I’ve been reading about the development of resistance movements in WWII, and I noticed something that got me thinking.
Resistance in a unified front (i.e. among groups that disagree politically), seems to require some form of shared identity.
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The fighting front in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (groups including Zionists and Bundists) shared the common identity of being Jewish.
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The united front in the French resistance (nationalists and communists) shared the common identity of being French1.
I think we can all agree that identifying with American patriotism is entirely reactionary – as a settler colony, there’s basically nothing redeemable there.
Is there an effective shared identity for people in the U$ to resist from?
I feel like the 2020 BLM protests had a shared identity of anti-racism, but it feels like that energy has dissipated.
1: not an identity without controversy, but not as directly reactionary as a full settler colonial national identity.
The best I can argue from is The Civil War, but famously that is not shared for all Americans. There also has not been a unified history around it, and even the anti-slavery history of the Civil War has been systematically minimized, and is only recently making a resurgence.
The second best one would be WW2 but agian that is a strech because it often feels like we more stumbled backwards into doing it, and then stayed in the fight to minimize the spread of communism, and then the second it was over aided facism regrow. Heck germany was inspired by the United States and Japan Bombed the US because it was worried the US’s Imperal ambitions would hinder its own.
so not really