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Sure, Biden’s climate policy could be better, but consider what a second Trump term would be like
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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Yes. You can't seriously say that "Biden is the genocide candidate but that's better than the uber genocide candidate" and then say that you're happy with the system. A system that offers you those choices is already broken, the only thing that remains is to build the best successor you can.
The problem with this 'break the system' accelerationist idea is that none of y'all have ever seen what really happens when the system breaks. I've known someone that lived through the genocide in Bosnia; that's what happens when a system has a total breakdown. It's not people suddenly joining hands and singing Kumbaya around a camp fire.
Rojava.
EZLN.
Cheran, Mexico.
I could go on.
The project of building the new in the shell of the old is not accelerationist, it is decelerationist.
Edit: also bold to try to scare me with the prospect of a genocide. Our functioning society would never do a genocide am I right? Or maybe the scary prospect is a genocide at home, but Foucault's boomerang means that's coming anyway. My interest is in making structures that will keep society functioning whilst the empire crumbles.
Good job naming small cities.
Now try naming any country of more than 10M people where this idea of burning it all down and starting over has worked without also creating 50+ years of deep civil unrest and violence.
Bosnia and Herzegovina's population is about 3.2 million, Rojava is estimated at around 2 million and the EZLN's region has over 5 million, but now according to you I need a single contiguous example bigger than 10 million, which is more than most countries.
Why? I assume because you're so scared of change that you'd rather content yourself with voting for slightly less genocide than consider the alternatives, and the best way to do that is to grab the goalposts and walk off with them.
And again, I'm not talking about burning things down, I'm talking about building alternatives. Let me know if you're at all curious to understand what I mean by that.
Also, please keep downvoting all my comments. It makes your argument look so superior, it's devastating.
By brother in Satan, the way you change things is by starting at the bottom and building platforms and candidates that are able to create consensus. You don't start at the top, where your vote only matters in the aggregate. You do things like running for the local school board (which is far, far more important than people seem to understand, since that's where the christian nationalists are focusing). You work with your local LGBTQ+ groups to train them in self-defense. You help protestors with opsec.
Work locally, vote strategically, That's how you fix shit. This is known, and it works, but people keep focusing on ¡la revoluccion!
Uh... those are exactly my politics. I think this is just a misunderstanding about a few word definitions. EDIT: Actually, based on your talk of "candidates", maybe we don't have the same politics. I don't know, read what I have to say and judge for yourself.
I just happen to consider building prefigurative movements to be "breaking the system" and "revolution". They just aren't necessarily one big moment of rupture. Meeting people's needs, doing mutual aid, community self defence etc, is weaning them off of dependence on capital and the state, and it is a revolution in the sense that it is a transfer of power away from the dominant system, even if it is slow, even if it is only about giving people food at first.
A sledgehammer breaks the pavement, but so does a root.
We can expect that when we do these projects, if they become successful enough, they will threaten to displace the enemy system entirely, and that will involve a violent reaction. That may entail a moment of rupture, but that's one step in the middle of it all. Whether something better comes out of it depends on whether the things we've built beforehand are strong enough to survive that moment. But don't kid yourself, we can't avoid violence entirely, even if it's only defensive.
Now, the EZLN and Rojava and a bunch of other projects had their moment of rupture, and they were liberatory. Not perfect, certainly, but they are doing incredible things and they don't have centralised leadership. The way you talk about them being "small cities" when they are large contiguous regions makes you sound ignorant of existing projects and demanding to see something "bigger than 10 million" makes you sound dismissive, like you're a liberal defending capitalism.
I'm glad you're not, I'm glad you're on board with prefiguration, but it is as destructive to the enemy system as it is constructive of the new. When you build the new in the shell of the old, the shell breaks.