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What are your opinions on building, let's say, left wing 'militias'? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I used to be a football hooligan in what now seems like a previous life and I hope it comes as no surprise that the vast majority of the ultras sections are hunting grounds for right wing movements seeking out young (mostly) men who are willing to form what are essentially militias.

Apart from this several right wing groups throughout Europe and the US have their own militias who do martial arts and combat training.

This, of course, seems all very LARP-y until it doesn't and they come to protests better equipped to fight.

For the time I have been active in political organizing not once have I seen the same effort coming from a left wing party and honestly it seems rather naive. I don't think you should advertise stuff like that out in the open because that would make you an easy target for bad press and it will probably scare people away anyway.

But still. Should left wing organisations offer martial arts or other self defense courses? Should we be 'above that'? And what if shit does hit the fan?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Leftists should be doing combat training if they have the knack but I don't think it is as important to a socialist revolution as it is to a fascist one.

Fascists use intimidation and violence to enforce their ideology. They exclude and persecute minorities but they are sure to communicate that if an individual isn't supportive they can be targeted too. The only way to prove yourself a good fascist is to do inhuman acts to minorities or anti-fascists.

Leftists use community and organization to build government after the masses overthrow the capitalists. The left does need people that are capable of violence but the primary concern is agitation. Why do martial arts training for an hour if you can make a crowd of ten people angry at capitalists instead?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Leftists use community and organization to build government after the masses overthrow the capitalists. The left does need people that are capable of violence but the primary concern is agitation. Why do martial arts training for an hour if you can make a crowd of ten people angry at capitalists instead?

This is very idealistic, the capitalists are not going to cede their power out of shame, they will use violence to protect it.

Agitation without proper martial organization will inevitably end in a tragedy. Communists need to be competent in organized violence to be able to take the power out of the capitalists hands, just like Mao said: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.". Agitation and martial organization should go hand in hand.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

I'm not saying we don't need to train because we can take on capitalism without violence. I'm saying if we only rely on leftists to do the violence we will never win against the capitalists. I'm not against combat training or self defence but it is not an essential need for every communist or even most especially in a pre-revolutionary situation whereas every single communist should be training and actively engaged in agitation all the time.

The revolution isn't won by communists it is won by the working class. The goal of communists is to pick up the reigns after the revolution. Revolution is a reaction by the working class to worsening material conditions. Communists can't start the revolution, they can only do a little to push it along. The revolution will come because of what the capitalists do not because the leftists have gained enough combat training and numbers.

The counter revolution will be won not because the nation has the most armed and trained communists but because there are more communists than anti-communists. Vietnam and DPRK won their wars because the only way to beat the communism was to kill every last man woman and child and the us couldn't do that even when they tried.

Mao's "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" came over a decade after the Qing had been overthrown in 1927. Its not a call to violence it is the recognition of the need to use violence to defend against the counter revolution. The guns are not the political power. The guns are fertilizer.

context

Communists should prove themselves the most politically conscious leaders in this war. Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yan'an has been created by having guns.

Even one of the most famous Combat trained Communists, Che Guevara didn't make the most gains by doing combat. After the revolution in 1959 Castro said "I have said very clear that we are not Communists." Che and the communists in the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations managed to propagandize Castro and the other revolutionaries and by 1965 they renamed the party to The communist Party of Cuba.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I agree with your main point but disagree on the specifics.

Fascist militias are so prominent because their primary mode of action is using violence against working-class people with the tacit approval of the state. Think of the Freikorps, the Brownshirts and Blackshirts, the Azov Battalion. They exist to commit acts of terror against civilians that the government proper would prefer to distance themselves from.

Marxists, on the other hand, will neither be committing terrorism against working-class people nor will they have the tacit but unofficial support of the state. The current Marxist movement neither has the capacity nor an urgent interest in building combat ability. That time will come, but it isn't now.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

I think the fact that Marxists won't be anti-working class fascists and that we won't have support of the state should mean that we have an even bigger incentive to build combat ability.