@cobweb I am curious too. By default you can set a size like this ![[image.png|pixels]]
Aligning an #image can be done using a #CSS like below and embed it like this ![[image.png#center|300]] but it’s a hassle to edit text along side the image when not in source mode.
We need to build better communities of care and support, desperately.
With how our society keeps refusing to acknowledge the pandemic (covid levels are so high in my state right now that it's dangerous to go out), it makes existing with other people even harder, and often disabled, marginalized folks like me get left behind. Forgotten, and it shouldn't be that way. It feels like the Left is so caught up with reacting to the Right's evils, that we've forgotten how to build up communities of solidarity and liberation.
We should be engaging in collective community care. We should be building that together and not eating up the isolating consumerist culture that late-stage-capitalism throws at us.
We need more media networks focused on building up communities of care and communities based on liberation. We need more support for our most vulnerable and to build that up for all people. We need to create alternate ways of giving and receiving that does not fall prey to the consumerist demands of capitalism. We need to support alternative ways of being that is focused on care, agency, creativity, cooperation, and liberation.
The right built up a powerhouse with its grassroots initiatives to an alarming extent, and it's how this mess we're in got worse.
Yes, we must tear down the racist, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, homophobic, colonalist, sexist system -- but we must ALSO build up an alternative. We can do both at the same time. This isn't an either/or, and right now? We desperately need to build up that alternative because things are going to get worse if we don't stop all oil and coal use, if we don't stop the rise of fascism, if we don't stop the genocides. Climate change is currently intensifying the suffering, and those in power are using that intensification to consolidate fascism.
In the "Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism," John P. Clark wrote: "Over the past generation of radical social theory, we have heard a great deal more about the 'microphysics of power' than we have about the microecology of community. The dominance of the former approach is, I think, less a reflection of the inherent superiority of poststructuralist analysis than a symptom of the defensive nature of oppositional culture in our time. A heavy focus on the 'physics' of the system of power, and the depiction of social action in terms of various 'strategies' and 'tactics' shaped largely in reaction to this system betrays a certain level of capitulation to a dominant mechanistic, objectifying order. There has been a widespread assumption -- not only among post modernist and poststructuralist theorists, but also among political activists -- that the historical destiny of opposition is essentially a future of permanent struggle against the system of power. For many, the highest aspirations of oppositional culture seem to lie in small tactical gains within a fundamentally immovable system and in forms of enjoyment and creativity possible through struggles within the vast labyrinth of power."
Here Clark calls out the reactionary politics that the Left has fallen into, where we've lost that sense of community and instead react to the horrors with 'strategy' and tactics' without laying a groundwork of community to support one another through our process of dismantling a harmful system. This reactionary politics views the system as immovable and a fact of life, when it is anything but.
He writes: "The ideology of permanent struggle embodies some important truths about our creative resources in the face of dominations, but unless these truths are placed within a larger, more affirmative problematic, they easily become a recipe for disillusionment and nihilism. Such a larger problematic underlies the microecology of community. This approach undertakes a careful exploration of the nature and possibilities of community at the molecular level of society, and directs our hopes and efforts toward a project of regenerating human society and liberating human creative powers through engagement in that project. It sets out from the assumption that society, no matter how mechanized and objectified it may become, always remains an organic, dynamic, dialectically developing whole, the product of human creative activity in interaction with the natural world of which it is an inseparable part. Society is shaped by human thought, imagination, and transformative activity, and is not least of all, the result of the kind of primary relationships that humans beings enter into with one another."
Here Clark describes how community and the relationships we build with another shapes society. Without community and building relationships with one another, we fall prey to the false idea that liberation is only a struggle against domination -- an oppositional strategy. Except, that's not the full picture. Liberation is never just about a struggle against opposition. Liberation is about creating a community beneficial for all, an alternative to the dominant oppression, as well as a strategy/tactics that dismantle the oppression. It's a multifaceted approach that builds up more than it tears down.
Clark continues: "It has been suggested that the most immediate concern in a renewed radical politics must be the creation of strong, thriving communities of solidarity and liberation. Such a form of community is one that is engaged deeply in the quest for communal freedom..."
Our freedom cannot be realized without community.
He writes: "It is the process of replacing a system of domination of the person and community through force, violence, and coercion with a system of voluntary, mutualistic cooperation. It is the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through exploitation, manipulation, and instrumentalization for the sake of power with a system of personal and communal self-realization. And it is in the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through alienation and objectification with a system based on agency, self-determination, and free self-expression."
He provides a crucial call out on progressives: "The respectable Left long ago decided that this discourse [of liberation] was too dangerous, and decided to label itself and its aims as 'progressive.' It is no secret that 'progressive' was invented in part as a euphemism for 'liberal,' the political orientation that dares not speak its name. But the term has also become a generic label for virtually anything that is vaguely to the Left, or begins to look Left in a political culture increasingly dominated by the Right. Thus, the rise of 'progressivism' has been an eminently regressive development. The abandonment of terms such as 'women's liberation,' 'Black liberation,' and 'gay [LGBT] liberation,' has coincided with the marginalization of the remnants of what were once called 'freedom movements,' and the co-optation of their issues by the dominant political interests. In the end, the discourse of 'freedom' and 'liberty' has largely been conceded to conservatives and right-wing 'libertarians,' with lamentable consequences. The dominance of the negative, individualist concept of freedom as 'being left alone' goes almost unchallenged, while the positive, social concept of freedom as collective agency and participation in many-sided communal self-realization is seldom mentioned. It is in this context that the concept of the communities of solidarity and liberation takes on crucial importance."
This callout is really needed because we have ceded far too much to the right in regards to terms, communities, and approaches to society. If we truly wish to stop the rise of fascism and its subsequent genocides and oppression, then we need to do more than just react to the bad. We need to tear down at the same time we build up our own grassroots communities.
Clark continues: "It is essential that we look for inspiration for the emergence of such communities not only in certain neglected chapters in the long and diverse history of radical and revolutionary movements, but also in contemporary examples of grassroots, community-based social reorganizations across the globe. It is crucial that we understand how the successes of reactionary movements (and most notably those of the religious Right) have resulted in large part from their achievements in community buildings, in grassroots organizations, and in the creation of organizational forms that fulfill primary social needs. We must understand the way in which both successful liberation movements and successful reactionary ones have created small communities that embody a highly articulated set of values, ideas, beliefs, images, symbols, rituals, and practices, and integrated these communities into a large social movement."
Here Clark points out how the Left has neglected to examine the radical and revolutionary movements -- especially those in the Global South -- created a strong, liberatory community in their fight against oppression, and it is how they won those fights. Such as the 'Arabic Spring' that happened a decade or so ago, where strong communities of liberation toppled dictators. It wasn't reactionary politics that did that. It was a strong community built on solidarity and liberation, that provided for one another's primary needs, while also sharing a common foundation that intensifies that sense of belonging and collective care.
This is what we need to be building. This is what the Left desperately needs if we want to defeat the rise of the Fascist Right and their genocidal campaigns. Our foundation of care, solidarity, agency, communal self-realization, creativity, and liberation exists in the communities we build with one another, and provides us with the strength in which to stand up and tear down the systems of harm and oppression.
Welcome. It's not that I am #NewToMastodon, but I am rather #neuhier with regards to the server I am on, so please allow to introduce myself, politely:
This is a rather private profile, with occasional toots around German and local #politics, #football and my personal life decisions (they’ll bring me to hell, I bet, if you believe in such stuff).
I'm #antifascist, and a #nocar person, and from that I think it is easy to conclude on the rest of my political views. If in doubt, please ask. Be prepared that most of my views are leaning #left - Hegelian.
Having worked in #ops and considering myself as #philosophy nerd for years, I am currently looking into #dev and #infosec a bit more to find a more sustainable way of living as I am sure that humankind needs to change in that regards, and these four have to play a major role in that change.
Living in #Leipzig, #Germany I am happy to answer all questions around topics taking place in mid Europe, as I consider myself as European rather than German.
New! Essay Review of Joshua DÁVILA (aka The Blockchain Socialist) new book
Blockchain Radicals, & launch to further discussion of blockchain left, higher ed. etc. In my Blockchain and Society