Constantly trying to thread the needle of "my target audience is not other communists but “vibes based” leftists, punks, skaters, goths, etc.
Yet I am definitely not afraid to speak my mind, to be openly and unapologetically political. Yet I fear this will only end up alienating more than it will agitate or educate. We lack time, we lack will, so we need space, we can’t build will without space. Space means culture, culture has been entirely co-opted by the system, thus you need to create a line of flight to the space (Deleuze), we can do this by working towards deterritorizing the “underground” (counter culture). In this way the ‘brand’ super structure itself can be detourned, re-worked into a rhizome, ergo “HOUDINI”.
But thats all pretty heavy shit and I worry that the openly political nature of the detournément will alienate before the rhizome can grow. For example someone I consider to be one of the most important voices in the gaming space as it relates to the medium as an art form, that person offered to write some articles for the brand, to grow the rhizome so to speak.
This person is not openly political and I wonder to myself, does he not see the level of political discourse I attempt to engage in? If not, will learning of that push him away, limiting the growth and shrinking the space, thereby lowering the will?
Well you shouldn’t be advocating for throwing acid on transphobes anyway because that doesn’t solve the problem, we learned about the ineffectiveness of individual acts of violence from the failure of 19th century anarchist tactics. What is needed is collective and organized action by the working masses and their vanguard. It also doesn’t make much sense to talk of PPW in the current conditions in the imperial core (yet), and we always have to be careful to not fall into adventurist tendencies.
In that sense it is correct to not talk about these things with the people you are trying to persuade because these are not the tasks that we are facing at present or in the immediate future. You should focus on making sure that they can begin to develop an understanding of the problem which is capitalism itself and the system of exploitation that is built up around it and which leads to the steady deterioration of the conditions of the working class.
Then you should introduce them to the idea that solutions do exist that involvd the social and economic reorganization of society and that one doesn’t need to simply continue to accept this status quo as immutable. Only once you understand the problem and understand the solution that you are aiming toward can you begin to discuss the variety of methods that can be employed in the struggle to get there, and more importantly learn to identify which circumstances are appropriate for which methods of struggle.
We know that time plus space equals will, but the problem is, I mean, just on the barest minimum, there’s an act of genocide going on and climate change. We lack the time to build the space, to build the will. And this is a fundamental issue, because when you lack the time, then you start thinking rash. You start thinking, well, how can we rapidly establish certain things and leapfrog to certain things? And like you said, that just becomes, that’s a slippery slope to adventurism. Adventurism should be what it all costs, because ultimately, I think adventurism is detrimental to the movement.
That isn’t to say that certain tactics can’t be powerful. In the moment. I would consider what Aaron did to be propaganda of the deed, which makes sense. He was an anarchist, so that’s going to be his root philosophy. And I think that what he did was a very powerful propaganda win. We’ve seen people resign from the State Department and mention his name specifically because they don’t want to be part of this genocide. So I think it’s all about threading that needle. Because we can’t all do what Aaron did, because then there would be nothing left. You see what I’m saying? We have to just take a bigger picture approach, I guess. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m in over my head.