American Militia Members. Where the hell are you? THIS is what you exist for and you are doing NOTHING!
Edit: I’ve only heard “defense against tyranny” as justification for these militias by these militia
Successful millitant Leftist organizers like the Black Panther Party are stamped out by the State, leaving only far-right millitias in any real number.
I’m convinced that this is it. There’s a dual track effort to defang leftists through first heavily propagandizing the success of “pure” non-violent movements by removing them from their context, then by aggressively stamping out the groups that move past that. The first part is why you see so many people saying “well, why don’t we just march again and wave more signs?” The state has done a very, very, very good job of convincing people that peaceful assembly without the threat of unpeaceful assembly behind it means a goddamn thing.
Spot-on! Just look at the historical revisionism surrounding the roles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the US mythologizes the Civil Rights Movement and erases the more millitant actions that forced their hand. See the shunning of Nelson Mandela for appreciating the aid Fidel Castro and Cuba at large had sent, followed by the revision of Mandela himself in popular western view. It’s through these distortions and bluntings of real, working class victories fought and paid in blood in ways that prevent the modern working class from following in their predecessor’s footprints.
Waiting for their orders to start killing brown folks.
94% of Militia members in the US are foaming at the mouth reactionaries if not open fascists, with many being active or former law enforcement or related to military or intelligence.
There was supposed to be a well regulated militia.
The militia we have are gravy seals and Y’all Qaeda who want to dismantle regulation and rights.
Majority of militia folks are fascists
Be it right or left. Militia or paramilitary is always big no no
Left and fascist are opposites. Left wing organization in general does sadly require millitancy, though, whether it be for revolution or to defend against outside Capitalist powers.
Ideas and idiologies are more than just left and right.
Facism is a way of doing things. It just usually is more prominent with the political right wings because of authotarianism. But there also are left facists. One just doesnt call them that. Leninists, maoists, stalinists, tankies
That’s not accurate, though. Fascism specifically is a far-right ideology centered around nationalism and entrenching the Bourgeoisie, usually through appealing to frustrations within the Petite Bourgeoisie. It’s a defense mechanism for Capitalism against rising labor organizing and threat of toppling Bourgeois power.
Marxism, on the other hand, is Left-wing. The class character of the various Communist strains is in appealing to the Proletariat, and wresting control from the Bourgeoisie, rather than entrenching it.
This is why Communists are the most effective anti-fascists, and fascists the most effective anti-communists, these are diametrically opposed systems and ideologies. That’s why 80% of the combat of World War II was on the Eastern Front, between the USSR and Nazi Germany.
I highly recommend Dr. Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds, the first chapter in particular goes to great length to explain how equating Communism to fascism is a horribly inaccurate mistake that obscures the real underlying systems and impacts the two ideologies have had on the global stage in History.
I much prefer georgi dimitrov definition as “the open terrorist dictatorship of finance capital most reactionary and chauvinistic elements”.
Certainly better put! When someone is conflating Communism with fascism, though, they often need to be walked baby-steps through those errors in my experience, and Parenti does a great job with that.
Removed by mod
This is a lot, so I’ll go through it point by point.
a) Marxism is the ideology formulated by Karl Marx, centering on a Scientific approach to Socialism, analysis of Capitalism along the lines of Marx’s Law of Value, and the philosophy of Historical and Dialectical Materialism. Marxism is an umbrella term for the various strains descending from this, the most common by far being Marxism-Leninism.
b) Socialism is an umbrella term for various economic propositions centering on collective ownership. Anarchism and Marxism are the most common umbrellas under Socialism.
c) Leninism refers to Lenin’s contributions to Marxism. Often it is used to explicitly reference the aspects of Marxism-Leninism that came from Lenin, such as analysis of Imperialism, though the idea of “Leninism” as a complete ideology is wrong, as Lenin was a Marxist and relied on Marxist analysis.
d) Stalinism usually is a reference to Stalin’s stance of Socialism in One Country, as contrasting Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution. Stalinism itself is not an ideology, but a policy position that is no longer really relevant in the modern day as that question was for the early Soviet Union. Sometimes Stalinism is used in place of Marxism-Leninism by those wishing to drive a distinction, but Stalin merely synthesized Marxism-Leninism, he considered himself a student of Lenin more than a theoretician in his own right.
e) Maoism, not to be confused with Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought, is an ideological strain under the umbrella of Marxism that places the Class Struggle at the top priority, rather than alongside the other pillars of Marxism. Examples of those influenced by Maoism include Gonzalo, but not Mao, who was a Marxist-Leninist, his contributions being called Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought.
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This is historically and analytically inaccurate, see the previous comment where I answered this more in-depth.
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I included those theaters, the combat on the Eastern Front was on an entirely different scale.
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The Russian Empire refers to Tsarist Russia, not the USSR. The USSR was not an Empire. Again, more historical inaccuracy and failed analysis, see the above comment.
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Finishing your comment on a racist tirade and calling me a bot for disagreeing with you and backing up my claims with sources is not really something I think of when I think of “left-wing.”
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Facism is a way of doing things
Fascism is an ideology, not way of doing things.
One just doesnt call them that. Leninists, maoists, stalinists, tankies
If they are fascists, why did Hitler attack them?
sigh
enjoy getting stomped out then
If you expect your enemies to die fighting for your beliefs while you sip a latte and post memes then you’re unfathomably fucking stupid. Right wingers care about stopping communism. Guess whose job it is to stop fascism?
Everybody else? Its not the communists, its literally every shade of political direction
I think you misunderstood the point.
Everytime I’ve seen someone an American militia discussing its purpose, defending against a tyrannical government is overwhelmingly given as the reason, from what I’ve seen when they are being interviewed.
It appears to me, who is not an american, that there is no other possible explanation for what’s happening in that country right now. Like it’s not even a debatable fact from what I’m seeing. The Dems bend over backwards and support this regime seemingly everytime they have the chance to opposite it, CR resolution as but one recent example.
So if both parties are in cahoots, and these militia are by their own words the check to this exact situation, why are they not acting? They didn’t have to start with guns blazing, but I’m not seeing it hearing them in any way doing the thing they say they exist to do m
So as my post mentioned, I directed my question to those members for someone to respond. I haven’t seen any comments here that claim to be from militia members.
If you expect your enemies to die fighting for your beliefs while you sip a latte and post memes then you’re unfathomably fucking stupid
It’s not my flight as i don’t live there. I’m not at all claiming what you said and this is a disingenuous argument that tells me you didn’t understand my question.
Your fundamental misunderstanding is that “militia” is a euphemism for “right wing domestic terrorist organization”. You won’t find them on Lemmy. There are a few small armed leftist organizations, but they wouldn’t call themselves militias and their mission is defending their communities. They understand that our government has always been tyrannical and a few guys with guns will just get themselves killed.
Don’t believe right wingers. (You can be forgiven for not knowing these were fringe right wing idiots. Media coverage tends to obscure that part.) They say they’re against government tyranny, but really they just hate brown people. (They meant the “tyranny” of having to sit at the same lunch counter as [slurs].) They love what is going on now.
I’m simply using the terms as that are used. My understanding of the word is more or less the same as this:
militia, military organization of citizens with limited military training, which is available for emergency service, usually for local defense
I think I see the issue. There is no real official militia. Those who call themselves militias here are white power, neo nazi, or the like. They are very much in favor of everything going on right now because it affects “those people” the most.
Then we have those who are armed individuals. Statistically, last I looked, the majority of firearms are owned by right leaning individuals.
There are those of us that are pissed off about everything, or left leaning, but we have no real means to get together and coordinate any type of uprising. Dig through my comments and you’ll get a good rundown of why.
The best we can hope, those of us that are against all this shit, is arm and defend our own as best we can. That is really more for crazed right side folks who see some reason to start being stupid. Which has happened here and there already, or attempted to. We’re not talking door to door, but groups that have planned raids on peaceful protests, or have shown up in hopes of provoking a peaceful protest into a riot of some sort.
In the US we call that the National Guard. The state governor controls them. In no way are they for this sort of situation though.
I don’t care what the dictionary says. I’m telling you what every American means when they say “militia”: crazy fringe conspiracy theorists who spend a lot of time discussing “the Jew problem”.
Because they don’t believe the rules they impose on everyone else should apply to themselves. They are shameless hypocrites.
Why are foreigners who I don’t understand not behaving the way I expect them to?
The two parties being in cahoots is a minority opinion and in my view little better than a conspiracy theory. The Democrats tried to impeach Trump twice, filed felony charges against him four separate times, and put a bunch of his cronies in prison. They are limited in the actions they can realistically take against him not only by a longstanding commitment to the rule of law but also by the political reality that he has a lot of supporters and they need to choose their battles carefully. It’s frustrating to watch from the outside but I doubt any of us could do much better if we were in their shoes.
Militia members, being overwhelmingly right-wingers, care much more about some specific freedoms than they do about others, and those priorities are going to be different from yours. Also, as right-wingers, they naturally care much more about the freedom of themselves, their families, and their communities and allies than they do about the freedom of their enemies and people they don’t know and have little in common with. They also have different ideas about what sort of government overreach constitutes a threat to America than you do, and are naturally going to be more forgiving of it when it occurs as part of advancing their values and priorities or fighting against their enemies.
And finally, you knew damn well that you weren’t going to get any responses from right-wing militia members by posting on lemmy.ml, this was never intended as anything other than a circlejerk post and you’re not fooling anybody.
Get out of here with your sensical rational thoughts
Why are foreigners who I don’t understand not behaving the way I expect them to?
Maybe because ita batshit crazy and no one outside of america can seemingly figure out what the fuck is happening right now.
They picked a fight and are threatening the soveriegnty of CANADA! Their biggest and oldest bestie!.
Its bat shit crazy!
Yes, on that part at least we can agree, Trump is a fucking lunatic.
Most of the “militias” support this tyranny. They’re celebrating
If the anti fascists of the US actually started arming themselves en masse, I think it would be a net positive effect.
Either you have more armed anti fascists able to fight back, or the fascists panic and begin banning guns, causing the fools who follow them to actually think twice about their beliefs.
Nothing gets far right followers more riled up than someone threatening to take their firearms.
This guy gets it
“Not all tyranny is bad”
-maga dumbshits
if you count urban terrorism, we have Atleast three groups. All of them communist or communist in name.
I’m responding to groups self identifying as a militia, and that claim to exist as a check against tryanny. For what is worth
We were assured that the guns were there for protection and the many thousand child-sized coffins were just the cost of freedom; A trade-off because tyrants were lurking right outside the door.
Now a tyrant has taken over with barely any resistance and it seems that all those children died for nothing.
Shameful.
Maybe we just didn’t let enough children die… 🤔
Oh, honey…
Government tyranny? Militias are (in the parlance of our times) here for it.
They’ll fight against Border Patrol, and even plot to kill them sometimes, but only when they think they aren’t doing enough.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48029360
https://time.com/6141322/border-vigilantes-militias-us-mexico-immigrants/
https://www.wired.com/story/border-militias-immigrants-trump/
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/07/border-el-paso-fbi-investigation/
Have been for a while. Probably for ever. True of probably any country.
I really wonder how it would work in a country that big in empty spaces and populations with so much authoritarian actors.
Each county has a well armed police force. Nearly each state has an armed force millitia. The country has a national guard. It also has several armed agencies. It has the three biggest armies on earth if you separate each corp and only count active soldiers. It has so much millitary equipment the overflow gets sold to polices.
Those armed millitia are all in different counties, are smaller than the local police forces, with less weapon and next to no organizational know how… They would never be able to have any other impact than get outgunned in a remote place by cops or the national guard…
Unless they all start to cause chaos at the same time, which would maybe lead to a semi destabilization of some part of the USA, I don’t see these people with guns achieve anything.
Also most people who wants guns are scared/anxious persons and will talk loud about using them but won’t act when it’s time, because their real motivation is hiding a percived weaknesses with a weapon.
That’s why in all the years of abuse by the insurance system in America, there was only one Luidgi.
To be clear, authoritarianism is rampant on both sides of the aisle. The gross resistance to even basic right wing ideology is proof of that (which to be clear I’m not calling Trump basic right wing). Hell the fact you’re calling for violence is more proof.
Left and right, people want to force others to believe what they believe period. If you don’t agree you get attacked.
We need to stop “fighting” each other, and start listening to each other. Then, instead of fighting amongst ourselves, we can unite against the common threat. Oligarchy, and plutocracy.
Step back everyone, we’ve got an Enlightened Centrist here!
Don’t call for violence, let’s just compromise to allow a little fascism! 🤏
Nobody here is calling for purging wrong-think. There are very obvious and visible threats to our society from an enclave of people tearing it apart. You’re making a strawman to conflate targeting them with targeting freedom of thought
More emotional baseless counters from the left.
The problem is that right wing ideology, basic or not, supports oligarchy, plutocracy, whatever you want to call it. Calling basic millitant opposition to oppressive structures an issue of “authoritarianism” and then seeking a solution somehow unburdened by the sin of needing to actually stand for itself or against the larger problem at hand is naive and idealistic.
I do agree that speaking past each other is absolutely a key problem, but speaking against opposition to right-wingers gets in the way of that message.
Or maybe the mere fact that you feel that way is more proof of my point, and why we need to fix the communication. I don’t think the left and right are actually that far apart, but identity politics is a wedge movement meant to divide.
If instead we speak about actual policy, and changes we want to se, we may get more traction working together.
Also, left and right both support both oligarchy and plutocracy.
The right sets the conditions for all business to grow which results in people getting rich leaving everyone else behind to fend for themselves. The left set the conditions to decide where exorbitant about of tax dollars go which has proven time and time again to result in nepotism and gross financial mismanagement. See how those broad strokes are simply inflammatory claims?
Orwells Politics and the English Language is a must read on exactly why this kind of dialogue is exactly what they want us to be having.
Violence is not the answer though. Not yet. Uncoordinated violence would just result in thousands dead and no change. Watch Les Misérables again if you doubt me.
The Left stands for some form of collectivized property ownership, while the Right stands for individual property ownership. Ie, the Left stands broadly for Socialism while the Right broadly stands for Capitalism. These are diametrically opposed.
The characterization of the left and right you give, conflating taxes with leftism and business with rightism, is an extremely narrow view of Political Economy that sees Capitalism as the only existing option. This is wrong, and confusing for everyone else.
As for Orwell, I wouldn’t really give much credit to that sex abusing chauvanist. He is celebrated in the West as someone claiming to be on the Left, while working with British intelligence agencies and making lists of suspected Jews and communists, both of which he hated. Everyone should read On Orwell in my opinion.
Violence is a tool, and a necessary one, sadly. Millitant organization has only ever been the way the Working Classes have been able to gain real victories. Read Blackshirts and Reds and listen to Blowback, Revolution is the only genuine path that has liberated the working classes.
Spoken like a true commie
Yes. I am a Marxist-Leninist, dirty commie, pinko, whatever you want to call me. You’re on a site made by “commies,” there are a lot of us here.
I’m realizing that
You’re more than welcome to learn more, but calling people “commie” without a hint of irony will probably just be really funny for everyone else.
Spoken like a true commie
Indeed it is, hence it being absolutely correct.
Whatever you say LenPutin
Why should I listen to someone who wants to dehumanize my existence?
What existence is that?
The existence of someone clapping your moms asscheeks
