Alt text: a screenshot of a microblog post with the text “you walking down an alleyway with a gram of weed in your pocket, who would you rather catch you?” Below are two pictures side by side. One of Kamala Harris and the other of Batman.
Alt text: a screenshot of a microblog post with the text “you walking down an alleyway with a gram of weed in your pocket, who would you rather catch you?” Below are two pictures side by side. One of Kamala Harris and the other of Batman.
I’m starting to believe that there is a contingent on Lemmy who wants this solution to be violent revolution, but they don’t want to say that out loud. They don’t want you to vote Kamala, they don’t want you to vote Trump, they don’t want you to vote third-party–they want you to make some molotovs and buy a Guy Fawkes mask.
But maybe I’m just reading into things.
Eh, I have the same hunch. They wanna be violent and be heroes, but vigilantes are mostly fantasy. In the meantime, they pat themselves on the back for playing pretend
Modern anarchist praxis largely involves building up parallel systems of power with horizontal (rather than hierarchical) structures to counter the existing capitalist systems from within. The revolution that we want to see is not a bloody one fought with guns in the streets, but a cultural one fought by communities of people meeting their own needs without the interference of the state. This is usually called “mutual aid” and is intended to meet the needs of the people who have been failed by capitalist society while also building solidarity and a community informed about the root causes of their problems - namely capitalism and hierarchical power structures.
Anyone pushing for violent revolution is more likely a vanguardist than an anarchist, and anarchists have a very long history of being absolutely fucked over by vanguardist parties throughout the history of anticapitalist struggle.
To suggest that the only alternative to voting is violent revolution is to deny the existence of well over a century of anarchic theory.
By all means, vote for the lesser evil. I won’t stop you nor could I. But when we point out why the lesser evil chosen for us by our masters is still in fact evil, don’t say that we haven’t offered up a viable alternative. The alternative we propose has in fact been in progress by passionate people meeting the needs of thier communities to the largest extent possible for decades. It’s just outside of the confines of what capitalism has pushed as the only method of affecting change, as it must be.