this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

💯

If you want to expand your political environment, teach activists or organizers how to cook. Teach them how to talk about relationship problems. Organize tea parties, raves, and mending clubs. Create spaces to unwind after work. Infiltrate churches, sports clubs, gyms, games clubs, online forums. Turn street protests into a space for networking: nobody is listening to your chants anyway.

This is like prefigurative social building 101 - and sure there's always going to be the "if you want to report abuse you should call the cops" type "anarchists" - but this whole post reads like terminally-online schizo-posting and not useful advice for people that are already out in the world as they say "touching grass"

This is not a wishy-washy hippie approach to politics. It’s not the vapid appeal to community building of a New York artivist. It’s not about feeling good and projecting a vague sense of emotional intelligence onto the politics we do. It’s a sad, but necessary act. Sad because it adds to relationships an element of political motivation, and politics is always dirty. It is necessary because without a global-spanning web of social affordances, History won’t get back into motion.

Also in terms of practical advice this article sounds exactly like the "vapid" community building they're mocking. And while the hyper-violent "rivers of blood" framing may be useful for some - I thoroughly refuse the "sad" positioning as I'd much rather build toward happiness in the ideal of "If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution"

Idk it's an overall emotive text with imo like little substance that reads like "you believe in prefigurative action? that pales in comparison to my strategy - firebombing a Walmart" and then not firebombing a Walmart.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

And while the hyper-violent "rivers of blood" framing may be useful for some - I thoroughly refuse the "sad" positioning as I'd much rather build toward happiness in the ideal of "If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution"

I'm reminded of the old saying from the days of the AIDS crisis, when Reagan decided HIV was God's solution to homosexuality and researching a cure went against His will - bury your friends in the morning, protest in the afternoon, and dance all night.

Which does kind of put things into perspective.

And as to the OP's article - I got to the part where it said "Solidarity is a learned behavior" and was like, okay, yes, this is what prefigurative politics is for. You go out and do stuff together so you can learn to do stuff together so you can do bigger and more important stuff together.

But the article seems to use "prefigurative" to refer to slacktivism and online shitposting and political discussion that serves as virtue signaling rather than a goad to concrete action and so on.

Edit: I do think the article makes half of a good point. If we want to make a change we have to put in the work, go out, work with people, get our hands dirty. I'm not so sure about the sadness and the rivers of blood. I suspect that's counterproductive.