https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti

Great video! He made some really solid points. I hope some of the audience of Contrapoints sees it.

Prefiguration really is the answer in so many cases. I think he could have emphasised, though, that while the road to rebuilding a real revolutionary left is long, every step along the path of prefiguration can and does make a practical difference to people’s lives. The pressure that can be brought to bear on elected officials will also grow little by little.

Regarding disengaging from electoral politics, I think that radicals, since they’re people who are very interested in politics, have often become so highly engaged with electoral politics that they find it difficult to kick the habit. Also, I think there’s a perception that keeping up with the minutiae of bills and appointments is essential for being taken seriously when discussing politics.

I’m no expert, but I’d imagine figuring out a (safe) way to use it with your water heater would be the low-hanging fruit, in terms of least-complexity for the amount of grid consumption you’d potentially save.

Why “thankfully”? Fuck Biden.

A right thing. And not a very substantial one. But don’t sell the UK short. The government might be despicable, but the massive marches in London by the people have been inspiring. The power of that crowd needs to be channelled into direct action.

I’m pretty sure that the United States was founded on the principle of self determination

Self determination for who? For rich, land-owning, white males.

The US was founded on the same genocidal settler-colonialism as Israel.

Maybe it won’t make an impact this election, but if people start voting for third parties regardless, the Democrats would be incentivised to do better and/or to introduce ranked-choice voting.

In any case, people need to stop waiting for elections and to start taking action now.

Boycott HP: https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp

HP-branded corporations play key roles in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. They are complicit in Israel’s occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid regime. They provide computer hardware to the Israeli army and maintain data centers through their servers for the Israeli police. They provide the Itanium servers to operate the Aviv System, the computerized database of Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority. This forms the backbone of Israel’s racial segregation and apartheid.

In case you - or anyone reading this - are unaware, the term covering the patterns you’re describing is ‘settler colonialism’. It differs from ‘exploitation colonialism’ in that it aims to not only profit from a territory, but to replace the population that is there with another population. What you describe are the logical consequences of that. I think your first two points are understating the history in Palestine/Israel, though. There was intentional displacement of the indigenous population from the start.

Best way to incentivize the major parties to introduce ranked choice voting is to vote third party anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Did the people downvoting this post even watch the video?

It’s been a while since I watched it, but I think it’d be accurate to say the TL;DW is basically that we shouldn’t care about ‘left unity’ if that means abandoning vulnerable people and reliquishing our deepest values. Essentially, if ‘the left’ doesn’t deliver safety for us and the people we love, then ‘the left’ can suck it.

I would have thought people on an anarchism community could appreciate that, and if they don’t, then they need to do some thinking, and maybe learn some history to see how anarchists have responded to demands of ‘unity’ and been persecuted in its name.

We gotta pump those numbers up! Those are rookie numbers!

https://bdsmovement.net/

You probably just want to get on the email lists of local organisations (activist groups, minor political parties, union councils, etc.).

They will often cross-promote each other so you’ll be made aware of other organisations through them.

It doesn’t says by who until the 4th paragraph, information that should be in the headline

It’s not both sides doing the same thing. Israel has been displacing, brutalising and killing Palestinians for 70 years. Israel has a modern army, a modern air force, nuclear weapons and a functional economy.

Since 1948, Israel has taken the vast majority of the land and continues to chip away at what little remains to Palestinians through illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Gaza is an open air prison that Israel constantly surveils and bombs, controls who and what gets in and out and even regulates how many calories per day Gazans are allowed.

It’s not both sides doing the same thing. It’s a settler colonial apartheid state brutalising an indigenous people who are holding on for dear life.

It’s just a war about a magical sky God, and his magical holy land

No it’s not. It’s about settler colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

archive.is usually works to remove the paywall: https://archive.is/lQVvD

Many states in the U.S. have ‘proof of surgery’ requirements before they will legally recognize people’s trans people’s gender identity: https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/identity_document_laws

A surprisingly large number of countries: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/01/why-transgender-people-are-being-sterilised-in-some-european-countries (paywall jumping archive link: https://archive.is/K336g)

Switzerland, Greece and 18 other, mostly eastern European, countries have a final hurdle: sterilisation.

Surgery is not the end goal for all trans people, and even if it were, requiring that it be completed before they can have their gender identity legally recognised is unnecessary and unhelpful.