This r/TrueAnon thread is resonating with me right now.

www.reddit.com /r/TrueAnon/comments/1jhlnto/anyone_else_feeling_deflated_as_hell_seeing/

My feelings are very much overlapping with this poster. Seeing Burnie and AOC doing these rallies is just depressing. I too came to the realization that Burnie is just a grounding rod for class consciousness. He takes the energy of the working class and redirects it right into the earth. He has been doing this for a long fucking time too, it's not new, and it's not an aberration.

Sure, he's out there saying "Run as an independent" but, what has his independence got us at the end of the day? Support for the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia? Running as a Democrat in 2016? Support for, or otherwise Silence on the Genocide in Palestine?

I have no faith in this lot of "Progressives". They know the role they play. They play it very well.

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Agreed that their message of "vote harder" isn't it, but I'm less pessimistic about the rallies and Bernie/AOC as individuals.
We ultimately need a huge population of people to shoot way left, and I think the unfortunate reality is that that won't happen in one huge leap. People's minds and perspectives take time to change, since everyone's default assumption is "my opinions are correct" (obviously that's not right, since only my opinions are correct). If someone is approached with an assault on all their opinions, they will reject it, even if it's all true.
I see these rallies as a way for lots people to develop class consciousness for the first time, and making it popular necessarily means making it a small deviation from existing popular opinions. In the US, that means they can't make their message "actually, the US is pretty horrible", even though it's true.
The message at the rallies is watered-down, dead-end bullshit, and you're not wrong to be mad about that, but imo it's still legitimately valuable as the beginning of the road that leads to actual leftism.
To me, Bernie/AOC have their role, and it's not "be the vanguard party," it's "get people energized and point them leftwards." They're the Jordan Peterson on the left's radicalization pipeline (related), and I think they're doing a decent job at it.
- If they're doing a 'good job' I would hate to see what their bad job looks like. It has almost been a decade since Burnie ran and lost. That energy was built on the backs of the 2008 housing market crash and the subsequent Occupy protests in 2011, which had a principled Anarchist vain running through it. The Occupy movement was squashed by the Democrats in office, and the last ounce of remaining energy left was channeled into Burnie Sanders, who for whatever reason ran as a Democrat for president, instead of as an independent. This allowed the dems to curb his campaign and again, like a lightning rod, ground that energy, neutralizing it, and then attempting to run old Hill Dog as the one true candidate.
  This blew up in their face, but they HAD to do it else their party would be dominated by left wing economic populism. It would have killed the cow they had come accustomed to milking.
  They are doing it again, this is them deploying the lightning rod for the primaries. They will energize you to vote only to rip the football away in the last moment. Don't be a Charlie Brown.
  
  Bernie would have gone absolutely nowhere by running as an independent, at least not if he started that way.
  After the party shafted him, he absolutely should have in the general and in the subsequent election
  
  Oh sorry, I absolutely DON'T mean to say they've got the sauce, and I totally agree that the electoralism that they're hawking is snake oil.
  For me, Bernie 2016 was an important step in getting to where I am now, and I think that's the case for a good number of people.
  I wish I could say that I'd have changed my opinion if he had challenged my entire worldview, but I don't think that's true. I think I was only able to change my opinion because he presents a watered down picture.
  I don't expect much from politicians, but Bernie/AOC are building legitimate momentum with class consciousness as their core message and that's where their value lies. Not in their solution, but in helping people (start to) identify the actual problem.
  Elected officials will ALWAYS say the answer is to vote - they are a hammer and :vote: is their nail. And looots of people are going to get Charlie Browned trying to vote harder.
  Our role is to take the momentum they're building and direct it somewhere actually useful, while continuing to educate people along the way.
- I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video

54 comments