I just watched a video from one f the big networks. They had originally done a story about the protest in Boston talking about 10,000-30,000 strong, despite organizers estimating much higher. This video revised attendance in Boston to 100,000
Everywhere except the past… where we fucking needed it.
Most people do not care about (and do not want to care about) anything under the broad topic of “politics”.
If you try to force them to care, they will punish you. That’s what we’re seeing, but it’s also why it’s so damn hard to stir people to action before things go wrong.
First there was the Arab Spring.
Then the Balkan Spring.
So this is… the American Spring? Sounds like a brand of bottled water.
“There be no shelter here, the frontline is everywhere.” - Rage Against the Machine
I really don’t like the amount of violence being suggested here. Trump needs to be removed but a lot of you are suggesting to support violent fantasies.
By the way that’s a very strong tactic be terrifically Republicans to make the left look unhinged. And they’re correct. It will turn a lot of people against you. Most are not violent people.
The point of making the ‘left’, or any opponent, look unhinged is to pressure them into submission. The reason why this works very well is because your media is complicit in amplifying any wrongdoings by any opponents and twisting the perception.
i mean, check out protests in Europe and how they’re framed by their media. Even your Vietnam war protests back in the day; your media started banging on about them being drug users and layabouts to make dismissing their cause much easier.
I just think Americans have lost a lot of people power if you have to protest while walking on eggshells. Best thing to combat it is to have a conversation with everyone. Get people chatting have to have rather than having the TV spout nonsense at them.
There’s one of the worst ways in modern times to get any message across. It’s like suggesting we use carrier pigeons to communicate on a battlefield.
The Internet exists. Hey did the Republicans protest in the streets to get their message across?
I didn’t see that yet every single person I know could reiterate almost all their talking points. If protests were stuff an effective medium for creating supporting and spreading a cause, how did they accomplish it without it.
Republicans hired think tanks. Same way the cigarette company did you delay laws. Same way energy companies did to delay and sew distrust on climate change.
The left for all the geniuses they say they are have not adapted to the modern world. Imagine if every single person at these protests stayed home instead and shit posted on every platform they could. That’s how you get messages out in modern times. You use the algorithms. You create content. You boost signals.
What you do not do is drag people into the streets banging pots. It’s not the 1960s
Everyone is online. You need people burying their signals and amplifying our own. You need memes. You need everyone to force their hand. The fucked up thing is they have such entrenched culture that you’d think it’s obvious where to apply pressure. It’s not calling them a Nazi. It’s culture jamming our society so we associate trucks with femininity. They are more sensitive than ever and it should be easy to find their soft spots. Can’t hit it from the middle of the road
What you do not do is drag people into the streets banging pots. It’s not the 1960s
Are you sure? I’m pretty confident that’s what happened on the weekend.
Also, relying on technology owned and controlled by the billionaire class is a bit rich…
Anyway, I don’t want to antagonise you. Just don’t discount the traditional methods of communication thinking it’s ineffective. In a world where privacy is almost non-existent and you’re constantly being monitored, going analogue is one of the best tactics there is.
Same here. The peaceful inclusive protest in Sackets Harbor, NY over the weekend worked. The immigrant children and their mother are being returned from Texas as I type this. Don’t give Trumpy any room to paint the left as unhinged.
It’s really sad how domesticated the American people have become.
Any of these 1000+ protests could have used their manpower in one day to remove everyone close to Trump.
Instead we will keep marching and holding signs while everything gets worse and our corporate leaders tell us to wave the signs higher…
How the hell are you suggesting that a single group of 10,000 to 100,000 people can “use their manpower in one day to remove everyone close to Trump”?? Are you saying that the January insurrections were a good idea? The tough part you’re not considering is that to preserve (what’s left) of democracy we need to continue abiding by its principles as frustrating as it might sound. We need democracy intact after this is all over. One could almost infer that your comment seeks to invite violence.
“A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless it is acted upon by a force.”
I’m not sure you understand how protests work.
So once you garner massive support do nothing meaningful to change things, that’s the right way to protest the government according to the government.
This is what I mean by domesticated
If you want a group of people to storm the halls of office and seize power by force you’re talking about a coup.
In this case, the demonstration of dissatisfaction by so many people is meaningful.
That “feeling” needs to build to a cacophony that republicans just can not ignore. The whole country (aside from perhaps a few loyalists) needs to be in agreement that the republicans are not fit to govern.
I thought a coup was when you placed loyalists in all positions of power, you control the news, and declare yourself president for life.
Huh well guess that wasn’t a coup and there’s no problem.
War is peace Freedom is slavery
If we removed him by force with only something like 1.5% of the population on board, we’d have kicked off a civil war we could not win. Right now, it’s more important to use protest as an outreach tool to get more of the population to support change.
The Irish did pretty well against such odds.
Ireland is still divided
More than a few Brits had to depart this world to do that though, yeah?
A lot of Irish did too. The country is still divided, the violence that was enacted also enabled all sorts of tertiary problems as well. Running drugs to buy guns, bomb makers being poisoned by the components of the bombs. Innocent Irish families dying from bombs being set to the wrong time. Torture, maming and killing of Irish who refused to get involved.
And again, Ireland is still divided.
Don’t get me wrong, British policy has killed more Irish than the IRA ever did, but it wasn’t some happy fucking holidays to the coast to gun down some black and tans. It was decades of terror and oppression. Not something to be bandied about online from a keyboard because you’re frustrated that Amerikkka is now showing the true nature of it’s system in place.
The IRA’s only mistake was that they stopped planting bombs to take out the Imperialists. They were good guys fighting an evil foreign oppressor; of course things wouldn’t be sunshine and rainbows all the time. It’s just as justified as the Revolutionary War.
Think about it: Would you rather take some evil people with you to the Great Beyond, or would you like some evil people to suck away all your savings as you die a slow death?
I’m pretty sure you’re not Irish, you don’t know anyone Irish, and you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
The IRA has no current analogue in the US. The IRA devolved into a criminal organization that terrorized the Irish just as much as the occupying brits.
Your accelerationist language and complete lack of nuance in your take tells me that you’re just looking for outrage. There are no good or bad guys. This isn’t a movie.
I wish you good luck and better mental health in the future. They say vitamin D supplements can help if you’re not getting enough sunshine wherever you are.
Well the civil war wouldn’t be 98.5% vs 1.5%. I reckon it would be fairly even, maybe even a bit more on the anti-Trump side, despite the fact that some people might not agree with violence. If forced to pick sides, I reckon most will stay on the same side of the political spectrum they’re already on.
However
I agree that civil war should be avoided. But at the same time I recognize some amount of violence may be required in the end, to have a true “liberation day” for Americans. Trump’s not stepping down as long as he’s alive and free.
No, you need to consider the National Guard and all armed forces in the US and Abroad.
IF there is a civil war it’s not going to be a bunch of citizens armed with AR pattern rifles shooting at the soldiers. It would be Palintir finding the communication hubs of any resistance fighters and a drone strike at the center of it, with a platoon of Marines coming in to clean up and post security. The Army close behind to go through and secure any surrounding structures and setup a FOB to prevent further insurrection.
It will be factions of the military fighting itself, and it would be devastating. Think Gaza but across two million square miles.
Their demands seem to be as feeble they might as well not exist. So the mass protests might not exist as well. Hands off bla bla lol, might as well send a sternly written letter haha. “Oh please sir, could you possibly be less rough with me?!”
I heard that the USA has been involved in illegal regime change in other countries 62 times. Sixty two times! Overthrowing quite a few democracies too. But for the US this seems unthinkable still, even for mother jones. A simple demand like the Trump administration to step down and call for new elections seems to be nowhere to be found.
PATHETIC ATTEMPT AT REVOLUTION!
Very good, take large potato from bin.
Lol what is this pathetic attention seeking behavior?
Did you get the attention you wanted bby?
As it stands now leadership change in the US does not include the possibility of calling elections.
If Trump steps down, Vance takes over. If Vance also steps down, it’s Mike Johnson, then Chuck Grassley, Marco Rubio, and so on.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession
For that to change, Congress would have to establish a new presidential succession process, which they could do. However, they won’t.
This is exactly how every single popular uprising in history has started: by overwhelming numbers of people getting out in the streets to have their voices heard. They always start off as peaceful until drive past that by elite/institutional reaction.
If this were a single instance, then, yes, it would seem feeble and ineffectual. But it’s not. It’s the early days of a large movement. We’re less than 3 months into the regime and this past Saturday was already the single largest day of protest in American history. And there’s another one scheduled in 2 weeks on the 19th.
I was at the protest in DC. There was 100k+ people there. I’ve been a political activist since the protests against the Iraq War in 2003. This event on Saturday was notably different than any other I’ve attended in 2 ways. One was the sheer size, larger than any other protest in DC I’ve seen. The other was the demographic composition of the crowd. All previous protests I’ve been to were primarily filled with male-presenting young people. This was very different. At 38 years old, I was definitely younger than the majority of the people there. It was also far more racially diverse than any other events I’ve been to except for the 2020 uprising.
What do you expect a giant crowd of people mostly in their 40s-60s to do? You think they were all going to storm the White House or Capital?
For that matter, what are you doing? You say these demonstrations are pathetic? Then surely you must be taking more radical actions that have a much higher chance of effecting change. I’d love to join in, so, please, tell me what you’re doing that’s puts the 5 million people out in the streets on Saturday to shame?
Well not wrong but without clear demands there can be not even a chance for anything to happen. Then it’s just a big angry party. So something like call for new election. Because this one was fraud based on lies and the current administration is engaged in treason / economic terrorism.
There is no mechanism within American politics to run a new election. If that’s the demand, we first would need to amend the Constitution, which isn’t going to happen, or violently overthrow the government. Just demanding, “run a new election” is as empty a demand as anything else you could imagine.
Take a look at how the US facilitates regime change. It’s always extra-legal. If you can’t even imagine it, then it’s just a pathetic and empty show of frustration. And that’s on the people of the USA (and the media of course that manipulates and indoctrinates them).
I was in DC on Saturday too, and I also have been going since W Bush’s first inauguration, and several anti war protests after that. I always enjoy seeing people out on the street, but I also feel like these protests don’t really accomplish anything as such. They are just really easy to ignore, unfortunately. Participants feel good about themselves, and hopefully build relationships with new people. But did that crowd on Saturday threaten anyone? Did any elected officials (R or D) feel nervous about it? Were there any demands made that will be met? Again, I do appreciate so many people taking the time to protest, but I hope that plenty of them have a line at which they will take stronger action, and that it doesn’t come too late.
Now all of these people converge on Mar-a-Lago and burn it to the ground. Preferably with Trump and Musk inside.
All for a change of regime, but nothing worth building has been built on violence.
I never thought about it, but, by George, i think you’re right! It always blows me away that the Nazis just up and released all the people they’d put into camps. That was truly swell of them.
LOL
You are a dream of an opponentWell everything? Nothing has been given freely.
This is refreshing to see after using reddit so long.
Calls to violence you mean?
You want a circlejerk with no barriers, whereas I wish we could discuss the reasons why hes putting in tariffs and cutting spending. Project 2025 versus ETS2 for instance, or the fact China is buying fewer and fewer treasuries every year; leading to higher borrowing costs on leveraged economies globally as money is sucked into the US, to fund the spending they also cant afford.
Even the global demographics look bleak given the amount of debt we’ve taken on, and people are still living in an MMT fantasyland as they roll over their mortgages from 2% to 6%.
My parents first mortgage, during Reagan, was at 12% which was fairly normal.
Yeah those tariffs on Canada are certainly going to help that, and he certainly never said they’d be lifted if Canada became a, what was it? Ah yes, “beloved 51st state”
As for 6% mortgages, that’s not a particularly high number actually. If you went in a 2% expecting that to last forever, maybe.
But you’ll burn all the children he has locked up inside. Best to shoot them in the head and steal everything.
He was waiting for this, now he can institute martial law! Dick tator for life.
this just shows how Americans only care for themself. take 15% stock loss then they go out. but when they let 100k children die in agony, crickets.
These events started pretty much the moment Trump took office. This was the second national day of protest since inauguration, and smaller events have been happening all over the country weekly. This event was not motivated by the stock market.
These were planned several weeks back, and would have happened no matter what happened to the stock market.
These were scheduled for a long time, they weren’t like randomly thrown together in a single day lol
There have been many protests even before the stock market issues. Even before Trump was elected there were protests across the nation at college campuses representing Palestinians. Even my very politically inactive university had enough students feel strongly enough to protest. Just because you’re not seeing them, or looking for them, doesn’t mean protests weren’t happening.
Now you have the numbers go physically remove the shit head and all his lackies, cause he’s not going to go willingly.
Great!.. now take this momentum and do a general strike! a week should do it
That’s not really how a general strike works. You can’t just post on the internet “do a general strike” and expect it to happen or be effective. Where are the strike funds to help feed people and pay their rent when they stop getting paychecks? Where are your strike captains to organize demonstration events? Where is your army of strike lawyers to defend people when they inevitably get arrested?
General strikes take a long time and a lot of resources to plan. Only then can one be effective.
it’s strike to prevent sliding into fascism, not a parade
And you’re never going to get people on board if the solution (general strike) doesn’t meet their material needs. If people have to starve and lose their homes while under threat of arrest or more violent action, you need a way to support them or they won’t stick with it. Revolutions are built on mutual aide and community organizing, not empty platitudes and gumption. Or, worse yet, shit posting and cynicism.
then fascism it is, sadly you are waaaay past signs and petitions
hopefully I’m wrong
What have you been doing?
Not buying American, cancelling trips to NY, being extra Canadian
I hope the best for you and all of us but I fear if your revolution awaits for someone to organise it so that it’s painless and requires no sacrifices, it’ll simply never happen
So is Trump and his entire admin stepping down then?
5+ million in attendance. A whopping 1.5% of the population.
In Seattle it was closer to 3.3%, which is kind of insane.
But hopefully soon
You do understand mass movements don’t affect change in 48 hours, generally. Not from start to finish.
I hope the US is building towards a general strike against Trump et al
Selective destruction of establishments is next guys, keep it up!
LMFAO 5 million white old ass, non ethnically/racially diverse boomers protesting against their 401ks losing value doing a cosplay competition 🤣
That’s the opposition? Rich white old men?
I personally saw thousands of young and middle aged folk at my local protests including POC, in higher concentration than old people. not sure what you’re talking about but it isn’t representative
That’s a tiny part of it but mostly it’s the disrespect for the world, a move towards economic isolationism and the dismantling of a once great superpower. All of these things break a society.
You seem happy about the boomer generation suffering and find it funny do you? That is the wacky internet for you. Maybe you are just being engineered by the algorithms and you have no choice? who knows anymore?
One for all and all for one, regardless of what generational group you fall under.
The function of accounts like the one you are replying to is to encourage cynicism and inaction among otherwise anti-fascist people.
Failing that, they will try to exhaust you with “debate”.
