I Support the Yellow Vests

[Chris]

If there is no dominant faction, there can be no movement. It stagnates

I'd agree. Movements are grassroots like the Yellow Vests were initially, like the Tea Parties were to the end, or like OWS was initially.

[Hoosier8]

The fuel tax started it. Now they are protesting for more free stuff. Socialism’s end result.

[countryboy]

Your opinion was about the turn to violence in the Yellow Vests, Polly. That is what is opinion, not fact. No one is discussing your grandiose achievements in the socialist movement that barely rose above obscurity in the US back in the late 1800s, early 1900s because it couldn't even capture the workers trades and unions.

Polly, you're an authoritarian just like Marx, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, and the rest of the gang, all who advocated and practice the worst violence man has every seen. How an authoritarian can claim to be an anarchist is beyond me.

I suggest you return to more nebulous postmodern neo-marxism of radical feminism.

Marxists are forever re-branding the same ideas, and hoping nobody will notice.

[MisterVeritis]

Those problems are inevitable following Marx/Lenin who preached violent revolution. Most socialists are libertarian and non-violent.

The Yellow Vests peacefully protested the fuel tax. It went beyond that when the violent left joined in. See France’s Yellow Vests Take a Left Turn.

In my opinion, the "movement" was about socialists who had no idea they would be paying for socialism.

[Peter1469]

I'm not exactly an anti-environmentalist. I am, however, an anti-elitist who opposes giving rich people a tax break at the same time for sure. I feel that there are better ways. I also see that that particular policy is just one tiny part of the larger neoliberal project that the yellow vests are fighting, and that's the real issue and motivation here underlying my support for them.

I'm not as enthralled by the particular yellow vests we're seeing in London right now, as they do indeed seem to be predominantly right wing, as per media caricature. But I'm interested in the Hungarian actions, as well as the French ones.

Yes, I am paying attention to all of the movements.

[Peter1469]

There has been little said about it at all.

Where has anyone here claimed the movement as their own. I don't care for myself. It isn't my country and I have nothing in this fight. Nothing that happens there effects my life.

That parts that target the carbon tax schemes affect us all. That people are revolting over it is good - it puts the elite on notice that we are not paying for their pet project.

[IMPress Polly]

Your opinion was about the turn to violence in the Yellow Vests, Polly. That is what is opinion, not fact. No one is discussing your grandiose achievements in the socialist movement that barely rose above obscurity in the US back in the late 1800s, early 1900s because it couldn't even capture the workers trades and unions.

Polly, you're an authoritarian just like Marx, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, and the rest of the gang, all who advocated and practice the worst violence man has every seen. How an authoritarian can claim to be an anarchist is beyond me.

I suggest you return to more nebulous postmodern neo-marxism of radical feminism.

Personally, I like Ernest Hemingway's book For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's about a character who fights in the Spanish Civil War against Francisco Franco's fascist forces even though he knows it to be a hopeless cause because he believes in it that strongly. Personally, I have little hope for America, for the world, or for the whole concept of human civilization for that matter at this point. I'm not optimistic. But I don't let that stop me from doing what I view as my part to try and make the world better and more fair and genuinely free.

Let's not mince words though: I am a revolutionary! When I say that I am an anarchist, a socialist, and a revolutionary, that is not simply empty rhetoric or hyperbole. By it I mean that if this movement ever makes it to the U.S., I will be there and actively support it physically up to the point of the overthrow of the government and (hopefully, ideally) the radical reorganization of society along more politically, economically, and socially egalitarian lines. About that much I am quite serious and more than willing to die for that sort of cause, as I hold my life in little esteem. It's not just lingo I employ to sound cool or whatever. I have actually tried shaking that sentiment before. I have tried to remake myself into a normal liberal and it just doesn't happen. I am a socialist and a revolutionary one. That's who I am. It's part of my metaphorical DNA at this point. If this you cannot handle, talk to someone else.

Incidentally, I was never the most authoritarian person, even in my Maoist days. You may not realize this (many don't), but the term "Maoism" is not consigned to the specific person of Mao and everything he believed and did in life. Rather, it describes a general plethora of ideas emanating from certain founding principles that Mao conceived. To this end, even in my Maoist days, I was often critical of $#@! Mao himself believed and did. My own thinking was more aligned with that of some of the more left wing people in Mao's faction of the Chinese Communist Party (as in those considered left of Mao himself) like Chen Boda, who helmed the Cultural Revolution Group and advocated ideas like the abolition of currency that were never enacted, and Wang Hongwen, who organized the overthrow of the Shanghai government in favor of a short-lived, radically democratic one modeled generally on the Paris Commune of 1871 called the Shanghai People's Commune during the cultural revolution. So even back then when I believed in concepts like the proletarian dictatorship and whatnot, I had a very liberal interpretation thereof (to the point of opposing standard-issue Leninist ideas about social organization, such as democratic centralism) and was still never exactly your classical Marxist or a big fan of repressive governmental structures. In fact, the reason I favored Maoism over other schools of Marxist though had everything to with with his long-running quest to find a viable, progressive alternative to maintaining the Communist Party as the exclusive center of power under (what passed for) socialism. I never found the more one-sidedly top-down Soviet model cemented under Stalin, which people are more familiar with, to be very inspiring.

[Chris]

Personally, I like Ernest Hemingway's book For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's about a character who fights in the Spanish Civil War against Francisco Franco's fascist forces even though he knows it to be a hopeless cause because he believes in it that strongly. Personally, I have little hope for America, for the world, or for the whole concept of human civilization for that matter at this point. I'm not optimistic. But I don't let that stop me from doing what I view as my part to try and make the world better and more fair and genuinely free.

Let's not mince words though: I am a revolutionary! When I say that I am an anarchist, a socialist, and a revolutionary, that is not simply empty rhetoric or hyperbole. By it I mean that if this movement ever makes it to the U.S., I will be there and actively support it physically up to the point of the overthrow of the government and (hopefully, ideally) the radical reorganization of society along more politically, economically, and socially egalitarian lines. About that much I am quite serious and more than willing to die for that sort of cause, as I hold my life in little esteem. It's not just lingo I employ to sound cool or whatever. I have actually tried shaking that sentiment before. I have tried to remake myself into a normal liberal and it just doesn't happen. I am a socialist and a revolutionary one. That's who I am. It's part of my metaphorical DNA at this point. If this you cannot handle, talk to someone else.

Incidentally, I was never the most authoritarian person, even in my Maoist days. You may not realize this (many don't), but the term "Maoism" is not consigned to the specific person of Mao and everything he believed and did in life. Rather, it describes a general plethora of ideas emanating from certain founding principles that Mao conceived. To this end, even in my Maoist days, I was often critical of $#@! Mao himself believed and did. My own thinking was more aligned with that of some of the more left wing people in Mao's faction of the Chinese Communist Party (as in those considered left of Mao himself) like Chen Boda, who helmed the Cultural Revolution Group and advocated ideas like the abolition of currency that were never enacted, and Wang Hongwen, who organized the overthrow of the Shanghai government in favor of a short-lived, radically democratic one modeled generally on the Paris Commune of 1871 called the Shanghai People's Commune during the cultural revolution. So even back then when I believed in concepts like the proletarian dictatorship and whatnot, I had a very liberal interpretation thereof (to the point of opposing standard-issue Leninist ideas about social organization, such as democratic centralism) and was still never exactly your classical Marxist or a big fan of repressive governmental structures. In fact, the reason I favored Maoism over other schools of Marxist though had everything to with with his long-running quest to find a viable, progressive alternative to maintaining the Communist Party as the exclusive center of power under (what passed for) socialism. I never found the more one-sidedly top-down Soviet model cemented under Stalin, which people are more familiar with, to be very inspiring.

The Marxist/socialist movement has been coming to American since the 1850s but never got anywhere. It's all but dead globally. The USSR collapsed. China has turned to state capitalism. Venezuala is falling apart.

Yet you are an authoritarian. You seek, as you say, to overthrow society. That has its roots in Rousseau and branches out through Hegel into Marx, the idea that you can forcefully free man from soceity by an authoritarian central state. And then at other times you come out in support of the exact opposite like the bottom-up, local democratic organization of Rojava. Here you remain silent on the grass roots Yellow Vests protests against the state until the violent and authoritarian left hijacks the movement.

[IMPress Polly]

The Marxist/socialist movement has been coming to American since the 1850s but never got anywhere. It's all but dead globally. The USSR collapsed. China has turned to state capitalism. Venezuala is falling apart.

Yet you are an authoritarian. You seek, as you say, to overthrow society. That has its roots in Rousseau and branches out through Hegel into Marx, the idea that you can forcefully free man from soceity by an authoritarian central state. And then at other times you come out in support of the exact opposite like the bottom-up, local democratic organization of Rojava. Here you remain silent on the grass roots Yellow Vests protests against the state until the violent and authoritarian left hijacks the movement.

You're not making any sense, Chris. You say revolutionary politics are antithetical to the revolutionary war that the anarchists in Northern Syria are fighting. That makes no sense.

I "remain silent on the grass roots Yellow Vests" you allege, though I have "been silent" on nothing here and recognize the yellow vests to be, and remain, a grassroots popular movement for greater economic equality.

You're not making any sense, Chris. I think you're just doing your usual $#@! of fabricating contradictions that don't exist using vaguely academic references that aren't actually relevant.

[Chris]

You're not making any sense, Chris. You say revolutionary politics are antithetical to the revolutionary war that the anarchists in Northern Syria are fighting. That makes no sense.

I "remain silent on the grass roots Yellow Vests" you allege, though I have "been silent" on nothing here and recognize the yellow vests to be, and remain, a grassroots popular movement for greater economic equality.

You're not making any sense, Chris. I think you're just doing your usual $#@! of fabricating contradictions that don't exist using vaguely academic references that aren't actually relevant.

Oh but I did not say that, Polly, I said that the authoritarian nature of your heros are antithetical to anarchy. And I said your support of the same now as the violent left hijacks the Yellow Vest protests flipflops your earlier support of the anarchists in Rojava. And I said you remained silect on the Yellow Vests while they were grassroots and only joined in to stand with the left infiltrating the protests.

My not making sense to you is like just the ringing of cognitive dissonance in your ear.

THose vague academinc references are the roots of your (neo-)Marxism of which you earlier claimed expertise.

And as per usual when you can't argue the message you argue the messenger. Soon you will be playing the victim.