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.

  • darkernations@lemmygrad.ml
    111·
    6 days ago

    No they will have to cultivate one; the material conditions of settler colonialism and imperialism are obstructions for which those benefits need to be impeded (and currently increasingly being done so by successive US governments as the Global South resists).

    Even where one may be able to find it in immigrants from the Global South, it is not a given because there is a tendancy to resolve the contradiction of your homeland having its people and resources plundered by becoming/collaborating with the plunderer (ie extends beyond gusanoism)

    ===

    I would also add progressiveness found in Westerners often hits a wall when challenging imperialism sufficiently because it is the improvement of material conditions from Global South exploitation that afforded this; any western “rights” for children/women/LGBTQ/non-white westerners/anti-ableism though maybe hard fought for domestically was ulitmately won due to the above imperialist subsidy - and the reaction and deterioration of the above is directly proportional to the changes in those international relarionships with the global proleteriat.