The amount of times on Reddit I saw supposedly left-wing people claiming the only solution in the US was violent revolution and anarchy and that our democratic institutions are not salvageable was very telling.

I often tried to bring reality into the conversation in these cases. Ask basic questions, how will millions get food when grocery stores are closed and roads are bombed out or sabotaged? What would stop the food producers from starving us out and protecting land preventing us from taking it? What about nuclear weapons? you can't just leave them be. What about other countries? they're not going to watch the most powerful military and economic power from the sidelines.

You want to win against capitalists? We need to learn to live without them first. Organized shared food production, libraries for everything, vote, run for office to get the boot off us a bit, try to change culture, etc. What not to do? Revolution fighting our enemy at their strongest, or protesting giving them an event to sabotage and an excuse to hurt us, or boycotts, they've figure out business structures, methods, and scales to neuter these.

[–] Uriel238@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Looking at Iran right now, I imagine there may come a point when violent revolution is appropriate. The Masha Amini protests (and the escalation to assassination, arson and sabotage) are the result of years of infrastructure failure and brutal retaliation by law enforcement and religious authorities. Pro-tip: If your side is the one bombing girls' schools with poison gas, you might be the baddies.

I doubt the left in the US is going to start civil war, but the militant right is eager enough that I'm worried about lethal attacks on pride parades. But for now we still have alternatives to burning down police precincts.

I liken the right wing attacks on civil liberties akin to containing the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar. There's enough integral complexity in the systems that pass and enforce execrable bills (and elect officials inclined to submit them) that they are prone to sabotage through malicious compliance with policy.

Still, according to retired CIA analysts interviewed on PBS, civil war in the US is inevitable (though they didn't specify it was imminent) and the kind of election reforms and diffusion of political power back to the public that might prevent war is unpopular among state or federal officials. We'll need to pressure them to pass such measures, probably with a level of extortion that equates to the threat of violence. Specifically what is well above my pay grade.