Nearly a third of Americans – 30% – say people may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.

It’s a sharp rise from 18 months ago, when 19% of Americans said the same.

  • cmbabul@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    3 hours ago

    At this point I’m tired of people trying to give a prescription for the ‘right way to do things’

    “A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” Hunter S. Thompson

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      3 hours ago

      The problem is there absolutely is many, many wrong paths to take, and we have to learn from past attempts to avoid their mistakes. Notice how the arab spring movement, while initially promising, ultimately failed to prevent a new authoritarian regime from taking hold in most of those countries.

      There are going to be different prescriptions from all political ideologies, but most of them can be dismissed to narrow down the possibilities.

      • Right-Libertarians will advise we privatize everything and remove regulations - Doesn’t work. Creates the conditions for Neo-fuedalism and capital dominating every aspect of life.
      • Moderates/Social Democrats will suggest we can reform our way out of this by voting for the right people - Didn’t work in Nazi Germany, didn’t work in Franco’s Spain. Due to corporate capture, they ultimately cannot resolve the issues that cause people to foolishly shift toward fascism in hopes to escape those issues.
      • Marxist-Leninists will say we just need a revolution with a Vanguard party - Doesn’t work. Results in extremely unfree authoritarian states like the USSR, North Korea, and China’s CCP. Basically state capitalism under the guise of socialism in name only.

      That leaves the Libertarian-left/Anarchists. We have evidence that their methods result in pretty sweet outcomes, they just have never survived very long due to the whole world usually being against them.

      Okay, so what do we do to in our case? First off, avoiding a civil war or extreme violence is vastly preferable, as the alternative has some big downsides. The best non-violent method we have at our disposal is a General Strike, which directly targets the machinery that fascist states rely on. Combined with mutual aid networks and civil disobedience, it has a rather good chance of preventing a fascist takeover with a minimum of violence.

      The alternative is straight up revolution, which requires the participating population to be educated on a shared vision, methods to organize, and how to avoid centralizing power structures or cult of personalities which lend themselves to co-option by the above mentioned groups.

      • cmbabul@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 hours ago

        I 100% agree with the overall point that there are very bad outcomes to getting this wrong, but my point is that we are out of time. Even if we manage to pull off a general strike with mural aid and civil disobedience we could eventually all have to come together on a direction or course of action going forward and I dont see that happening and even in the best of circumstances I think the country balkanizes/otherwise dissolves after a series of geographically and ideologically independent insurgencies rise up from the chaos that’s about to happen.

        I’m not trying to be a doomer, but I think the time to