I can’t be the only one who is seeing this fucking pattern on damn loop every few years. First, leftists managed to clobber together a movement. Lets say Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter. Or we can go more recent and talk about 50501 or TeslaTakedown.
Look, I get it. Its a lot of work and coordination to build up these movements. But time-and-time again, the movement rises up. Then the right attacks it.
Then mysteriously a few very violent actors show up (maybe its far-left. Or maybe its right-wing false flaggers). I dunno, but the violence ALWAYS shows up. BLM had groups trying to take over parts of town. I know Trump agitated the protesters with unwarranted acts of force (see the Laffeyette clearout).
But it doesn’t matter “how” the violence begins. The point is some level of damage starts to occur. Its inevitable and we need to not only accept it, but plan for it.
Now what? The violence gets amplified by right-wing media and then… the movement is defeated. I shit you not. Its the death of every leftist movement for the past 15 years. The movements become a symbol of violence in the mainstream’s eyes and loses all power.
We’re entering the same period right now with 50501 and TeslaTakedown. The violence has begun: lots of Tesla vehicles have been smashed and arsons have started to spread.
What we need is a spokesman, who can navigate and sell the situation to the public. Martin Luther King Jr. was the spokesman of the Civil Rights era, and his “branding” was the most important element of all. If you want a violent movement, that’s fine. But create a spokesman. Malcom X, to counter-act and differentiate between philosophies.
Without spokesmen (like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X), we conflate the violence and the messages. And ultimately, that destroys our movements.
Please, for the love of whatever diety you worship. Get a fucking spokesman. Now. Sooner is better. Maybe its too late for TeslaTakedown and 50501, but we need movements that truly are rallied behind a singular face who can serve as the ideological leader to the general public.
You are all getting it all wrong. It’s not that the right wing has more charismatic leaders, or even better leaders. It’s that the right wing allows their politicians to lie with impunity. Their voters will turn a blind eye to the most egregious of falsehoods, as long as those voters are told what they want to hear.
Their opposition doesn’t have that luxury. Their charismatic leaders must also speak truth. MLK was not only charismatic but he was able to relate the truth about the situation of the time that resonated with people of all races.
Those charismatic people who can also stay true to reality are few and far between. It is very possible that in today’s political environment which is flush with cash, super-PACs, and self-dealing, all those people are simply not in politics. Leaving only the liars, and those are tolerated better on the Right.
You are all getting it all wrong. It’s not that the right wing has more charismatic leaders, or even better leaders. It’s that the right wing allows their politicians to lie with impunity.
The left (at least, what passes for “the left” in America) has leaders. Look at the crowd Bernie and AOC are packing into cities right now. The left actively suppresses anyone who is anti-corporate. When it comes to leading and winning elections or raking in five billion in donations, they’d rather have the five billion, which they can legally pocket by loaning cash to their campaigns and paying themselves back at 20% interest.
The Democrats had to subvert their own primary rules in order to stop Bernie Sanders, or we’d have just finished his second term as president and people would be begging for the Constitution to be amended so he could have a third.
It’s not that the right wing has more charismatic leaders, or even better leaders
Who was the leader of BLM? Who is the leader of TeslaTakedown?
You’ve already failed to understand the point. The left doesn’t even have a leader to begin with.
Those charismatic people who can also stay true to reality are few and far between.
I’m not even looking for a charismatic person. I’m just looking for “a person”.
Pop quiz: what happened to MLK jr and Malcolm X? And Fred Hampton and other leftist leaders, for that matter?
Answer that and you’ll understand not only why it’s hard to find and keep such leaders, but why movements like OWS deliberately tried to eschew them entirely.
Tap for spoiler
AoC and Bernie seem to be doing fine, last time I checked.
But they will not step up to ‘own’ 50501 or Tesla Takedown. That means y’all need to find another spokesperson if there’s any hope of actually existing longer than a year.
That just goes to show how moderate AoC and Bernie are, TBH.
The left doesn’t like authoritarianism which is why single spokesmen are relatively rare - additionally the Trump administration (see Khalil) (and the feds of the past see MLK, Malcom X) has a habit of beheading organizations.
Being headless means it’s more difficult to launch ad hominem attacks based on oppo research and also means the organization is more resilient to being driven off course.
Being headless means it’s more difficult to launch ad hominem attacks based on oppo research
Laughs in BLM.
You’re shitting me. Or are you serious? I’m having difficulty trying to figure out what’s funnier.
BLM is seen by the mainstream as an angry mob who takes over cities and causes riots. Oppo-research? They don’t even bother. Without a leader, movements like BLM cannot hold onto a brand at all.
Its impossible to ‘prove’ to the public that BLM is a peaceful group if they don’t even have a leader.
And give it… I dunno… 6 months? 12 months? And 50501 and Tesla Takedown will be similarly wiped out in the public eye. Your opponents know how to fuck a leaderless group. Just say shit in public, and there’s no one there who can possibly opposed Donald Trump’s bullshit because there’s no leader to BLM to say what the group stands for on TV.
Do you think the conservative media would give an actual leader any airtime? There are protests and marches going on - I’d forgive you not knowing about them since nobody (including “left leaning media”) covers them. You’ll only see coverage in non-domestic outlets.
What we need is a spokesman, who can navigate and sell the situation to the public.
you’re close, but the problem isn’t finding a spokesman, it’s finding a platform that can reach the people they need to reach. idk if you’ve noticed but the general public is not hanging out on lemmy, and the vast vast majority of the public’s attention is owned by corporations and therefore by the billionaire class.
You’ve got this entire process backwards my man.
Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t need a platform. Nor Malcom X. If the goal is to amplify just one voice, its going to be far easier than trying to amplify a crowd of screams.
We’d be able to pass out pamphlets of the spokesman, host radio talks and/or large scale rallies with the spokesman in major cities. Then aim to get onto the major channels with the Spokesman. Sure, Joe Rogan, or Medias Network, or whatever. Media will fuck us over but at least we’d be playing the game.
Without the spokesman, you can’t even “show up” to the fucking political game.
do you genuinely believe that the political landscape is even close to how it was during the civil rights era? the world has changed a little bit in half a century and the papers that reported on MLK and X are owned by the same folks who called for their murders.
Then aim to get onto the major channels with the Spokesman.
??? why would generational wealth give air time to the person calling for its redistribution? rogan came up through independent channels and they bought him (or rather, his audience). what’s stopping your “great spokesman” from being paid for just like joe?
you’ve proven my point here: plenty of these people exist, you just haven’t heard of them! outreach is expensive and any time a signal starts to get picked up, the noise machine works overtime to drown it out.
Who is the leader to 50501, Tesla Takedown, or Latino Freeze?
Nobody. They’re all fucking leaderless by design. That’s stupid. All of you will be fucked in less than a year.
But if you can get a spokesperson who can defend 50501 or similar, then maybe… Just maybe they can survive long enough to affect the midterms.
maybe they’ve learned from what happened to dr king lol
They should be trying to learn from Occupy, BLM and other more recent movements.
Similar feelings, although for different reasons.
One of the struggles left-wing movements have been having lately is that they struggle to coordinate between different sub-groups, many of whom are often in general agreement but slightly misaligned. When you look back at a lot of historical left-wing movements, there was strong coordination between people who didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on everything, but agreed that there are some very important things which they ought to be addressing now.
Modern left-wing movements seem to really struggle with that. Not only do we not have the unifying drive of a single leader, but this ends up leaving the various sub-groups to promote their own leaders - who, because they are originating from representing that narrower sub-interest, also tend towards more exaggerated positions which put them out of alignment with the other movements. This effectively self-sabotages any effort to get a broader consensus going.
I am honestly rather jealous of right wing movements’ ability to get groups which aren’t totally aligned - sometimes even at odds on issues - to nonetheless coalesce around a broader vision.
The French solved this problem by creating a separate Congress to represent the people.
Ignore the like 40 years of violence and infighting. But I do believe that we need something more akin to this. If the Democratic party is dead then we build our own.
Democrats are invited of course, lol. And hell, might as well invite Republicans too. But in any and all cases, it needs a leader that can speak for everyone and is responsible for the actions of everyone.
The left is obsessed with radicalism and only accepting the most extreme version of demands. It’s a consequence of intersectionality and identity politics. Trying to moderate views from outside a subgroup is seen as oppression and discrimination. Building coalitions and compromise is not the focus and often outright refused.
The problem is that the right has a vested interest in demonizing any spokesman, and enough people live in an alternate reality that they’ll go along with it regardless of facts.
Then you’ll lose. Time-and-time again.
Without a spokesman, the right will demonise the group as a whole and you have no defense against it. It becomes too easy to false-flag some violence and blame it on the movement.
Remember: a record number of Republicans were voted into the House of Representatives following Occupy Wall Street. It was an epic failure in terms of political movements.
They’ll also do that with a spokesman. They did it to MLK too, and now the media ecosystem is even more siloed and more able to create alternate realities
More siloed than literally the separate but equal era??
I don’t think so. MLK Jr. Had to do that shit with zero Black media supporting him. Because black media didn’t exist.
Separate but equal wasn’t about the media
I promise you. If an effective leader took charge and ownership of one of these groups, entire swaths of online media will follow up.
Oprah, MeidasTouch podcast, TheBulwark, The Atlantic, Guardian, etc. etc.
There’s plenty of allied media. But no leader that we can put on our media. We have a media disadvantage but it’s not completely dead. We can work with this.
