#41
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"OWS failed because those crazy marxists and anarchists wouldn't take seriously my liberal ideas of corporations are greedy and we just need new regulations and things are back to normal."
#42
penitent
Post rating: +
ows failed b/c a buchn of people just wanted to sit in a park for a bit and it got cold and people kept hitting them so they went home and wrote blog posts about how brave they were. some of these people wanted to reform the system a lil and some of em wanted StalinTopia but they were all Twats
#43
Post rating: +
Ows failed cuz of the time a cop said, "Savages. The lot of them. Exterminate the brutes." And the other cop was like, "Gee willickers a-Doydoy," and clobbered himself on the head with his steel baton, rattling his lips with his finger a blubber, spit spraying from his maw. And that's why ows failed
#44
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ows failed because it was a reactionary movement that excluded minorities
#45
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this i claim, that the legitimacy of any movement is inversely proportional to the amount of white people in it
#46
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i dont really see how ows failed, it didnt have any purpose except to make unemployed white kids feel like they were making a difference even though they didnt have any idea what difference they were trying to make and it succeeded wildly at that
#47
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they didn't kill any cops so it failed miserably
#48
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Lanza was apart of OWS and look how he turned out
#49
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dumb white rednecks from the south are more effective at protest and change than OWS. Dick's Sporting Goods and other places suspended their gun sales and rednecks around the country are boycotting these stores
#50
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they didnt want to kill any cops though and even they had no idea what kind of changes they wanted to see. the average ows protesters understanding of the issues started and ended with "something is wrong and someone should do something why am i not rich i went to school for history". what it was was a great big ego boost to a bunch of unemployed 20 somethings that wanted to mimic real actual political movements.
#51
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ows was the real world equivalent of every goon project where everybody wants to make posters and websites but nobody wants to do any actual work.
#52
political car tune
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How do goons make posters if they dont have sex?
#53
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ows failed because they didn't pass the test
#54
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DildoMalone posted:

ows was the real world equivalent of every goon project where everybody wants to make posters and websites but nobody wants to do any actual work.


All that theory and no action

#55
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the response might be that decades of intellectual pesticide (TINA TINA TINA), the soils of our minds are toxic so of course the first growth will be weak

i dunno how the challenges & response of this generation compare to those before them tho
#56
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lol first world revolutionaries lol
#57
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AmericanNazbro posted:

this i claim, that the legitimacy of any movement is inversely proportional to the amount of white people in it



triple irony



"the revolution is surrender"

#58
Post rating: -
OWSers were just like fat goons sitting at home playing fantasy football, but then suddenly got the urge to put aside the spread sheets and take to the streets for a little two hand touch. Instead they found out they're horribly out of shape and got a bunch of skinned knees and bruises for nothing and went back to armchair quarterbacking. OWS's hearts were filled with the writings of Trotsky and other slavic scum, took to the streets to play out their revolutionary fantasies, but realized babyhueypnewton wasn't their friend and his dick stunk
#59
[account deactivated]
#60
Post rating: +

ggw posted:

OWSers were just like fat goons sitting at home playing fantasy football, but then suddenly got the urge to put aside the spread sheets and take to the streets for a little two hand touch. Instead they found out they're horribly out of shape and got a bunch of skinned knees and bruises for nothing and went back to armchair quarterbacking. OWS's hearts were filled with the writings of Trotsky and other slavic scum, took to the streets to play out their revolutionary fantasies, but realized babyhueypnewton wasn't their friend and his dick stunk



Hmm great analysis really made me think

#61
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
Post rating: +
turns out if you constantly criticize a bunch of white liberals for being "violent" before theyve actually done or accomplished anything, it effectively scares them into not becoming violent and thus not actually doing or accomplishing anything. this phenomenon was first discovered by Edward Jenner in 1796
#62
FLAWDA
Post rating: +
Re: Dalston's question about prison activism

Yes, there is prison activism but it can't really do anything to stop the giant overwhelming beast that is the prison industrial complex in America. There are entire police departments propped up by the war on drugs and their ability to seize items and funds used by criminals. The only real prison activism that is making a meaningful impact has to do either with changing sentencing policies (rescinding Three Strikes amendments, alternative sentences rather than imprisonment, using day fines), specific drug related issues (like decriminalization, getting drug courts and other courts to rely on rehab rather than punishment), or changing current prison conditions (reducing overcrowding, meaningful work training programs, return of prison nurseries, etc). Individual jurisdictions, states, counties, all have their own policies that result in imprisonment that people might be trying to effect in those areas, but any national efforts are drops in a bucket.
The biggest constraints on the construction of new prisons are all budgetary and states like California have built in measures that require them to start freeing prisoners when they reach a certain level of overcrowding. Since prisons have to be ordered to be constructed so far in advance, it makes the individual Departments of Corrections have to do forecasting and this cost-benefit analysis of whether or not they can release prisoners/continue overcrowding/change policies/build new prisons. Prisons are crazy expensive to build and staff, but small towns lobby heavily for their construction and right now the new craze is actually prison privatization where companies like Wackenhut or some of the other large security corporations take over existing prisons or build private prisons.
If you have any specific or directed questions about crime, imprisonment or other related issues I can answer those.
#63
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AmericanNazbro posted:

Hmm great analysis really made me think


thanks D&D is full of insights

#64
[account deactivated]
#65
[account deactivated]
#66
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Well from what I heard London Occupy was terrible, much worse than New York. Most of the criticisms here of OWS are shallow and are the same criticisms everyone made before the movement even begun. Obviously OWS was lliberal and was limited by its ideology and tactics, but it also had many successes and provided a lot for the left to discuss in terms of tactics and propaganda.

Marx's criticism of the Paris Commune wasn't "they didn't seize the banks stupid n00bs LOL"
#67
[account deactivated]
#68
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babyhueypnewton posted:

Well from what I heard London Occupy was terrible, much worse than New York. Most of the criticisms here of OWS are shallow and are the same criticisms everyone made before the movement even begun. Obviously OWS was lliberal and was limited by its ideology and tactics, but it also had many successes and provided a lot for the left to discuss in terms of tactics and propaganda.

Marx's criticism of the Paris Commune wasn't "they didn't seize the banks stupid n00bs LOL"



bhpn is right

#69
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seriously though mapping the shittiness of OLSX to OWS, which you do by implication through using phrases like ivy league etc, and also linking this to journals like TNI is a big stretch.
#70
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as with p much everything, bhpn is absolutely right. thank you bhpn.
#71
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i like the article klamsek, i have only one point of criticism, the line "This keeps ideas stale and weaksauce. No wonder we bemoan the death of the left." I think the article would be much better served with an allusion to the mcrib here, perhaps a simile alluding to the mcrib's ability to remain in a state of being fresh and preserved for decades while simultaneously retaining a quality of rankness and inedibility--lingering culinary undeath. the writing would relate much better with your target audience, in my opinion. cheers
#72
Kurdt
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final fantasy tactics
#73
[account deactivated]
#74
Post rating: +
Yes the consensus system is crap, it hides leadership under the guise of "direct democracy" and "leaderlessness" and therefore creates a clique of unelected, unanswerable leadership based on charisma, connections, and privilege.

Yes the message of Occupy was incoherent and the 99% crap, besides being an ideological mess, practically prevented OWs from expelling undercover cops, crazy homeless people, Ron Paul libertarians, racists, etc.

Yes the "camp" aspect was a huge money sink and frustrated the hell out of the poor guys who had to do security or feed the whole New York homeless community without police protection. It led to segregation and discrimination within the confines of a small park, and yeah the racial politics were crap.

We all know this, and we've all known this about anarchist politics for a long time. It doesn't explain why OWS became the largest left wing movement since the 70s. It doesn't explain why the language of OWS became adopted by the media, the main political parties, the populace at large, and even other left groups. It doesn't explain why the PSL, which has a coherent marxist economic analysis, a diverse membership, and a principled, anti-imperialist political analysis(and successful anti-war movement) had a massive banner with 'We are the 99%" in the central NY office and was in Zuccoti and then Union Square trying to recruit people. It doesn't explain why Occupy mobilized a whole section of the population which normally doesn't participate in any political process, and why Occupy expanded so far beyond the typical anarchist lifestyle squatters.

All of the criticisms you make are important to check the utopian anarchists like David Graeber who think those kind of politics are more advanced and more 'democratic' than Marxism rather than the same tired crap Marx himself had to write polemics against. But they don't really explain what made OWS different, and what we can learn from it.
#75
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~
hey in regard to the question Daltian you ask about whether leftism / lifestylism is cities only, well, not exactly, see the cities are a good place to party, do drugs, and sleep around, and people who want to do that all through their twenties have a larger overlap with leftism due to their youth. my home town is pretty well stocked with hard old country hippies who bend city government to their will the whole time.
#76
[account deactivated]
#77
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PSL



lol the revolution will occur through electoral means and voting advances the cause of communism lol

#78
[account deactivated]
#79
Post rating: +

discipline posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

It doesn't explain why Occupy mobilized a whole section of the population which normally doesn't participate in any political process, and why Occupy expanded so far beyond the typical anarchist lifestyle squatters.

I don't know BHPN it sort of appealed to this generation of hyper-individualized thrill seekers. low commitment. feeling important. on the cusp of history. brag to ur friends. get on tv. smoke a doob.



Well if that's what makes up this generation than we need to appeal to them. You've given OWS this 'original sin', which is partially being too white/male, being too liberal, and being too reflective of all the problems of our society at large. OK great, I'm not defending OWS, it's done and I'm a Marxist. What can we learn? What were its successes? Self-righteousness will get us nowhere, especially rooted in a kind of misanthropy which complains about how the masses should be instead of how they are.

#80
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NO GODS NO MASTERS BANKING REFORM ASAP