Couple of things:
- Information : Keep creating and sharing reliable information. Not just opinions, information. We are still the majority, the US fascists is not world, we need to flood all the relevant platforms with our content.
- Education: The reason these monsters have any credibility is because some people are too mentally weak to defend themself from misinformation. We need to educate around in any way possible. Everything counts, keep trying.
- Humor is a powerful weapon. These people have giant ego and 0 humor. Let’s keep ridicule them and have fun at their expense. They need to understand we have some things they can never touch, even with all the money in the world, solidarity, humour and camaraderie.
also hope. Got to show people there is hope so they dont fall into apathy. They got to know others are actively doing something and refuse to be silenced. I have been trying to look for this for long time now and its not been good.
- Don’t do fascism yourself. (This is harder than you think.)
- If it is within your power, prevent others from doing fascism.
- Help others that have had fascism done to them.
- Grow your power, in order to do #2 more often.
Avoid creating or growing an organization that has a strong hierarchical structure, as they are easier for fascists to convert/infiltrate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs Democratic structure can be better, but beware giving any power to the intolerant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#Paradox_of_freedom_and_paradox_of_democracy
If you are comfortable, #4 might involve physical, martial, melee, firearm, etc. training. It is not unlikely that the current fascists in power use violence to grow/retain power, and that might require violence as part of the fight. That said, I feel there’s plenty of non-violent ways to fight fascism, for now.
The problem with violence is that the bad guys are usually better at violence.
I wouldn’t say better at violence, just better equipped.
I wouldn’t say better at violence, just better
equippedfunded.FTFY.
Not true. Japan was definitely the Bad Guys. US was able to commit more violence then they were.
The US wasn’t the good guys against Japan. They just were slightly less bad for about 5 years before and 6 months after.
So you don’t know your history.
Or they know that there weren’t any “Good guys” around.
The Japanese war crimes are well known in the West. The US ones are routinely glossed over or ignored.
Wars don’t determine who was right. They determine who’s left.
There are no evidence of US war crimes even coming close to Japan, Germany or Russia at the time or superceding it. Where are the tens of millions of bodies, rammer? Where are they?
You’re joking, right? Nazi Germany wishes they could commit genocide in the scale of the early US.
The 105000 in Tokyo not enough? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo The 25000 in Dresden not enough? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden The 246000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki not enough? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki Post war casualties? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
But those civilian casualties aren’t in the millions unless you count the post war casualties. That makes the US a “Good guy”. Right?
Woo hoo…? I guess!
Sure but to Japanese Americans where the bad guys. Which is why the real world is more complicated then a movie but everyone wants to make it black and white.
In all fairness there are non violent support roles
It’s not that people die commiting acts of violence, it’s that people minding their own business or just trying not to be violent, also end up violently dismembered with their families.
Supporting the violence is participating in it. Maybe you’re on the “good” side but still. If you work a normal 9-5 go home shoot the shit with your buds and volunteer at a homeless shelter… You’re still not a good person when your job is making bombs getting shipped to Israel.
Somebody has to build the drones and c4 kits
To be fair, both Ghandi and MLK Jr. showed that there is an alternative to violence that can be very effective in gaining support.
That being said, I do think the Black Panthers/Malcom X were very instrumental in the civil rights movement. I think the leadership saw two options: work with MLK Jr. or deal with the Black Panthers.
Of course, the FBI, amongst other groups in power at the time were able to successfully thwart MLK Jr.'s attempt at educating people about class consciousness. MLK Jr. wasn’t just fighting for equal rights among racial lines, but also economic lines.
Hell, Jesus Christ was able to start an entire religion based in nonviolent protest based around class consciousness. Of course, that religion has since been perverted, but the point still stands.
MLK and the Civil Rights Movement have been majorly white-washed since they happened. That narrative is a big reason why protests since have been largely ineffectual in the US.
MLK supported the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and said that the only reason that he didn’t do anything more than the sit-ins and such was because that was already illegal and anything more could get them all jail time. And he was still seen as being just as violent as they made BLM out to be.
The Million Man March was seen as a threat of violence by white America. If he could get a million people to mobilize in the capital and shut down the entire city, what else could he get them to do?
Also, civil rights were only put into law after a full-on week of violence that burned down entire sections of cities and did millions in property damage. Years of protests led to flowery words. A week of riots saw the bills written, voted on, and codified into law.
They only worked with the threat of violence if they failed.
And they’ve both been WAY watered down in modern tellings…
Gandhi could grind the whole subcontinent to halt just by asking. It was economic violence in a sense.
#VITA
Violence really, really fucking sucks.
It may be necessary, but if there’s any other option you should look to that first. If it legitimately comes to violence a lot of innocent people are going to suffer in a big way.
There where options they didn’t work.
Yeah, I feel like violence is evangelized online in odd ways.
The class that suffers the most in violent uprisings is the lowest class. By orders of magnitude. For every member of the bourgeois that is taken down, tens or hundred or thousands of every day people are injured or killed.
But it’s already happening. They’re already suffering.
“They” (we) aren’t being killed en masse.
Sure so violence is messy painful so just let it happen. And people wonder how America got to where it is.
Take it from us who dont live in a country built on liebensraum created by genociding the native population and has spent all its VERY short existance not knowing tyranny or how to separate church, state and private companies.
Classless society leads to death of millions and classed society. Lowest class loves killing lowest class. Once the preceived opressors run out more will be found. People wanting violence want it for selfish reason. The guy calling to kill all landlords today will be raping your small daughter in a state organized torture dungeon tomorrow. Yes its graphic, yes this is what you get when you want mass violence, stop pretending otherwise and buying into propaganda of evil people.
This is how it has always been, and always will be. Slow social reforms is the way to get what you want. Violence just creates more violence.
I agree with your anti-violence stance, but can’t ignore the reasoning behind it.
I don’t believe there’s some special class that either accumulates or breeds violence. I don’t believe that the “lowest” class, whatever that might be, is fixed on killing its kin. The people ruling Nazi Germany certainly weren’t the “lowest” class when they were making their impactful decisions, many of which killed members of other classes, not theirs.
Neither Trump nor Musk are “low” class, yet they tend to hold the more absurd and anti-human views, separating people into worthy and not-so-much and believing they can make destinies.
There are dangerous people in our world, which are often attracted by power, often any sort of power they can rise to. Violence included.
Regardless, violence only breeds violence, for so many reasons that no comment can hold. Violence traumatizes and creates examples and “Why can’t I, too?..” questions, etc.
Im just going by history. hitler, stalin, polpot everyone thought themselves to be the low class and went on to kill millions of the low class. “kill ceos” will end up with timmy who used to work the cashier walking along a mass grave and shooting blindfolded sara from call center, thomas who runs a joinery firm and their daughter abby in the back of the head so they fall into a grave they dug. Its how these things work and its what the people who call for violence want in to end up as.
I don’t get you americans. Trump didnt put the hand on a bible so in a society where boob in public space is a christinan moral apocalypse no memes have been produced and gone viral. Musk was on drugs and literally did nazi salutes and no memes showcasing president musk doing the greeting the reich way have been widely spread. No memes showing how facebook was literally censored. No memes showing the literal nazis who got a pardon yesterday.
There is prime material to weaponise internet culture in a way that takes a tiny bit of effort and no money, that will surely swing the cultural pendulum to the left. But no, you can find thousands of the posts saying “peaceful ways have been all tried and failed” followed by talks of mass violence and how centrists are actually evil.
Makes me wonder if they want to solve their problems at all or just want to fantasize about mass murder so they feel better.
I don’t get you americans
I’m Russian, living in Russia, who’s never even been abroad.
But no, you can find thousands of the posts saying “peaceful ways have been all tried and failed”.
I was agreeing with you the whole time, saying that violence is never the answer and does eventually bring peace and prosperity.
Im just going by history. hitler, stalin, polpot everyone thought themselves to be the low class and went on to kill millions of the low class.
If I consider myself to be the upper class, will that make me upper class? Most likely not, so I don’t see how that makes literal top figures of their state at their respective time anywhere near “lower” classes.
The tyrants you’ve mentioned also all lived in the 20th century and operated within very hierarchy-based political systems, at least in terms of influence. Each had immense power of their country and everyone around, and especially everyone lower in the hierarchy. There is nothing “low” class about any of this.
“kill ceos” will end up with timmy who used to work the cashier walking along a mass grave and shooting blindfolded sara from call center, thomas who runs a joinery firm and their daughter abby in the back of the head so they fall into a grave they dug. Its how these things work and its what the people who call for violence want in to end up as.
This is what I’m agreeing with.
You just seem oddly focused on the class aspect of this, especially the “lower” class, in a way that seems condescending and patronizing. All I’m saying is that it seems very disrespectful and a wrong thing to focus on.
I am simply focusing on the class aspect since the people I am writing this about are focusing on the class aspect. It is neccesary they understand what this means. Socialist society with free healthcare, more time off work, fairer wages and restrictions on big companies does not mean you need to abolish capitalism or that it will only benefit the poorest. It will benefit literally everyone and that is what the focus should be on rather than bloody uprising.
I just assume everyone is American here since the posting hours are very early for you and me.
Peace as a choice is only possible when the option of violence exists.
There were other options. I think those other options failed at this point in time.
Hanlon’s razor dictates that we should not attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence.
So, by posting this response, you are very, very stupid. You are incompetent of understanding the fundamental difference between the VIDEO of Elon saluting Adolf Hitler, and the IMAGES of all these people waving.
If you respond to this, you’re showing that you have enough intelligence to understand the difference between Elon’s gesture and a wave, so you’re therefore defending his sieg heil and you remove all doubt that you are a Nazi, and therefore unwelcome here, or anywhere.
I guess you have a third choice of claiming it was a joke or a shit post or whatever.
Show me ONE of those photos as a video making the actual gesture.
Just one.
His spokesperson in Italy said that he meant to say “I give my heart to you” with that gesture. I mean, dude, just own it up. It’s not like there would have been any repercussion.
Why haven’t i seen this side by side with Nazis? Or him put in the rally or along side Hitler etc?
These all seem like simple edits
Well that’s a little on the nose isn’t it.
It’s a weird salute he’s doing there that guy on the left.
Some kind of awkward excitement reaction i guess.
His heart really goes to his people, doesn’t it?
I did this one…
I wonder what he is thinking, that is odd looking face
It’s the face of effort. Dude probably doesn’t get off of the computer chair very much, and lifting his arms above the ‘loose hang, elbows bent, wrists resting on desk’ takes a lot of effort, and thus the grimace from struggling.
Nah, it’s just drugs. I mean, I think Elon Musk strikes me as a person who’d love to have the… for the lack of a better word, “courage” to perform the Nazi salute under such circumstances when actually totally sober, but a guy that had to fake Path of Exile 2 success is simply not gonna throw a Nazi salute on stage, even in front of people he sees as supports and loyalists.
I wonder if that absolutely bizarre specimen has been truly sober in last years. Or ever, if we count being high up your own ass as an altered state.
Violence isn’t the answer; it’s the path.
Find charities, news outlets, podcasts, rights groups or other entities that match your message and support them.
Donate money, time, and whatever else you can to help.
I think everyone understands that being loud might draw the wrong attention, so do what you can to support the ones that you want as much as you are able.
if you find a group that supports a violent message or is too extreme, congratulations you are supporting the opposite entity by giving them an enemy and giving normal people more reasons to support the opposite entity.
The current powers that be are so outrageously cartoonishly criminal that simple and pure education ought to be enough.
“oh what you think of people with nazi tatoos who run neo nazi militias kill cops”
“hate them”
“trump just pardoned them, here look at these articles”
Run for political office. The Democrats have no intention of fixing anything, let alone making things better.
And if you believe you’re not qualified or don’t know how to do the job, just remember that both parties are filled with incompetent fools, fakes, conspiracy crackpots, and morons. It would take considerable effort to do worse than some of the people in congress.
Politics stopped working at the federal level, and only some states are full democracies.
So running for local office either won’t help at all, because the fight is not there. Or it’s a dangerous futile thing to do - if one were to be outspoken and all public against injustice.
The only hope for many is to make new things while breaking as little of the old as possible
I really want to. But getting started in that is kind of like looking for a door in the castle walls.
Many state and local democratic parties are far ahead of the national party in the progressive shift, too, and it’s absolutely easier to inspire change in a local or state party than the national party.
And it’s not just running for elected offices. In-party roles like chair membership and planning can be effective for driving change in a party, and also be the difference in whether the elections continue to go to the shoe-in forever politicians or someone new. The people supporting a change who have access to the resources of the party are just as important as those running.
And if anyone is thinking “my city/county/state party is so tone deaf/old/corporate” consider that they might simply need someone younger or more progessive to become more involved. In an ideal world, they’d be able to speak more with the community, but sometimes they are understaffed or unaware and rely on who is involved to provide context. Become that context.
I don’t want to put a target on my or my families backs 😓
Run for office, or find someone worthy and get behind their run. Don’t worry about Republicans for now,vee have to defeat the Democratic establishment before we will have the ability to fight Republicans.
Run for office? With what money?
Well, both parties are also filled with money and other resources needed to ensure that only two parties can succeed.
We need alternative voices in office, but I don’t think that’s happening without some form of revolution. The best one can hope for in lieu of that is co-opting a party’s direction over a span of decades, like the fascists did to the GOP.
If you can’t organize a political movement, you definitely can’t organize a revolution. Also, if history is a guide, the people with wealth tend to end up in power after a revolution.
Lenin was not wealthy. Stalin was not wealthy. Despite the many failings of the USSR, let us not forget that compared to life under the Tzars it was a smashing success.
And it did put power in the hands of people who weren’t born to privilege.
I wonder how well thought past revolutions actually were. Did they seriously plan what they will do after they win or did things just move on and suddenly they had to come up what to do now.
Anyways, people with wealth taking power is definitely something that must be planned against or you might as well not do anything in the first place.
Same as anything else. Go talk to people who you consider fascist, understand their point of view and concerns, and then make arguments to them in terms of those concerns.
Frankly, I don’t think that it’s likely an incredibly-entertaining task.
I also think that the term “fascist” has a pretty extensive history of being overused, though I suppose from the standpoint of this, doesn’t really matter much.
The word fascism is rarely overused, people just don’t understand that fascism is the most common political ideology in the western world. People think that fascism only applies to jack booted thugs and concentration camps when it is really just banal bigotry and arrogant incompetence.
Yeah I mean, can’t a guy just love Hitler and be a white supremacist without being call a nazi anymore? The left always have a way overusing terms, right. /s (in case)
The people who are ignorant of what they voted for are persuadable. People who I consider fascists only understand one thing.
Luigi
Did nothing wrong
And how do we fight people like Luigi?
Why would I want to fight a man who did more for our citizenry with 3 bullets and a few seconds than the occupy movement and the entire DNC combined managed to accomplish in fucking decades?
Found the healthcare exec
When you fight one evil with another evil, it’s natural to ask how to deal with the second one after it eliminates the first one.
That’s some Batman level bullshit argument.
How so? What he did isn’t encouraged by any means.
Indiana Jones had the right idea
Imagine the memes if someone started shooting Nazis and his name happened to be Mario
Luigi did nothing wrong
The ear guy tried.
I found this book to be very compelling and topical: https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/civil-resistance-what-everyone-needs-to-know
Civil resistance is a method of conflict through which unarmed civilians use a variety of coordinated methods (strikes, protests, demonstrations, boycotts, and many other tactics) to prosecute a conflict without directly harming or threatening to harm an opponent. Sometimes called nonviolent resistance, unarmed struggle, or nonviolent action, this form of political action is now a mainstay across the globe. It was a central form of resistance in postwar anti-colonial movements, the 1989 revolutions, and the Arab Awakenings, and people are practicing civil resistance at higher rates than ever before around the world, including in the United States. If we want to understand the manifold protest movements emerging around the globe, we need a thorough understanding of civil resistance and its many dynamics and manifestations.
That’s the neat part…
We need to make detentions and deportations difficult. For a group and keep your eyes peeled. Report any activity that you see by CBP in your area. Be a nuisance. Film them. Shout at them. Drive slow in front of their vehicles. If you can, do more that I won’t say online.
By making every single step they try to take excruciatingly painful by any means necessary.
I am writing this with the assumption that you are tacitly asking about US politics because of the moment in history. What I have to say will make people mad, but here goes:
A lot of the people on this webzone are what Eitan Hersh called “political hobbyists”. These are people who do not really take political action in their daily life despite voting or occasionally attending a rally. They may be well informed about politics, but being well-informed in itself is not really effective at changing politics. You can get on your phone and “rub the glass” to complain about politics, or to find people who agree with you. But outrage on social media won’t change anything, and if rubbing the glass and occasionally voting is all you do, then you are a political hobbyist.
Political hobbyism mostly functions as a consumerist approach to political engagement. A political hobbyist will passively receive news and information about politics, but will never really try to change anything, because to them engaging in a news feed is all they really do. That consumerism is painfully apparent here when, for example, posters denounce a Democratic candidate as being “not exciting” or someone they are “not passionate about” as if the candidate was the newest model in a brand of laptops that failed to zazzle in Q3. We see signs of political hobbyism again when political parties are treated as entities that are somehow completely separate from the public. For example when a lemmy user denounces the Democratic party for not doing what they want. “The Democrats need to do X!” Why are you complaining about that on the internet? You know the DNC isn’t reading these threads right?
If you really wanted to influence the Democratic party (which I think is the best bet for resisting fascism right now) why aren’t you lobbying the party? Why aren’t you mobilizing voter bases? Why aren’t you building political power in your local community so you can influence larger political organizations? Because its hard, because you don’t know where to start, because you are busy? Ok, but fascism is coming, and you are too busy to do anything about it. Or too overwhelmed to even try?
The truth is, if you wanted your ideas (and I am including here opposition to fascism as an idea) to influence policy, or what candidates gain traction in nomination races, then you should have been working on that LOOOOONNNNNG before the national candidate was nominated. Treating the Democratic party as a vendor that offers political products is a losing strategy for gaining influence. There will be an endless parade of glass rubbers ready to denounce the various political parties, but by and large, they didn’t do anything to gain influence with those parties. Their denouncements are ignored, they are irrelevant. My advice is to ignore the glass-rubbers. Identify one or two local issues in your physical area and try to improve them. What you should do is find a little slice of America (or your own country if you are not American) and try to make it better. Use those efforts to build up influence at higher levels. My goal here was to convince you not to listen to the glass rubbers. But my advice for resisting fascism is: Try to build political networks, try to mobilize local voters in local issue elections. Doing this will make your network an invaluable asset to larger (state and national) organizations. If you have a network of voters, of issue conscious citizens, or donors, larger organizations are going to want to leverage that network when it comes time for lager races. That gives you leverage. That gives you power. The glass-rubbers are going to tell you that is impossible. Its not. People do it all the time. The book I cited has examples of people doing it. Fascist conservative groups do it all the time. So why not you?
I will admit, this is hard. When I first read Hersh’s book I was offended, because when he was describing political hobbyists, he was describing me. But it did give me some motivation to think about politics from the perspective of power. And set me down the road of trying to do all things I wrote about here. It is early days for me yet, and I have only seen limited success. My work complicates things. I am busy, and often overwhelmed. But fascism is coming.
If “political hobbyism” isn’t impactful how did MAGA come to power? Why does russia have a military arm specializing in radicalizing people who participate in “political hobbism?”
The truth is, political messaging, no mater the venue, needs to be countered at every level. Be it on the darkest depths of the internet or in a local venue that is just as unlikely to ever coalesce into something meaningful.
Political hobbyists are people who consume political content, but don’t do anything substantive with it. There probably are MAGA types who are political hobbyists, but the movement in general is extremely politically active, organized, motivated, and effective across all levels of public life. They influence conservative politics through those organizational efforts. The MAGA movement came to power by leveraging networks of activists and voters to build political infrastructure that could be used to drive voters to the polls, fund candidates, coordinate campaigns and set the scope of policy, which they do very effectively. If you want to be effective you should be building political networks too.
Also, this is an aside, but political messaging is way less effective at persuasion than your comments here suggest. In practice this type of messaging tends to only reach people who already agree with it, and the persuasive effects of media on political attitudes have very weak effects that are attenuated quickly (Look up something called the hypodermic model of mass communication if you want to know more). Benkler, Faris, and Robberts offer really good illustrations of this in practice. By analyzing the spread of political messaging in news and social media networks, they show that most of the misinformation, lies, and propaganda that circulate through conservative media spaces do so because conservative media consumers want that content and punish outlets that criticize it. Creating ‘counter messaging’ is unlikely to be effective because conservatives would just reject the messaging.
Misinformation, lies, and propaganda is counter messaging and narrative reinforcement.
You want to disaude me from believing that most MAGA are “political hobbiests” and not some overwhelming political force working all angles of the political spectrum; show me numbers. I won’t be convinced by you just flatly stating, “this is my stance.”
Finally, you’ve done nothing to address that there is known foreign adversary operations to effect election results all over the world and they operate right here on the internet.
Very well said! Thank you.
Voting was the thing to do, too late now for that. History has the answer for what’s next
Now that’s what I call evolution
the Democratic party (which I think is the best bet for resisting fascism right now)
Which part of the last eight years informed you that liberals have any interest in resisting fascism?
democratic party looks more like sockpuppet that is supposed to make you feel protected from the knife on the other hand.
Trump siccs a white supremacist lynch mob on the capitol - the liberals do nothing.
The MAGAS kill Roe v. Wade - the liberals do nothing.
The Dems have zero credibility because they don’t DESERVE any.
A lot of this is true. And the system is designed to keep the masses in such an incredibly insecure place when it comes to living and health that they cannot find the time, money, or courage to risk it.
People are barely keeping afloat. They pay their rent hoping their next paycheck will bring up their account balance before the check clears. People are using installment plans for the grocery trip. They have irregular swing shifts and/or two jobs that make scheduling incredibly difficult.
Organizing stuff takes a lot of people’s time, mental effort, and money.
I’m definitely not saying don’t organize. I’m saying do try and understand especially for the less privileged (among Americans) it’s really an insane task.
just don’t vote. Its not my method but I heard from a lot of folks who feel that can fight fascism. you mileage may very.
