Fortunately we don’t have to worry about libs like this because their only solutions are writing their reps, going to “protests” at the designated time and place and then immediatly going home, and voting.
So it’s not like their going to have literally any impact on anything.
I wish it were that simple. But unfortunately it takes a different set of actions and much less to preserve and defend the status quo than it does for us to change and overcome it. These people will gladly help the state spy on us and repress our movements, for example, which is relatively passive shit that we don’t really have the equivalent of. They get to exercise power almost simply by just being, whereas we have to put up active resistance and throw our bodies, our freedom, and our societal status on the line in order to accomplish anything. I think the notion that we just don’t have to worry about them because they’ll just casually contribute to the repressive tide we have to struggle against is actually kind of dangerous.
Not that the sense in which we should worry about them is in trying to “change their minds online”. That’s obviously a pointless and futile strategy. But we should be working, when we can, to humiliate, shame, disempower, and make them uncomfortable everywhere they turn. We should be working to dismantle their casual systems of power (reactionaly neighborhood watches, homeowners’ associations, better business bureaus, NextDoor, etc.—and whatever the equivalents are in other regions, as I’m mostly familiar with the American ones) because those things are essentially an informal extension of the state and of capitalist power. They are basically brownshirts, except that the state and its tendrils have become so ubiquitous that they often don’t need to actively take the violent actions themselves when they’ve almost always got a cop on hand to do it for them, and all they have to do is be that cop’s eyes and ears. (And, of course, we shouldn’t neglect the fact that the state will still be very forgiving of them if and when they do decide to be directly violent.)
Fortunately we don’t have to worry about libs like this because their only solutions are writing their reps, going to “protests” at the designated time and place and then immediatly going home, and voting.
So it’s not like their going to have literally any impact on anything.
I wish it were that simple. But unfortunately it takes a different set of actions and much less to preserve and defend the status quo than it does for us to change and overcome it. These people will gladly help the state spy on us and repress our movements, for example, which is relatively passive shit that we don’t really have the equivalent of. They get to exercise power almost simply by just being, whereas we have to put up active resistance and throw our bodies, our freedom, and our societal status on the line in order to accomplish anything. I think the notion that we just don’t have to worry about them because they’ll just casually contribute to the repressive tide we have to struggle against is actually kind of dangerous.
Not that the sense in which we should worry about them is in trying to “change their minds online”. That’s obviously a pointless and futile strategy. But we should be working, when we can, to humiliate, shame, disempower, and make them uncomfortable everywhere they turn. We should be working to dismantle their casual systems of power (reactionaly neighborhood watches, homeowners’ associations, better business bureaus, NextDoor, etc.—and whatever the equivalents are in other regions, as I’m mostly familiar with the American ones) because those things are essentially an informal extension of the state and of capitalist power. They are basically brownshirts, except that the state and its tendrils have become so ubiquitous that they often don’t need to actively take the violent actions themselves when they’ve almost always got a cop on hand to do it for them, and all they have to do is be that cop’s eyes and ears. (And, of course, we shouldn’t neglect the fact that the state will still be very forgiving of them if and when they do decide to be directly violent.)