An unfortunate inevitability within online leftist circles is the type of people whose first impulse is to discourage an action as “futile.” Their criticisms go in the veins of “they don’t care about your protests,” “how do you expect to get this passed when the corporations are in charge?”, and so on. It goes past healthy introspection about strategies for activism, and has the effect of perpetually shutting down discussions about taking practical action. Not very many people have adopted this attitude. But it’s definitely not the mindset we need for overcoming the global oligarchy.
The people who hold those fatalistic views are reacting to how hugely our crises have piled up. America is now more militarized, more controlled by corporations, and more filled with sophisticated CIA-based propaganda than ever before. The opportunity for stopping major a climate upheaval passed a long time ago, as the planet moves close to more than two degrees Celsius of warming. The U.S. power establishment, in its struggle to regain its former world dominance, is close to starting a third world war.
Yet all the time, we see counterexamples. Teacher strikes are sweeping the world right now, and they’ve made some victories even as the media largely ignores them. The establishment’s propaganda machine is in a much weaker place than it was mere months ago, as was revealed with last month’s overblown media smear effort against people telling the truth about Syria. You can always find people who are working to fight our systems of corporate control and create a better world, and there are a lot more of those people than there were a few years ago. The recent growth in social movements has shown this.
If these positives seem trivial up against the power of the global oligarchy, remember how history’s repressed people have found ways, time and time again, to change their societies. We’re seeing this now in how the Palestinian people have been able to turn the tide on the issue of Israeli apartheid, with the Israeli and U.S. political establishments being no longer able to suppress discord about the genocide that’s going on. Outrage towards Israel’s human rights abuses, I’ve noticed, is increasing right now in both the public and social media realms.
This looming victory for the movement to liberate Palestine is paralleled around the world. Here are some recent events which prove this:
-Amid the collapse of the West’s latest “chemical attack” claims, the State Department has partially frozen funding for the White Helmets, signalling a surrender in the neocon drive for Syrian regime change.
-Amid recent scandals and bad press, the FBI is in a state of turmoil. This raises hopes for the abolishment of this American secret police agency.
-World renowned economist Yanis Varoufakis, among many others, says that capitalism is soon coming to an end. The unprecedented economic crash that all evidence says the world is soon headed for will exacerbate this revolution.
-Western media articles attacking “online conspiracy theorists” and “Russian disinformation” continue to pop up daily. This continued reaction to the efforts of independent journalists show how close we are to overcoming the establishment propaganda machine. As Caitlin Johnstone wrote last week: “The nationless power establishment which looked completely unshakeable a matter of months ago is now flipping out like a meth addict whose stash just got stolen and publicly overextending itself in an amazingly conspicuous way.”
There reasons to keep taking action, and to encourage others towards taking action, are too overwhelming. A transformation for our species is close to happening. We just need to feed the movement towards it.
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