The ‘7 warehouse fires’ claim is unverified. Only 2-3 can be confirmed, and accounts like @ProudSocialist are framing unrelated incidents as a coordinated uprising. That’s not journalism, it’s narrative-building.
Abdulkarim said on video: "All you had to do was pay us enough to f*cking live. That’s not revolutionary ideology. That’s a 29-year-old warehouse worker who snapped.
Political violence in the U.S. is rising, that’s documented. It’s reaching levels not seen since the 1970s. Meanwhile, overall crime is actually falling. So what we’re seeing isn’t a general breakdown in society. It’s targeted desperation in a country where working people feel increasingly squeezed.
History shows that sustained, organized labor action (strikes, unions, collective bargaining) has done more to improve working conditions than any fire ever has. The most effective ‘anti-capitalist’ movement in American history was the labor movement, and it won through solidarity, not sabotage."
Accounts on the left are celebrating these fires as class warfare. Accounts on the right will use them to paint all workers as dangerous radicals. Both are exploiting real suffering for engagement. Neither is offering solutions.
You don’t need to fabricate a revolution to prove that working people are struggling. A man burned down a warehouse because he couldn’t afford to live on his wages, and that fact alone should be enough to demand change. But celebrating arson isn’t solidarity. It’s spectacle. And spectacle doesn’t pay rent. If you actually care about the working class, put your energy into the things that have historically worked: organizing, striking, voting, and building collective power.
History shows that sustained, organized labor action (strikes, unions, collective bargaining) has done more to improve working conditions than any fire ever has.
the Haitian Revolution, literally started with enslaved workers burning hundreds of plantations to the ground.
The American Revolution (torching the HMS Gaspée)
The French Revolution (burning the Paris toll barriers).
Pretending that literal fire and sabotage haven’t historically been the exact sparks that destroy oppressive systems is just painfully naive.
Accounts on the right will use them to paint all workers as dangerous radicals. Both are exploiting real suffering for engagement. Neither is offering solutions.
The right is already putting people in camps. This event doesn’t give them an excuse to hurt workers. They already are.
The solution is socialism. The workers must own the means of production. Having a few private individuals own and control so much of the wealth is the problem and ending it is the solution
I also find the idea that the left is exploiting real suffering because of the celebration of these fires, so silly its laughable.
But celebrating arson isn’t solidarity. It’s spectacle.
What do you think working class people bonding over celebrating these fires leads too? This doesn’t hurt class solidarity but you know what does? Comments lecturing people that liking it is bad.
put your energy into the things that have historically worked: organizing, striking, voting, and building collective power.
Definitely agree with organizing/collective power and striking which is just an exercise of that power but voting? Source needed lol.
Summary: your comment was silly and you should feel silly. 🫳🎤
You’re right that I oversimplified. Property destruction has always punctuated successful movements, and I shouldn’t pretend otherwise. The Tea Party, sit-ins, suffragette window-smashing. Disruption is part of the toolkit.
Having said that, your three examples all share features that don’t apply here: pre-democratic conditions, no legal redress, and, crucially, organized political infrastructure that the fire punctuated rather than replaced. The colonists had no seat in Parliament, but the Sons of Liberty had been running committees of correspondence for years before the Gaspée burned. The French monarchy hadn’t convened the Estates General in 175 years, but sans-culotte sections were functioning political bodies before they were rioters. Haitian slaves had no ballot, but maroon networks existed for generations before the plantations lit up. In every case, the fire was punctuation on a sentence that was already being written. A Compton warehouse worker has the right to vote, however degraded that channel is, and vastly more material standing than anyone in your three examples. Context matters.
Important to this is this is that in our current context, Chenoweth and Stephan’s data (hundreds of campaigns, 1900–2006) shows nonviolent movements succeed roughly twice as often and are about 10x more likely to produce durable democratic outcomes. That’s not a moral claim, it is a strategic one. The movements that actually built worker power in conditions like ours, 1930s labor, Civil Rights, the UFW, won through disciplined organizing, not arson. The ones that went the other way got the Reign of Terror and Napoleon, or a century of crippling indemnity and isolation. Fire ends things; it doesn’t build them.
Where I think you’re actually right is on voting. “Vote harder” alone is weak. The real lever is organized labor and sustained civic infrastructure, and the U.S. has systematically dismantled both since the 1970s. That’s the fight. Celebrating fires feels like solidarity but functions as content. And content is exactly what the attention economy wants from us instead of organizing.
And when fires have come without that scaffolding, they’ve usually backfired. The 1968 riots after King’s assassination were a human response to grief, but the political result was Nixon’s “law and order” realignment, which has been shaping American politics for almost sixty years. The Weather Underground bombings hollowed out a broad New Left coalition and gave the right a permanent talking point. The 2020 property destruction is the one in living memory: BLM’s public support polled higher before the arson got sustained coverage than it ever did after. The peaceful mass mobilization moved the needle. The fires moved it back. Fire without scaffolding doesn’t just fail to build, it gives the other side exactly the footage they need.
If the fires are a symptom of how squeezed working people are, I’m with you. If they’re being sold as the strategy, I think the historical record and the data both say we lose that way.
And look, the reason I’m pushing on this isn’t to lecture anyone for feeling good about a warehouse burning. I get it. The reason I’m pushing is that the stuff that actually works is boring. Honor a picket line. Donate to a strike fund. Join a workplace organizing effort, you’re legally protected to do that even without a formal union. Show up to a tenant union meeting. Vote in a municipal election where turnout is 18 percent and your ballot is worth ten. None of that trends. None of it feels like solidarity the way a fire does. But it’s the stuff that built the 40-hour week, and dismantling it is what got us here. If the choice is between content that feels like power and organizing that builds it, I’d rather we pick the second one, even when it’s slow.
The ‘7 warehouse fires’ claim is unverified. Only 2-3 can be confirmed, and accounts like @ProudSocialist are framing unrelated incidents as a coordinated uprising. That’s not journalism, it’s narrative-building.
Abdulkarim said on video: "All you had to do was pay us enough to f*cking live. That’s not revolutionary ideology. That’s a 29-year-old warehouse worker who snapped.
Political violence in the U.S. is rising, that’s documented. It’s reaching levels not seen since the 1970s. Meanwhile, overall crime is actually falling. So what we’re seeing isn’t a general breakdown in society. It’s targeted desperation in a country where working people feel increasingly squeezed.
History shows that sustained, organized labor action (strikes, unions, collective bargaining) has done more to improve working conditions than any fire ever has. The most effective ‘anti-capitalist’ movement in American history was the labor movement, and it won through solidarity, not sabotage."
Accounts on the left are celebrating these fires as class warfare. Accounts on the right will use them to paint all workers as dangerous radicals. Both are exploiting real suffering for engagement. Neither is offering solutions.
You don’t need to fabricate a revolution to prove that working people are struggling. A man burned down a warehouse because he couldn’t afford to live on his wages, and that fact alone should be enough to demand change. But celebrating arson isn’t solidarity. It’s spectacle. And spectacle doesn’t pay rent. If you actually care about the working class, put your energy into the things that have historically worked: organizing, striking, voting, and building collective power.
Anything else is just content.
the Haitian Revolution, literally started with enslaved workers burning hundreds of plantations to the ground.
The American Revolution (torching the HMS Gaspée)
The French Revolution (burning the Paris toll barriers).
Pretending that literal fire and sabotage haven’t historically been the exact sparks that destroy oppressive systems is just painfully naive.
The right is already putting people in camps. This event doesn’t give them an excuse to hurt workers. They already are.
The solution is socialism. The workers must own the means of production. Having a few private individuals own and control so much of the wealth is the problem and ending it is the solution
I also find the idea that the left is exploiting real suffering because of the celebration of these fires, so silly its laughable.
What do you think working class people bonding over celebrating these fires leads too? This doesn’t hurt class solidarity but you know what does? Comments lecturing people that liking it is bad.
Definitely agree with organizing/collective power and striking which is just an exercise of that power but voting? Source needed lol.
Summary: your comment was silly and you should feel silly. 🫳🎤
You’re right that I oversimplified. Property destruction has always punctuated successful movements, and I shouldn’t pretend otherwise. The Tea Party, sit-ins, suffragette window-smashing. Disruption is part of the toolkit.
Having said that, your three examples all share features that don’t apply here: pre-democratic conditions, no legal redress, and, crucially, organized political infrastructure that the fire punctuated rather than replaced. The colonists had no seat in Parliament, but the Sons of Liberty had been running committees of correspondence for years before the Gaspée burned. The French monarchy hadn’t convened the Estates General in 175 years, but sans-culotte sections were functioning political bodies before they were rioters. Haitian slaves had no ballot, but maroon networks existed for generations before the plantations lit up. In every case, the fire was punctuation on a sentence that was already being written. A Compton warehouse worker has the right to vote, however degraded that channel is, and vastly more material standing than anyone in your three examples. Context matters.
Important to this is this is that in our current context, Chenoweth and Stephan’s data (hundreds of campaigns, 1900–2006) shows nonviolent movements succeed roughly twice as often and are about 10x more likely to produce durable democratic outcomes. That’s not a moral claim, it is a strategic one. The movements that actually built worker power in conditions like ours, 1930s labor, Civil Rights, the UFW, won through disciplined organizing, not arson. The ones that went the other way got the Reign of Terror and Napoleon, or a century of crippling indemnity and isolation. Fire ends things; it doesn’t build them.
Where I think you’re actually right is on voting. “Vote harder” alone is weak. The real lever is organized labor and sustained civic infrastructure, and the U.S. has systematically dismantled both since the 1970s. That’s the fight. Celebrating fires feels like solidarity but functions as content. And content is exactly what the attention economy wants from us instead of organizing.
And when fires have come without that scaffolding, they’ve usually backfired. The 1968 riots after King’s assassination were a human response to grief, but the political result was Nixon’s “law and order” realignment, which has been shaping American politics for almost sixty years. The Weather Underground bombings hollowed out a broad New Left coalition and gave the right a permanent talking point. The 2020 property destruction is the one in living memory: BLM’s public support polled higher before the arson got sustained coverage than it ever did after. The peaceful mass mobilization moved the needle. The fires moved it back. Fire without scaffolding doesn’t just fail to build, it gives the other side exactly the footage they need.
If the fires are a symptom of how squeezed working people are, I’m with you. If they’re being sold as the strategy, I think the historical record and the data both say we lose that way.
And look, the reason I’m pushing on this isn’t to lecture anyone for feeling good about a warehouse burning. I get it. The reason I’m pushing is that the stuff that actually works is boring. Honor a picket line. Donate to a strike fund. Join a workplace organizing effort, you’re legally protected to do that even without a formal union. Show up to a tenant union meeting. Vote in a municipal election where turnout is 18 percent and your ballot is worth ten. None of that trends. None of it feels like solidarity the way a fire does. But it’s the stuff that built the 40-hour week, and dismantling it is what got us here. If the choice is between content that feels like power and organizing that builds it, I’d rather we pick the second one, even when it’s slow.