Yeah, whenever i see someone here saying that we need to resort to violence, my immediate thought is always, “Ok tough guy, where’s your truck bomb?”
I do more IRL resistance work than at least 95% of the people on this site. And I’m not even talking protests. I’m directly, on the ground, working to help some of the people most hurt by the regime’s policies. I’m not into violence, but I’m not above disobeying unjust laws either. So it’s not like I’m some online slactavist that refuses to lift a finger to actually help people. The kind of work I do is the kind of thing I can’t even post about on social media.
But it is an incredible shame how the right has taken over so many online spaces. 10-15 years ago, the left more dominated online spaces. The early internet was a mix of very libertarian and progressive. Hell the internet was built from the ground up on socialist principles. But it’s the right that really learned how to use the net most effectively as a means of mass communication and propaganda. And they did so quite deliberately. There was a deliberate and organized campaign among white supremacists on places like stormfront to subtly move their message to the mainstream.
I think those on the left tend to view things from way too scholarly a perspective. Why repeat the same message if you’ve already written extensively about it before? Or make sure to not post simple understandable messages; instead start with a dozen qualifiers and provisos that end up watering down your whole message. It’s more important to be intellectually rigorous than it is to effectively communicate your values. Or there’s the tendency for purity tests that end up shoving away otherwise eager allies.
The right meanwhile has learned that even bold faced lies can become widely accepted if you simply repeat them loudly and often enough.
Yeah, whenever i see someone here saying that we need to resort to violence, my immediate thought is always, “Ok tough guy, where’s your truck bomb?”
I do more IRL resistance work than at least 95% of the people on this site. And I’m not even talking protests. I’m directly, on the ground, working to help some of the people most hurt by the regime’s policies. I’m not into violence, but I’m not above disobeying unjust laws either. So it’s not like I’m some online slactavist that refuses to lift a finger to actually help people. The kind of work I do is the kind of thing I can’t even post about on social media.
But it is an incredible shame how the right has taken over so many online spaces. 10-15 years ago, the left more dominated online spaces. The early internet was a mix of very libertarian and progressive. Hell the internet was built from the ground up on socialist principles. But it’s the right that really learned how to use the net most effectively as a means of mass communication and propaganda. And they did so quite deliberately. There was a deliberate and organized campaign among white supremacists on places like stormfront to subtly move their message to the mainstream.
I think those on the left tend to view things from way too scholarly a perspective. Why repeat the same message if you’ve already written extensively about it before? Or make sure to not post simple understandable messages; instead start with a dozen qualifiers and provisos that end up watering down your whole message. It’s more important to be intellectually rigorous than it is to effectively communicate your values. Or there’s the tendency for purity tests that end up shoving away otherwise eager allies.
The right meanwhile has learned that even bold faced lies can become widely accepted if you simply repeat them loudly and often enough.