Votings worked out great so far... Price of freedom I guess 😂. We should vote for whatever party represents our class interests but don't get illusions, we were given 'democracy' to stop revolution and the only true path to democracy is a workers revolution to bring about Democratic workers control of our economy.
Essentially, mainstream politics use voting to limit us, we post our ballot and that's that, the ruling class can continue in which ever form they take, whether Democrat or Republican but the power still sits with the same class, in my case, Tory, Labour, Green, or Reform. Tory's did a shit show for 14 years, then labour came in, and we see no stop to austerity, we see the same allegiance with Israel. Our voting the 'left' did little, we must play an active role in fighting for our class interests.
Yes it is, I have had an argument several times with .ml folks who articulated that voting legitimised the system making you culpable for its shortcomings.
Very common around election season, I think the first time I heard it was actually last midterm in 2022.
Hell there are 3 comments on this post saying don't vote. There's no ambiguity they aren't saying voting isn't enough, in no uncertain terms they are saying don't vote.
Is there an argument to be made that the ratcheting mechanisms of FPTP skew the results towards the lesser of two evils? Absolutely, especially at the presidential level.
Where that is less true is the midterms and municipal elections. We've seen proof that we can have real progressives like Mamdani and we need even more like Abdul El-Sayed. Progressive policy is popular and any movement needs allies.
I'm not saying don't protest, I'm not even going to say do it peacefully but voting still has it's place.
Yes, but I don’t know which ones you’re referring to so in order to have a productive conversation I need to know specifically what you’re referring to.
This is not the first time I’ve seen this conversation play out like this.
Liberal: Leftists believes crazy thing!
Leftist: Can you give us examples of “crazy thing”?
Liberals: No, I cannot.
Or in the rare instance where the liberal does actually cite a source, the source isn’t saying what the liberal is saying they said.
I will continue to believing this is self-soothing delusion by liberals until they can provide some evidence for their claims.
Like, What you’re saying is so grossly untrue you don’t even want to take an opportunity to cherry pick someone saying something not broadly supported by leftists?
Americans don't know how to riot. If they did when Renee Good was killed, there would be three dead cops in the street. Because there was 2 dozen citizens there and 3 police officers.
If that happened in my country, she might still be dead, but so would the cops.
For a police force that constantly "fears for their lives" as an excuse to murder their own citizens, they sure as fuck don't feel enough fear.
Make sure you give democrat politicians your assurance that you will vote for them no matter what their policies are, giving them literally no reason to appeal to you at all
Def get that frustration, Dems are not here to help us or anyone but the rich.
However - rather than not vote, go vote 3rd party. If voting is low effort for you (it isn't always...), that's a tiny but legible stamp of "nah fuck this".
Whereas non-voting in the US is only seen by the powers that be as "guess they're fine with either of us lmao, must not be too unhappy, hell yeah, may the great grift roll on!"
Send the signals ya mean, folks. Silence is not a signal.
Part of the problem with the Democrats is their infighting. Even if a Democratic candidate appeals to you and you like his policies, most of the time it doesn’t mean his policies are going to get passed or even introduced to get voted on.
The one thing Republican party has is its members solidarity and consistently voting as a block the last 30 years.
The main difference between the two parties is one is run on feelings and no policy and the other runs on watered-down corporate policy passed along as the status quo.
Both parties produce poor quality legislation for the country that is deliberately flawed in slightly different ways.
Your comment makes no sense. When did I mention anything about leftists or liberals? What do you even mean about “we’re not assails of the DNC”. What does that have to do with the fact that Democrats have a hard time getting elected because of their shit policies and fighting on which policy is the right way to go forward.
Unfortunately, pedophiles ("misopede") of the bourgeoisie are well defended in France too. Brigitte Macron, Polanski, Depardieu, ...
It need big mobilization to trial to be made, and even more for the crime to be acknowledge. Their is still no trial for Epstein accomplices
Good propaganda is. The recipe is to use some facts and add a cause, derive a conclusion, exaggerate the fact, mention other facts irrelevant in the context but implying something in combination...
Just lying gets you the people already in you camp. The others don't have a reason to believe you. But if you add some facts, the lies become easier to believe if the person doesn't already know better.
You're right! Should've put "necessarily" based on facts. At the very least that propaganda distorts facts. Basically propaganda doesn't really care about being factual and will go out of its way to ignore inconvenient facts.
It wasn’t always a meaningless pejorative. McCarthyism did that, which is still going on.
Did you fail history class like super bad or something? There's been propaganda from literally every country for basically all written history, and people have been calling it for just as long.
I am not only versed in history, but capable of the most cursory internet searches.
Per wikipedia "The meaning of propaganda changed from a neutral term for spreading ideas to a heavily negative label for manipulation and deception during World War I and World War II."
Wear your dunce cap with shame, Professor Numbnuts.
You have to link sources ya screwball. It's funny you didn't and I think you know why you didn't link it. It may have something to do with the propaganda you're spewing:
The term is essentially contested and some have argued for a neutral definition,[54][55]: 9 arguing that ethics depend on intent and context,[55] while others define it as necessarily unethical and negative.[56] Emma Briant defines it as "the deliberate manipulation of representations (including text, pictures, video, speech etc.) with the intention of producing any effect in the audience (e.g. action or inaction; reinforcement or transformation of feelings, ideas, attitudes, or behaviours) that is desired by the propagandist."
Propaganda has existed since the beginning of recorded history. In the New Kingdom of Egypt, the state utilized a "Clean Victory"[failed verification] ideology to prioritize the preservation of Maat (cosmic order) over factual military reporting.[21] Temple reliefs sanitized warfare by omitting violence against non-combatants,[22] portraying the Pharaoh as a disciplined protector rather than a chaotic aggressor.[23][unreliable source?] This was exemplified by Ramesses II, who reframed the Battle of Kadesh, a stalemate, as a divine personal victory.[24] To visually reinforce this authority, artists used hierarchical scaling to depict the king as a giant among men,[25] utilizing motifs like the "smiting of the enemy" to symbolize the Pharaoh's triumph over chaos.
According to Harold Lasswell, the term began to fall out of favor due to growing public suspicion of propaganda in the wake of its use during World War I by the Creel Committee in the United States and the Ministry of Information in Britain: Writing in 1928, Lasswell observed, "In democratic countries the official propaganda bureau was looked upon with genuine alarm, for fear that it might be suborned to party and personal ends. The outcry in the United States against Mr. Creel's famous Bureau of Public Information (or 'Inflammation') helped to din into the public mind the fact that propaganda existed.
McCarthyism is a political practice defined by the accusation and investigation of left-wing individuals of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s, heavily associated with the McCarthy era.[1] After the mid-1950s, U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy, who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity after several of his accusations were found to be false.
McCarthy was a huge asshole, and caused immense harm. However, claiming he's the reason there was a negative connotations with the word, then saying it happened during WWI and WWII, and then only viewing it from the incredibly modern western centric view is incredibly dishonest.
Um, actually, propaganda can technically be in the presentation of true facts. It can also be a promotion of a certain philosophy that interprets those facts in different ways.
You can't judge the effectiveness of any action only by its immediate measurable effects. The working class of the US is in a long period of finding their courage and strength and solidarity after decades of propaganda hid it from them. Every peaceful protest encourages bigger peaceful protests and they encourage more disruptive protests. Every protest that gets tear gassed all to hell by the police pisses people off more and encourages more and bigger and even more disruptive protests.
I hate how slow this is all going too and I have been ready for and advocating for direct action for a long fucking time now. I have taken direct action when the scale is small enough that I can do it alone. It takes time to rouse a population and it is embarrassing to our country that it's taking so long but it is absolute bullshit to say that what we've done has been 'nothing effective'. Class consciousness is higher than I've ever seen it in my lifetime and it's only growing. The amount of people ready for direct action and the amount of groups organizing is greater than I have ever seen it. That's all progress. It's happening. Instead of being a doomer go out and organize and you'll see what is growing.
And the riots in France are effective? All it has done is create campaign material for Le Pen’s political ads for the presidential election next April. These Nazi are already spinning it as a migrant problem. Le Pen will certainly win now as she surges in popularity.
BS we had riots with BLM. They are putting up mass surveillance because they know that it’s coming again. “A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?” - MLK
I think the main difference is that American police will kill people. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know anything about French police but my impression of European police is that they have less guns and trained not to kill?
I'm not saying I'm right, it's just a hunch. Rioting in the USA could put you in prison, life crippling fines, maimed or death. In ratio we imprison the most people in the world and our prisons are notriously inhumane. If you don't go to prison then the fines and medical bills will cripple a person.
We have instances of protestors sitting on the ground in unison while getting pepper sprayed to the face or even burned with hot gas canisters. Even when our police use rubber bullets they aim for the face. I think the usa is more fascist than france and that makes it very difficult to fight back.
The only way I'd riot is if I was willing to endure our screwed up legal system. Rioters are usually labeled as violent antifa gang members and treated like enemies of the state.
If those same people were waving the red white and blue and threatening to pillage the capitol, that's cool.
Brace yourself for an apparently super edgy hot take:
Rioting > voting
rioting & voting > just rioting
just voting > nothing at all
Discouraging voting or rioting = supporting the status quo.
I'm stealing random awesome Lemmy quotes for early voting encouragement cards. Would you like your user handle to be kept out of it or can I credit it?
There's no anti-pedophile or anti-Israel party in the USA, unfortunately.
Our voting options are limited to exclusively pro-Israel Epstein billionaire buddies. Remember, Israel is USA's 51st state, and has been since we created it after WWII.
Our government is 100% committed to maintaining this base of operations in the middle east. It's not just another country, it's our baby.
Regarding pedophilia, it sure would be nice to open those Epstein files, eh? Biden and Trump don't agree on much, but for some mysterious reason they both agree that Epstein is their little secret.
If you ever want to tense up a boomer, pronounce DOS like "dose" instead of "daws". Works every time. Also tell them its a spanish/mexican word that the operating system was jokingly named after, because it works hard.
Its a power move at thanksgiving to derail the uncles if trump comes up. If they want to talk nonsense and bullshit, then we all can too.
I have done it before in my own research on certain subjects they were in relevant points of my studies regarding. Sauerbraten is the closest I'll go off FOSS solid anymore and that once in the last decade to build something for someone else and demo it in certain ways and it's FPS nature to their interests. I have discarded interest in video games personally. I got a good stack of board games to replace them in my life. Comps are for something else primarily now so until I get better at those skills, VG's for my vapors.
Absolutely vote? Wasn't it the democrats who originally started using those concentration camps? Why the hell should we keep supporting liberals as an obligation, this kind of stuff is why you'll never move left of the Democratic Party.
I remember people being deported all the time under liberal administrations technically legally, and you were all silent about it. What's happening now is the natural extrapolation of where that was heading.
You started at "Democrats were using these camps", and now you're at "the Democrats did something that can be interpreted as a precursor to what's happening now".
You're wildly shifting the goalposts to keep Democrats central to your ire, while also saying that something is just as bad as something that is an escalation of it.
A preceding B does not make A equivalent to B.
The camps existed on a (slightly) smaller scale under Biden, but the escalating brutality has remained relatively constant across Democrats and Republicans, it's just that the Republicans came later.
I'm sure I can talk about two issues in separate comment threads. I think everyone is sure of that. Are you sure you understand how to converse in english comrade? Or are you wasting my and everyone else's time with meaningless callouts?
I don't give a shit if ICE was brutalizing people legally vs. if ICE was brutalizing people illegally and breaking the constitution of your slave state imperialist country.
Yes and, it’s also gotten worse. You and the person you’re replying to are both right. Liberals have been deporting people too, and also, there really are a bunch of new concentration camps, because the conservatives want to deport even more people. You’re both right!
No, because one of these people is seemingly totally alright with just settling with a more acceptable number of people being deported if it follows the correct legal process. Both parties should be fucking overthrown. There is no acceptable amount of continuous death and brutality.
I think we should have all but completely open borders. The only reason I see to have border controls to control the flow of potentially invasive plants and animals, to prevent the import of food, etc that doesn't meet domestic safety guidelines, basic demographic and census tracking, and to make sure that anyone coming in knows their rights and isn't being abused.
more acceptable number of people being deported if it follows the correct legal process
This is a very confusing statement to me. What do you think deportation is?
I'm not sure how you can be particularly upset that someone is okay with people being sent home after getting a proper trial and legal due process, particularly when the alternative is "not that".
Of the choices the Democrats are most likely to stop the concentration camps so of my three options (vote Dem, vote Repub, do nothing and/or vote third party) I'll do the one that is most likely to effect the change I want
Let's look at a historical analogue. In the past Democrats were anti-gay marriage. I think Clinton only came around on it in like 2012 and Obama in like 2008 or something like that, who knows. But recently in the grand scheme of things. Can you imagine in like 2006 being like "well the Democrats and Republicans both don't support the gay community so I guess I'll just not vote"? But the Dems were the most likely to eventually come around, and enough people pushed them in that direction that they did the right thing. That's how politics works
Well he's right. As an American I don't worry about a civil war or citizen revolt here. Present-day Americans can yell at their televisions and post badass tirades online, but they couldn't revolt their way out of a Walmart. It's far too inconvenient. Even after the Jan 6 idiots forced their way into the Capitol building, what did they do - committed minor vandalism and took selfies.
Plus I think it's important to point out for folks outside the US that even though this place looks like a spiraling shit hole from the outside (and rightly so) that for tons of people living here life is completely normal and pleasant. Living in such a fortunate/privileged position you have to put effort into paying attention and giving a shit in order to see that the emperor has no clothes.
The American Way is for most of us to have things pretty good at the price of a horrifyingly large minority of us suffering for it. Plus of course all the people in other countries that our government has fucked with or killed.
This place always has had the reputation of being the richest country in the world, yet unable or unwilling to guarantee healthcare or a thousand other things. Our outward appearance may be dumpster fire, but our bank account still has a lot of zeros. People are too comfortable to force change.
Now, if the midterm elections are a horror show that gets people killed and it kicks off the AI stock market meltdown, it could probably change quickly. I just don't expect it to change quickly.
In a real insurrection I wouldnt be at all surprised to see citizens lining up to protect costcos with their lives. Walmarts, I'm not so sure would gat the same treatment. No shade intended on costco. I love costco.
Walmart can go fuck itself.
I'm trying really hard to understand...is this tweet screenshot aiming to discourage Americans from voting?
I'm also genuinely curious where these riots in France are going to end up. What's changed so far? From my perspective in the US, it seems they might've pushed a big segment of moderates away and made it more likely the far right will win the next election. Oh yeah, did you know they vote in France, too? Because it's a fucking democracy.
From a french point of view, the far right is mostly gaining ground in the medias, people tend to support the high school kids. Also, we are used that important movements of protest be surrounded by black blocks, police disguised into rioter to rise violence, and thiefs coming to still easy targets. Some real manifestants have been extremly violent on some police officer, but exceptionally.
Some of the most dangerous amunition of riot police has been changed for a bit less dangerous ones... not a big victory yet. Parents tend to take side with their kids, teachers too, and a large part of those having younger kids. Those turning to far right were just waiting for an excuse to do so, the good news is that kids know how to fight (they will need it again soon).
I very much understand and feel this. I still hope everyone in every democracy turns out to vote, counter to what this screenshot of a tweet recommends.
Yes of course, REAL communists let trump get a third term by avoiding the vote, so that he can kill off all the fake communists, leaving only the one true ideologically pure commie Jesus to usher in The Revolution
That's a bit extreme. But yeah, the US constitution actually legalizes Luigi in extreme cases. And if the next election would somehow just not happen for a year that would probably the exact case that rule had been written for.
Passing houses of congress from one bourgeois party to another doesn't actually give power to the people. We will see what comes of the French protests, but it's far likelier to get larger scale change.
Actually, most of our schools are very well funded, receiving more funding than schools almost anywhere else in the world.
The problem is that much of the funding is squandered on administration, athletic programs, and poorly thought out capital expenditures ... while leaving some of the most important fundamentals -- like teacher salaries and basic academic supplies -- still chronically underfunded. There are many problems with American schools, and very few of those problems could be solved by dumping more money into the schools without making any other changes.
This isn't really the issue. Most of that lower nation-level population density is due to the fact that the US possesses some truly vast wilderness and wasteland within its territory. I'm no geographer, but I'm pretty sure there's no equivalent of the Nevada desert contained within France somewhere, let alone Alaska.
The real issue with the US is suburban sprawl. The population isn't too spread out on a national level; it's too spread out on a local level. If the US had European-style urban design, the existence of some vast empty wilderness won't affect things. We're talking about how the people in the inhabited parts of the land live. The wasteland is irrelevant.
This is great news! I was unaware that when I traveled by car or by plane that I can just skip going over and through the parts that are irrelevant. I've been wasting so much time moving through space up to this point.
Yup. It is simply harder to organize people, especially when the offending politicians can literally fly away to Mar-a-Lago. It costs a ton for people to get around the nation, there is no such thing as job security or universal health, and so on.
We will have to overhaul or replace the Constitution, with it having rules to at least allow for free fuel, basic housing, and free generic food. This would allow people to be freed from the shackles of the workplace, and be able to relentlessly protest against politicians.
One day, you look out your window as you're getting your morning coffee...to see 100 colorful individuals setting up tents and raising barricades...across the T-intersection at the end of your cul-da-sac.
About 8 million Americans took to the streets in March to protest Trump. About 500,000 took to the streets in France on the 17th. In both cases, there's disagreements about the real number of participants, but overall the math indicates similar levels of participation.
But the US has 1/10 the population density as France. Americans were spread out over a much larger area, so participation appeared lower.
Black Americans and immigrants and native Americans are the only people who aren't like that. Some of them might be chauvinists, but they might be the only groups of people in America whose material interests are totally opposed to American imperialism.
Everyone gets that wrong. Second amendment was meant for fighting for the government (well regulated militia) not against it. They didn't want to have to keep a standing army. AR 15s aren't going to do much against drone swarms or nukes.
Every US president was a dictator and a war criminal. I'm actually glad that Trump, while being those things (which aren't good), is really incompetent at them.
sad but true. we have become soft from decades of relative peace within our nation. its been so long that too many do not remember the fighters that bought us all that peace and have taken it for granted. i understand, as did everyone that ever had to do it, that fighting is mean, nasty, ugly, and painful in ways few can comprehend. but thats literally what it takes to take back our peace from the ones that took it from us. preaching, and words in general are never quite enough.
Ukrainians are the slaves, neofeudal serfs to their blackrock lords.
All opposition parties are banned.
All opposition media has been seized by the state.
They can't vote.
Men can't even leave to escape being kidnapped off the street ICE style. They're dressing like old women in public. They're drowning in rivers trying to escape this death cult. Just an impossible VICTORY OR an inevitable DEATH?
These riots are not benefiting the French. The riots were plotted and funded by the people in control as part of a Problem, Reaction, Solution pattern to institute whatever policies they want next.
When pallets of bottles and bricks mysteriously show up on the street, someone should ask why the system suddenly provided means to burn itself.
Americans did riot not that long ago. Threatened to hang the vice president, had zipties to kidnap politicians, wiped shit on the walls, killed some cops. It was a whole thing.
The French population are not nearly as armed to the teeth as Americans.
There are more Americans with guns than cops. Start killing them and they'll stop killing you. Bring out the Guillotines and set an example. After that the police may start to wake up in the morning and might rethink putting on their uniform for the day.
So it's better to bend over and let them kill you, take everything from you, execute you in the streets, remove your way of life, because "The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" are 350 million pussies with guns?
What's your 2A for anyway? Killing some poor person stealing a loaf of bread? What happened to "Good people with guns stop bad people with guns"? Last I checked cops are the bad people down there.
Also, the French aren’t doing armed resistance.
Because France hasn't voted en mass to militarize their public police force over decades.
Have you ever been in an armed conflict? Because I have and I suspect that you have no idea what it is you're demanding people do. I also suspect that you would not be willing to do that were you in our shoes.
Militarizing the police was never put up to a vote here either.
No, but I serve in the Armed Forces. I was just never deployed before releasing.
Have you? I feel like you're speaking as someone who've never spent one second serving your country.
Because I have and I suspect that you have no idea what it is you’re demanding people do
Being a space cadet isn't service your country. I'm demanding a country that masturbates over having guns, that watches children get gunned down in classrooms and their fellow citizens executed on the streets to stand up against a totalitarian regime that is actively trying to take away your way of life.
I also suspect that you would not be willing to do that were you in our shoes.
If my country ever succumbed to what America has, you better believe me and my fellow citizens would defend what is right. But I don't live somewhere where armed police are abducting citizens and our government is killing people in our own streets. But if it were you better believe if I'm going to die I'm taking at least someone with me.
Militarizing the police was never put up to a vote here either.
I know the American education system is bad, but come on, this is low hanging fruit...
An analysis of budgets for more than 100 law enforcement agencies across the country uncovered the opposite. Ninety percent of cities and counties increased spending for police between the fiscal years 2018-19 and 2021-22. None of the North Carolina cities the team analyzed reported an increase in law enforcement budgets.https://abc11.com/post/defund-the-police-budgets-crime-safety/12324529/
Police budgets are set year by year. And the people who decide these budgets are elected officials. If money is not spend on the service, it doesn't roll over. So all that money needs to get spent, so they generally purchase military surplus supplies. They'll buy things like APCs, military grade weapons, munitions, hire more and more officers for a smaller and smaller population... These are real things that exist in America. And the people making these decisions are voted on my the community.
I was willing to die for my country. Fortunately for myself and a lot of others, we never needed to since my country doesn't go to war over a sneeze. But I certainly did serve it, and I am still more than willing to die for protecting it, both foreign and domestic.
Are you? Because it certainly seems like you and the majority of your fellow countrymen are a bunch of gun toting, nationalistic pussies.
Well, I like the enthusiasm, but American police also have armored vehicles, tear gas, and helicopters, and then there's the national guard and the military who will be called upon if an insurrection threatens the government and they have automatic weapons, grenades, mortars, tanks, artillery, planes, and drones. Fighting against all that won't be that simple and clean.
It's easy to forget what French people are rioting over. But also easy to forget that Macron has held office in an iron grip for decades, with no end in sight.
That's all you're worth, don't care if you're butthurt for being nothing but a real tough keyboard warrior.
Must be compensating for being ridiculed in this post and the by the rest of the world.
So bye, blocking you.
You can vent your little frustrations somewhere else, not interested
And with all due respect to France, I love their tenacity, I watched a video of cops fleeing. American police look for the opportunity to go on the offensive. Even when fleeing, they're absolutely tagging people on the way out.
Tell me what protest achieve anything recently in france ? The last one that did actually end up by reform following protest is more than 20 year old.
You have no cpu of what you r seeing but you think it does something.
Yeah, that's why their government as a whole has shifted to the right. The American government wants riots, so they can send in the military and take control of states. The only thing insulating Americans from the federal government is that the states have some modicum of control. The feds are going around it with ICE, but ICE has a limited purpose. If rioting happens, the national guard has a much broader purpose. That needs to be avoided, at least til after election time. The votes need to happen.
This is not actually true, a great deal of credit for the passing of the Civil Rights Act can and should be attributed to nationwide riots that took place in the week directly following Martin Luther King Juniors assassination. Known as the Holy Week Uprising. The American public education system purposely doesn’t talk about this and pushes the peaceful protest angle to prevent any meaningful organizing. It can easily work here too
The Civil Rights Act that people commonly refer to as "The Civil Rights Act" passed on July 2, 1964. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, passed in the wake of the MLK assassination and Holy Week Uprising, is more limited in scope than the 1964 bill and mostly covers Native American rights and Fair Housing.
I saw you are anti electoralism. I’d love someone to explain: you want violence but not the non violent way too? Why is that mutually exclusive to you?
Voting now does not exclude burning down the place afterwards? The Jan 6ers voted twice prior to taking a shit on a desk. If they can do it, surely we can too?
That's because Americans do it wrong. The people in charge know that there is no real solidarity amongst the population, so they can just wait it out. The riots won't spread, won't last longer than a week or two at worst, and everything will go right back to the status quo once the new shiny distraction comes out.
Edit: as a response to all the comments, it doesn't have a great track record in the current media landscape.
It never does. Haven't you seen what the French government is now trying to do? They're claiming it's leftist separatists doing this and it has nothing to do with schools. They will try everything to delegitimize instead of doing the right thing. Cost benefit analysis will be run later and they might learn a thing, but mostly don't.
Anyone with a political opinion needs to read this before spouting off their opinion. What we see in this country right now is exactly who this country has always been.
It is a cruel irony that this great promise of democracy is rarely realized in practice. Most of the great political reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been accompanied by massive episodes of civil disobedience, riot, lawbreaking, the disruption of public order, and, at the limit, civil war. Such tumult not only accompanied dramatic political changes but was often absolutely instrumental in bringing them about. Representative institutions and elections by themselves, sadly, seem rarely to bring about major changes in the absence of the force majeure afforded by, say, an economic depression or international war. Owing to the concentration of property and wealth in liberal democracies and the privileged access to media, culture, and political influence these positional advantages afford the richest stratum, it is little wonder that, as Gramsci noted, giving the working class the vote did not translate into radical political change. Ordinary parliamentary politics is noted more for its immobility than for facilitating major reforms.
We are obliged; if this assessment is broadly true, to confront the paradox of the contribution of lawbreaking and disruption to democratic political change. Taking the twentieth-century United States as a case in point, we can identify two major policy reform periods, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. What is most striking about each, from this perspective, is the vital role massive disruption and threats to public order played in the process of reform.
The great policy shifts represented by the institution of unemployment compensation, massive public works projects, social security aid, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act were, to be sure, abetted by the emergency of the world depression. But the way in which the economic emergency made its political weight felt was not through statistics on income and unemployment but through rampant strikes, looting, rent boycotts, quasi-violent sieges of relief offices, and riots that put what my mother would have called “the fear of God” in business and political elites. They were thoroughly alarmed at what seemed at the time to be potentially revolutionary ferment. The ferment in question was, in the first instance, not institutionalized. That is to say, it was not initially shaped by political parties, trade unions, or recognizable social movements. It represented no coherent policy agenda. Instead it was genuinely unstructured, chaotic, and full of menace to the established order. For this very reason, there was no one to bargain with, no one to credibly offer peace in return for policy changes. The menace was directly proportional to its lack of institutionalization. One could bargain with a trade union or a progressive reform movement, institutions that were geared into the institutional machinery. A strike was one thing, a wildcat strike was another: even the union bosses couldn’t call off a wildcat strike. A demonstration, even a massive one, with leaders was one thing, a rioting mob was another. There were no coherent demands, no one to talk to.
The Orange Plague is counting on riots so he can declare martial law, send in the military against our own people (in blue states only ofc), and stay in office like the fat fucking parasite he is.
I’m definitely impressed with the French coordination. It’s not just one or two cities, but a nearly nation wide movement of both non violent and some violent actions.
That’s a lot of people on the same page for an particular issue. Last time Americans agreed like that was because a lot people across the spectrum do not like the way they’ve been treated by cops.
Governments are emergent systems to me, they come from the people, the culture, the land, etc. If Trump died tomorrow it would upset some plans, but the process that is capital takeover in American can't be stopped so easily. It's a catch 22, and Nash equilibriums all the way down. Realistically we stand to lose a lot if we fought back now, and we've collectively chosen Trump over anything else twice now. Americans don't really know what they want, and they're not even capable of doing what it takes to get it. For all that we argue about here most people don't put much more though into it than, who did I vote for last time - or they don't vote at all.
French here, the current state of the riots are not natural. There's been some extremist left wing politicians doing calls to violence and teens stupidly follows that. It's just like the call to storm the capitol.
Peaceful protests do happens, and actually the police are protesting for funding too and were mostly in the lines.
(And before you ACAB, keep in mine that ACAB is a USA problem. stop pushing those stupid views toward europe, we are not like you)
This isn't a good comparison. I hate the US and all Americans more than you do but it's like asking Macron if he'd rather these protests or have these people vote for him.
"They're calling us out as pussies! We know how to deal with that!" doots an internet icon. waits for reward. forgets what's going on because back in the feed.
No I downvoted because americans have had plenty of inspirational riots, even just in the last few years. Like the George Floyd uprising or J20 or standing rock. Its just annoying when people seem to forget or ignore history. And when they compare the actions of liberal parties and youth/left wing protestors. Of course those are not the same...
I would not bring those protests up as examples...
You've got your own Gestapo, regular murders by police and other authorities, a fully functioning pipeline, and Trump sending things toward a black hole at rapid pace.
Literally the things you mentioned had zero effect.
As always, just wait a short while, do it again, no resistance at all.
And you think these were your big impactful "inspirational riots"? They were isolated, short, and reflective of the renowned apathy and feed distraction of American society. A win isn't even on the cards, you'd be struggling to qualify them for a recognition award.
You are simply ignorant of the riots that happen here. Summer of 2018, 2020 we were seeing a constant stream of videos that looked exactly like what we're seeing france right now. It's probably still happening but they've figured out how to scrub the videos from the internet
I think no one is impressed or remembering because these events don't seem to have produced any meaningful change. The french get what they ask for every time because they escalate until they do.
The french get what they ask for every time because they escalate until they do.
Sadly this is just not true. Yes they are able to slow down austerity measures, but beyond that there isnt much meaningful (aka long term progressive/anticapitalist) policy change. The meaningful change is in the people, in their relationships, in their organizing and in popular opinion. Same can be said for the US: '2020 never ended’: how Black Lives Matter organizing taught Minneapolis to handle ICE surge
It might take years to force changes, and right after, capitalism/political power/... will try to claw those gains back, so the fight is on all the time, just now it's one of those times that gets headlines.
When we got the 35h workweek, man was it attacked in the media and all over the place for over a decade, actually the right wing still brings it up like someone placed a turd on their birthday cake, but it's one of those things we fought for, and didn't let go of. FYI if you work 37.5 or 39h/w, you get "free" days you can take whenever you want, like 11 or 22 a year. Neat huh? That was one fight, we're on another now, and ten, twenty years from now it will be yet another.
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What prevents you from voting and rioting at the same time?
There is absolutely no reason to not vote.
If you aren't voting AND burning down government buildings you are leaving levers of power unpulled. Pull them all.
Unpopular opinion:
And buying weapons.
Preach.
bioweapons? I thought those were illegal but whatever you say
They should still vote. Not sure why that's off the table entirely.
The meme is wrong. Instead of “: vote” it should say “: do nothing “
Every election season like clockwork, just like the debate about trans people in sports.
Votings worked out great so far... Price of freedom I guess 😂. We should vote for whatever party represents our class interests but don't get illusions, we were given 'democracy' to stop revolution and the only true path to democracy is a workers revolution to bring about Democratic workers control of our economy.
Essentially, mainstream politics use voting to limit us, we post our ballot and that's that, the ruling class can continue in which ever form they take, whether Democrat or Republican but the power still sits with the same class, in my case, Tory, Labour, Green, or Reform. Tory's did a shit show for 14 years, then labour came in, and we see no stop to austerity, we see the same allegiance with Israel. Our voting the 'left' did little, we must play an active role in fighting for our class interests.
Nothing about this says that voting is off the table entirely....
No but it's a common sentiment from circles on here
No, its not. Liberals just imagine it is whenever anyone points out how the Democrats suck.
Yes it is, I have had an argument several times with .ml folks who articulated that voting legitimised the system making you culpable for its shortcomings.
Very common around election season, I think the first time I heard it was actually last midterm in 2022.
Hell there are 3 comments on this post saying don't vote. There's no ambiguity they aren't saying voting isn't enough, in no uncertain terms they are saying don't vote.
Is there an argument to be made that the ratcheting mechanisms of FPTP skew the results towards the lesser of two evils? Absolutely, especially at the presidential level.
Where that is less true is the midterms and municipal elections. We've seen proof that we can have real progressives like Mamdani and we need even more like Abdul El-Sayed. Progressive policy is popular and any movement needs allies.
I'm not saying don't protest, I'm not even going to say do it peacefully but voting still has it's place.
Please cite your examples.
No, thank you, you are very capable of reading through this very low comment post to find them. I'm not going to litigate reality with you.
Yes, but I don’t know which ones you’re referring to so in order to have a productive conversation I need to know specifically what you’re referring to.
This is not the first time I’ve seen this conversation play out like this.
Or in the rare instance where the liberal does actually cite a source, the source isn’t saying what the liberal is saying they said.
I will continue to believing this is self-soothing delusion by liberals until they can provide some evidence for their claims.
Like, What you’re saying is so grossly untrue you don’t even want to take an opportunity to cherry pick someone saying something not broadly supported by leftists?
I think the tabel is falling off the table.
Do both.
Americans don't know how to riot. If they did when Renee Good was killed, there would be three dead cops in the street. Because there was 2 dozen citizens there and 3 police officers.
If that happened in my country, she might still be dead, but so would the cops.
For a police force that constantly "fears for their lives" as an excuse to murder their own citizens, they sure as fuck don't feel enough fear.
Cops dont actually fear for their lives.
Then fucking make them.
Don't all of you have guns too?
5% of us have guns. The guns per capita ratio is so high bc the ones with guns have so many guns.
That sounds like a "you" problem.
69% of statistics are made up.
32% of Americans own guns. 4 in 10 households have a firearm.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
The police unions are a protection racket.
Make sure you give democrat politicians your assurance that you will vote for them no matter what their policies are, giving them literally no reason to appeal to you at all
Def get that frustration, Dems are not here to help us or anyone but the rich.
However - rather than not vote, go vote 3rd party. If voting is low effort for you (it isn't always...), that's a tiny but legible stamp of "nah fuck this".
Whereas non-voting in the US is only seen by the powers that be as "guess they're fine with either of us lmao, must not be too unhappy, hell yeah, may the great grift roll on!"
Send the signals ya mean, folks. Silence is not a signal.
Part of the problem with the Democrats is their infighting. Even if a Democratic candidate appeals to you and you like his policies, most of the time it doesn’t mean his policies are going to get passed or even introduced to get voted on.
The one thing Republican party has is its members solidarity and consistently voting as a block the last 30 years.
The main difference between the two parties is one is run on feelings and no policy and the other runs on watered-down corporate policy passed along as the status quo.
Both parties produce poor quality legislation for the country that is deliberately flawed in slightly different ways.
Leftists aren't liberals, it's not "infighting" because, as much as you insist, we aren't DNC vassals
Your comment makes no sense. When did I mention anything about leftists or liberals? What do you even mean about “we’re not assails of the DNC”. What does that have to do with the fact that Democrats have a hard time getting elected because of their shit policies and fighting on which policy is the right way to go forward.
Unfortunately, pedophiles ("misopede") of the bourgeoisie are well defended in France too. Brigitte Macron, Polanski, Depardieu, ... It need big mobilization to trial to be made, and even more for the crime to be acknowledge. Their is still no trial for Epstein accomplices
i mean that kinda ignores what la, minnesota, new york, etc did earlier this year.. especially considering people were murdered by ice because of it.
I don't think propaganda is based in facts.
Good propaganda is. The recipe is to use some facts and add a cause, derive a conclusion, exaggerate the fact, mention other facts irrelevant in the context but implying something in combination...
Just lying gets you the people already in you camp. The others don't have a reason to believe you. But if you add some facts, the lies become easier to believe if the person doesn't already know better.
You're right! Should've put "necessarily" based on facts. At the very least that propaganda distorts facts. Basically propaganda doesn't really care about being factual and will go out of its way to ignore inconvenient facts.
It wasn't always a meaningless pejorative. McCarthyism did that, which is still going on.
Putin has become our "Emanuel Goldstein" foreign boogieman for everything the Epstein Class has done to us.
Did you fail history class like super bad or something? There's been propaganda from literally every country for basically all written history, and people have been calling it for just as long.
I am not only versed in history, but capable of the most cursory internet searches.
Per wikipedia "The meaning of propaganda changed from a neutral term for spreading ideas to a heavily negative label for manipulation and deception during World War I and World War II."
Wear your dunce cap with shame, Professor Numbnuts.
You have to link sources ya screwball. It's funny you didn't and I think you know why you didn't link it. It may have something to do with the propaganda you're spewing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
McCarthy was a huge asshole, and caused immense harm. However, claiming he's the reason there was a negative connotations with the word, then saying it happened during WWI and WWII, and then only viewing it from the incredibly modern western centric view is incredibly dishonest.
Um, actually, propaganda can technically be in the presentation of true facts. It can also be a promotion of a certain philosophy that interprets those facts in different ways.
It also ignores our lack of healthcare and our militarized police force.
Those cities did nothing effective.
You can't judge the effectiveness of any action only by its immediate measurable effects. The working class of the US is in a long period of finding their courage and strength and solidarity after decades of propaganda hid it from them. Every peaceful protest encourages bigger peaceful protests and they encourage more disruptive protests. Every protest that gets tear gassed all to hell by the police pisses people off more and encourages more and bigger and even more disruptive protests.
I hate how slow this is all going too and I have been ready for and advocating for direct action for a long fucking time now. I have taken direct action when the scale is small enough that I can do it alone. It takes time to rouse a population and it is embarrassing to our country that it's taking so long but it is absolute bullshit to say that what we've done has been 'nothing effective'. Class consciousness is higher than I've ever seen it in my lifetime and it's only growing. The amount of people ready for direct action and the amount of groups organizing is greater than I have ever seen it. That's all progress. It's happening. Instead of being a doomer go out and organize and you'll see what is growing.
And the riots in France are effective? All it has done is create campaign material for Le Pen’s political ads for the presidential election next April. These Nazi are already spinning it as a migrant problem. Le Pen will certainly win now as she surges in popularity.
As if they wouldn't be ranting about immigrants anyway
Same thing happened in Germany when they let bankers run the country, same thing happening in ALL of Europe now.
When you make grassroots socialist populism impossible you make faux-populist fascism inevitable.
Division is irrelevant to the point in hand. Especially when there's nothing there.
BS we had riots with BLM. They are putting up mass surveillance because they know that it’s coming again. “A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?” - MLK
BLM wasn't far enough, because police are still killing black people.
BLM morphed into Defund and Reallocate, which Biden then came out against and increased police funding instead. The centrist Dems strangled it.
Even just defunding the police is too radical for some people.
How long ago were the MLK riots?
Th quote remains relevant
Goodlord, that was 60 years ago.
I think the main difference is that American police will kill people. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know anything about French police but my impression of European police is that they have less guns and trained not to kill?
I'm not saying I'm right, it's just a hunch. Rioting in the USA could put you in prison, life crippling fines, maimed or death. In ratio we imprison the most people in the world and our prisons are notriously inhumane. If you don't go to prison then the fines and medical bills will cripple a person.
We have instances of protestors sitting on the ground in unison while getting pepper sprayed to the face or even burned with hot gas canisters. Even when our police use rubber bullets they aim for the face. I think the usa is more fascist than france and that makes it very difficult to fight back.
The only way I'd riot is if I was willing to endure our screwed up legal system. Rioters are usually labeled as violent antifa gang members and treated like enemies of the state.
If those same people were waving the red white and blue and threatening to pillage the capitol, that's cool.
I'm stealing random awesome Lemmy quotes for early voting encouragement cards. Would you like your user handle to be kept out of it or can I credit it?
Lol, fuck this comm. They banned you for encouraging people to vote? It's so fucking transparent what they're doing.
Interesting concept, terrible execution, run by people with an agenda to push. I've finally decided to block it.
Rioting = participatory democracy
Voting for status quo defined by elite = not actual democracy
I'm not trying to convince you to not vote, but the system is rigged and I'm trying to convince you to riot.
No it isn't, it's counter effective because it helps maintain the liberal parties as the farthest left conceivable parties.
If we instead convinced people to become communists instead of uselessly voting for liberals we would have more actual communists.
"Perpetuate the system of fascist capitalist pedophile elites! But also fight against it!"
There's no anti-pedophile or anti-Israel party in the USA, unfortunately.
Our voting options are limited to exclusively pro-Israel Epstein billionaire buddies. Remember, Israel is USA's 51st state, and has been since we created it after WWII.
Our government is 100% committed to maintaining this base of operations in the middle east. It's not just another country, it's our baby.
Regarding pedophilia, it sure would be nice to open those Epstein files, eh? Biden and Trump don't agree on much, but for some mysterious reason they both agree that Epstein is their little secret.
PSL – Party for Socialism and Liberation https://pslweb.org/
Parties outside the duopoly can win if you vote for them.
True.!
What an erudite and persuasive argument. You sure showed me!
My understanding is it's the reverse, USA is a vassal Israel state.
Yeah, Israel is the biggest “Little America.”
Americans never needed to learn how to fight properly due to their innate ability to go "berserker mode".
America when kids are literally murdered at shool: "the soind of children screaming has been removed"
"soind"
🤣
Boinc!
I didn't get the reference at first, but searched for the phrase and found it. Incredible.
Bash>DOS
comparing shells to operating systems... command.com will prevail!
If you ever want to tense up a boomer, pronounce DOS like "dose" instead of "daws". Works every time. Also tell them its a spanish/mexican word that the operating system was jokingly named after, because it works hard.
Its a power move at thanksgiving to derail the uncles if trump comes up. If they want to talk nonsense and bullshit, then we all can too.
Think what you like, I supposed. Closed will always steal everything you own after you die.
Was just commenting on the technical details. I only use proprietary software when paid to do so. On Linux for 25 years.
Dang, I also play proprietary games :(
I have done it before in my own research on certain subjects they were in relevant points of my studies regarding. Sauerbraten is the closest I'll go off FOSS solid anymore and that once in the last decade to build something for someone else and demo it in certain ways and it's FPS nature to their interests. I have discarded interest in video games personally. I got a good stack of board games to replace them in my life. Comps are for something else primarily now so until I get better at those skills, VG's for my vapors.
Absolutely vote? Wasn't it the democrats who originally started using those concentration camps? Why the hell should we keep supporting liberals as an obligation, this kind of stuff is why you'll never move left of the Democratic Party.
I remember people being deported all the time under liberal administrations technically legally, and you were all silent about it. What's happening now is the natural extrapolation of where that was heading.
You started at "Democrats were using these camps", and now you're at "the Democrats did something that can be interpreted as a precursor to what's happening now".
You're wildly shifting the goalposts to keep Democrats central to your ire, while also saying that something is just as bad as something that is an escalation of it.
A preceding B does not make A equivalent to B.
The camps existed on a (slightly) smaller scale under Biden, but the escalating brutality has remained relatively constant across Democrats and Republicans, it's just that the Republicans came later.
Nothing was done illegally or unconstitutionally before this and to suggest otherwise just shows that you are a troll or one the nazis
Biden funding and supporting genocide was clearly and obviously a violation of the Leahy laws. Thats not really up for debate.
So now you pivot from your initial claim regarding deportation and want to discuss "supporting genocide"?
Are you sure?
I'm sure I can talk about two issues in separate comment threads. I think everyone is sure of that. Are you sure you understand how to converse in english comrade? Or are you wasting my and everyone else's time with meaningless callouts?
Idk, maybe liberals committing a genocide is kinda relevant to the original point of not voting for them.
And nothing the Republicans are doing is illegal or unconstitutional according to the Republican supreme court.
"according the the Republican supreme Court" Means nothing
It doesn't change the law or the constitution, what they are doing is against it, it's not debatable
I don't give a shit if ICE was brutalizing people legally vs. if ICE was brutalizing people illegally and breaking the constitution of your slave state imperialist country.
Can you show me where they were eprevously "brutalizing" people?
I think the biggest science was the cages that were still in use at the border.
Can you show me murders, shootings, neighborhood sweeps, CCOT transfers or people being trafficked to countries they have never been to?
Yes and, it’s also gotten worse. You and the person you’re replying to are both right. Liberals have been deporting people too, and also, there really are a bunch of new concentration camps, because the conservatives want to deport even more people. You’re both right!
No, because one of these people is seemingly totally alright with just settling with a more acceptable number of people being deported if it follows the correct legal process. Both parties should be fucking overthrown. There is no acceptable amount of continuous death and brutality.
I think we should have all but completely open borders. The only reason I see to have border controls to control the flow of potentially invasive plants and animals, to prevent the import of food, etc that doesn't meet domestic safety guidelines, basic demographic and census tracking, and to make sure that anyone coming in knows their rights and isn't being abused.
This is a very confusing statement to me. What do you think deportation is?
I'm not sure how you can be particularly upset that someone is okay with people being sent home after getting a proper trial and legal due process, particularly when the alternative is "not that".
It becomes a problem when they also start killing people with names like Renee or Alex.
All countries deport people.
Fuck you
If you're going to complain about deportations in one country and remain silent about them everywhere else, perhaps it's you who should get fucked.
I'm no fan of deportations of people who aren't harming anyone, but I'm also no fan of hypocrisy.
I do care about deportations in other countries, but they're happening somewhere beyond my sphere of influence as a communist in North America.
no u
Dumb comment by me
I will STFU for a bit
The commenter I was replying to certainly seemed to be mad at that. Did you read that comment?
Yeah. I guess it just seems you are minimizing the point of the conversation. Please disregard if it was irrelevant to your point
Of the choices the Democrats are most likely to stop the concentration camps so of my three options (vote Dem, vote Repub, do nothing and/or vote third party) I'll do the one that is most likely to effect the change I want
Let's look at a historical analogue. In the past Democrats were anti-gay marriage. I think Clinton only came around on it in like 2012 and Obama in like 2008 or something like that, who knows. But recently in the grand scheme of things. Can you imagine in like 2006 being like "well the Democrats and Republicans both don't support the gay community so I guess I'll just not vote"? But the Dems were the most likely to eventually come around, and enough people pushed them in that direction that they did the right thing. That's how politics works
This is backwards. The reason they came around to gay people were because of violent riots.
You can riot and also vote, they're not mutually exclusive acts
Stfu you don't actually want people to riot you're being dishonest.
Can we do both?
Or better, can we do either instead of posting on niche social media sites and think it's some form of effective revolutionary act?
Do all three.
Jefferies has already said that he's not going to push for an end to the war.
So they aren't altering their losing strategy at all then. Replacing the head of the DNC with Ken Martin didnt change a single thing looks like.
We should still vote to get progressives in where we can, we need all the allies we can get
Well he's right. As an American I don't worry about a civil war or citizen revolt here. Present-day Americans can yell at their televisions and post badass tirades online, but they couldn't revolt their way out of a Walmart. It's far too inconvenient. Even after the Jan 6 idiots forced their way into the Capitol building, what did they do - committed minor vandalism and took selfies.
Same here.
Plus I think it's important to point out for folks outside the US that even though this place looks like a spiraling shit hole from the outside (and rightly so) that for tons of people living here life is completely normal and pleasant. Living in such a fortunate/privileged position you have to put effort into paying attention and giving a shit in order to see that the emperor has no clothes.
The American Way is for most of us to have things pretty good at the price of a horrifyingly large minority of us suffering for it. Plus of course all the people in other countries that our government has fucked with or killed.
This place always has had the reputation of being the richest country in the world, yet unable or unwilling to guarantee healthcare or a thousand other things. Our outward appearance may be dumpster fire, but our bank account still has a lot of zeros. People are too comfortable to force change.
Now, if the midterm elections are a horror show that gets people killed and it kicks off the AI stock market meltdown, it could probably change quickly. I just don't expect it to change quickly.
+1 Insightful
In a real insurrection I wouldnt be at all surprised to see citizens lining up to protect costcos with their lives. Walmarts, I'm not so sure would gat the same treatment. No shade intended on costco. I love costco. Walmart can go fuck itself.
Wait, are you saying that Hollywood to the wrong side of the whole thing?
that's not fair though. they also write strongly worded letters.
I'm trying really hard to understand...is this tweet screenshot aiming to discourage Americans from voting?
I'm also genuinely curious where these riots in France are going to end up. What's changed so far? From my perspective in the US, it seems they might've pushed a big segment of moderates away and made it more likely the far right will win the next election. Oh yeah, did you know they vote in France, too? Because it's a fucking democracy.
What bad is trash liberals that think they are the good guys
The only thing that pops up around election time is liberals mildly start to pay attention. Our message is consistent
From a french point of view, the far right is mostly gaining ground in the medias, people tend to support the high school kids. Also, we are used that important movements of protest be surrounded by black blocks, police disguised into rioter to rise violence, and thiefs coming to still easy targets. Some real manifestants have been extremly violent on some police officer, but exceptionally.
Some of the most dangerous amunition of riot police has been changed for a bit less dangerous ones... not a big victory yet. Parents tend to take side with their kids, teachers too, and a large part of those having younger kids. Those turning to far right were just waiting for an excuse to do so, the good news is that kids know how to fight (they will need it again soon).
Great perspective, thank you for sharing. Solidarity from the other side of the Atlantic ✊
We've been protesting since 2018, because the rich got richer, the poor poorer and more numerous.
This is the government not listening to the people, that is what breeds violence. That is the reason for the violence.
It's like pouring salt on a wound, when will it stop hurting?
I very much understand and feel this. I still hope everyone in every democracy turns out to vote, counter to what this screenshot of a tweet recommends.
Yeah, good luck to you in the USA, go vote Democrat and then get into politics, one way or another.
This is a communist space, communists are not democrats, we dont vote for democrats.
Yes of course, REAL communists let trump get a third term by avoiding the vote, so that he can kill off all the fake communists, leaving only the one true ideologically pure commie Jesus to usher in The Revolution
That is one Hell of a typo!
I get all the communist space and stuff, but you're advocating for violence against a people.
Also, America when riot.
"This is the socialist, communist antisocial fuckwads destroying public property"
This kind of generalisation DIDN'T use to happen in Europe. But this time, the trumpism has spread.
France is smaller than Texas with 4x the population density.
So... why you think the USA can match that as a nation is beyond me.
Large US cities were just burned down to the ground a few years ago, I've been told. You'll get more riots soon enough, they're not rare in the USA
America when pedophile billionaires engage in genocide: post memes FTFY
That's a bit extreme. But yeah, the US constitution actually legalizes Luigi in extreme cases. And if the next election would somehow just not happen for a year that would probably the exact case that rule had been written for.
🤣 🤣
America is about to flip control of both houses of Congress. What is France getting for setting its historic buildings on fire?
Passing houses of congress from one bourgeois party to another doesn't actually give power to the people. We will see what comes of the French protests, but it's far likelier to get larger scale change.
I hope you're right. However I'll revisit this comment in december and see what actually happened.
Oh yeah. And that is going to solve so much. Assuming it even happens, which is by no means certain.
Fear of the bourgeosie. Not enough, but needed to have anything
Hey, now. The US has underfunded schools, too!
Actually, most of our schools are very well funded, receiving more funding than schools almost anywhere else in the world.
The problem is that much of the funding is squandered on administration, athletic programs, and poorly thought out capital expenditures ... while leaving some of the most important fundamentals -- like teacher salaries and basic academic supplies -- still chronically underfunded. There are many problems with American schools, and very few of those problems could be solved by dumping more money into the schools without making any other changes.
You should have told us about that.
Population of France: 69.1 million (316 per sq km) Population of USA: 349.6 million (38 per sq km)
Hmm. I wonder why it's more difficult to mobilize people in the USA?
This isn't really the issue. Most of that lower nation-level population density is due to the fact that the US possesses some truly vast wilderness and wasteland within its territory. I'm no geographer, but I'm pretty sure there's no equivalent of the Nevada desert contained within France somewhere, let alone Alaska.
The real issue with the US is suburban sprawl. The population isn't too spread out on a national level; it's too spread out on a local level. If the US had European-style urban design, the existence of some vast empty wilderness won't affect things. We're talking about how the people in the inhabited parts of the land live. The wasteland is irrelevant.
This is great news! I was unaware that when I traveled by car or by plane that I can just skip going over and through the parts that are irrelevant. I've been wasting so much time moving through space up to this point.
Yup. It is simply harder to organize people, especially when the offending politicians can literally fly away to Mar-a-Lago. It costs a ton for people to get around the nation, there is no such thing as job security or universal health, and so on.
We will have to overhaul or replace the Constitution, with it having rules to at least allow for free fuel, basic housing, and free generic food. This would allow people to be freed from the shackles of the workplace, and be able to relentlessly protest against politicians.
You mean a country being 1,600% larger than another makes it harder for people to mobilize??
You mean you don't understand that higher population density and narrow urban streets makes it easier to riot?
I want to set up an occupation protest free zone...at the entrance to a randomly selected suburban cul-da-sac.
One day, you look out your window as you're getting your morning coffee...to see 100 colorful individuals setting up tents and raising barricades...across the T-intersection at the end of your cul-da-sac.
It's gonna be one of those days...
About 8 million Americans took to the streets in March to protest Trump. About 500,000 took to the streets in France on the 17th. In both cases, there's disagreements about the real number of participants, but overall the math indicates similar levels of participation.
But the US has 1/10 the population density as France. Americans were spread out over a much larger area, so participation appeared lower.
Ohio and France have the same population density.
Muricans know very well how to fight - as long as it's not in their own country and not for freedom and democracy.
Especially if you say it is and point anywhere. Even here, really. In fact, I'd like to point out that that's exactly what they're doing!
Americans will do literally anything if it means the treats keep flowing.
Black Americans and immigrants and native Americans are the only people who aren't like that. Some of them might be chauvinists, but they might be the only groups of people in America whose material interests are totally opposed to American imperialism.
Protesting quietly, on the weekend, in a non-disruptive fashion is as good as we can do.
I'm going to end up blocking this entire platform. Half from AI boosting and the other half from liberal vote scolding.
Are you being scolded for your liberal vote, or being scolded by liberals?
If you don't believe AI can mimic liberals...
"We need the second amendment to fight kings and dictators! So we need to accept school shootings!"
Ok, you now have a dictator who took over the US. He is manipulating the voting system. He is dismantling the democratic government.
"Vote ☺️"
maintenance of liberty requires all four boxes, not just the ballot.
Everyone gets that wrong. Second amendment was meant for fighting for the government (well regulated militia) not against it. They didn't want to have to keep a standing army. AR 15s aren't going to do much against drone swarms or nukes.
Every US president was a dictator and a war criminal. I'm actually glad that Trump, while being those things (which aren't good), is really incompetent at them.
How do you slander the name of William Henry Harrison!
"I died in thirty days!"
Also write a very sternly worded letter, that’ll get their attention.
sad but true. we have become soft from decades of relative peace within our nation. its been so long that too many do not remember the fighters that bought us all that peace and have taken it for granted. i understand, as did everyone that ever had to do it, that fighting is mean, nasty, ugly, and painful in ways few can comprehend. but thats literally what it takes to take back our peace from the ones that took it from us. preaching, and words in general are never quite enough.
You're already owned by Western finance capital.
Every accusation is a confession.
Ukrainians are the slaves, neofeudal serfs to their blackrock lords.
All opposition parties are banned.
All opposition media has been seized by the state.
They can't vote.
Men can't even leave to escape being kidnapped off the street ICE style. They're dressing like old women in public. They're drowning in rivers trying to escape this death cult. Just an impossible VICTORY OR an inevitable DEATH?
https://busification.org/en
Their grandchildren's grandchildren will still be paying off generational debt from predatory military and IMF loans.
And for what? Same reason America always goes to war...
Go to Slava Intel on Telegram. It's the height of Russian Z rhetoric. They hate Trump just as much as you or I do.
This rhetoric has no basis in reality, and is designed only for the consumption of ill informed American liberals.
These riots are not benefiting the French. The riots were plotted and funded by the people in control as part of a Problem, Reaction, Solution pattern to institute whatever policies they want next.
When pallets of bottles and bricks mysteriously show up on the street, someone should ask why the system suddenly provided means to burn itself.
Anyone with a truck and a loader can place a pallet of bricks wherever they want. You don't have to be a billionaire to do that
Americans did riot not that long ago. Threatened to hang the vice president, had zipties to kidnap politicians, wiped shit on the walls, killed some cops. It was a whole thing.
Only the Right is willing to fight, and that's not good.
You're missing most of history. Probably because you believe...or...well...anything at all, really.
Only if it's negative about Americans.
Yeah, because a non-militerized police force and universal healthcare in France has nothing to do with it.
French people don’t riot because they have that stuff. They have that stuff because they riot.
When have French police ever been comparable to American police?
Perhaps during the Vichy regime?
The French population are not nearly as armed to the teeth as Americans.
There are more Americans with guns than cops. Start killing them and they'll stop killing you. Bring out the Guillotines and set an example. After that the police may start to wake up in the morning and might rethink putting on their uniform for the day.
Guns don't make you bulletproof and they don't square you in the eyes of the law.
Also, the French aren't doing armed resistance.
So it's better to bend over and let them kill you, take everything from you, execute you in the streets, remove your way of life, because "The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" are 350 million pussies with guns?
What's your 2A for anyway? Killing some poor person stealing a loaf of bread? What happened to "Good people with guns stop bad people with guns"? Last I checked cops are the bad people down there.
Because France hasn't voted en mass to militarize their public police force over decades.
Have you ever been in an armed conflict? Because I have and I suspect that you have no idea what it is you're demanding people do. I also suspect that you would not be willing to do that were you in our shoes.
Militarizing the police was never put up to a vote here either.
No, but I serve in the Armed Forces. I was just never deployed before releasing.
Have you? I feel like you're speaking as someone who've never spent one second serving your country.
Being a space cadet isn't service your country. I'm demanding a country that masturbates over having guns, that watches children get gunned down in classrooms and their fellow citizens executed on the streets to stand up against a totalitarian regime that is actively trying to take away your way of life.
If my country ever succumbed to what America has, you better believe me and my fellow citizens would defend what is right. But I don't live somewhere where armed police are abducting citizens and our government is killing people in our own streets. But if it were you better believe if I'm going to die I'm taking at least someone with me.
I know the American education system is bad, but come on, this is low hanging fruit...
An analysis of budgets for more than 100 law enforcement agencies across the country uncovered the opposite. Ninety percent of cities and counties increased spending for police between the fiscal years 2018-19 and 2021-22. None of the North Carolina cities the team analyzed reported an increase in law enforcement budgets. https://abc11.com/post/defund-the-police-budgets-crime-safety/12324529/
Yet, the city’s police department budget for 2021 is 10 times greater than the Houston Health Department’s budget, with the police allotted nearly $1 billion and the health department $100 million. https://abc11.com/post/defund-the-police-budgets-crime-safety/12324529/
Missouri voters once again approved a ballot measure that requires Kansas City to increase its minimum police funding – but by a much narrower margin than in 2022. https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2024-08-06/missouri-amendment-4-results-election-2024-kansas-city-police
Police budgets are set year by year. And the people who decide these budgets are elected officials. If money is not spend on the service, it doesn't roll over. So all that money needs to get spent, so they generally purchase military surplus supplies. They'll buy things like APCs, military grade weapons, munitions, hire more and more officers for a smaller and smaller population... These are real things that exist in America. And the people making these decisions are voted on my the community.
I was willing to die for my country. Fortunately for myself and a lot of others, we never needed to since my country doesn't go to war over a sneeze. But I certainly did serve it, and I am still more than willing to die for protecting it, both foreign and domestic.
Are you? Because it certainly seems like you and the majority of your fellow countrymen are a bunch of gun toting, nationalistic pussies.
Well, I like the enthusiasm, but American police also have armored vehicles, tear gas, and helicopters, and then there's the national guard and the military who will be called upon if an insurrection threatens the government and they have automatic weapons, grenades, mortars, tanks, artillery, planes, and drones. Fighting against all that won't be that simple and clean.
It's easy to forget what French people are rioting over. But also easy to forget that Macron has held office in an iron grip for decades, with no end in sight.
Also, ffs, please stop pretending Americans don't riot.
What exactly do you mean by this? He's just approaching the end of his second term next year, which will be his (consecutive) term limit.
Oh, I haven't been. I was only pointing out two major differences between the US and France.
quit pretending
You're the one pretending. Pull your head out of your ass.
LOL
That's all you got, huh? No surprise.
That's all you're worth, don't care if you're butthurt for being nothing but a real tough keyboard warrior.
Must be compensating for being ridiculed in this post and the by the rest of the world.
So bye, blocking you.
You can vent your little frustrations somewhere else, not interested
🤣🤣🤣🤣
With that kind of projection you should get a job in a theater.
We need to borrow a few French tutors.
The Tudors are what started this whole mess
Texas is larger than France, can we stop making these comparisons?
And with all due respect to France, I love their tenacity, I watched a video of cops fleeing. American police look for the opportunity to go on the offensive. Even when fleeing, they're absolutely tagging people on the way out.
And that country smaller than Texas knows how to fight against their government
A country with universal healthcare and without a militarized, trigger-happy police force.
Tell me what protest achieve anything recently in france ? The last one that did actually end up by reform following protest is more than 20 year old. You have no cpu of what you r seeing but you think it does something.
2025, they basically led to an entire government being dissolved, and pension reform being out on hold
Yeah, that's why their government as a whole has shifted to the right. The American government wants riots, so they can send in the military and take control of states. The only thing insulating Americans from the federal government is that the states have some modicum of control. The feds are going around it with ICE, but ICE has a limited purpose. If rioting happens, the national guard has a much broader purpose. That needs to be avoided, at least til after election time. The votes need to happen.
More like to fight against small business owners.
Well yes, it's easier to have solidarity with smaller numbers.
It's more likely for Californians and Texans to fight that Parisians and those from Versailles.
Dont forget you might get shot at school in u.s.a.
Consequences matter. French have rioted before …
I wonder whether the famous French revolution would even be possible with all the surveillance tech of today.
Remains to be seen.
I get where this comes from but... What do you expect rioting to accomplish? It doesn't exactly have a track record of changing much in the US.
Edit: as a response to all the comments, it doesn't have a great track record in the current media landscape.
This is not actually true, a great deal of credit for the passing of the Civil Rights Act can and should be attributed to nationwide riots that took place in the week directly following Martin Luther King Juniors assassination. Known as the Holy Week Uprising. The American public education system purposely doesn’t talk about this and pushes the peaceful protest angle to prevent any meaningful organizing. It can easily work here too
The Civil Rights Act that people commonly refer to as "The Civil Rights Act" passed on July 2, 1964. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, passed in the wake of the MLK assassination and Holy Week Uprising, is more limited in scope than the 1964 bill and mostly covers Native American rights and Fair Housing.
EVERY SINGLE right you have right now is the result of violence and riot.
I saw you are anti electoralism. I’d love someone to explain: you want violence but not the non violent way too? Why is that mutually exclusive to you?
Voting now does not exclude burning down the place afterwards? The Jan 6ers voted twice prior to taking a shit on a desk. If they can do it, surely we can too?
The state speaks one language, and not its peace. If you dont speak to a person in the one language they understand, they wont understand
Democracy and "liberalism" is a result of violence and rioting.
That's because Americans do it wrong. The people in charge know that there is no real solidarity amongst the population, so they can just wait it out. The riots won't spread, won't last longer than a week or two at worst, and everything will go right back to the status quo once the new shiny distraction comes out.
It never does. Haven't you seen what the French government is now trying to do? They're claiming it's leftist separatists doing this and it has nothing to do with schools. They will try everything to delegitimize instead of doing the right thing. Cost benefit analysis will be run later and they might learn a thing, but mostly don't.
I recommend reading "A People's History of The United States" by Howard Zinn. Great book! And still relevant today
Anyone with a political opinion needs to read this before spouting off their opinion. What we see in this country right now is exactly who this country has always been.
James C Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism
Meanwhile the entire country fellates slave-owning tax dodgers who started such a big riot it turned into a civil war.
Media is just Public Relation but your Nal is T, for sure.
The Orange Plague is counting on riots so he can declare martial law, send in the military against our own people (in blue states only ofc), and stay in office like the fat fucking parasite he is.
Bold of you to assume he won't stage it and do it anyways
The only way to end this is with action, martial law or not.
French police probably don't murder the rioters.
I’m definitely impressed with the French coordination. It’s not just one or two cities, but a nearly nation wide movement of both non violent and some violent actions.
That’s a lot of people on the same page for an particular issue. Last time Americans agreed like that was because a lot people across the spectrum do not like the way they’ve been treated by cops.
Both are cringe.
Wait you actually think riots are good?
We just haven't been given the green light yet. Americans break all at once.
Governments are emergent systems to me, they come from the people, the culture, the land, etc. If Trump died tomorrow it would upset some plans, but the process that is capital takeover in American can't be stopped so easily. It's a catch 22, and Nash equilibriums all the way down. Realistically we stand to lose a lot if we fought back now, and we've collectively chosen Trump over anything else twice now. Americans don't really know what they want, and they're not even capable of doing what it takes to get it. For all that we argue about here most people don't put much more though into it than, who did I vote for last time - or they don't vote at all.
Only way out is through.
Thats not true at all. Only way to end it is to end it, not perpetuate it with laziness and talk about empty hope. End it.
If it can be stopped it will be. If not, we'll get through it.
Why would they fight? They live better life than the world they plunder
French here, the current state of the riots are not natural. There's been some extremist left wing politicians doing calls to violence and teens stupidly follows that. It's just like the call to storm the capitol.
Peaceful protests do happens, and actually the police are protesting for funding too and were mostly in the lines. (And before you ACAB, keep in mine that ACAB is a USA problem. stop pushing those stupid views toward europe, we are not like you)
French cops (riot cops especially) definitely AB.
The fact that you think ACAB is a USA problem says a lot about your first paragraph. Please do not speak on behalf of French people.
"Occupied" lol
Occupied by who, lol, their own bourgeoisie? So is every capitalist country.
This isn't a good comparison. I hate the US and all Americans more than you do but it's like asking Macron if he'd rather these protests or have these people vote for him.
lol, the downvotes.
"They're calling us out as pussies! We know how to deal with that!" doots an internet icon. waits for reward. forgets what's going on because back in the feed.
No I downvoted because americans have had plenty of inspirational riots, even just in the last few years. Like the George Floyd uprising or J20 or standing rock. Its just annoying when people seem to forget or ignore history. And when they compare the actions of liberal parties and youth/left wing protestors. Of course those are not the same...
I would not bring those protests up as examples...
You've got your own Gestapo, regular murders by police and other authorities, a fully functioning pipeline, and Trump sending things toward a black hole at rapid pace.
Literally the things you mentioned had zero effect.
As always, just wait a short while, do it again, no resistance at all.
And you think these were your big impactful "inspirational riots"? They were isolated, short, and reflective of the renowned apathy and feed distraction of American society. A win isn't even on the cards, you'd be struggling to qualify them for a recognition award.
You are simply ignorant of the riots that happen here. Summer of 2018, 2020 we were seeing a constant stream of videos that looked exactly like what we're seeing france right now. It's probably still happening but they've figured out how to scrub the videos from the internet
Are you trying to divide those things?
I mean, I just can't tell if you're talking about math or meth. Or both?
Wait...
I think no one is impressed or remembering because these events don't seem to have produced any meaningful change. The french get what they ask for every time because they escalate until they do.
Sadly this is just not true. Yes they are able to slow down austerity measures, but beyond that there isnt much meaningful (aka long term progressive/anticapitalist) policy change. The meaningful change is in the people, in their relationships, in their organizing and in popular opinion. Same can be said for the US: '2020 never ended’: how Black Lives Matter organizing taught Minneapolis to handle ICE surge
Remains to be seen if what's happening in France will produce meaningful change
This is correct.
It might take years to force changes, and right after, capitalism/political power/... will try to claw those gains back, so the fight is on all the time, just now it's one of those times that gets headlines.
When we got the 35h workweek, man was it attacked in the media and all over the place for over a decade, actually the right wing still brings it up like someone placed a turd on their birthday cake, but it's one of those things we fought for, and didn't let go of. FYI if you work 37.5 or 39h/w, you get "free" days you can take whenever you want, like 11 or 22 a year. Neat huh? That was one fight, we're on another now, and ten, twenty years from now it will be yet another.
✊🏼