Well, when they get actively repressed for their simple first amendment exercise the cops might just be the radicalizing element for a lot of them. It has historical precident in the lead up to the USSR revolution.
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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I think if you view the protests as the end goal, then yea they are pointless. Libs are mad and need a way to let out that frustration and the protests are the most effective way to absorb it. It doesnt require them to get too far out of their comfort zone or face the systemic question of how we got to this point in the first place.
As leftists i think we can view these protests as a sort of "career fair" for trying to organize people. We need to go to where the people are at and i feel like a liberal at a protest is on the path to being radicalized and forming a revolutionary consciousness, but there still needs to be some sort of nudge to get there. The nudge will have to be from another human being because social relations do dominate people's conscious.
Theres also a sense of solidarity that builds up when you are among others who are also sharing in the disatisfaction.
This is just the state of American political awareness
They all went out willingly and independently and believe they achieved something
They think this is what politics is
All those people who are getting shot at and get up every morning to protest despite the military being deployed against them are controlled opposition? This is either defeatism of fedposting
Occupy buildings.
The buildings with snipers on top of them?
Millions(?) of people coming out to protest, and the overwhelming demand is 'replace orange man with another genocidal fascist pls'.
From what I've seen, the demand has been "stop ICE", why are you imagining opponents to shadow box?
I think the post was mostly referring to the very lib one afternoon of "No Kings" protests, not the anti-ICE actions going on
This is correctus, anti-ICE protests are extremely cool
DTLA yesterday was nut to butt, shoulder to shoulder, LIBS. Libs dressed like founding fathers, libs leaving water bottles and flowers at the feet of the National Guards, libs with chihuahuas in strollers. Libs libs libs everywhere. No material analysis beyond "Trump bad". Thousands and thousands of people and basically none of them will ever be willing to do anything more radical than dress up and hold signs. Depressing
Edit: fuck I wrote were on fire and not were not on fire
I went out to a protest yesterday and saw so many American flags that weren't on fire. I wish I had brought lighter fluid.
I did browbeat a bunch of white boomer libs about how MLKs nonviolence got him killed and only worked because the BPP scared white people.
I did meet some cool younger comrades though and was passing out links to the Chunka Luta online library to everyone I talked to.
2 days ago they were on their couches. Yesterday they got out. Call it baby steps, or too late, or whatever, but you can push them further now that they're actually starting to try something even if you view it as ineffective.
I’ve been hearing this for the last decade at least, I don’t believe it any more. These people aren’t budding revolutionaries. They show up in droves to choke the life out of any radical movement and water down its demands until it can be safely ignored.
Seems like you had an opportunity to talk to the community that arose around you. My mutual aid group leaned into that and ended up raising hundreds of dollars and filled 5 vans with donations.
The org I went with for several hundred new sign ups yesterday, PSL had a table set up too, had a good chat with them.
It's true that it's 90% liberals who think their sign-making contest is peak activism. It's about hitting the 10% who literally don't know how to do any better. It's very convenient to have that 10% all in one place.
Lib protests are good, symbolic resistance is still resistance
symbolic resistance is still resistance
I think that's an interesting take. I can't say I share it, symbolic resistance seems more to me like a distraction from actual resistance.
I saw a car with a DPRK flag and was happy, then saw that it was covered in other shit and had a fake missile on the top, then the driver got out in a Trump mask and started dancing around and I realized it was actually some incoherent lib mocking Korea, and that soured my mood immediately
I know why, in terms of omnipresent propaganda. But turning a (supposed) day of resistance to your own country's public evil into an occasion to look down on another people who actually resisted it is the most "what the fuck did they ever do to you" shit-for-brains American move ever.
I think it's interesting that the media and Democratic party approved relief valve movement is using "no kings" instead of "no oligarchs." I know we all know that 
and 
are also liberals who don't really want to address material conditions, but the "no oligarchs" branding was getting some traction with mainstream liberals. A well designed movement that actually wanted to generate some momentum could have capitalized on that to create unified messaging and cohesion. But the people who are designing this protest movement either are oligarchs or are trying to cozy up to them: that rhetoric is dangerous and needs to be quashed. So "no oligarchs" becomes "no kings," which can be spun as only applying to the Republicans instead of American politics across the board. This has the side benefit of bleeding some momentum off the more left-oriented "oligarch" rhetoric, which is probably just as (if not more) important to them.
Worth noting that there were "no kings" protests outside the US (fuckin why??) and they renamed them "no clowns" because they didn't want to offend the commonwealth monarchy
nothing but a pressure relief valve to stop any actual action
The protests were funded/organized by a Walmart heiress, a literal billionaire oligarch. If you combined all the Walton wealth they would be the wealthiest family in the world.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. The choice of language is not an accident, nor is it organic. It's deliberate rhetorical propaganda that's primarily aimed at defusing any nascent class solidarity.
It sounds like you assume it’s pointless without instant results. Overtaking buildings and doing anything even in the grey area of legal would be a step back.
I was impressed how many people showed up to their first protest ever yesterday. My 67 year old dad went to his first protest yesterday. My non-political, never voted friend went to their first protest yesterday. It brought out a new group of people to stand up.
I was impressed how many people showed up to their first protest ever yesterday.
Ignoring the other parts, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but that it's effectively fruitless on its own merit. If your first protest proved pointless, confused, and entirely ineffective, are many people really going to feel empowered to go on to do meaningful actions? Or will they instead feel justified in staying at home and never bothering?
Overtaking buildings and doing anything even in the grey area of legal would be a step back.
if you believe this you are actively trying to lose the fight against fascism
Yeah, remember all those books we're supposed to be reading that most of us do not?
In some of them they talk about having a permanent professional revolutionary class, right? A small group that basically waits for moments like these and has some plans as to how to try to galvanize, organize and direct the angry masses.
The libs have their permanent professional counter-revolutionaries to nudge things in a direction more favorable to their goals.
We seem to be lacking a counter to that in the USofA.
The masses in most of these cities aren't even angry though. They are mildly annoyed that the man on the TV isn't the correct looking man on the TV.
Bingo. 99% of the people who showed up for No Kings protests would never attend any kind of protest if Kamala was president, even if she did a lot of the same shit as Trump. I don't even think I'm being facetious here.
Huh I never considered the Democrats an anti-vanguard party before 
Its more than just the dems. They exist in depth through a multitude of NGOs.
Yeah, for sure. I've seen the talk of how nonprofits and prestigious universities capture the revolutionary potential of the working class, but never thought of the Democrats as a professional organization to act as an anti-vanguard
Material conditions haven't devolved enough.
What did you expect, exactly?
Democrats using Trump as a shield. Elect us and we can get back to brunch. No policy push. No laws drafted. No plan. Just put yourself out there for the Actblue and NGPVan to be a virus to harass and stalk you forever. Register as a Democrat and not as PSL / Green. Rinse repeat rehabilitate the public perception of the aging faciat you all supposed to oppose.
i saw a lot of palestinian flags at the one near me so dont knock it too hard
I hear you, but most people aren't well informed.
Most people are just trying to get by and are highly vulnerable to oppositional propaganda.
Will the No Kings protests directly change the system? No.
But the fact that millions of people across the country came together and touched grass as a group with some united mindset still matters.
General strikes, government occupation, and corporate sabotage do not "just happen".
These things require mass cohesion and unified goals. These protests are a critical first step in building that cohesion and getting people motivated to physically gather and DO SOMETHING.
Don't let the doomer brains infect you. Seeing ordinary and under informed people work together is a great sign that we still have a chance.
In some cases these protests are also probably radicalizing new people. I was watching Hasan’s stream last night and there was part of it where there was a girl with a lib protesting sign walking up from an area where protestors were just brutalized by cops, and he was talking about how that might affect those people who showed up expecting something more peaceful.
That's only if the cops overreact and brutalize the lib prostesters. AFAIK there were only crackdowns in LA due to the existing conflict.
Exactly. For the vast majority of these protestors, the police will not brutalize them, because they pose no actual threat to their operations. For these liberals, the narrative that it is only violent protestors who get the boot will be entrenched.
They will say to themselves and other, 'I went to the No Kings protests and was perfectly fine, I even shook hands with the police, those BLM protestors and (insert group of the year) must have been doing something dangerous and illegal!'
If it makes you feel better my city had specifically anti-ICE protests this week organized by PSL that drew more people than the no kings protest
Just curious, how well was that covered by the local news media? I suspect coverage of these protests is being skewed to fit an establishment friendly narrative.
Basically not at all, other than the more left wing news sources.
Hell yeah
yeah it's been very black pilling for me. the thing that's got millions of people out into the streets is "no kings", which isn't even in the top 20 best reasons to protest against america. it's making me feel insane
The women's protests in 2017 had so many participants, one of the biggest in the history of the US. The Iraq War protests were the biggest in the US and global. Occupy was pretty big too
None of it did anything. Of course it didn't. They just had to wait out the protesters, let them blow off steam and if any so much as step a toe out of line you can lay the power of the state on them. You'd have to shut shit down for days to weeks to impact the US, people will go to protests and the back to work. Nevermind sabotage or violence - but even violence you can just put some cops in riot gear let them knock each other about for a bit and then people will just go home and back to work after a dat.
And I'd argue this is an issue of civility mostly. Unless you start breaking rules and fucking the state's shit up, nobody cares.
Pacifism and "civility" are two of the greatest tricks ever played on the working class. It's going to take a lot of material condition worsening until people finally realize there's no point being peaceful against people who would throw you in the fire pit if it was the best way to make profits.