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.

  • The fighting front in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (groups including Zionists and Bundists) shared the common identity of being Jewish.

  • 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.

  • ProudCascadian@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    I was thinking of Cascadia, often called the PNW (Pacific Northwest) much more, but not enough people seem to be considering themselves as Cascadian, and as my earlier AskLemmy post went, you cannot build up nationalism, especially national chauvinism, and then expect to have it be a vehicle for socialist education and activity.

    Really, I was thinking that Cascadia could be introduced to people first as a left-wing movement, and then once people are subsumed into a cohesive Cascadian culture, they could be given instruction on communism. But altho I see some promising developments, there would be significant work building the shared identity from the ground-up.

    Lots of Cascadians are, ultimately, progressive. They are built from left-wing resistance to the U.S. gov’t. It’s stuff like the 1999 WTO protests, resistance to the War On Terror, and the legalization of weed that Cascadians are proud of. But I don’t know that these people will resist effectively. Hell, I don’t know how fascism could be effectively resisted with a shared identity!

    Honestly, my main gripe with a shared identity is that resistance to fascism must be class-based first and foremost. The entire purpose of fascism is to protect capitalism from its own contradictions, by any means necessary. I don’t exactly know what a shared identity would do compared to educating and organizing workers into anti-fascist groups.