our org tried to do red charity and organizing work for a while, but we eventually had to face the fact that the charity work was eating up too much of our limited time, energy, and funding. Since we were such a small group of people, it was sapping most of the energy we could've been putting towards organizing, so we eventually had to make the difficult decision to suspend the program. The decision was delayed for quite a while because some people thought it was too heartless to stop doing grocery handouts.

At the same time they offer a chance for meeting people with similar values and philosophies.

They touched on that, too, and came to the conclusion that a limited grocery distribution could be useful as a stepping stone to connect with the advanced masses. If it's done with that in mind, with the intention of moving on to bigger and better things once you get more people on board, then it can be a good starting tactic.

That’s where having pre-established networks of people willing to help each other may be life saving - both for you and others.

Sure, I agree with this. I have a side project that I run that would fall under your definition of mutual aid (I can't say what it is, due to OpSec). But it's not a massive drain on my time or resources, so it's feasible for me to do. I think mutual aid should be something that the masses do themselves to support each other. The issue I'm talking about is when a self-proclaimed revolutionary org is spending all of its time and energy doing one-sided "mutual" aid work that doesn't get them any closer to revolution.

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flabberghaster wrote

I know a lot of Marxists love to engage in violent fantasies about what to do about anarchists and ancoms but the end world they both describe is very nebulous. It's not that different, to me.

Having things organized in some way is not against anarchist principles but online Marxists love to talk about purging them and shit idk it's so weird and aggro.

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flabberghaster wrote

Note that non anarchist philosophies also struggle with the question of "how do we prevent our system from being taken over by the badguys?" Whether it's monarchists saying "this system works great if the monarch is good but the trick is to make sure a doofus doesn't become monarch", or democracies wondering how we can prevent a demagogue from taking power and abolishing the democracy via popular vote. Even communists have the same problem: whatever administration you set up, how do you prevent it from turning itself into something terrible that's bad for people?

So yes, anarchism doesn't solve it but nothing else does either, IMO.

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voxpoplar wrote

I have not read up a huge amount but I think the standard answer is something along the lines of that anarchism does not mean lack of organising, just lack of hierarchy.

After a revolution there would still be larger structure and organising but would, ideally under an anarchistic viewpoint, be bottom-up, voluntary and truly democratic.

There’s a lot of different types of anarchism and lots of different answers to how this would theoretically work. E.g. anarcho-syndicalism is focused on the idea of anarchist trade unions seizing control of production.

How to prevent people concentrating and amassing power under these sorts of systems is obviously a big problem and I don’t think there’s any good answer other than you need mass class consciousness and people motivated against allowing that.

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nitori wrote (edited )

Anarchists don't really have the same goal as Marxists, since the "classless, stateless society" the latter wants will still have an "administration of things", which is really just a state in disguise (but Marx doesn't call it as such because he only saw the state merely as a tool for class oppression) as it is a bureaucracy. Just another form of government.

The Raddle wiki has a page that deals with this myth: https://raddle.me/wiki/Marxism_End_Goal

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flabberghaster wrote

It's more about hierarchical social structures than like... coercing a boss to accept a union. Like you shouldn't have one person in your group who can kick you out or make you do things if you don't want to, or no one should be forced to work a job to make ends meet, through the coercive power of wage labor.

That's not the same as like, you and your co workers getting together and saying if the boss doesn't negotiate we'll go on strike / slash his tires / what have you. That is coercive, in a way, but it's not really the same thing.

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rain wrote

Alright full confession on one item - I have adhd and video more than a couple minutes long simply does not work for me, so I saw the vid was 20 minutes and stopped right there.

That said, I’m going to try to address this anyway. In my opinion the best mutual aid networks/opportunities are rarely called “mutual aid,” but that doesn’t mean they aren’t. Any group, formal or informal, working to help each other support themselves (or to help people help each other) should be thought of as a form of mutual aid. Once you accept this it really opens up the possibilities of what you can do.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for things like tenant organizing. But since I expect the entire system to collapse in the coming years I don't think that will be enough on its own. That’s where having pre-established networks of people willing to help each other may be life saving - both for you and others.

It’s also true that “handing out groceries” tends to lack the mutual aspect of mutual aid, but it doesn’t have to. And some charities are worth doing even if they are only charity. For example, no matter what else they do, Food Not Bombs feeds hungry people, and that is worth doing. At the same time they offer a chance for meeting people with similar values and philosophies. So even if they are dubious on the “mutual aid” part, they can help lead to genuine mutual aid as well as other organizing opportunities. And even if they don’t do that, they fed hungry people. It’s a win.

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twovests OP wrote

Some of these things seem wrong to me, but I don't have the Literature to know otherwise. But this in particular:

Ask yourself if you have two choices, which is the less coercive one to get what your org needs done, and that's probably the way to go

I think I disagree with this? Are there more coercive methods to a better world we're just sitting on?

I mean, I don't think so. But I would love that a lot, even if it means a structure that resembles authoritarianism, or is even just merely closer to authoritarianism than total anarchy.

That said, maybe "coercion" means something different between us. I think disruptive protest is coercive, but also good, for example

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flabberghaster wrote

The idea is kind of two fold I think.

Communists say that After The Revolution™, society eventually becomes a classless, stateless society and everyone just produces for the common good and receives what they need, and there's no need for money to force people to work, nor for guys with sticks to go beat people up.

So even state communists, usually they're saying their authoritarian government is meant as a stepping stone towards that.

Anarchists have the same goal, except they think once you make the state to break up the bourgeoisie, then that state is going to perpetuate itself and you're never going to move beyond it to the better world, so their organizing tends to be based on non hierarchy. Build the world you want to see today, don't build authoritarian structures that are supposed to break down authoritarianism tomorrow.

I don't understand how the monopoly on violence can be abolished, or how it can be prevented from arising again. I don't understand how an anarchist society will have space for the large contingent of people who would want to recreate a hierarchical state with a monopoly on violence.

The idea is, if you had a society where no one had bosses and everyone had their needs already met, and your neighbor Phil showed up and said "we should take over, let's get some guys and make me the king. I'll give you extra food" you wouldn't have any reason to join him because you already have what you need. And of someone started doing that everyone else would just beat him up for trying.

To me, like all utopian ideologies, I see it as more of a north star than a thing you could implement. Ask yourself if you have two choices, which is the less coercive one to get what your org needs done, and that's probably the way to go. It's nebulously defined just as Communism is nebulously defined.

There are good writings on it but I'm not a nerd so I can't think of any off the top of my head sadly.

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