It’s just going to be crabs in a bucket until we all die, huh?
People are just going to get more and more fash, aren’t they?
EDIT: Thank you all for reminding me there are things to be hopeful for, and that organising and community are important.
It’s just going to be crabs in a bucket until we all die, huh?
People are just going to get more and more fash, aren’t they?
EDIT: Thank you all for reminding me there are things to be hopeful for, and that organising and community are important.
Community is the real problem.
People don’t feel close to other people in modernised places. That makes it hard to organise collective action or sell collective messages.
As someone who has been active in left activism for decades, I’ve come to have a visceral reaction to use of the word “community”. In my experience, it has come to mean, “Our liberal ComMMuNiTY will exploit your injustice sensitivity for labor, and then drop you as a weirdo as soon as we don’t need you.”
Oh, you bring up an excellent point.
With rising fascism, has anyone else felt themselves grow more misanthropic? I’m not saying this is a good thing, but this is a personal problem I’m having…which logically means I don’t try to build any community where I can, even online.
This likely has cascading effects on society at large, because people then become more and more callous because they assume everyone is an asshole and……ohhhh look at that I’m describing the base and superstructure again.
Trump getting elected for the second time absolutely wrecked me, because (for me) it was the death of any last shreds of hope in the superstructure. It was my crossing of the Rubicon.
As one person, taking on the entire superstructure is not possible. The goal (for me) is to build a different superstructure, one dedicated to leftist values. I’m trying to devote energy almost exclusively to things that I can make a meaningful difference in, and that has meant finding and organizing like-minded people at a very small scale.
In that vein, I’ve been getting more plugged in to the DSA branch around here, and it has actually been super helpful for my misanthropy! There’s some stuff that I don’t necessarily think is a good use of time (e.g. electoralism, but tbf they focus on local stuff), but it is SO NICE to be around people who want to help and are doing something about it.
Unrelated to misanthropy, but regarding groups with mid politics:
There’s a spot in F.D. Signifier’s video on “hoteps” where he and a guest talk about their reluctance to condemn the movement as a whole, even though it has some bad politics, since they’re allies in organizing for black liberation. She says something like “if you don’t like their politics, just out-organize them!” And I think that’s the best attitude we can have on the left in general: don’t spend time talking bad about other orgs; work together where we can, set boundaries of acceptable behavior, and out-organize groups that have bad politics.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Doesn’t help that most people have decided to stop believing in germ theory, either. It’s hard to meet strangers when they’re all trying to kill you.
Not misanthropic, but I’m feeling more hopeless toward people in the imperial core, especially the “middle class” treatlerites. The optimist in me says that all that’s needed is to activate the class consciousness in them and then a real revolution could happen. However I’m starting to give up hope as capitalism is just designed to deflect all alienation towards commodity consumption and imperialism is designed so that stopping the exploitation of the third world means less treats, which apparently is a huge deal breaker for all of them. . People get very uncomfortable whenever you broach those topics. The banality of it all also depresses me, as people still talk about whether AR is going to replace smartphones, or AI doing some bullshit in the future as it destroys the environment, and not whether we’ll ever get a society that can house and feed everyone.
All revolutionary potential seems deflected at this anti-elitism which is totally non-materialist and just about what the last podcast episode you listened to said to believe in.
Is this what a third worldist believes in? I think I am becoming one.
This.
While The Money has no trouble broadcasting its messaging ev. Ry. Where. to unprecedented effect
Build community. Support those who are doing the same
Community with who? A shitload of bigots and colonizers?
What’s the alternative? Shutting yourself off from the world until magically all the people around you have the correct politics? If I only associated with people that have zero bigotry in them I’d be talking to like 2 or 3 people IRL at most.
Definitely agree. Ideally you’d find people with your exact political opinions, but those folks will be few and far between.
We need a mass movement, and most folks don’t have correct politics. That means we need to work with people who don’t currently have correct politics, and educate them.
At this stage, that IS the work.
There is no revolution without mass organization, and building mass organization means bringing people on that don’t already agree with you.