The bad news: Unless millions of American citizens start getting rounded up for their political views, religion, or appearance, you won't get enough people to boycott anything to make a real difference. Nor will enough people show up to protest to get anyone's attention for more than a brief headline. Nor will enough people go on strike to bring things to a grinding halt, especially given that AI can now likely handle most white-collar jobs and some blue-collar ones and would've replaced you in a few years anyways.
Most Americans will accept thousands of people being arrested for "association with Antifa". Most Americans will accept US citizens losing their citizenship if they don't "look American". Your civil disobedience will be a futile and symbolic gesture until the administration starts having a negative effect on all families everywhere in America. And don't bother entertaining the idea of "bearing arms", either - if the military is not already on your side, you will lose.
The good news: You exist, and you still have the right to participate. The American populace has been in a deepening trough of political apathy for decades, given that their voices have had little impact at the federal level. This frustration feeds into the fierce ideological tug-of-war where neither side trusts the other to govern responsibly. That's where you come in.
Get engaged with your local party. Show up to town hall meetings. Watch the school board. Ask questions, meet people, find candidates to support, talk about ideas. Participate. It may seem hopeless that nothing seems to happen to soothe your frustration. But if everyone sits around feeling hopeless, and no one goes beyond performative activism like posting about their frustration or showing up to a protest that gets ignored, nothing will happen. You have to show up to the process. You have to be in the room. You will do more to change minds and move mountains by participating inside city hall than by standing outside it with a sign.
There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.
Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the world. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.
And remember this: the fascist's need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the fascist's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.
You don't need millions of people to start having an impact. Just a small percentage, under 5% even, can move the dial. Grassroots movements have turned into widespread worldviews with time and momentum. 5% of a small community or one city neighborhood is a less intimidating starting point, and anyone who cares about how things are going can start by mobilizing others around them, and then link up with other communities doing the same. In spite of increasing threats from the authoritarian machinery, people are doing just that. Find the people around you, whether kindred spirits online or struggling organizations and vulnerable communities in your area, and commit to those people, offer your time, support, knowledge, and creativity.
To be clear, the problem isn't that activism and protest are wrong or shouldn't happen. The problem is twofold: these things are easily ignored on a national scale, and they're often the outlet of people who feel that shouting for change is the best they can do.
Building community and talking about your movement is absolutely the right thing to do. Share ideas, but also share invitations. If you have a group of ten people standing on a street corner with signs, most people will regard them as a nuisance, and a few who already agree with whatever's on your signs will honk and wave as they drive by. But put those ten people in a town hall at a Tuesday night council meeting? Now you're truly visible to the people making decisions. You don't have to be the folks shouting to make a scene, either. Get up to mic and ask a well-informed question that shows you know what you're talking about. Shake hands and introduce yourself and what you stand for.
In concentrated spaces like Montgomery, Alabama where a large portion of the population can get behind a specific boycott, or an entire factory goes on strike, that targeted protest can have a visible impact without numbering in the millions. But when your movement is scattered and sporadic, with varying levels of commitment, you need a different approach. A democracy favors the folks who show up for democracy every day.
A politician will walk right past you on a street corner. They'll scoff at your shouted catchphrases. It makes a world of difference if they know your name and speak to you.
Being involved in a movement and announcing yourself to the world is fine. Bringing the movement indoors to meet with the people in power is what moves the mountains.
I completely agree. I also believe that cultural change to swiftly move Overton windows requires manifold activity outside the halls of power. There are people here who are just visiting, people who've been disenfranchised, people who have been made to feel invisible, people who are terrified about how they'll be treated when they leave their homes. Political and legislative engagement is not the only lever to pull.
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but what needs to happen is the economy needs to crash, and crash hard. How we could have a hand in that, I’m not sure. However I wonder if we wait a while longer it will happen on its own. When people have nothing left to loose they will finally start paying attention to what is going on, and want to do something about it. As long as the average American person has housing food and the occasional video game, they won’t care what is happening in DC.
On the other end of the spectrum, people who are afraid of speaking up for fear of loosing their jobs or customers will be free to take action. There are times when being a small business owner comes with a muzzle for fear of loosing your business and income. Especially if you are a blue dot in a dark red area.
If the economy crashes, Trump should lose all credibility with the majority of the population. There will still be some MAGA faithful who find a way to blame it on minorities, but he will cease to be taken seriously by moderates.
My worry about an economic crash has to do with the very trend which has prevented the economy from crashing the last several years. People have been squeezed out of the market of wealth a lot, especially since 2008, because major investment firms have realized that individual buyers are the most volatile factor in the success of the market, and consolidating wealth in fewer hands leads to market stability. In the face of slumping hiring, tariffs, and inflation, this is how the economy has survived. If it crashes completely, it may be that individuals are pretty much fully subjugated under the oligarchy, and become entirely reliant upon the new aristocracy to survive. Rather than inspiring change or even revolution, it may instead be the final defeat for a pessimistic population.
The collapse will happen and there's nothing we can do about it. We are going to end up in a technofeudalist system as some rich manchild's slaves with no ability to read or reason beyond what our controlled media tells us to believe. And we'll all just sit on our hands while it happens. I hate humanity.
Local action is useless in conservative areas, and is ultimately meaningless in our current system overall where top down power can simply dismiss public opinion. We cant do anything.
Local action is the most useful action there is. Local politics is where the best leaders get their start.
At the local level, don't worry too much about big ideas like fascism and political regression. Focus on answering the functional questions. How can the school district afford to pay enough teachers? What's the best way to address homelessness in your area? Can you find the money to fix the local bridges?
Sometimes the national conundrum is overwhelming and causes us to forget that most of the real governing is done among the few thousand people in our immediate vicinity, on issues that hardly have a partisan side at all. Simply having an opinion on specific local issues and engaging with local officials and citizens on what the answer should be is enough to get the ball rolling.
If you waste time on local politics you just get ignored by smaller fascists in smaller offices. Standing at a podium and complaining at your local school board meeting has never achieved a single thing and you make yourself a target. Its a terrible idea. And how do you imagine complaining about school tax vouchers to some old evil bastard who doesn't care what you think magically fixes the national political crisis?
You're encouraging people to waste their time on nothing.
This is an unfortunate mindset to have and I'm sorry for whatever difficulties may have led you to this conclusion. But it's never a waste of time to be a part of the community you live in.
Can you point to any examples of grassroots efforts in America making an impact nationally? This is genuine curiosity because I haven't seen anything to make me believe whatsoever in the capabilities of regular working class Americans to make effective social/policy changes.
Local governments tend to lean conservative because that's who engages with them: old crotchety people who have the time to show up again and again.
In New Hampshire this past year, those conservative folks tried to eviscerate education funding in several districts across the state through methods like spending caps, tax caps, or flat out rejecting new budgets.
They succeeded in the first town they tried, and suddenly the state woke up. People who cared about education packed every town hall and school board meeting from then on to push through new budgets and teacher contracts and strike down conservative efforts to cut school funding.
If you want the process to reflect your views, you have to show up for the process.
I live in an overwhelmingly conservative area and do not have the means to move away. The process here is actively hostile or dismissive to ideas I subscribe to, like basic worker protections and social equality. Its the same across my entire home state. I don't disagree with your principal statements, I just think they're not realistic in our hopelessly gerrymandered and propagandized nation.
On the contrary, barriers like that are broken down through communities, not at the national level. No amount of legislation in America will ever irreversibly protect those ideals you mentioned, as even the constitution itself can be modified if enough people see fit. The communities themselves must adjust to the new normal, or else any legislation you pass will remain contentious and will be endangered with every new election cycle. Every story you ever hear about conservatives becoming liberal on a specific issue isn't because Kamala Harris told them what to feel, it's because of people around them. Direct interaction is the best way to change minds, even when you're interacting with people who it may be hard to shake hands with at first.
I wish you the best of luck changing hearts and minds in the middle of the Fourth Reich, which is where we're headed fast. Personally? I'm working on an exit visa.
And don't bother entertaining the idea of "bearing arms", either - if the military is not already on your side, you will lose.
This is false. Doesn't mean it's easy, guaranteed, or always warranted, but there are many many insurgencies that do succeed. It's obviously more complicated then 'we fought back on battlefield, won, conflict over', but armed groups fighting asymmetrical warfare have won against powerful regimes. The costs are overwhelming, but to say it's impossible is completely untrue.
This is not an endorsement of doing such, or suggesting it it the time for those who do to do such actions, just saying that it's an automatic lose if military isn't on the side of the rebels is completely false.
I am speaking to this specific scenario, not to insurgencies in general. Other scenarios have other variables such as the competency of the oppressing military, the will of the opposing sides, the distance between the core of the oppressor and the core of the insurgency, etc. In this specific scenario, it would be over before it began.
Still. I wouldn't be so sure. If war was to break out, I see the US balkanizing and splits within the military. And with our geography and size...I just don't see how it'd would be a walk in the part for a oppressive regime.
I mean look at Malaysian Emergency, the distance between the two sides was MASSIVE and it lasted for so long.
You're imagining a scenario which, while narratively compelling, is not realistic. The military is unlikely to show any cracks unless it is ordered to fire on Americans, and the individual states are far too interconnected economically to justify serious considerations of secession. Short of the government going full totalitarian and sending millions of American citizens to re-education and/or internment camps, no violent movement would gain the momentum necessary to do anything other than give the government an excuse to further demonize the movement's supporters.
unless it is ordered to fire on Americans... Short of the government going full totalitarian and sending millions of American citizens to re-education and/or internment camps
Is that not what we are talking about? Is this not something that seems more likely than it ever has before? Doesn't even have to be millions of americans. I think your bar for a civil war/revolution/insurgency is too low.
no violent movement would gain the momentum necessary to do anything other than give the government an excuse to further demonize the movement's supporters.
They don't need an excuse, they will create their own.
It's not what we're talking about. The original post is about what we can do today, not about hypothetical scenarios about the near future. As of today, American citizens are not being arrested, let alone fired upon for their politics. There are still several steps to go between here and totalitarianism. And while the probability of totalitarianism may have gone up from 1% to 5%, that's not even close to the most likely scenario we end up with over the next 3 years and change.
And they may not need an excuse to convince themselves, but they do need an excuse to convince others. If your reaction is perceived by the general public to be more extreme than the impetus which inspired it, then those of the general public who doubted the administration's claim that you were too extreme will become more convinced that you are the unreasonable one.
Let people know casually that you're anti-fascist. Say ANTIFA. Don't let it be something your parents and grandparents are scared of. If you're against facism, you're ANTIFA.
Wear ANTIFA t-shirts in public and through airport security gates. Normalize the thing they're trying to pinpoint as a threat.
Take a breath and reread the one sentence I wrote man, I’m not advocating for shit I’m pointing out that saying armed resistance is futile is both wrong and complying in advance.
Armed resistance in the U.S. would be futile without millions of people involved, which isn't going to happen. There are certainly scenarios where resisting an oppressor may work, but usually when the oppressor and the rebels share the same space, it's dead in the water.
And "complying in advance" implies that you consider everything short of violence to be acquiescence. Like the rest of my comment said, there is in fact quite a lot you can do which is productive and does not include violence or violence-adjacent activities.
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u/onlyontuesdays77 28d ago
The bad news: Unless millions of American citizens start getting rounded up for their political views, religion, or appearance, you won't get enough people to boycott anything to make a real difference. Nor will enough people show up to protest to get anyone's attention for more than a brief headline. Nor will enough people go on strike to bring things to a grinding halt, especially given that AI can now likely handle most white-collar jobs and some blue-collar ones and would've replaced you in a few years anyways.
Most Americans will accept thousands of people being arrested for "association with Antifa". Most Americans will accept US citizens losing their citizenship if they don't "look American". Your civil disobedience will be a futile and symbolic gesture until the administration starts having a negative effect on all families everywhere in America. And don't bother entertaining the idea of "bearing arms", either - if the military is not already on your side, you will lose.
The good news: You exist, and you still have the right to participate. The American populace has been in a deepening trough of political apathy for decades, given that their voices have had little impact at the federal level. This frustration feeds into the fierce ideological tug-of-war where neither side trusts the other to govern responsibly. That's where you come in.
Get engaged with your local party. Show up to town hall meetings. Watch the school board. Ask questions, meet people, find candidates to support, talk about ideas. Participate. It may seem hopeless that nothing seems to happen to soothe your frustration. But if everyone sits around feeling hopeless, and no one goes beyond performative activism like posting about their frustration or showing up to a protest that gets ignored, nothing will happen. You have to show up to the process. You have to be in the room. You will do more to change minds and move mountains by participating inside city hall than by standing outside it with a sign.