• Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    My issue is this clearly doesn’t work. You’re being mislead that this works. You had 700 million people out there and nothing happened.

    But 700 million people used in new and strategic ways can move mountains. Literally. But instead of moving mountains, you’re just in a street for a day.

    Think about this. Protesting isn’t new. It’s occurred since the 1900s as a way to force government and the rich to bend to our will through collective action.

    Do you people think that the rich and powerful haven’t solved this problem yet? Just think about it for even 10 minutes. It makes no sense that this type of collective action could ever work in today’s world like it has in the past. Say what you like about authoritarians, but they do coordinate and plan. Just look at all the events they attend with each other. It’s not just for drinks and cocktails. They use their resources to prevent us from taking their power away. They have created thick manuals for this very specific form of soft fleshy crowd. The powers that be have paid for the smartest Ivy league quants to think of strategy and tactics like an NFL coach does when reviewing games. They’re so ahead of us on this. The rich control the media. The same media that many of us decided is not important to use anymore or maintain connections on. The media they have heavily invested in. Turns out that this media is needed. If we don’t have a presence on social media then we cannot share our efforts. Without that media, the authoritarians can make this effort into anything they want.

    If i was a rich guy I’d love these protests because it gives me an opportunity to arrest and financial bankrupt any of the leaders. So when I see that people are getting angry and there is this potential energy that could erupt against my class, then I can use the media to plan these things. When you all show up, the police can identify the leaders and arrest and charge them after kicking in their heads. The rest go home after 24 hrs. With the pressure now released, there will be another year before I need to rinse and repeat.

    Compare this to say the clownvoy. They were connected to the police. The tow truck drivers that would be needed to remove trucks after an arrest were in support of them. They made it family fun with bbq and trampolines and bouncy castles and hot tubs because do you think police want to deal with any of that after they clear it all out. Every part of the clownvoy was set up to mess with the playbook that Authoritarians use to disrupt protests. That is what is lacking on the left. But there are leaders in the left who seem hell bent on maintaining status quo. But people are waking up slowly. The problem with doing these things slow is it gives the Authorities time to adapt. There needs to be serious critical honesty reflection on the left towards how badly these protests have damaged and harmed progress. Digging in is only going to keep the status quo which right now is causing huge losses day by day.

    Right after I posted I saw this exemple of media being used in the way I described. My Facebook is getting filled with the posts rapidly. Take those same 700 million people and just image what you could do online with them.

    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I’m going to offer my call to action that also gets shot down often but I want people to consider it honestly. I know it sounds crazy. It’s not fully fleshed out. But I believe efforts need to be more focused online. It is anonymous. They can’t beat your head in. The authoritarians invest heavily in it. The weakness in their efforts is that the thing they need to invest in can easily be leveraged by us to also spread an idea just like a protest. Except with so much less effort and risk.

      What I want people to consider honestly is that I think the proof that this is where we need to focus is that the powers that be are actually trying to dismantle our ability to do this before we wise up to it. This is why they’re trying to introduce digital id’s. It’ll let them be able to identify leaders and voices online who organize and censor them. Right now they cannot do that easily. But they know if those 700 million people that showed up in the streets would instead show up online, their bots, propaganda and efforts would be crushed. You can control the narrative and flip it all back on them. I think we have wrongly been telling people to abandon all the social media we can. To block everyone. To ignore it all. I think that is contributing to all our countries sliding towards the right. We gave them all red carpet access to the eyes and ears of most people. Instead we should encourage each other to connect online. Take control of the platforms again and only then consider going back to the streets when the narrative can be controlled and messages spread.