By Teka Lark (February 24, 2020)
The problem with individualism is this: eventually, you have to go to sleep and that is when they will shoot you in the head. See Fred Hampton for a historical example of that.
I have friends that are far-left individualists, kente cloth capitalists, and others who don’t have labels, who say they are ready for the revolution. They are ready, because they have guns and they have gone to the shooting range and they have practiced.
When they talk this way I typically stare. I stare not because I am anti-violence, I stare, because I have read The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Prince by Machiavelli , On War by Clausewitz (I read SOME of that one)…in any uprise of violence at this current time, the left will lose. It will lose badly.
The Far Right (which includes present-day Republicans) has more people, more discipline, and more weapons.
In an armed fight, disabled people will die, older people will die, children will die, and those who hesitate will die.
90% of the fraction of the people the left has who has the stomach to kill, will die, and that means all us will have to move, die, or be locked up.
You know I am not an alarmist. You also understand that I have been great at deducing future actions by observing present and past actions.
So my point is that what we need to do, instead of preparing for a battle, is to organize for peaceful political change. We need cooperatives up and running, so when the fire sale of the United States is over we have examples of a better way, instead of hoping the wealthy’s robots won’t enslave us for our universal basic income.
I guarantee we will lose in a violent battle. Accelerationism theory is only going to work well for those with an escape hatch: a passport, a trust fund, and a Ph.D. or other credential that allows a person to wax poetically in the ivory tower in another imperialist country after this one has burned to the ground.
We need to work together. We need to cooperate. Being reactionary is not going to be helpful. We need more time, this is not about stating that what we have is OK, or repairing what is not broken, because the system is not broken, it is working as it is supposed to. This is about giving us more time, because I don’t want us to die or even worse — be forced to live in what I fear is coming.
There is no “problem” with individualism… only with herd mentality that makes people into docile sheep who can’t respond against oppressors.
It’s regressive to be assuming that disabled and old people can’t defend themselves, just as kids. One with even more retrograde stance would say the same about women and gay people.
In Serbia during the Nazi occupations, children were given molotovs by their parents so they would attack German officers after school. A family member of mine is also disabled and always stood up for himself in the face of violent thugs.
We gotta learn to supportive towards individuals that do shit on their own and stand up for themselves. When you see a youngster getting beaten by security guards over shoplifting, what do you do? You can’t wait for some movement, group or organization to come to their defense.