United States | News & Politics

Yes, and MLK is a perfect example of someone I can agree with and vehemently support on one issue while disagreeing on others. I reject his socialist agenda, but I'm completely on board with his civil rights activism.

You wouldn't have the civil rights movement were it not for the socialist movement and MLK's understanding from it and organizational methods built from it. These are not separable qualities and it is why the approach you are suggesting does not work. Your suggestion is actually the status quo. There are many single-issue abortion rights groups out there. They are small and disorganized.

MLK wasn't successful because he was socialist, he was successful because his ideas resonated with a large, pissed off minority of various political persuasions. His org, the SCLC, was decidedly not socialist, in contrast to other groups at the time. Yeah, he had socialist views, but that was separate from his civil rights activism. And he was more of a democratic socialist, so more like Bernie Sanders than the USSR.

Bernie Sanders is not a socialist at all. He is a social democrat. He also failed to organize, as he only knew the aesthetics of the left and not the organizing content. He's actually another pretty good example of why your suggested method fails.

As I mentioned before, MLK was a leader and organizer within a much broader context of civil rights organizations both constituted by socialists and learning from their methods, including the methods of organized labor.

But they were. There's a reason King left socialism out of the civil rights fight, and it was to get greater appeal. He also wanted economic reforms, but that was secondary to the civil rights movement.

He left it out at first and then regretted doing so. This is why he pivoted to the Poor People's Campaign. It's also why liberation was dramatically incomplete. He arrived at a more accurate analysis and radicalized over time. He learned the exact same lessons that everyone does when they fight too idealistically, without a grounding in how the material forces work against you.

Of course, MLK was not the entire civil rights movement. Socialists were a major driving force the entire time.

And when I say "partisan divide," I don't mean appealing to Republicans and Democrats generally, I mean appealing to something that goes beyond partisanship. Highlight an idea that doesn't fit on either side, and get people in the middle pissed off that neither side is doing anything about it. Eisenhower was a moderate Republican and he was guilted into helping, that's how much it resonated.

No presidents are guilted into helping. Change doesn't come from a convincing speech. He responded to leverage and, as has been the pattern, sought to mollify the movement to prevent it from doing even more. This is the same government that blackmailed MLK and blacklisted, marginalized, and killed civil rights leaders.

Absolutely, but it's a step in the right direction. I'd like to go further and switch the House to be proportionally elected. But that scares people, so ending FPTP is the first step. Ending FPTP opens up opportunities for popular third party candidates to be able to win enough seats to effect real change.

But like I said, that's not how it works in reality. The base of power and leverage dictates the change, not popularity of a candidate. There are plenty of places without FPTP. There are places where representation comes from voting for a party and they get proportional seats. They still face the same fundamental problem.

Yet having a mass organization can get results even without much electoral representation.

I'm not talking about Democrats here, and I think left/right thinking isn't the way.

The right is reactionary and conservative, the left seeks to overthrow that order. To pursue justice you must be on the left. There is no fence-sitting nor valid pretense that these issues are isolated.

If Gaza is the hill we want to die on, it can't be a leftist justification, it needs to go beyond that. Unfortunately, this issue is seen as leftist, so it's going to be much harder to prove that decency isn't political.

The ideas mean nothing without organization and neither does any notion of respectability politics or framings. It is also not unfortunate that this is leftist. The bourgeois electoral parties and their followers are anti-leftist and generally quite racist towards Palestinians. I interact with them often. It is only the left that correctly understands and advocates for the national liberation of Palestine. We would not even be discussing it in support of Palestine were it not for the left.

I'm not sure what the right messaging is, but I think Fatah needs to be seen as a stabilizing alternative to Hamas, and Israel needs to let them try stabilizing Gaza. Israel won't leave without Hamas losing power, and Hamas won't lose power without a realistic replacement. But if the US backs Fatah, it's going to be seen as meddling, and therefore it probably won't work. So the best approach, imo, is the "we can't afford to pick sides" argument, both from a fiscal and diplomatic angle. That's hopefully separated enough from partisan politics to work. But it's an uphill battle.

We have no option to control any of that. We are disorganized and weak. What is achievable on the horizon of this invasion is to undermine support for the US' pro-Israeli position, to disrupt arms shipments, to increase mass consciousness of the true face of American empire.

It is not unlikely that the US' hoped-for path out of this is to effectively take over administration of Gaza, displace UNRWA so that it can control the population further, create some narrative where it pretends Hamas is defeated, and to keep Palestine divided. All of this depends on the US maintaining the ability to do so without a regional war breaking out. It requires the basic consent of the public to not get in the way of any of this. It is our job to get in the way.

FPTP is comparatively easier and would be more impactful long term. It's not going to help Palestinians today though.

FPTP won't do anything for any of this. This is core to the material interests of the country. The primary moving force for it. This isn't up to the task in front of us. Therefore, we must be realistic and plot a course that is sufficient.

It worked for Trump.

No it didn't. Trump also served bourgeois interests. And Biden has maintained the vast majority of his policies, or even made them worse. Trump is not a charismatic leader that created any kind of movement that took on "the establishment". Those are just words to him. He cannot call upon them to actually do anything.

The figurehead attracts people with similar concerns, and builds an org around themselves.

The Republican Party already existed and he slotted into it just fine.

King started with a small org that organized bus boycotts, then founded SCLC. He didn't rise through any ranks, he was an influential community member who decided to do something.

This is a typical organizer trajectory. You begin work in one org among a constellation. And often you then found a new one based on your connections, your fellow like-minded organizers. You then continue working in building your power through the organization.

That's how Youtubers and streamers who get famous work, and that's how we'll get change rolling. That figurehead should build a coalition with existing groups, but I think they need to come at it as an outsider.

YouTubers are not organizers when they do YouTube things, they're petty bourgeois entertainers whose entrainment is sometimes educational. This is why many of them are also quite politically miseducated. They do not know the work of organizing or the forces you encounter when you try to make something happen, so they spread false idealism about how to achieve goals, how the system works, and who are our allies vs. our enemies in a given situation. This doesn't mean they are simply bad, and they can be useful, but they're not going to get anything done whatsoever except help raise some atomized political consciousness.

What most people seem to do after watching thirst videos is to do the same thing they were doing before: nothing. And anecdotally, the people I encounter that rely heavily in YouTubers for political education have a false sense of their own knowledge and are somewhat disruptive when they join an organization. They haven't had to learn humility or how to disagree with others, they only developed a parasocial relationship in a relatively combative electronic space. This is why I emphasize them entering a political education program before they do much else.