The problem with weeeeeee is that they cannot achieve successful revolution, nor peace of mind, by retreating into themselves. What to do is make a friend group and talk to people. This can be done by getting a job, like a 9-to-5 where you talk to your coworkers, or volunteering. Especially if you have money to donate you can instead donate your time. It can start out fun and light-hearted before going into how the work feels, and then into a union or study group. This is the pattern for nations like the United States; in AES countries it is imperative to work with your government and follow their lead.
"Buy product.
You’ll feel better."
“But I am product.”
"Sell product.
You’ll feel better."
Boycott actually works really well though, but only when targeted and coordinated.
That’s why the official BDS movement focuses on a small list of targets. In order for boycott to be effective, it has to be organized and mass scale, to go beyond individual consumer choices. They had some success with this tactic, that’s why BDS is so antagonized / criminalized in the imperial core.
People of conscience around the world are rightfully shattered, enraged, and sometimes feeling powerless about Israel’s Gaza genocide, armed, funded, and shielded from accountability by the colonial West, led by the US. Many feel compelled to boycott all products and services of companies tied in any way to Israel. The question is how to make boycotts most effective and impactful in holding corporations accountable for their complicity in the suffering of Palestinians.
The BDS movement uses the historically successful method of targeted boycotts, inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, and the Indian and Irish anti-colonial struggles, among others worldwide.
We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact. We need to target companies that play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, as well as in violating the rights of other peoples/communities, and where there is real potential for winning. This is how the BDS movement has successfully forced companies like G4S, Veolia, Orange, Puma, and Pillsbury, among others, to end their complicity in Israel’s grave human rights violations and crimes.
Compelling large complicit companies, through strategic and context-sensitive boycott and divestment campaigns as well as well-thought-out shareholder strategies, to end their complicity in Israeli apartheid and war crimes against Palestinians sends a compelling message to hundreds of other complicit companies that “your time will come, so get out before it’s too late!”
The fact that Israel’s economy has been in steady, at times drastic, decline also helps in showing that business with Israel is not only unethical and illegal but also financially irresponsible. Israel is quickly turning into what the BDS movement calls a #ShutDownNation, with the dramatic flight of capital, severe brain drain, drying foreign direct investments in high tech, and a generally unsafe, unstable, and “collapsing” economy. Ethics and international law aside, this should help us mobilize most shareholders to oppose any investment in Israel.
Boycott actually works really well though
That very much depends on what the measured outcome is. For a radlib the restriction of certain capital movement maybe considered a win but we are several years into a genocide after decades of ethnic cleansing.
BDS is actually better as a minimum litmus test within the constraints of bourgeoise conceptions of empancipation.
Put it another way: there’s really only one primary thing slowing down the genocide and ethnic cleansing and that’s the resistance fighters on the ground. BDS works best as an advertisement for that.
I tend to agree and I think the core of what bugs me about boycott strategies is the level of abstraction they operate on. The line “bourgeoisie conceptions of emancipation” I think elucidates this somewhat for me. It is often too much within this point of view that you can “reform the system from within via public pressure” without actually challenging power itself. Which makes me think boycott tends to be, at its best, a form of short-term harm reduction, but it’s little better than bourgeoisie electoral reform if there’s no comprehensive strategy beyond that. Even if you whittle away over time, the dominant power is going to work to reassert itself and if you didn’t wrest control over anything, then gains can very easily be lost. As seen in the US with the FDR-era reforms degrading into what the US is today.
I would venture to say people were taught wrong about power on purpose. Taught that improvements to society came through prolonged protest, essentially, rather than violent struggle. And when they operate on the belief that protesting an unjust system for long enough will fix it, that positions them to spin their wheels on action that never seriously challenges power. Never risks actual skirmishes, but instead acts merely like participants of the system who are a bit bothered with how it’s run.
Yes, of course. If you’re in the imperial core, it’s not enough to just sit back and cheer on the resistance online. We have to organize IRL and on a public site, we can only tell people how to do that legally. And BDS is already at the edge of that in Europe. I think we need more communities here about how to organize offline and about tactics that work, sharing useful skills and so on. How to support comrades in prison, how (not) to talk to police, how to build and coordinate affinity groups, how to do good opsec, all that stuff. Just complaining about the lack of revolution is easy. We have to build one.
this is what really frustrated me during this time. americans were turning it into an individualistic morality thing rather than collectively organizing. a boycott isnt abstinence, it’s supposed to be targeted restraint from buying from a company with a clear motivation so that the company stops something they were doing
idiotic question but couldn’t you argue that avoiding supporting imperialism is avoiding “sin” though since imperialism is objectively and morally wrong? wouldn’t it be correct then to hold oneself to such moralistic standards while doing the boycott? that’s how i do it anyways
You can’t build a revolution on moralism which is idealism. Dialectical materialism must be the modus operandi.
That’s what happens when your motivation for doing things is to “not be a bad person”
I don’t think consumer activism is particularly revolutionary and puts way too much emphasis on the individual anyway.
with all this effort we put into shaming single moms for having two stanleys we could have shut down every US base
True.
is this a safe place where i can say that in the capitalist world, therapy and other mental health treatments act largely as a means to manage the symptoms of alienation and other ailments caused by capitalism. it is like a service center for the workers where they receive enough to not 1. commit suicide and cause capitalists to lose their surplus value and 2. stop any actually radical ideas
i’m not against therapy but like most things in the capitalist system it sucks by the way its put in practice rather than intristically.
i noticed that a lot of american communists avoid the mental health system like the plague despite speaking about their mental health struggles openly (because they believe it is attached to the system rather than something wrong with them in particular)
i dont think this person is pathetic as much as they are misguided and dont have the correct community around them. they only mention themselves and a therapist in this comment, no collective that they would talk to, organize with…
Besides the psychiatry as a field, has a very dark eugenics background. It was basically born in tandem with fascism, which is why the Soviets found that field so distasteful.
if you say this to libs theyll look at you like youre crazy but so many americans are on antidepressants while in the rest of the world its considered heavy duty stuff and NOT given to any average citizen…
Because the goal of the system is to return you to being an effective worker, not wellness.
Yeah where I am from medical professionals rarely prescribe high doses medication, its harder to get the heavy stuff.
i remember a documentary, i cant remember what war (it was post 2000) but it was a traumatized veteran who didnt look older than 20 and then they had a treament segment and he had a talk therapist and spent time with his parents, no medication at all…
The most famous Psychiatrists in history were mentally fucked people with equally fucked up politics.
I’m convinced that most people who get into psychiatry are deeply fucked-up people who want to figure themselves out.
Ohh. Is there some resource to learn more about that? I didn’t think that psychiatry had birthmarks like that or that the soviets had a particular distaste for it.
Its not really a socialist author but here Psychiatry after Kraepelin
An important to note is Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology theory. Mosche Wulff was also an early figure (but he became later an establishing figure in Israhelli psychiatry so go figure).
After the Lenin’s death especially Freudian psychoanalysis was rejected outright.
Western society was more focused on stopping mental illness, while the soviets primarily were interested in care and mental illness divorced from a biological origin.
that is a succinct way of putting it. the function of therapy as a “service center” is especially chilling to me.
it really shouldnt be that way it should be professional help to make you happier not a way to get you back to work/functional for a court case…
💯
“I believe that we will win”
“U-S-A!"
"U-S-A!”
“I believe that we will win”
“U-S-A!"
"U-S-A!”
“I believe that we will win”
“U-S-A!"
"U-S-A!”
May he be better and May he be a revolutionary. American Marxists must make a replacement for Starbucks.
Cursed be Starbucks, for the destruction of the café.
People focus more on the people who don’t boycott every single thing
Is this really true? I have never seen such a behaviour. Boycotting perfectly is kinda hard in the US because it looks like almost all of the big corporations fund the genocide.
I think there is a possible legitimate mental health problem arising from the feeling of helplessness when you don’t directly and immediately see the effects of the boycott. This is exacerbated by most people not participating in it. But I don’t know if an exposure therapy where you fund a little genocide as a treat is the way to go about this. This sounds like effective altruism even.
Boycotting perfectly is kinda hard in the US because it looks like almost all of the big corporations fund the genocide.
And because so many things are owned by the same corporations (sometimes without it being obvious that this is the case, due to how parent corporations can own so many others). And due to the Christian culture framework, people tend to view it from a lens of whether they are being a good person or not, rather than whether it is measurably effective at doing anything. So you end up with “leftists” online scolding each other about whether they have the moral fortitude to stick to a boycott, instead of asking whether it is actually effective as is, and if it can be, what to do about people who fail at it other than moralizing at them.
boycotting in the US is hard because they live in a capitalist society where all human connection is taboo and evil. they have to organize COLLECTIVELY for an effective boycott which is so hard where nobody likes anyone
I’m not sure that’s true. It’s more that everyone has basic needs that are funded by different schedules. The only get together excuse you can legit get time off is Sunday church, and even that is eroded. People bash blue laws, but it was a guaranteed day off.
I assume with “every single thing” they mean the BDS list or even just a certain list that they got in their head via osmosis.
Basically you get shit on for eating at MCdonalds, drink at starbucks or buy stuff from zara etc. But burger king, random coffee franchise that does support israel, but is not on a list or buying call of duty, is okay.
There was no activism in the first place. Just some virtue signaling/slacktivism.
hate how this is relatable, many times i wish i could go without food for months so i can spend less money which always contributes to genocide by default
nothing will ever be enough to help gaza, not even mass western casualties i feel but of course i still try with my worthless life
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