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Hi, I'm here to announce that everyone pushing the standard Hexbear party line on the protest movement is a loser and wrong. I already know the weak-ass arguments you're gonna make and every single one of them reveals your disconnection from any actual organizing. Let's go through them one by one. If you have another that you think Marx Failed to Consider, please bring it up and I will explain how you are wrong in that way as well.

This was funded by the Waltons

No, one Walton bought an ad in the NYT. Who fucking cares? It has no material bearing on the movement whatsoever. There's no organization money is being funneled to other than the Democratic Party and Indivisble, which is not different in any way. The on-the-ground organizers in most cities and towns are not receiving a penny from the left's George Soros conspiracy. They're just normal people (and, to the next point, lots of leftists).

The Democrats are using this to steal the leftist energy of the masses

The Democrats certainly want to do that, but on the ground reports indicate they are losing all over the country. That's because leftists (especially PSL) are not leaving this space uncontested. I have spent an enormous amount of time putting in the work to earn the trust and legitimacy necessary to place a bunch of literal revolutionary communists in the leadership of the local movement. Not in some sneaky, behind the scenes way, but out in the open, succeeding specifically because we are literal revolutionary communists who never shut up about it. The Democrats, by my accounting, are losing the struggle in more places than not. If you refuse to engage because you're afraid the Dems will suck your leftist soul, you're just conceding the struggle and granting them victory. They don't co-opt by pressing a button, they co-opt because they have the resources to take leadership and then defuse. So far they have failed to do so specifically because the space is not empty and the communists are fighting harder to reach the masses (since we actually have an appealing program).

The attendees are all Kamala-loving liberals who just want to go back to brunch

If you had ever bothered to go to one of these events and talk politics to people, you'll discover a very broad array of political perspectives, including a strong trend towards explicit support for socialism. Yes, of course, the PMC bug-eating libs are there - who cares? They are by no means the only attendees. Maybe you're just Too Cool to be around someone who reminds you of your mom, but the rest of us are finding deep political discontent and activating it. When one of my comrades gets on the mic and says "we need to break from the democrats and do a literal socialist revolution", the crowd response, by and large, is incredibly positive. The retired dentists and accountants in the crowd grumble and whine, but they are a minority - and they don't leave. They stay and listen to the arguments we make. They say things like "you're right, I just don't think it's possible". They very, very rarely say "you're going too far".

This is a disorganized mess that's going to fizzle out

50501 and other decentralized spontaneous protest movements never last, but they do give an opportunity for dedicated political organizers to intervene on a stage where thousands of disaffected liberals and Democrat voters are asking "what is to be done?". If you decide not to show up and answer that question, the Democrat machine will coordinate the demobilization of this movement. If you do show up and you deliver the political argument you believe in. If you show up with the AV equipment, safety marshalls, march route, signs, and speaker list - the bare minimum for a halfway serious organizer - then you don't just hand out flyers and talk at a table but set the entire political line of the event. And in doing so, you demonstrate the leadership of the socialist movement and win a lot of those attendees to your side. If you can plug them into actual organizing work, you can bring them into permanent political motion. Does it matter if 95% of these people just go home and never bother to do anything besides another protest? If those 5% join the movement in a meaningful way, that's half a million new comrades.

Mao says: "All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the masses. Unless they are conscious and willing, any kind of work that requires their participation will turn out to be a mere formality and will fail."

Stop thinking about what you want to do and achieve and start thinking about the fact that we needs tens of millions of people to support revolutionary socialism in the US in order to get anything done. They are out in the streets begging for you to explain this to them.

These are just peaceful protests that won't achieve anything because they aren't revolutionary.

Lenin says: "What grounds are there for assuming that the “great, victorious, world” revolution can and must employ only revolutionary methods? There are none at all. The assumption is a pure fallacy; this can be proved by purely theoretical propositions if we stick to Marxism. The experience of our revolution also shows that it is a fallacy. From the theoretical point of view—foolish things are done in time of revolution just as at any other time, said Engels, and he was right. We must try to do as few foolish things as possible, and rectify those that are done as quickly as possible, and we must, as soberly as we can, estimate which problems can be solved by revolutionary methods at any given time and which cannot."

You're doing the ultra-leftism of conflating tactics with strategy. Our tactic in this moment is to intervene in these protests to convince people of the necessity of a revolutionary socialist political organization as the only solution to our sick society. Right now, mass revolutionary socialist consciousness and organization does not exist in the USA. Therefore, it is impossible to carry out open revolutionary militancy. If the current crop of people who are in some way directly involved in revolutionary socialist organizing (certainly a lower bar than revolutionary guerrilla warfare or sabotage) turned today to armed struggle, all ~100,000 of them would lose. The broader periphery of people who semi-passively support that objective through attendance at events and monetary contribution is probably a few million. The masses who would passively support probably number in the tens of millions, but that passive support is not particularly useful. And the number of people who would simply sit by and watch it happen is probably over 100 million. Every one of those groups needs to be elevated to the next stage - observer to passive supporter, passive supporter to semi-passive periphery, semi-passive periphery to revolutionary organizer, revolutionary organizer to doing the literal revolution. Each of these layers of the movement have a symbiotic relationship with the others that strengthen the entire struggle.

Here's the key lesson: WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE TO WIN VIOLENT STRUGGLE AND YOU NEED TO GO WHERE THE MASSES ARE TO RALLY THEM TO OUR CAUSE.

Amerikkkans will never do a revolution because they are labor aristokkkrauts

Ok, thank you for you contribution, you can resume sitting in a hole since your prescription is inactivity.

Please tell me your other weak-ass reasons why you're correct to sit on your ass.

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[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

It seems we had vastly different experienced with the no kings protest. Mine was deeply liberal and the vast majority of people there were not open to hearing alternatives. PSL was not present, CPUSA was but all it had was a small table with one person manning it in a corner maybe 3 people visited. The only marginally successful alternative voice was the opportunist DSA. The scheduled speeches were incumbent Democrats. There were comrades in that crowd but they did not have a voice at all and were actively shunned. From my perspective this is not a movement the Democrats are trying to co-opt, this is a movement they created to save their party. My only avenue left is to expose its flaws through critique.

Can this protest not be both an opportunity to gain comrades and a woefully inept co-opted mess?

[-] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 7 points 9 hours ago

Who is arguing against a straw man idea that these protests will magically turn into socialism without effort? Or worse, who was actually arguing for that idea?

The people are angry. Sure these are brunch-munching libs, but they are only that because they think that is the Best of All Possible Worlds. They literally don't know any better. I thought the Hexbear line was "These libs are useless on their own, but some of their number do have genuine revolutionary fervour and with a bit of help will become comrades." I'm very confused by this whole thing, I saw some people talking about the uselessness of these protests, but I thought it was more about the lib aspect and how they need to be steered towards effective action not just doom posting about how everything is unchanging and eternal and revolution is impossible.

[-] Des@hexbear.net 21 points 13 hours ago

i have had similar thoughts and sometimes share them here. since i'm being worked into an early grave I do what I can with the people i have contact with regularly, many of which would be considered pretty icky and lost causes. i've only been to a few protests, not out of lack of desire. so this refers primarily to just direct interaction in general:

in this Age of Alienation, actual human contact weighs a thousand times more on someone's mind vs. online. you'd be surprised by how interested people are in hearing about alternatives to the system we currently are in. not everyone is a treatlerite.

the core of socialism is a love of humanity, not a rejection of it.

[-] ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net 17 points 14 hours ago

I can see both sides of this

On the one hand my local No Kings protest was mostly libbed up white boomers carrying one of 2 fascist flags (usually amerikkka but also more than a handful of ukkkraine) but on the other hand I ran into a bunch of comrades there I knew from pro Palestine demonstrations and there were even some others with Palestinian flags and more who supported us when they saw our flags

Funniest moment of the day was when one of our local reps who's also a pastor at a black church tried to get this crowd of mostly white boomers to sing along to a song and literally none of them were singing along (it was just me and like 3 other people who actually did) she said "I can't hear you sing!" to try to energize the crowd like 5 times before giving up

A real mixed bag overall

both-sides

[-] ratboy@hexbear.net 16 points 14 hours ago

Whites are so afraid of using their voice and just being in community, which are obviously symptoms of individualism and civility brain worms. Reminds me of a personal anecdote:

I remember being at a punk show in New Mexico, and I think towards the end the bands and organizers who were overwhelmingly HIspanic, indigenous and black, wanted everyone to join hands and chant together. Myself and my other white friend were all nervous and shy about it and someone else, looking kinda of annoyed, grabbed my hand and made me start swaying and chanting. I don't blame them for being annoyed, we shouldn't have been embarrassed to use our voice and engage in community. It's really something I struggle struggle with as a white person

[-] PTSDwarrior@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 hours ago

Whites have been effectively dehumanized. They've been stripped of their roots (English, German, Italian, Russian etc) and lumped in as a hyper-individualistic collective called white. I mean, isn't it gross? White is a color. You have no culture to fall back on unlike African Americans, Latino Americans and Asian Americans.

[-] ratboy@hexbear.net 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Agree with this. I went through a sort of identity crisis in my early 20's because I never related to being a "Red blooded American" or anything like that and kinda actively despised it as a baby punk. A lot of my close family is Mexican, and at the time that was a part of my upbringing that I became very fond of; I was raised by my Mexican family as a very young child so I kinda started going down that road. I very quickly learned that I shouldn't start hardcore co-opting culture or anything like that, but it DID inspire me to study Latin American/Latino studies in college as a way to learn about and connect to some rich cultures, and that really radicalized me, so I am grateful for that experience.

Still have that yearning for connection to where I came from, though, since the US isn't my home (or it isn't supposed to be)

[-] aileks@hexbear.net 7 points 12 hours ago

It's a little odd to me that people here will decry an organized protest as "libbed up" and a "pysop." Resistance is resistance. This kind of attitude is reminiscent of "you're not protesting how I want you to!" from reactionaries. We live in the cradle of empire, most people protesting against the regime aren't going to be staunch Marxists or some shit. We can use these movements to our advantage; even Lenin wrote about making compromises, zigzags, and the like if a movement weakened a common enemy. They serve as opportunities to raise class consciousness, something especially needed in the west. The list go on. The knee-jerk abhorrence just seems silly to me.

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[-] SootySootySoot@hexbear.net 23 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

As someone who started a big thread shitting on the No Kings protesting, I will half self-crit and admit I didn't narrow down my frustration enough, and did criticise the whole endeavour as fruitless. So very fair point and upbears for that - I was wrong. I do my best to avoid doomerism and didn't really do my best enough there (I will also plead recent onset serious illness as my mitigation).

I'll be honest, some of this kind of assholeish name-calling rhetoric may be fun but really doesn't make me eager to self-crit either. Obviously doesn't change that I was in the wrong. I'll applaud correctly calling out hypocritical inaction and harmful thinking 'round here, myself included. Also obviously going out and doing actual organising is the coolest shit and I'll never not respect it.

[-] SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net 12 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I agree with this. As communists, we should be absolutely pleased with the opportunity to recruit new people and attempt to influence these protests in any way we can, whether it is in an individual or organized fashion with a party. Just sitting on the sidelines while mocking protestors for protesting incorrectly, isn't just counter-productive, but also ironically a seventh type of liberalism. Mao would like to have a word with those people.

[-] purpleworm@hexbear.net 26 points 16 hours ago

It sounds like what you're arguing is that the No Kings protest is an attempt by libs to coopt radical energy and has the involvement of countless moderates, but that radicals must engage with it because it can readily backfire on the liberals and produce more radicals. I completely agree with such a sentiment. The capitalists will sell us the rope.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 53 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

i will always say this here: good socialists will be salivating at the opportunity these protests present. either capital coopts this again, or we do.

[-] Tabitha@hexbear.net 24 points 18 hours ago

chad-trotsky just stole a brand new printer

[-] godlessworm@hexbear.net 26 points 17 hours ago

its fun to laugh at liberals for being ineffective and cringe but yeah the way many people are painting these protests just reads to me like they’re trying to convince themselves its okay to just sit on the sidelines. that they’re not being lazy or not taking action but actually they’re “protesting the protest” because they’re actually just too principled of communists to fall for the liberal psyop.

nobody thought the protests were going to solve anything. the point is to show the government there are many people who are opposed to this. i just went and stood to add to the crowd size of my smallish southern town.

i get refusing to vote out of protest because at the end of the day anybody the powers that be let come to power is gonna fucking suck

but protesting a protest and trying to act like some 200 year old left wing theory book told you to do it is cope. mfs are just being lazy and they’re not about political change the way they think they are. just because that protest didn’t kick off the revolution doesnt mean it didnt heighten revolutionary potential or create potential revolutionaries

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[-] TransWalterKronkite@hexbear.net 8 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Communist should go out but hexbears shouldnt

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 17 points 16 hours ago

Thank you for your service!

100 % agree! I picked up those vibes too, like a vibe was building around justifying to not do anything. It used to be different, right? Everyone used to keep saying:"Get organized!"

And yes, everyone on hexbear who is physically and mentally able and has the necessary bare minimum of resources and time should at least try to get organized and/or contribute in some (not online only) way that fits them. There are so many unique, individual ways to participate. We just have to find ones that fit us long-term without getting burned out.

And of course moments like this should absolutely be used to agitate and to win more comrades and raise class consciousness and in the imperial core: to lower acceptance for imperialist wars. Even if the outcome is not revolution in the US, lowering acceptance for wars can harm hegemony enough to save literally millions of lives outside the imperial core. It worked for Vietnam.

Not American, but where I am, I often feel like, I've let things slide too. Only been to like two protests this year and not really active anymore in the orgs I'm in. I used to do more. I always feel guilty when I'm in a period where I do less politically and of course there are always good reasons. Point is, it's not about feeling guilty, it's about at least trying to go out there. Just this week I reconnected with a comrade and activated some friends and we'll go to some leftish/semi-lib Pro-Palestine protest soon and we'll see what we can do/who we can connect with.

[-] RION@hexbear.net 35 points 18 hours ago

I found the jump from "one member of the Walton family took out an ad supporting the protests" to "the protest was paid by Walmart" very silly

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[-] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 26 points 17 hours ago

Reiterating my point that if the protest is within walking distance, it's alright to attend, but if you have to drive 40+ minutes and pay for parking, you're better off spending that money on Palestinian gofundmes.

If you want a more "leftist" reason, once you're spending 40+ minutes to drive to another location, that really isn't your community anymore, so everything that various people, both socialists and progressives, say about building community is not applicable for the simple reason that community is only applicable to people within walking distance (or a short <10 minute drive if we're talking about suburbia since suburbia is hostile towards pedestrians).

[-] sleeplessone@lemmy.ml 6 points 12 hours ago

This is the biggest thing keeping me politically demobilized. I really need to grow the fuck up, move out of my parents' house, and move to the city.

[-] LeninWalksTheEarth@hexbear.net 11 points 15 hours ago

Reiterating my point that if the protest is within walking distance, it's alright to attend, but if you have to drive 40+ minutes and pay for parking

that's the worst fucking thing about American protests. Everyone get in the car, we're driving to the protest.

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[-] sewer_rat_420@hexbear.net 34 points 18 hours ago

What the 2017 lib protests didn't have was Palestine flags and a general disdain for "billionaires" and "oligarchs". Things are moving in the right direction however slowly

[-] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 39 points 19 hours ago

I actually support every protest because I enjoy the violence

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[-] FettermansFinalStroke@hexbear.net 30 points 19 hours ago

Thank you comrade, you have totally changed my view for the better. I was not thinking critically at all before this and just judging the protests based off imperfection

[-] HelluvaBottomCarter@hexbear.net 33 points 19 hours ago

I don't know who you're replying to so the impact of this post is lost on me. If someone on Hexbear said that Walmart is paying people to show up to protests then you should have called them out in the thread where they said it. Making a new post to say that all hexbears believe that is odd. Your whole post is like "Listen up here you fucking cracker reactionaries, I'm gonna set you strait and let you know that we need to build popular support before we can have a revolution!" Like who is disagreeing? This is premium Hexbear online posting. I don't know why we're kidding ourselves thinking this is some kind of grass-touching anthem.

[-] FettermansFinalStroke@hexbear.net 30 points 18 hours ago

There has been much fucking nihilism on this site lately, this feels like a general response to that.

[-] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 2 points 8 hours ago

It feels like the "nothing ever happens" gang's only response when something happens is to act like the sky is falling.

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[-] QuietCupcake@hexbear.net 15 points 16 hours ago

There was that post the other day with someone at the protests propping up a sign saying "If Kamala were president, we'd all be at brunch" or something like that. To me, it was very clearly a criticism of the liberals there who would not have cared if a dem were in office, the kind of thing one of us might put on a sign for these protests, but almost everyone commenting on that post was assuming the sign was meant to be taken at face value. The top comment said:

"this place is beyond hopeless. i don't have the words to describe the despair that these lib "protests" are engendering in me"

That is the kind of doomerist, nihilistic, non-dialectical nonsense that I think OP is addressing here.

When I pointed out that even the olive cocktail cutouts made it obvious it was irony-protesting, I was berated for "giving a white american the benefit of the doubt." Like wtf, what percentage of this very site is white american again? Some of them are capable of being comrades. It was weird to me how much people in that thread just wanted to think everyone at those protests are the equivalent of .world libs. One of the predominant sentiments on hexbear about the prostests are to be ridiculed and nothing more. That they are worse than ineffective, they are somehow only heling the bourgeoisie. And don't get me wrong, I am well aware of the many completely valid criticisms of these protests and their inadequacy to effect real change. But the kind of attitude that jack is addressing in this OP is absolutely something that is prevalent here and needs to be addressed.

[-] free_casc@hexbear.net 30 points 19 hours ago

If you went to the protest, did some canvassing/organizing work, and posted about it here later in the day, you'd know exactly where OP is coming from. I know because I did the same thing, but didn't have enough fury to bang out 7 paragraphs about it.

It's important to call out this ultraleft position in our community to invite our comrades to reflect and develop a different perspective.

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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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chapotraphouse

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