Ed Note: This was originally a thread on Mastodon.
It’s no secret that I am very skeptical of protests in the United States, and even more skeptical of the Democratic Party. I’m almost 50 years old, and I think I’ve only seen lefties win two things: gay marriage and AIDS funding. That’s pretty much it, and I doubt that’s a coincidence.
Americans voted Trump back into the White House and he’s predictably being not only openly corrupt, but illegally dismantling the government and violating court orders. That of course isn’t when ICE isn’t grabbing people off the street and shipping them off without due process to a prison in El Salvador. It’s not a coincidence that Peter Theil and Elon Musk are at the center of all of this, and every “policy” sounds like something spouted by some dipshit in a university ACM office circa 1995. Today, it’s saying that birthright citizenship isn’t real. Tomorrow, it’s saying that you can’t truly be free until we reëstablish chattel slavery. But I digress.
On the bright side, there’s a real hunger for activism on the left and center. People are fucking pissed. The Democratic Party of course isn’t up to meeting the moment. They’re a bunch of octogenarians still shell shocked from the 1980 presidential election and Vietnam. In this vacuum, one organization has sprung up to meet the demand: the 50501 Movement.
Now what I’m about to say isn’t just about the 50501 Movement. It’s about contemporary lefty activism in general. It’s just that the 50501 Movement is the newest and most high profile, and arguably successful group around today. They are the perfect embodiment of lefty activism in the early 21st century.
50501 seemed to just appear wholly formed on the scene a few months ago. Fifty protests in fifty state capitals; one movement. They hit the moment. Before they showed up, I was feeling anxious as were others in my milieu. “When are we going to start protesting?” “Why isn’t anyone standing up against this?” Then 50501 made a post on Reddit and it kicked off a lot more than 50 protests. I attended a couple. I’m skeptical of protests as I said, but I was also wanting people in the streets, so go do it.
It was so normie and safe. The first flyer I saw repeatedly talked about how it was “NON-VIOLENT” and “ABSOLUTELY NO WEAPONS“. They’re really centering on respectability. My thoughts on both have evolved in the past 10 years, but okay. At the same time. And where was this protest? City Hall? No. A park in downtown. Umm… Okay. It’s not like city hall is the nexus of fascism in the South Bay and the courthouse/federal building doesn’t have room to hold a crowd of a few thousand. Fine. Let’s go to the park.
The two hours I was there, I kept thinking the same thing. What are we doing here? We’re walking around on the sidewalks stopping for lights with chaperones (I’m sorry, “peace ambassadors”.) chanting “WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!” Are they really when we’re being polite? People were carrying signs literally saying “Thank you Rachel Maddow” and “What would RBG do?” Well, we know what she did. Knowingly dying of cancer and knowing that Senate was lost, she stayed on even after meeting with Obama who begged her to resign so they could save the seat. A 6-3 Supreme Court is her legacy. Fuck her. But hey, I heard she could draft some meaningless legal opinions, and looked good in a doily.
Meanwhile, everything keeps going along same as before. What actions are we doing? Calling our congresspeople? Okay. What else? Because that’s working out oh so well.
We have octogenarians that refuse to stand up, because that might alienate some “independent” that voted for Trump to disappear some Hispanic guy and beat a trans kid, but hates paying $16 for an egg. Hell, the House Democrats picked a 75 year old dying of cancer instead of a healthy 35 year old that actually gets people excited to be the ranking member on government oversight. How did that work out? He’s resigning because he’s dying of cancer after four months? Mission accomplished I guess.
People are calling their reps constantly begging them to oppose Trump instead of just keep confirming his picks, and they’re going to keep the government running so Trump and Musk and keep dismantling it.
But finally! Someone stood up! Corey Booker makes an epic “filibuster”! TWENTY-FIVE HOURS! OF ACTUALLY SPEAKING!!! Oh my god! Someone actually threw a wrench in the works! Oh wait. He did it in the middle of night, when nothing was on the agenda? So nothing was going to be voted on? Once he’s exhausted, he sends mass text asking for money, and regular order continues.
What the fuck?
Why are these leaders and organizations so timid? Granted, I’m in small lefty bubble but I want, what I hear other people want is more. We look at other countries facing fascism and see their city plazas full. We see their general strikes. We look at their crackdowns, and we wonder, “Why not here? Everything feels so aimless and timid. Uninspiring and ineffective. If this is truly a crisis, then why aren’t we acting like it is?”
I used to think that I was just had a higher desire for more direct action because direct action is fetishized. I play act, because I arrogantly assume my side will win. I am naïvely ignorant of the true reality and so I have the luxury to play act. But now, just over 100 days into this new era, and seeing how much perhaps irrecoverable damage to the government and society has occurred, it’s ludicrous to believe that these protests and phone banking is up to the crisis. “Move fast and break things” must be countered. Bullies prey on weakness. Be the change you want to see in the world. But no. Don’t do that. That’s illegal. That sounds like confrontations, property damage, in other more loaded terms, quote-unquote “violence”.
Don’t go there. That’s illegitimate. That’s the low way. Their ways. We turn the other cheek! We’re like Ghandi or MLK.
But also…
But also…
Fundamentally, autocrats only surrender when they feel fear. We must make them afraid, and no one is afraid of a monthly Saturday afternoon parade, let alone the same parade a year later when no one shows up, but more importantly the status quo is upheld.
I thought I was alone in feeling a failure to meet the moment, but then I see people online post, “General strike when?”. Someone compares the recent South Korean impeachment protests with America’s, and find America’s lacking.
So there are others also feel it as well. America’s lefty protest movement is timid. Sarah Jeong pointed out 1000 people sitting in the middle of the street not moving while being in proper grid, held a kind of veiled threat behind it. America’s protests are parades. The nonviolence register is different. Why do the 60s marches feel real, but today’s feel fake? Then across my feed Margaret Killjoy’s essay lands in my feed.
Killjoy’s essay opens with a Fredrick Douglass epigraph specifically calling out people that demand the cause maintain propriety above all else. This epigraph is directly confronts quotes from contemporary lefty marches touting their nonviolence, play by whatever conditions the police set, and absolutely no guns. (No guns? After multiple instances of marchers being killed by fascists; incidents that included cops identifying with and helping the murderer? Please.) She then contrasts this poplar idea of nonviolence as practiced by groups like 50501 and their 1960s antecedents from the civil rights movement. The groups of 2025 promote safety. The groups of the 1960s promoted confrontation. They disrupted the status quo, and often paid the price for it in blood. If nonviolence’s supposed moral superiority comes from the explicit rejection to meet violence with violence, then only the 1960s protests were “actually nonviolent”, while today’s protests are “false nonviolence”.
This essay hit a chord in me. My problem with American protest movements is that they’re ineffective, and their ineffective because they don’t disrupt the status quo. Killjoy really captured the crux of the problem.
I see some self professed anarchist online say that anyone advocating against nonviolence is probably a cop. I point out that direct action doesn’t have to be violence or property damaging. Just a sit down protest to disrupt work could be enough.
They called me a cop.
I chalk it up to the professional activist archetype. They can’t ever win the struggle, because then their identity would be end.
It’s this set of vibes about protests and activists never crystalized into a coherent structured in my head until while listening to a related Acid Horizon episode on technofascism that everything collapsed into a single theory.
America’s lefty activist cadre aren’t in the business of politics. They’re in the business of advertising.
