I’d like to thank everyone for my most upvoted post on lemmy ever. Not only have you upvoted it to the top for like 2 days you commented the shit out of it. I’d like to take this opportunity to say fuck the mods of this instance. This was my second post coming off a 30 day ban and I want to say these fucking mods have been nothing but bitches. I’ve never been more attacked on any other instance, subreddit, forum, etc. then I have been in this fucking instance. Not only have I been attacked I’ve been told my memes arent memey enough again and again.
I’ll be honest, I do not know how to make a meme but I keep posting just to piss in these mods cheerios.
Thanks lemmy.world/politicalmemes for being the worst community I’ve ever been a part of.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50501
they are protesting literally Nationwide in front of every Capital in every state.
Luigi made a bigger impact than protesting… Allegedly
*by protesting
Okay I’ll be blunt here: This is nothing and if this is Americans’ idea of resisting then y’all are never going to beat fascism. Historians will look at this period and say there was very little popular resistance to Trump’s regime.
I want you to understand what it is you’re talking about when you say things like this:
You are asking for what it’s the equivalent of all of Europe revolting against leadership that never leaves Prague.
America is really fucking big. I live in Seattle. I have been protesting. But my state officials are already more or less on my side
For me to protest in a way that actually causes a problem for the people in power I would need to drive no less than 41 hours if I didn’t sleep. Realistically it’s 3-4 days each way. Or hundreds of dollars in airfare or train tickets.
And of course I’d be fired for missing work.
I’m pissed as any American but what the fuck am I supposed to do? Asking America to revolt isn’t like asking England or France or Belgium. Our leaders are in a proverbial ivory tower and we’ve been stripped of any ability to effect change through anything but a national strike, which has not been successfully organized, largely due to the scale required.
We have 341m people on 10M km² of land. Compare that to somewhere like Germany with 84m people on 357k km²
It’s a much easier proposition getting 10% of Germans to their capital than getting 10% of Americans to ours
Here, ‘just stop oil’ has been throwing beans at famous artworks for publicity. The art works are all behind glass so aren’t harmed. They then put it on social media. They also climb tall stuff and put up banners.
How about sponsoring people who have the time to go protest, hiring buses and setting up camps like occupy did? People who can’t go can chip in to fund it.
You should coordinate strikes countrywide and don’t stop striking until conditions are met. Like the writers of Hollywood did. They reached their goals.
generalstrikeus.com
Everyone who needs to strike is living paycheck to paycheck. Nobody wants to become homeless in order to strike. And our media and networking are largely controlled by compromised assets.
I’ve been in and out of politics as a personal interest since the early 2000a. We’re in a really bad situation right now.
Without a central voice to organize and lead people we’re not going to be able to coordinate enough people across the country
Union dues fund a strike fund that is used to pay workers while they strike, that’s why unions are so important to be able to strike.
Unions also call for strikes as a centralized authority, which the US populace completely lacks. When France had those huge labor strikes a few years ago it was all called for by 5 or 6 unions.
I tell everyone I know to sign a strike card at https://generalstrikeus.com/ but that platform is fully decentralized. Right now it takes several days for another 10K signatures, and the critical mass we’re trying to achieve is 11 million. Yes, it’s the best option I’ve found, and YES that rate will increase exponentially the more people who get involved, but is it efficient and timely? No, but it’s the best we’ve got rn because the power of labor unions has been purposefully dismantled over decades.
Which is great except for all the people not in unions, and that most heavily unionized trade jobs in the US are somehow populated with people who both stand to lose a lot from Trump’s policies and who are among his staunchest supporters.
One huge example:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/18/teamsters-favor-trump-harris-endorsement-00179879
A lot of those unions are politically agnostic to partisan slant because they’re trying to navigate the current political climate, where they’re basically unilaterally hated and unprotected, but also a lot of big unions exist functionally as an extension of the HR department of these companies because of how popular support for them has been drained, membership has dwindled, labor power has dwindled amongst their lower members because of increased automation, and because they’ve just straight up slowly been dismantled over time and legally gimped.
Hopefully more workers in other industries and areas that traditionally aren’t unionized take the risk to unionize, perhaps with the IWW’s help.
They can’t just let all paycheck to paycheck people die. And you can try looking after yourself, since the government seems not to care anyway
Don’t sell your crops to megacorp but give it to fellow strikers for free, for example
Don’t code for fascists, but create tools to organise yourself in a save manner
Health care workers, don’t sell the medicines and your work, steal all medicines possible and give them to fellow strikers
Don’t clean any public properties
Use your skills for the good, not the evil
They CAN let all paycheck to paycheck people die and will happily do it.
Why do you think they’re cutting medicaid and social security?
This country is fucked and the people who SHOULD be leading the resistance, the democrats, would rather whine helplessly because they are down 1-2 seats in congress.
They would not earn any money if they can’t profit on the back of Workers, without getting to be workers themselves.
Most on them don’t ever need to earn another cent, and will still die with massive wealth.
Taking away their food, water and electricity is about the only thing that would help, but it would kill millions first.
Real question here - why not? If the powers that be are facing the potential of unrest in the face of their tyranny, why wouldn’t they let the protesters starve? Does this not only preemptively eliminate potential opposition? Do you think they simply care out of some hidden shred of dignity of something?
I think all of you black & white accelerationists are either ignorant or deceitful about the reality of the stakes in play here. I’m not saying revolution shouldn’t happen, won’t happen, can’t happen, or any of that, but I’m tired of listening to people acting like this choice is as casual as picking what sandwich to have and not the very real acceptance of potentially fatal or otherwise devastating consequences. Necessary action or not, that’s not the kind of thing to treat so cavalier.
We only have to look to the USSR and its history of starving the kulaks to death (Holodomor but also many other countries including Russia) to know that a dictator absolutely CAN allow swathes of the population to starve without penalty, but it can be a winning strategy.
First of all, you have chosen to read it as “black and white”, that generally does not exist, everything is a spectrum.
Secondly, the economy of America does not work without workers and rich don’t get richer anymore, which they seemingly don’t like
And yea maybe the way I wrote is making it look too easy, I see that, but I don’t plan the revolution, that is the job of the American people
I think we are having same or similar opinions, I just did manage to write it as good as I wanted. 🙊
Wait until you hear who owns most of our farms.
Crops don’t yield without workers… Plants don’t care who own them. What are they gonna do?
Fair point, but those megacorp owned farms aren’t going to be giving it away to strikers regardless of who is doing the picking.
Either get scabbers, or take advantage of increased automation, or a combination of the two. The only way to prevent those scabbers is with outright illegal militant action focused on targeting them, which would earn you the ire of the state, and which most people also don’t want to engage in due to moral qualms.
You can prevent a couple trucks from leaving an amazon warehouse for a couple days when you can organize a general strike where you’re paying everyone a full stipend after saving maybe years of union dues, and that’s the legal way to protest, which costs like, tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenditure every day, and is basically a war of wealth attrition with a huge megacorporation.
You could do that, or you could get like one or two guys to slash tires, and then set those trucks back for about the same amount of time. Or slash the tires of the individual scabber’s home cars, which is maybe gonna be easier to pull off. How much of that militant action can you engage in, as an organization, though, before the feds just decide to completely crack down on you and deem you to be domestic terrorists, along the lines of what happened to the people engaged in the “stop cop city” movement? That’s a good example of what’s even a relatively low scale and low stakes operation, that’s not very militant, and they’re still getting slapped with rico charges and domestic terrorism.
The people who grow the crops are still hoping Trump works out. Because whatever he’s doing is better than respecting pronouns.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/21/trump-tariffs-farmers-trade-war-iowa/
You can start to grow crops yourself, if you don’t go to work.
If you live on enough land to grow crops. If you own the land you live on. Otherwise when you miss rent for long enough men with guns will come force you out.
Americans are struggling because of a lack of socialism, basically. They can’t do this and keep the hyper individualistic and selfish society they have now. Anyone reading this, look up libertarian socialism. Socialism can co-exist with capitalism and does so successfully in many countries. Make it happen in your state and who knows, you too could have the safety net needed to assert your democratic rights in a crisis.
That’s one reason. Another is accelerationists intentionally supporting increased suffering with religious dedication, believing, despite all of the evidence otherwise, that if they throw enough LGBTQ+ and genocidees under the bus, it will stop, rather than just swerving to avoid the heap of corpses.
Agree!
Sign a strike card! https://generalstrikeus.com/
Your state officials are already on your side, but your senators and representatives are likely following the DNC’s ineffectual leadership and—among other things—confirming Trump’s nominations for office. If so that’s what you should be protesting. Make sure your state officials are also resisting Trump policies that affect the state (like California should have been doing when Trump started messing with their water reservoirs).
Then organize one. Unionize, and if already unionized have your union leaders cooperate with other unions to prepare so when the time comes they can quickly organize a general strike.
Europeans learning OpSec for the first time is the only redeeming part of 2025.
Amusingly enough, there’s more. Because of Trump’s ineptitude at negotiation Mexico got him to police gun flow from America to them, and it seems his sheer presence will spare Canada of a conservative majority in the next election.
Ride the wave. Have Denmark allow Greenland to enter a COFA with the US for a steep fee. The US already has that level of access.
Let Macron negotiate for the transfer of US bases and hardware at a discount as they leave. Use that to power Ukraine.
I don’t see why authoritarians are the only ones allowed to benefit from our hard fumble.
What is a COFA ? The only thing coming up on a search is a “Compliance officer for finance and administration”
It’s pathetic.
It’s still cold yet. Just wait til summer.
It’s easy to judge from the sidelines. We were suffering well before this guy was sworn in… Most of us are just trying to survive right now. We’re eating into our savings and retirements, and/or getting second/third jobs, and/or paying off medical bills. We’re just trying to get by and support our loved ones and friends after massive spikes in our cost of living, our housing costs, and out of control inflation.
You’re welcome to come raise some hell outside the capital if you can afford that trip, though. No need to wait for others and scoff - you do it. Be the change you want to see. And if you think it’s too expensive and far… Welcome to the same boat most of us are in here in America.
People don’t talk about it, but this is what jan 6th was. Not for a good cause, obviously, but basically everyone that was participating in that was either psychotic enough to willingly throw away their entire life based on a single ineffective and uncoordinated mass mob capital occupation on a single day, or they were small business owners who were able to afford to fly across the country first class and take several days off of work, and probably most of them were both of those things. A lot of these guys are getting arrested immediately after being pardoned because the prison system sucks and does not set you up for success, obviously, even for those wealthy people. There’s not an escape from the state, even for them, their lives will be irrevocably altered and made worse by their participation in a single ineffective day of high profile movement.
Obviously you could action a good amount of political change onto people by simply making them think they have nothing left to lose, as we see with that, but again, mass, uncoordinated movements are broadly ineffective. More organized and militant action is what you really only get when people start to collectively understand that the people around them, the things they actually do have left, are under immediate threat, and they need to do something to stop that. Maybe even more than that, you probably need a funding apparatus which is either gonna be foreign, or probably based on illegal domestic activities. So probably foreign.
I dunno at what point some of those criteria start to be filled. It’s not looking great.
This is why people need to band together. Yeah, its a kind of socialism. Here we have protests in the capital city and organisations run subsidised transport so you can get there very cheap or even free if you can’t afford anything. We’re suffering too, support each other.
I mean I’m not American so I can’t do much, but that aside you don’t need to go to the capital. You can raise some hell right in your backyard by—among other things—refusing to work. Organize protests not against Trump, but against your senators, representatives and (if applicable) state officials for not resisting Trump’s rampage more.
Finally I want to note that I’m not making a moral judgement here (it wouldn’t make sense to do that from the sidelines, as you said) but rather a statement. I’m not sure most Americans fully understand the implications here, but unless Americans en masse choose to change course y’all are on a one-way trip to fascismland. What responsibility you want to assign to whom here is up to you.
we judge cause our countries have stood against worse and understand this is the duty of the democratic citizen: to protect democracy. You in your little baby aged country do not know how bad it gonna get if you don’t. Losing out on a day of work on your shitty job is going to seem like paradise in a few years.
It’s not just a day of work if you get fired and your family starves.
Well the camps trump is building gurantee work for the rest of you and your families life.
lol I think this is my favorite crazy comment in here. You’ve literally taken on the persona of an old country and decreed you can judge because of your history. Not that you’re just a human being who probably hasn’t done shit-fuck for the country in your lifetime, but please keep taking credit for… I don’t even know what.
I’ll paraphrase to be less crazy as you are right. “You dont need to wonder what happens next cause the history is full of peoples and countries who have gone through it. It is your choice to go online and convince others there’s nothing you can do and everyone who suggests otherwise is not to be listened to, to sit idle and hope you are not going to be the victim or do what is in your power and capability.” Its just extremely ironic "the only land of the free!!! " democracy was only being held up by good faith. But seriously, even your online attitude is enough to help one side or the other. You dont want to be in the find out phase of a dictatorship that is already setting up death camps in a country already built on genocide.
Relax , your anxious feelings are understandable but we will continue to provide the best television experience the world has ever seen.
Arbeit macht frei
Only if you love what you do
protests are not “nothing”, protests are the reason Americans and citizens of other countries enjoy the civil rights they have.
protests are a primary mover of political policy.
Unfortunately, data does say otherwise. For the last half-century in the US, political decisions have almost exclusively been the will of the ultra-wealthy, with following the desires of the populace being generally coincidental, statistically speaking.
what a wealth of data you haven’t provided to support this claim.
It has been studied and published numerous times over the last decades. A good reference that I’ve been aware of, nearly since it was published is this one from Martin Gilens, a professor from Princeton University’s Politics Department. The study was published in 2004 and utilized data from between 1981 and 2002.
https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/idr.pdf
To be clear, I am not advocating violence, nor trying to convince anyone of futility. I think it’s all the more reason to call accelerationists out on their bullshit magical thinking that helped put us in this place and push for more engagement on political structures, supposing elections continue. If more than a tiny segment of the Left participated in primaries, instead of performative behavior and offering up vulnerable populations as blood sacrifices, we’d have universal healthcare several decades ago and actual consequences for genocide.
it would be difficult for you to be more wrong here.
“I think it’s all the more reason to call accelerationists out on their bullshit magical thinking…”
too bad you are doing the opposite of that.
those puppet-master elites you are complaining about have convinced you that asking protesters to calm down and stop fighting back Is the way to make change. it is the exact opposite.
" Don’t protest, nobody cares!"
obviously incorrect as mentioned in the uncountable examples above that have resulted in your civil rights.
" Don’t file a lawsuit, it won’t have any effect."
women’s healthcare is still accessible because of these lawsuits, the government is literally still running because of these lawsuits, Trump is now a felon and half a billion dollars poorer, Bannon and others in the Fake electric scheme went to jail.
“Americans are too litigious”
corporate safety overall Is primarily a result of civil lawsuits against harmful corporate practices.
“college kids are too sensitive”
college students are basically the front line against police brutality and the genocide in Palestine.
you are turned around, capitulating to the wrong paradigm, you are thinking how those controlling you want you to think despite the historical and factual contrary evidence that fighting back does make a change.
protests and protesters change policy.
you can support them or you can detract from their efforts, yowling at your shutteed window that change isn’t possible.
you think you are being “practical”, but you’re parroting the absorbed, objectively false strictures of your ruling class and screaming mindlessly at the people fighting for and preserving your rights.
I wrote a while big thing but my ADHD meds wore off part of the way through, leading to a less-than-cohesive stream of thought. My apologies for that.
My point overall is that protests change people, not policy in a government subjugated by oligarchy, which the US has, by the data, been for half of a century. This is why those in the current “bloodless” coup are so anxious to achieve the smallest government that they can, purged of anyone who is not a loyalist. If they succeed, there’s noone on the “inside” to impact any positive change with the existing levers of power. Protest and resist but do it from a place of knowledge. And, unfortunately, do it with awareness that you are likely putting your life and those of your loved ones on the line (please, no cellphones at protests, they are readily traceable).
Things are bad now and are likely, based upon recorded human history, to get worse for at least several generations. If your thesis is that uprisings by a populace subjected to domestic repression is likely, I’m going to need you to share your notes with the class because millennia of data imply otherwise.
It may seem defeatist to you, but, the reality is that the time to save the nation and prevent suffering of its vulnerable as well as genocide abroad and at home is done. The regulatory state is being rapidly dismantled by a billionaire, while none in power offer much more than performative resistance. November was the last “escape hatch”. Right now, it looks like accelerationists have handed the government over to people intent on speed-running a certain austrian’s rise to total power. Better to accept this now and get through the disillusionment so that you can effectively resist into the future.
Now, I absolutely hope that I’m wrong but, the camps being built and talks of international human slavery don’t make that hope very great. Resist as you can and help others as you’re able.
“…millennia of data imply otherwise”
If you don’t believe in the civil Rights movement or literally the founding of the US having occurred, there’s not much that’s going to convince you.
You believe the stories that the puppet masters you’re so afraid of have told you.
rebellions, protests, change history constantly.
you can literally read any history book and find this out, especially in modern democratic societies.
in fact, I defy you to find a single history book that says rebellions don’t change history.
“…may seem defeatist to you…”
there’s no 'may seem" about it, you’re advocating for hiding and not doing anything because you, contrary to fact, don’t believe that the rights you have today are the result oh organized rebellion.
because the people you perceive as above you told you that resistance is futile, you are squawking out that same message.
You are parroting the empty words of those you fear, exhorting protesters to do what your masters tell them to.
you are definitively defeatist, full stop.
“Better to accept this now and get through the disillusionment so that you can effectively resist into the future.”
absurd.
this is not the same as Hitler’s rise to power, because Hitler already did it and civilians, lawyers and judges in the US are fighting against it.
You are parroting those ignorant parties you perceive as more authoritative than you.
If this authoritarian coup works, part of their victory will directly be your fault for expressing these false sentiments and encouraging others to stop protesting.
“I absolutely hope that I’m wrong…”
you are unequivocally, factually and historically wrong.
The very fact that you’re able to express your cowardly sentiments and I am able to express my practical encouragement are proof that protests work.
The US was literally successfully founded on protests.
“…don’t make that hope very great.”
what is happening in the world has zero effect on hope, your attitude and actions determine your hope.
you are nervously crawling down the path of least resistance, which is apparently tearing down the principles and people who gave you your rights and liberty today.
Lol. No they are not.
The primary movers of political policy are money or violence.
Public opinion is a part of it. Showing up supports others. It might not be what you want but it’s something visible
“No they are not.”
are you sure? it sounds like you’re going to agree with me in your next sentence.
“The primary movers of political policy are money or violence.”
organized protests like labor strikes (those influence “money”) change policies.
Glad you agree, I figured you’d get the eventually.
2 people and a horse chanting in front of some government building doesn’t change shit. That’s what the 50501 protests are.
Boycotts and strikes would be effective, those are not happening on a large enough scale.
“2 people and a horse chanting in front of some government building doesn’t change shit.”
phew, good thing that isn’t what’s happening.
it sounds like you’re completely ignorant of the protests?
“That’s what the 50501 protests are.”
ah, you are completely ignorant with these protests.
4,000 people gathered in front of Denver’s capital alone.
you are embarrassingly uninformed.
“Boycotts and strikes would be effective, those are not happening on a large enough scale.”
again, you are embarrassingly uninformed.
Why are you even making things up that are so obviously wrong?
like, just type any of those words into a search engine and you can see how wrong you are.
I promise that learning is not as scary as you think it is.
You make it seem like that’s a low or average number of protesters in each state, but it seems there are 100 to 200 protestors in most states and not many people even calling for boycotts to Google, Apple, or other companies which showed their full support to Trump’s dumb ideas, gave him launch money, and sucked him off.
Tesla and X have been getting a little more hate than usual, but not enough hate for it to actually matter for a president.
“You make it seem like that’s a low or average number of protesters in each state”
incorrect, but I understand your trouble:
me saying there were 4,000 The protesters in Denver means that in the city of Denver, there were 4,000 protesters.
that is a number. your inference is your own.
as for your 100 to 200 claim, it’s simply inaccurate and not supported by the website you provided.
those are the absolute lowest numbers in a couple of states, but not at all the mean or average.
go read the page you googled.
according to your source, 5051 has already organized close to 30,000 people Nationwide for a single protest on a single day, after barely a month of a shitty administration.
and you’re ignoring all of the other protests simultaneously happening.
but thanks for proving me right!
I know that everything is scary and your country sucks right now, but people are trying to help you by organizing political action in the most effective historical democratic way, and you should be appreciative and supportive, or at least informed of what is going and how political change happens in your own country.
Nope, it’s threat of violence behind every liberally acceptable method that motivates governments.
That’s naive but completely supports my argument anyway, so thanks.
Except it doesn’t.
You can enact change with no protest and use of force.
You cannot enact change with protest and no force.
Remove protest and refocus elsewhere.
Martin Luther King Jr disagrees with you, and has proved you wrong.
Gandhi disagrees with you, and has proved you wrong.
women as a gender, disagree and has proved you wrong.
they’ve all proved you wrong in the past, and they’re all going to prove you wrong again.
you are nervous, and that’s your right, but you are also wrong.
Wait, you think MLK Jr talked America into making change and not the Black Panthers, Malcom X, or “Ghetto Riots”.
And you think it was Gandhi and not nearly a century of armed resistance?
These people represent the most palatable for the status quo. It’s propaganda to teach your citizens that waiting nicely and asking is the solution to not having basic human rights.
“Wait, you think MLK Jr talked America into making change and not the Black Panthers, Malcom X…”
no but go ahead and try to prove that theory.
should be funny.
“And you think it was Gandhi and not nearly a century of armed resistance?”
this is a way sillier take, but you should try and prove it also, one way or the other.
“It’s propaganda to teach your citizens that waiting nicely and asking is the solution to not having basic human rights.”
You’re mistaking propaganda for your own anxiety.
protesting in the streets against your government is a brave political action.
your contention that sticking your head in the sand is the only thing to do is cowardly brainwashing that you don’t realize you are a victim of.
Real, mass protests can and do move national policy as you said. However, 50501 isn’t that. Look up the civil rights movement or the late 19th early 20th century labor movement for what you need to do to make politicians listen to you. You want millions of people (ideally 3.5%+ of the population) protesting for extended periods of time (the 1 part of 50501 is on its own a deal breaker) if you want any hope of getting anything done. Compare this to 50501 and tell me the latter isn’t simply not enough.
because I brought up one example out of many going on at the same time, the frightened among you insist that you have to have a particular percentage point or protests just won’t work.
but that simply isn’t true according to all of the protests that have worked in the past.
protests have worked, they are working, and they will continue to work.
Give me an example.
we’re literally already talking about an example.
be more specific if you need help.
stroof
where can i see more media of the protests
you can just type 50501 protests into YouTube or any search engine and see the most recent coverage, here are a couple examples from a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ__uXx3ea4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_7beIREv8I
Street protests are one of several necessary activities for a change movement. They can help build awareness and let off some steam, but need considerable mass to affect change on their own.
More change happens when paired with organised political action, strikes, obstruction, PR and ofc violence/terror.
The trick is to coordinate the sides towards the goal. Only street protests or only terror won’t do anything, but pulling together you did get 8 hour workdays,or more recently grain import regulations (in Poland).
Then again, a million protesters over three months, including transport striking and uncoordinated violence, did not affect the French pension age.
Yes, name any successful movement for political change that didn’t involve street protests.
✅ French revolution ✅ Suffragettes ✅ Indian independence ✅ The Boston Tea Party
And, I would imagine that it’s extremely rare to have big protests without first having some small protests. People need to know they’re not alone. It’s really hard to be one of the first people at a protest. But, the bigger they are, the easier it is for people to find out about, and to feel confident in attending.
Add to that that everyone knows that to be effective these protests have to take place in DC, but the US is huge and DC is relatively small (and very strange as a city / metro area) so it will be a while before you can have mass protests in DC. The logistics of just getting there are difficult and expensive. In many countries, the capital is the biggest city in the country: London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Tokyo, Bangkok, Seoul, Mexico City… And, in countries where the capital isn’t the biggest city, it’s at least normally a very big city, Beijing: 22M, New Delhi: 28M, Ankara: 5M, etc. The Washington DC metro area spans the District of Columbia plus parts of 4 states, but is still only the 6th biggest metro area in the US.
I imagine there will be huge protests in DC. It will just take a while for all the logistics to be worked out.
you are incorrect that only street protests (I have a dream) or only terror (9/11) “won’t do anything”, but you are correct in agreeing with me that the more forms of protest occurring simultaneously, like the protests happening now, the more likely a movement is to effect change.
You’re over simplifying the first, and conflating the other.
The MLK protests made change on the back of decades of campaigning together with multiple organisations applying different types of pressure and activism for the same goal, including president Kennedy, and several PR disasters for the opposition.
As for the 2001 attacks, what would you say was their political goal? Was it fulfilled by those attacks? If not, I’d scratch that up as a failed attempt.
“You’re over simplifying the first, and conflating the other.”
incorrect.
you are claiming that protests do not affect political change.
you are wrong.
“The MLK protests made change…”
that’s right!
“As for the 2001 attacks, what would you say was their political goal?”
to destroy an important symbol of the US, terrify the US population and force them to waste resources chasing an unseen enemy.
which, since none of you seem versed in history, is exactly what happened and is still happening.
“Nuh uh”
nope
Are you implying the ‘inside job’ conspiracy theory, or suggesting these were the goals of Al-Qaeda?
I’m not saying that to reject the former, it has some debatable credibility, but if you’re proposing the latter, “to destroy an important symbol of the US, terrify the US population and force them to waste resources chasing an unseen enemy” doesn’t make sense from Al-Qaeda’s perspective, contradicts the choices of targets, and contradicts their stated motives both years before and after the 2001 attacks. (quick wiki summary to launch from)
'Are you implying the ‘inside job’ conspiracy theory, or suggesting these were the goals of Al-Qaeda?"
…how? do you get to these non-sequiturs.
If you don’t know something, just ask.
On 9/11, a bunch of Saudi terrorists destroyed two very tall buildings in NYC in 2001. The quote of mine are several of the explicitly stated goals of that terrorist group that were successfully carried out.
I can’t help you if you don’t “believe” in 9/11, that’s…what happened. You can just read about it. Like, everywhere.
I did. I asked a question.
Where are these goals explicitly stated by al-Qaeda? Please provide sources.
For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Motives
This is why the planes were sent to the Twin Towers (symbol of economic power) and the Pentagon (symbol of military power).
Their goal was to combat US military intervention .They don’t care about random US citizens being scared, that doesn’t help them combat the US military, and they didn’t want the US to be in their country so why would they want to be chased? It makes no sense for "terrifying the US population and forcing them to waste resources chasing an unseen enemy” to be the goals of al-Qaeda. They didn’t want to waste resources, they wanted soldiers gone or killed.
Thank you for agreeing with me and providing the sources you’re asking for.
I don’t get what you’re trying to do here.
i see you’re just making things up here:
“they don’t care about random US citizens being scared, that doesn’t help them combat the US military, and they didn’t want the US to be in their country so why would they want to be chased?”
but again I’m not really sure what you’re after.
Good luck.
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Our government is far more militarized than our citizens by a factor of about a million.
Plus, nearly every MAGAt is armed to the teeth with guns. Starting the violence just gives them the ammo (pun intended) to start the war they want.
Everyone here on both sides knows what’s coming. One side is literally foaming at the mouth for it to happen though so they can play put all the fantasies they’ve dreamt of since they played with finger guns in the back yard.
This is not gunna be fun for the side Lemmy primarily wants to win
That is way the United States need to get a un-united. It can not be, that all those red states dictate the blue states what is allowed and what not.
Suppressed states need to free themself, in my opinion.
Yes. Cascadia now.
Thats why you ambush the forces of the government and then seize their weapons.
But i seriously disagree with this notion of the US government being a million times more militarized. The difference between gun and big gun is much smaller than between no gun and gun.
But even if it gets to the point of the US air force bombing its own citizens. Those bombs need to be build. The factory needs workers. The factory needs supplies from a different factory. These suppliers need the same…
Fighting and winning a civil war against a well armee population is much harder than fighting against a well armed conventional opponent.
Try taking a look at !combatfootage@sh.itjust.works or !combatvideos@sh.itjust.works for a while, watch some Ukraine war footage, and realize that as bloody and horrific that war is: Both side are nearly at parity in military strength, and neither side is capable of air superiority.
Now imagine civilians with hand weapons going up against the most advanced, funded, and well trained volunteer military in the world with an unlimited budget and legendary logistics.
Your suggestion is only remotely possible if the military and the industial complex behind it fractures and joins the rebellion in a sizeable amount, otherwise it’s suicide.
Conventional armies fighting against each other cannot be compared to fighting against guerilla/insurgents.
Look at the US failing to create a stable occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Look at the US failing in Vietnam. Look at Israel annihilating Gaza and committing mass slaughter, yet Hamas has the same number of fighters today, like it did in 2023.
Of course the US army has the means to genocide all of the US population. That is until they run out of food. Of course they can terrorize the civilian population by cutting power, starving people and denying fuel, healthcare etc. That worked great for Bashar al Assad in Syria…
Ones you have a popular uprising, the disproportionate use of force by the regime usually fuels more resistance against the regime. That is why they try to react disproportionately hard even to the earliest signs of it. Why did they make all the fuzz about Luigi? Because they are scared, that if it is not 1 Luigi but 100 Luigis, the system would be at serious danger and with 1,000 Luigis it could collapse already, because no Oligarch would feel safe anymore. And 1,000 Luigis in a country with 340 million people is not that much.
You didn’t mention guerilla warfare in your other comment, you said the US isn’t that much more militarized than anyone else, and that there isn’t much disparity between small and large weapons.
Could America sustain a resistance similar to The Troubles? I think so. But any sort of conventional warfare, like along the lines of the Russian or Spanish civil war, is quite unlikely, which is what I thought you were implying.
Resistance against a foreign power is also a much different thing than domestic.
Lmao this is an absolutely hilarious take
“You’re a pussy” says the person behind the monitor.
Of course, I, as foreigner, fly to America to save it… /s
They would put me in prison before my plane touches US ground, lol
I mean, thousands of international volunteers traveled to Spain to help during the Spanish Civil war. The same is true for Ukraine and to a lesser extent, Rojava.
Yea, helping may be OK, but you can not simply walk in a foreign country and start a revolution there, or, wait, was that not done by America and Russia all the time?
Well, I, as Swiss person, have the opinion, that a country should not interfere in in-boarder stuff of another country, if it not directly affects first country.
Of course, Swiss government and Swiss organisations are allowed to state their opinion on what is happening but not interfere.
Ukraine is not an in-boarder event according to the international boarders that were agreed upon at that convention I forgot the name from 😆 but there, basically all countries agreed to the boarders of each country, that they don’t change them with violence and that each country is sovereign, iirc.
Yeah, Americans never traveled anywhere to save anybody from nazis. Never.
American came veeery late and way after sovereign countries got invaded.
A country attacked from another is something different than going to waste from within
Huge amounts of Americans support what Trump is doing and welcome a dictatorship. There’s no unanimous opposition to what Trump is doing. That is the reality. This is same as the Russia situation with Putin where Russians who sided against the country and fight alongside Ukraine are the minority actually willing to do something.
I see you are unaware of all the armed protests and demonstrations going on.
what you are whining about is already happening.
There seems to be a media blackout on those do you have any details ?
there is no media blackout, you’re trying to be cynically hip, which is very cowardly in this situation.
here are thousands of people in Denver alone during the 50501 protest.
https://www.denvervoice.org/archive/2025/2/18/thousands-rally-in-denver-against-trumps-radical-overhaul-of-government
here’s a thousand people at Stonewall
https://glaad.org/rally-at-stonewall-draws-1000-people-protesting-removal-of-trans-people-history-from-park-service-website/
there are Nationwide protests happening constantly, and pretending there aren’t political events happening that you are choosing not to join because you want to be blissfully ignorant or are afraid of the consequences of fighting for civil and democratic rights is simple cowardice.
own up to your apathy.
Mate it’s a bit bloody hard to join from the UK so shove your insults up your arse. I’m not American and I can assure you that this isnt making it on to the major networks (US or international) in any meaningful way. Hence the “media blackout” comment - because that’s how it looks.
“Hence the “media blackout” comment - because that’s how it looks.”
you are either blind and deaf or have never used the internet before.
If you are actually British, and the BBC is not covering these protests, that does not mean there is a “media blackout”, it means that Britain specifically isn’t covering the protests in the US.
The protests are all over the telly in the states and other countries.
but I guess you guys do have that police state thing going on right now, so I can see why the BBC wouldn’t want to report on civil rights movements.
websites and news organizations are reporting on the 50501 movement hourly.
I don’t know how you’re managing to miss all of the information being disseminated about these protests, but if you type in those numbers, you’re going to find all the information you could ever want about the 50501 protests, there’s nothing remotely like a “media blackout” happening.
Won’t speak to all your statements around the protests, but as a Canadian I haven’t heard anything from our news about your protests. The only time I’ve heard of protests are from Lemmy and Reddit comments, not even posts. Donalds and Elons shenanigans are plastered over all our news sites and social media platforms.
It’s good to hear protests are happening though. Good luck and best wishes on all your protests!
Nice of you to say, I’m rooting them on as well.
I feel like between the dozens of judges stepping up, and all of the civil and municipal lawsuits, plus constant nationwide protests against all manner of executive order abolishing civil rights, there’s still a way to go before the citizens are down for the count.
I googled 50501 from the info on here. Not a single entry from major US media, every single one is a regional paper - with one exception - there was an AP article 2 weeks ago.
I’m afraid I don’t usually turn to the Baltimore Sun or the Staunton Register for my US news - first two entries - where the hell even IS Staunton.
No, the BBC isn’t covering it (typing 50501 into the search bar got me “Is American cheese really that bad” from 2019 (no I dont understand either)
The last coverage by majors such as CNN and APnews and reuters who ARE who I look to for US news was two weeks ago (16days to be precise) so if there have been many protests since then as you claim then it does indeed look like they are ignoring it
A search on AP news for “protests” sorted by new has me scrolling down about 70-80 items before I find out that 300 people are protesting being sacked from the DHH.
Then another 2 pages to find a rally in california a couple days ago.
None of these were on the AP home page headlines, none of these come up in the RSS ticker feed. If it’s not a media blackout they sure don’t think these protests matter
“I googled 50501 from the info on here. Not a single entry from major US media,”,
not sure how to help you if you find the concept of regional media included in media as mindblowing.
American cheese really is that bad, so at least you found a relevant result for yourself!
No wonder there is nothing on the Dutch news about this, the name is shit
haha, I had the same thought. and completely agree! it is a terrible name to remember and catch on.
Standing in a street? No one cares.
The 1776 energy died with the people who made it happen.
ah, so you don’t know how policy works.
protests very frequently change policy. protests are why you have 8-hour days and firefighters.
these ones are making a change as well.
That wasn’t just protests. Unionists and syndicalists paid for that dearly in blood.
the protests and work stoppages changed policies, not the occasional fistfights.
That’s what you’ve been gaslit into thinking so that you don’t get rowdy.
you are historically and factually incorrect.
as for your backwards insult, I am advocating for change through protest, which Is historically relevant in changing policy, while you are whining that nobody should “get rowdy”.
you are hiding, you have been cowed into believing you can’t make a change.
stand up. have some pride.
When?
That’s the exact opposite of what I’m saying.
Again, that’s the opposite of what I’m saying. We can make a change, but protests aren’t how it gets done.
“When?”
Gandhi freed India(1947
The Civil Right Act.(1964)
Women’s Suffrage(1920)
nearly every labor right you enjoy(from 200 years ago up to today)
nearly every civil right you enjoy.(sames)
There are literally countless examples.
All of your privileges you take for granted and are blissfully ignorant of were bestowed upon you by caring citizens who took the time to demonstrate their political will.
this feels like it’s conflating strikes and protests
it might help you to recognize that an organized strike is a form of protest.
yes, a strike is a subset of protest, but the person you were responding to said “standing in a street? nobody cares” because they are accurately saying that the current protests are not labor strikes
not at all.
they were inaccurately saying that protests do not affect policy.
that is flatly incorrect.
protests do affect policy, regardless of the form of protest.
they did not say “the current protests are not labor strikes”, which would be a bizarre non-sequitur.
they said that “standing in a street? no one cares.” can you dospute that? is standing in a street what got us 8 hour days, or was it the labor strikes?
“they said that “standing in a street? no one cares.” can you dospute that?”
Yes, easily. I can prove them and you irrefutably incorrect.
The civil rights movement happened because people were “standing in a street”
women got the right to vote because people were “standing in a street”
racial inequalities in labor were legislatively addressed because people were “standing in a street”
remember that " I have a dream" speech?
Guess where Martin Luther King Jr was standing?
y’all ig’nant.
Y’know I think we’re arguing pointlessly here. Put that energy and anger you have into getting people onto the street, enough people (100s of thousands) does have impact, but just maybe try taking on board what everyone is trying to say which is that you need more than protests, you absolutely need strikes, and possibly more.
You don’t need as many people as you’re afraid of, but don’t worry, I am getting people out there.
“…everyone is trying to say which is that you need more than protests, you absolutely need strikes.”
This is my original point that “everybody” is angrily agreeing with me about, so…sure.
I still agree with my original point.
Inertia is a human force of behavior, I get that. But the landscape has changed. The methods of pre-2024 will NOT work, they will be summarily ignored. Standing in a street will now be summarily ignored.
Or forcefully dispersed. Remember, in his prior admin, he wanted to know why we didn’t just send the national guard out to kneecap people.
“Inertia is a human force of behavior, I get that.”
great.
“But the landscape has changed.”
boy, has it not.
“The methods of pre-2024 will NOT work, they will be summarily ignored.”
this is incorrect, and is much more a symptom of anxiety than any sort of legitimate statement.
“Standing in a street will now be summarily ignored.”
again, incorrect and a simple anxiety.
I’m sure things look very scary or daunting to you, but you don’t have to take part in making the US a better place, these tens of thousands of people are doing that for you.
“Or forcefully dispersed.”
this one’s definitely not happening.
there were 50 protests a few days ago that were not dispersed, and countless others defending civil rights Nationwide in the past week that were not “dispersed”.
you have the wrong information, or more likely, no information.
again, it sounds like anxiety.
Alabama More than 200 protesters gathered outside Alabama’s Statehouse
Alaska An estimated 123 people gathered outside Alaska’s capitol building
Arkansas Approximately 200 protesters gathered on the outside Arkansas’s capital
California During the February 5 protest, over 1,000 protesters gathered near the west steps of California’s capitol building
Florida Around 300 protesters gathered outside the Florida State Capitol
…I mean seriously?
Denver had 4,000, Boston had a thousand, over 50 states(even your red ones), you have tens of thousands of people taking part in these protests simultaneously across the Nation.
and this is only one of the many protests going on.
this single protest is getting tens of thousands of people while other protests are happening.
so yes.
seriously.
I just took the first states alphabetically. In Germany we have protests against fascism just before our elections, the fascists are at 20% in the polls and we get 10,000s of people on the streets with protests in more than 60 cities.
But don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to downplay the US protests, I am glad about every single soul on the streets. It’s just that I am shocked about the realities across the pond.
“I just took the first states alphabetically.”
I know, that’s why I pointed out that your numbers were totally off.
“we get 10,000s of people on the streets with protests in more than 60 cities.”
Cool, so do the Americans.
“I am shocked about the realities across the pond.”
Germans are usually very well versed in history, what about a fascist dictator rising to power surprises you?
I looked through the numbers of the other states in the article you shared and they all look the same. 4,000 in Colorado was max, most of the others are “a few hundred protesters”
Maybe, but this is not reflected in the article you shared.
No idea what you are talking about. I am just saying it seems that most of the US seems to be paralyzed.
“a few hundred protesters” ,
incorrect, but if it were correct, it still doubles the numbers that you were claiming.
“most of the US seems to be paralyzed.”
you have multiple protests going on literally in every single state, every few days, with dozens of active lawsuits filed against the federal government, citizens going door-to-door informing people of their rights against ICE, Judges literally blocking his executive orders, and you think Americans are paralyzed.
active protest is nearly as opposite of paralysis as you can get.
you should get up to date on your information!
you are way off.
I just quoted the wiki article you shared, so that’s where I got my information from. I already said I am glad about every single person protesting. No idea why you are being so aggressive.
I would like to end the discussion at this point. So if you like you can formulate an answer, but I will likely not respond.
“that’s where I got my information from.”
that is where you read a couple numbers from and then used those few random numbers, extrapolated an incorrect conclusion that you based your harmful advocacy for political apathy on.
“No idea why you are being so aggressive.”
you’re irritating, I am being irritated.
you aren’t taking the time to craft factual sentences or relay correct information, so I have to keep correcting you.
“I would like to end the discussion at this point.”
well, I’ll give you a hint: talking to someone is a terrible way to end a conversation.
Historically successful protest campaigns need people in percents of the population to have an effect. Tens of thousands dividend by 350 million is… uh… not that.
boy, your education system is rough.
you don’t need some particular percentage, you need to exert the will of the people to effect political change, as has happened many times before, as is happening now, and as will happen many times in the future.
protests work, factually and historically.
You’re butting your head against reality.
If your claim is true, where does that leave these guys?
folks. search engines. then you don’t have to prove yourselves wrong through your easily remeded ignorance.
your question is “does literally every single protest ever immediately achieve the exact aims it set out to?”
no.
Why would you think that?
also, it’s not like that battle is over.
Why don’t you Google these things first?
France is literally reassessing the pension move from 2023 right now, as of 3 days ago, because it isn’t going to solve any problems.
“those guys” you mentioned are in a pretty good spot since everything they said in 2023 is being proved correct now.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-latest-pensions-battle-could-ignite-fresh-political-crisis-2025-02-18/
Your claim that protesting works period would logically lead to that conclusion. If not all protests work then there must be effective and non-effective ways of protesting, and just the “will of the people” can’t be enough. In hindsight the Iraq war would’ve been a better example here.
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Considering the gravity of the situation, those numbers are devastatingly low.
Two weeks ago in Munich 250000 people protested against a fascist party – before elections even started. Just to put things into perspective.
you are uninformed.
you are, like everyone else, referring to a very small percentage of a single new protest movement that I used as one offhand example that doesn’t include any of the other protests simultaneously happening.
The US had 50 million people nationwide protesting racial unrest and Police brutality as recently as 2023, tens of millions in the US marched against gun control, feminism, environmental protection, lgbtq rights, in the last 5 years.
those tens of millions of people are a much higher percentage of the US population than the 250k you cite out of Germany’s population.
“After several smaller-scale protests, in the evening of 12 January 2024 around 2,000 protested against the AfD at its Hamburg headquarters. The next day, a rally in Duisburg against an AfD new year’s reception attracted around 2,400 protesters according to police, far more than anticipated by organizers at the time of registering the rally with authorities, which was before the Correctiv revelations. Also on 13 January, around 650 protestors …”
If your number is accurate, those protests started out much smaller than you are pretending, and 50501 has them beat hands down in their first week by scale and organization.
I am not saying that the US is better at protesting. I think Germans are very politically aware as a people and Europeans in general are more culturally open to and willing to protest, and don’t shy away from it.
I’m trying to shed some light on how inaccurate your assumptions and conclusions about American protesting are.
That is fantastic and it is factor of a trillion better than no protests.
This is token protesting and does nothing.
you clearly don’t know how to use the word “token”.
protesting is the reason many civil rights you take for granted exist at all.
protests cause huge policy changes constantly and consistently, you are simply ignorant.
I think they’re talking about these specific ones that are happening atm, not like in general.
Correct. There’s only one type of protests fascists understand.
Good