You have to be willing to Luigi these people. We need a thousand more Luigi.
Any other answer is wrong.
Tactical nukes.
I won’t say just vote, but you should do that, too, at every level!
Depending on how much time and money you have:
- Join a union (and give time and money to organising the union)
- Join an antifascist political party (and give time and money to organising the party)
- Lobby your representatives to demand they oppose fascism
- Join protests against fascism
- Join civil society groups that are antifascist (either directly or because they’re pro human rights or anti-racist, or what-have-you) (and give time and money etc.)
- Boycott businesses that are owned by or enable fascists
- Join co-operatives (and give time and money etc.)
- Join community groups (these don’t even have to be political)
- Support local, independent media and good freelance journalists
- Spread the word about all of the above
I’ve ordered these roughly by how effective I think they’re likely to be (this is of course just one guy’s opinion); you should pick the one(s) that are most attractive to you and best fit your current situation.
Fair warning, none of the above will instantly fix the problem and I grant that some of them probably seem pretty weak sauce in the face of fascism, but the more people do them, the weaker the fascists will get.
“A Riot is the language of the unheard”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
“When peaceful revolution becomes impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable”
-John F. Kennedy
As per lemmy.world rules, I’m obligated to say that I do not condone violence, just quoting some people, interpret it however you wish to. 😉
Luigi
Organize en masse using a common enemy (billionaires). Fascists win when they are able to successfully divide and conquer, which they have been very successful at.
There’s a very good reason both neoliberals and fascists have been working so hard for so long to distract the masses from who’s causing the real issues in society.
We can’t let them shut us down this time, like they did with Occupy Wall Street, the George Floyd protests, the hippy movement, MLK Jr.'s economic movement. We need to stay controversial and constantly active so we can stay in the news cycle (much like how Trump has been able to dominate the news cycle since 2015). If they try to distract us, we must counter at every step of the way.
Workers have the real power in society, and the oligarchs can’t survive without us. The sooner we all realize that, the better.
also remember any movement will get infiltration attempts and if succesful they will try to derail, corrupt or otherwise bring the movement to its end. Got to plan things well since halfassing this will have severe consequences.
Form a new grassroots party and encourage voters to demand change in exchange for their vote.
This is a tried and true method that has succeeded in multiple countries with much worse electoral systems than the US (I can vouch for PTI in Pakistan, it took them about 20 years including 10 years of military rule)
Unfortunately, it is too radical for the folks over at c/Politics, even though it was literally what Malcolm X often suggested and what MLK did before they were both shot (albeit MLK preferred endorsing individual candidates regardless of party rather than trying to form a new one since that would be slower).
So the real answer is unfortunately to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flames.
Change through politics is no longer on it table.
Lol these ppl acting like the SS division were on the way
M3 grease guns proved effective last time we tried it.
Couple of things:
- Information : Keep creating and sharing reliable information. Not just opinions, information. We are still the majority, the US fascists is not world, we need to flood all the relevant platforms with our content.
- Education: The reason these monsters have any credibility is because some people are too mentally weak to defend themself from misinformation. We need to educate around in any way possible. Everything counts, keep trying.
- Humor is a powerful weapon. These people have giant ego and 0 humor. Let’s keep ridicule them and have fun at their expense. They need to understand we have some things they can never touch, even with all the money in the world, solidarity, humour and camaraderie.
also hope. Got to show people there is hope so they dont fall into apathy. They got to know others are actively doing something and refuse to be silenced. I have been trying to look for this for long time now and its not been good.
I’m pretty sure that the answer is against the Terms Of Service of this instance.
Build a network of friends/neighbors etc. conceive plans to protect the ones who will be targeted first (POC, LGBTQI, …) eventually either go underground or leave the country.
To be fair, both Ghandi and MLK Jr. showed that there is an alternative to violence that can be very effective in gaining support.
That being said, I do think the Black Panthers/Malcom X were very instrumental in the civil rights movement. I think the leadership saw two options: work with MLK Jr. or deal with the Black Panthers.
Of course, the FBI, amongst other groups in power at the time were able to successfully thwart MLK Jr.'s attempt at educating people about class consciousness. MLK Jr. wasn’t just fighting for equal rights among racial lines, but also economic lines.
Hell, Jesus Christ was able to start an entire religion based in nonviolent protest based around class consciousness. Of course, that religion has since been perverted, but the point still stands.
They only worked with the threat of violence if they failed.
And they’ve both been WAY watered down in modern tellings…
MLK and the Civil Rights Movement have been majorly white-washed since they happened. That narrative is a big reason why protests since have been largely ineffectual in the US.
MLK supported the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and said that the only reason that he didn’t do anything more than the sit-ins and such was because that was already illegal and anything more could get them all jail time. And he was still seen as being just as violent as they made BLM out to be.
The Million Man March was seen as a threat of violence by white America. If he could get a million people to mobilize in the capital and shut down the entire city, what else could he get them to do?
Also, civil rights were only put into law after a full-on week of violence that burned down entire sections of cities and did millions in property damage. Years of protests led to flowery words. A week of riots saw the bills written, voted on, and codified into law.
Violence really, really fucking sucks.
It may be necessary, but if there’s any other option you should look to that first. If it legitimately comes to violence a lot of innocent people are going to suffer in a big way.
There were other options. I think those other options failed at this point in time.
I wonder what he is thinking, that is odd looking face
Why haven’t i seen this side by side with Nazis? Or him put in the rally or along side Hitler etc?
These all seem like simple edits
Well that’s a little on the nose isn’t it.
It’s a weird salute he’s doing there that guy on the left.
Some kind of awkward excitement reaction i guess.
Yeah, I feel like violence is evangelized online in odd ways.
The class that suffers the most in violent uprisings is the lowest class. By orders of magnitude. For every member of the bourgeois that is taken down, tens or hundred or thousands of every day people are injured or killed.
Take it from us who dont live in a country built on liebensraum created by genociding the native population and has spent all its VERY short existance not knowing tyranny or how to separate church, state and private companies.
Classless society leads to death of millions and classed society. Lowest class loves killing lowest class. Once the preceived opressors run out more will be found. People wanting violence want it for selfish reason. The guy calling to kill all landlords today will be raping your small daughter in a state organized torture dungeon tomorrow. Yes its graphic, yes this is what you get when you want mass violence, stop pretending otherwise and buying into propaganda of evil people.
This is how it has always been, and always will be. Slow social reforms is the way to get what you want. Violence just creates more violence.
But it’s already happening. They’re already suffering.
Peace as a choice is only possible when the option of violence exists.
In all fairness there are non violent support roles
Somebody has to build the drones and c4 kits
It’s not that people die commiting acts of violence, it’s that people minding their own business or just trying not to be violent, also end up violently dismembered with their families.
Supporting the violence is participating in it. Maybe you’re on the “good” side but still. If you work a normal 9-5 go home shoot the shit with your buds and volunteer at a homeless shelter… You’re still not a good person when your job is making bombs getting shipped to Israel.
#VITA
Sherman tanks and M1 Garands were quite effective once.
I am writing this with the assumption that you are tacitly asking about US politics because of the moment in history. What I have to say will make people mad, but here goes:
A lot of the people on this webzone are what Eitan Hersh called “political hobbyists”. These are people who do not really take political action in their daily life despite voting or occasionally attending a rally. They may be well informed about politics, but being well-informed in itself is not really effective at changing politics. You can get on your phone and “rub the glass” to complain about politics, or to find people who agree with you. But outrage on social media won’t change anything, and if rubbing the glass and occasionally voting is all you do, then you are a political hobbyist.
Political hobbyism mostly functions as a consumerist approach to political engagement. A political hobbyist will passively receive news and information about politics, but will never really try to change anything, because to them engaging in a news feed is all they really do. That consumerism is painfully apparent here when, for example, posters denounce a Democratic candidate as being “not exciting” or someone they are “not passionate about” as if the candidate was the newest model in a brand of laptops that failed to zazzle in Q3. We see signs of political hobbyism again when political parties are treated as entities that are somehow completely separate from the public. For example when a lemmy user denounces the Democratic party for not doing what they want. “The Democrats need to do X!” Why are you complaining about that on the internet? You know the DNC isn’t reading these threads right?
If you really wanted to influence the Democratic party (which I think is the best bet for resisting fascism right now) why aren’t you lobbying the party? Why aren’t you mobilizing voter bases? Why aren’t you building political power in your local community so you can influence larger political organizations? Because its hard, because you don’t know where to start, because you are busy? Ok, but fascism is coming, and you are too busy to do anything about it. Or too overwhelmed to even try?
The truth is, if you wanted your ideas (and I am including here opposition to fascism as an idea) to influence policy, or what candidates gain traction in nomination races, then you should have been working on that LOOOOONNNNNG before the national candidate was nominated. Treating the Democratic party as a vendor that offers political products is a losing strategy for gaining influence. There will be an endless parade of glass rubbers ready to denounce the various political parties, but by and large, they didn’t do anything to gain influence with those parties. Their denouncements are ignored, they are irrelevant. My advice is to ignore the glass-rubbers. Identify one or two local issues in your physical area and try to improve them. What you should do is find a little slice of America (or your own country if you are not American) and try to make it better. Use those efforts to build up influence at higher levels. My goal here was to convince you not to listen to the glass rubbers. But my advice for resisting fascism is: Try to build political networks, try to mobilize local voters in local issue elections. Doing this will make your network an invaluable asset to larger (state and national) organizations. If you have a network of voters, of issue conscious citizens, or donors, larger organizations are going to want to leverage that network when it comes time for lager races. That gives you leverage. That gives you power. The glass-rubbers are going to tell you that is impossible. Its not. People do it all the time. The book I cited has examples of people doing it. Fascist conservative groups do it all the time. So why not you?
I will admit, this is hard. When I first read Hersh’s book I was offended, because when he was describing political hobbyists, he was describing me. But it did give me some motivation to think about politics from the perspective of power. And set me down the road of trying to do all things I wrote about here. It is early days for me yet, and I have only seen limited success. My work complicates things. I am busy, and often overwhelmed. But fascism is coming.
A lot of this is true. And the system is designed to keep the masses in such an incredibly insecure place when it comes to living and health that they cannot find the time, money, or courage to risk it.
People are barely keeping afloat. They pay their rent hoping their next paycheck will bring up their account balance before the check clears. People are using installment plans for the grocery trip. They have irregular swing shifts and/or two jobs that make scheduling incredibly difficult.
Organizing stuff takes a lot of people’s time, mental effort, and money.
I’m definitely not saying don’t organize. I’m saying do try and understand especially for the less privileged (among Americans) it’s really an insane task.
Voting was the thing to do, too late now for that. History has the answer for what’s next
Very well said! Thank you.
the Democratic party (which I think is the best bet for resisting fascism right now)
Which part of the last eight years informed you that liberals have any interest in resisting fascism?
democratic party looks more like sockpuppet that is supposed to make you feel protected from the knife on the other hand.
