“A riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear?” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
This country cannot change.
There will be no appeals by me to stop the protests or the looting in Minnesota, as the the people react to the murder of George Floyd. Black and brown people in the United States have been murdered for centuries with impunity by the state apparatus or with its blessing, while whites look on from the sidelines, wringing our hands, squawking about civility and discourse.
America needs to atone for its sins. Maybe it needs to burn?
Living away from my country, while always a personal net positive, can be dislocating. Obsessed with bigger ideas and other people’s thoughts of them, I used to retreat to Twitter to check the pulse of what was current in the discourse back home.
But something changed, either in me, my experience using it, or in the collective, that showed me it is not the place I once learned so much from.
Maybe it was the momentum of the Bernie campaign, its rise, the enthusiasm and hope for an uncertain future that it brought to many. Or its subsequent crashing into the full weight of an democratic establishment, recalcitrant to any critique or admonition for something better. Or maybe it was my partner becoming rightfully annoyed at my manic moods in reaction to what was happening online.
Regardless, I took a month away and realized my mood was better, I was more present in my real life, and not as anxious. But Twitter is a good place to make personal connections and I wanted to find a community of like-minded people interested in socialist ideals, especially vis-a-vis the United States. I had started a Twitter account for DSA members living abroad earlier and found some people to create a Telegram channel.
There was no goal. I imagined we get a people together and decide what would be possible while living abroad. Over the months, some of us brainstormed. Do we make a chapter of DSA? An organization that acts as a bridge between continents? A media arm to support Medicare for All and other logical policies such as a Green New Deal? How can that integrate seamlessly into our lives as foreigners in other countries? So we decided to prioritize a social component. For me, this is the best. Because what I crave isn’t some organization that I might become anxious with trying to do something for a country sometimes not in the forefront of my mind, but people, their beautiful ideas and interesting stories, away from places that can’t build solidarity and internationalism like Twitter. So we decided on a social discord server.
The Internationale After Hours Discord
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades, come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race
While recognizing that the majority of people are depoliticized, those of us on the left can be divisive in a way those on the conservative, reactionary side have never been. We posture theoretical ideologies online and critique those outside of those frameworks. Socialists, anarchists, and communists do not hold any real power, and these ideas, while certainly more acceptable than ten years ago, are still fringe. Our group wanted to create a space of learning and discussion away from somewhere like Twitter that encourages hot takes, calling people or ideas problematic, and looking at everything through a distrustful lens.
Now is the time for internationalist, ecological, and socialist solidarity. I’m not under any illusions that we can solve world-spanning problems, but if some of us can enjoy a space online to talk about these things, it’s something. Going forward and with more people interested, we will produce a mission, a website, and a podcast for our collective perspectives.
I have a lot to learn from people. And hopefully I can also share some experiences and information along the way.
If you’re interested in joining the server, let me know.
A thing I saw after the the end of the Bernie campaign was this call online for the socialist left to throw down our ideological weapons and surrender to the inevitable Biden candidacy. “You have to vote for him! Otherwise, you are enabling fascism,” some said.
Asad Haider in Salon:
The scale of social change required to manage the impending age of catastrophe lies beyond the myopia of those who, since the election of George W. Bush (if not before that, in historical terms), have endlessly repeated that we have no option but to reduce our politics to the embrace of the “lesser evil.” To reprimand young people for failing to muster enthusiasm for voting for the lesser evil ultimately amounts to a refusal to recognize the necessity for a greater idea, for a mobilization for structural transformation. In our age of catastrophe, “lesser-evil-ism” is the most unethical position. The slogan of May ‘68, “Be realistic; demand the impossible!” remains a rational and ethical principle for the present. We should be inspired by the youth who are reviving it.
Haider rightly points out the absurdity of demanding allegiance from a few thousand socialists and preemptively blaming them for a possible loss, rather than building a political program that inspires millions of Americans who do not see the point in voting at all.
If Biden loses, it will not be because the Democratic Socialist of America didn’t endorse him, a request unbelievably laughable. It will be because, like in 2016, the Democratic Party decided to tack to the center, offer platitudes, and bank on white educated suburbanites and older loyalty voters of color. They will once again ignore the working class, the precarious millennials with Uber jobs and no chance of ever becoming homeowners ourselves.
To be transparent, I am still undecided about what I will do in November. California is solidly blue and we all know the popular vote is meaningless in our supposed democratic republic. I can hold my nose and vote for Biden, stay home, or vote third party.
The troika of crises that I squawk about; coronavirus, capitalism and the looming financial crisis, and climate change demand much more than going to the polls every four years for a false choice between evils. A re-configuration of society based on ecological, internationalist, and anticapitalist lines is the only way forward.
You say “it’s unnecessary”? Look around.
You say “it’s impossible”? Not with that attitude.
