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.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    4 days ago

    I think their role in influencing the current US culture is actually another way for the dominant white culture to license their own bigotry. They take the advances of these struggles and appropriate it to their own identity, diluting it of its revolutionary charecter. The white dominant culture also uses its physical proximity to these subcultures as a way to dismiss notions of bigotry and entrap those within white culture into reaction.

    This is a very astute observation.

    Therefore, it’s my opinion that some kind of progressive identity will be forged in the process of anti-imperialists building dual power against the state apparatus. In the process of that struggle, a progressive, anti-imperialist shared culture will gradually manifest to counter act the reactionary US culture which currently exists.

    I think this is the only viable path.