Don’t forget the material basis for these shifts! While The Discourse of “practical” truangulating centrists tends to show this rightward path, it is because (1) they were already fundamentally reactionary, they tend to just use this logic as an excuse for why they tolerate far-right positions, and (2) the right is supported by the ruling class to address some of the “problems” it creates, like a marginalized underclass that wants enough income to feed their children, housing, and safety from violence.

The shift right is not driven simply by debate or ideology, but by the arenas where degradation in material conditions due to capitalism meet the ruling class’ need to deflect blame to the marginalized (who they can reap larger profits from) to placate the less marginalized. Racism, nationalism, and extermination campaigns are created and maintained for the interests of capital, with the common people being pushed and prodded to fall in line with repeating the (usually ad hoc) new or recycled scapegoats and underclassrs. Wouldn’t want you to point blame in the right direction!

This is a bad faith meme that represents anyone making any form of compromise as a rude

They’re not depicted as rude, they’re depicted as an know-it-all eager compromiser that ends up working for the forces of reaction because they have no real principles or red lines.

close-minded

That is generally the attitude of “centrists” and people that go out of the way to congratulate themselves on “being practical” by triamgulating. If they were open to actual principles they eould no longer be triangulating on them, and triangulating is their primary commitment.

genocide supporter

Like virtually every Democratic member of Congress and both of their presidential candidates? Anyone tolerating that is indeed complicit. It does not require any mental gymnastics to acknowledge this.

posted by an account that frequently posts pro-China

No!!! I almost passed out when I read that. You’re telling me there are good aspects of a designated enemy of empire!? Impossible.

Open-minded btw.

sometimes pro-Russia propaganda

Not another designated enemy!!! I almost died when I read this.

and hops between Western country-focused lemmy’s pending election cycles.

Is this supposed to imply something bad about them?

Set up a proper backup system for your server. I like to use borg. Just to be safe, make a copy of your drive as well (like full disk rsync). Then do a clean install and restore as if your drive had failed. If your backups missed anything, you will now know and can fix your backup system and can still recover from your rsync’d drive.

You might also want to take this opportunity to start administering your server with code, like using ansible or other remote provisioning tools. This makes your system configuration reproducible so that you only really need to back up a few kinds of data like media files or databases.

America has already used all of the tools of fascism before, often to greater extremes. Lebensraum found its inspiration in Manifest Destiny, for example.

Expect to see things you have seen before, but now with clearer eyes. When Dems want to double their police forces and tighten preparedness of the national guard instead of maintaining or increasing social spending, recognize that the boots they are lacing are intended for your necks.

It will be strikingly similar to the last 4 years but the partisan narratives will simply flip in various ways, as will those of allied media. The bad things that the Trump admin did in his first term that became suddenly tolerable, ir even “good” under Biden? They will be back to being good again. Dem politicians will be back to calling themselves “the resistance” despite losing another layup because they could not do more than campaign on “at least we aren’t them” while presiding over a genocide and economic decline for the average person, both with intentional policies. Remember that they are all PR and cynicism and are lying to you about what they will do, as they are not beholden to a disorganized public in any way.

To be clear, bad things will be happening. It is only reasonable to feel some despair for them, but if you can allow that to motivate you to substantive action you can escape merely being a witness to suffering and can begin to work materially against it. Much of that suffering was going to happen anyways or a different form of suffering may have happened under a Harris regime. It’s not like Democrats did much with their power, they tend to pretend they have no party discipline or power even when thry have the presidency and Congress, so they allowed the major shifts at state levels to occur largely unheeded and served a right wing agenda at the national level. So it is important yo ask the question of what action you can take that does not depend on expecting Democrats to save you. They won’t. What we need are other organizations, ones that organize independently of ans often in opposition to the Democrats, Dems who otherwise suck up all political energy demanding improvements to people’s lives and turn it into more cops and wars.

So, the two ingredients to effective organizations are political education and organization building. The former is just an organized form of reading and teaching, and it is essential because we have all internalized false ideas of how politics functions. They are taught to us by the ruling interests that keep us disempowered *because * this keep them in power. The latter is about growing and improving an organization so that it can have greater and greater leverage and develop strategies for gaining and wielding power (and power is not things like letter writing campaigns to already-elected ghouls, it is making demands that must be met or else).

You can enjoin this kind of project in many ways. You don’t need to jump deeply into a hardcore organization straightaway; it can be useful to join one that is only oushing yourself moderately at first. Maybe a mutual aid organization or a single issue or single community group. The important thing is that it is of the left and therefore not of thr Democratic party. You can also engage in your own political education independently if you’d like, which can keep the pressure down when you are first starting out with irl left work.

And of course please do rely on whatever community you already may have, including here. I am happy to chat here or via DMs if you’d like and can answer basically any question you might have. I’m also happy to recommend readings that you may find useful or helpful.

Also, a reminder that community can start with just one other person, you don’t need to personally create a large organization overnight.

The left inherently recuperates through political education, but cannot do much about the society of the spectacle without winning revolution, as it does not have cultural hegemony. Debordists would traditionally go on mindfulness field trips and such, which is fun, but not really building power.

The left needs to build: it needs more and members. This means political education and doing organizing work, with everyone levelling up skills, planning and executing actions, recruiting, studying, and running education programs for the recruited. And all of this means nothing without the context of an organization, so join one that looks good and revisit your decision every few years as you develop politically yourself.

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