One thing that I think is particularly important is articulating the ways community support and local organizing can provide an avenue for action in the current moment. The would be assassin, I suspect, viewed their action as the only or at least most effective way to affect the world around them. How would things have turned out if they…
One thing that I think is particularly important is articulating the ways community support and local organizing can provide an avenue for action in the current moment. The would be assassin, I suspect, viewed their action as the only or at least most effective way to affect the world around them. How would things have turned out if they hadn’t been isolated or propagandized to believe it was up to them singularly. Without community support, community action I think more and more people will fall into such nihilistic adventurism.
I agree, and an uncomfortable thing I have realized is that in some left/liberal spaces we do accidentally exclude some people by doing stuff like using "white male" or "cis man" as a pejorative to people not irony-poisoned enough to not take offense, or treating some people as lower status if they haven't caught up to our tier of progressive/leftist epiphany yet.
Some of the young men steered to reactionary anti-woke Nazi stuff could just as easily have been befriended early on by the people they've now been brainwashed into viewing as "other" and "degenerate," and become the outraged defenders of policies and marginalized groups, if someone met their understanding and the ignorance/privileged they carried where it was at.
Felix Biederman from Chapo Trap House loved to talk about "Based Libs" like Ron Perlman who came off as gruff and made the occasional problematic insult, but were undeniably formidable cohorts. We absolutely need such people in this time, more than ever.
Yeah personally I don’t think forming a community around Chapo Trap House or whether or not someone wants to listen to Ron Perlman is any significant part of building a local organization. If people want to argue about how tolerant their local spaces should or shouldn’t be they can do so but trying to form some hard and fast rule around tolerating racism for the entirety of left/liberal spaces is more of an online point scoring thing imo.
I don't agree with hard and fast rules, I just have seen some groups wherein calling out people for being problematic devolved from an enlightening thing to a power trip thing, or a way to project your resentment toward past bad experiences with say white men onto some new white guy who has nothing to do with it.
One thing that I think is particularly important is articulating the ways community support and local organizing can provide an avenue for action in the current moment. The would be assassin, I suspect, viewed their action as the only or at least most effective way to affect the world around them. How would things have turned out if they hadn’t been isolated or propagandized to believe it was up to them singularly. Without community support, community action I think more and more people will fall into such nihilistic adventurism.
A vital point brilliantly expressed!
Thank you! This was also a very well needed, and well timed, argument in this current moment.
I agree, and an uncomfortable thing I have realized is that in some left/liberal spaces we do accidentally exclude some people by doing stuff like using "white male" or "cis man" as a pejorative to people not irony-poisoned enough to not take offense, or treating some people as lower status if they haven't caught up to our tier of progressive/leftist epiphany yet.
Some of the young men steered to reactionary anti-woke Nazi stuff could just as easily have been befriended early on by the people they've now been brainwashed into viewing as "other" and "degenerate," and become the outraged defenders of policies and marginalized groups, if someone met their understanding and the ignorance/privileged they carried where it was at.
Felix Biederman from Chapo Trap House loved to talk about "Based Libs" like Ron Perlman who came off as gruff and made the occasional problematic insult, but were undeniably formidable cohorts. We absolutely need such people in this time, more than ever.
Yeah personally I don’t think forming a community around Chapo Trap House or whether or not someone wants to listen to Ron Perlman is any significant part of building a local organization. If people want to argue about how tolerant their local spaces should or shouldn’t be they can do so but trying to form some hard and fast rule around tolerating racism for the entirety of left/liberal spaces is more of an online point scoring thing imo.
I don't agree with hard and fast rules, I just have seen some groups wherein calling out people for being problematic devolved from an enlightening thing to a power trip thing, or a way to project your resentment toward past bad experiences with say white men onto some new white guy who has nothing to do with it.