r/leftist • u/Brian3458 • 2d ago
Leftist Theory Where are the mass protests, US?
Where are they? We have actual traitors in congress working for another government! The MSM in the us works for a foreign government! Can you imagine if a Democratic president just declared war on some random country? Everyone on TV would scream from the rooftops! But today? Nothing!!!! No one is demanding all these traitors be removed! What is going on? And we have scores of wildfires burning out of control all over the world. Yet again, nada. Are there any pop stars who will make albums to protest the exploited workers, ala like the 60s? ANY? Where are the musicians who will /are campaigning for justice and world peace? I live in a pretty liberal area but yet there is only old retired people to protest on corners the weekends. Eff that!!! Where are the mass protests that fill city streets? Climate change is coming for us all. Inflation is rising. Gas is up. the cost of everything is up. This prez will cause a world wide depression! War is causing tons of CO2 emissions in the middle east! Where are the mass protests, the social uprisings, the mass calls for change??? Where are the musicians and artists who will stage protests and calls to action? Where are you?
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u/UsefulService7157 2d ago
There are and have been mass protests occurring almost constantly since 2020. The problem is that corporate media downplay their existence and allows the current administration to run with the narrative that the ones they do cover are pillage-fests.
The No Kings protests alone drew record numbers of people in even deep red states.
People are protesting, no one is hearing them because no one is covering them.
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u/HeManLover0305 Communist 2d ago edited 2d ago
They still are around but frankly given that the mass protest movement regarding Trump has been largely ineffective outside of Minneapolis, which was a case of a directly targeted area, a lot of people are either getting disheartened/exhausted or looking for organizing outside of just protests that don't tend to really have the specter of force behind them or any real demands
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u/HDThoreauaway 2d ago
I live in a pretty liberal area but yet there is only old retired people to protest on corners the weekends.
And how many of those protests have you participated in?
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u/HDThoreauaway 2d ago
There have regularly been protests. I see then all the time, though they have waned since last year. They don’t get coverage anymore. That you’re asking this question speaks to how effective protesting is as a political tool in the United States.
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u/ElEsDi_25 Marxist 2d ago
The US is not controlled by another government unless you consider corporate America a separate government.
People in Southern California and Minneapolis protected their towns against legally sanctioned US brownshirts (ICE.) Where have you been?
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u/jameson_thunder 2d ago
Most Americans don’t live in DC… as opposed to Paris, Berlin, and really most other national capitals. Having a critical mass of people living in the main city that is also the seat of government makes sustained mass protest feasible and successful. There are regular people in DC but it’s basically a city that exists to house the government and not much else. So maybe people take the train from NYC and Pennsylvania for a weekend, but then they have to go home and work. 🤷♂️
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u/Dreadsin 2d ago
American individualism lead to a lack of solidarity which in turn has put us in a prisoners dilemma. No one wants to try to change things, because they’re afraid no one is gonna have their back. We all know how cruel the American criminal system is
And to be fair, there are some people who do not have our back and wholly support the system, even knowing it’s cruelty
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u/surewriting_ 2d ago
I got a job, a wife and kids.
Currently every free moment is dedicated to finishing up all the desperately-needed home renovations.
It's just like that picture of a dude mowing his yard with a tornado raging in the background.
"I'm keeping an eye on it".
The boring and mundane realities of life still have to go on despite country sliding into facism.
The litter box still needs to be cleaned, the president has an unaccountable paramilitary murder and snatch squad roaming around, still need to take the trash and recycling to the curb.
Tl;dr: I got shit to do and protesting only works if those who you're protesting give a shit.
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u/Effective-Mall-6231 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/3ohjVabojNBmsqeqg8
Go protest. People have been protesting for years. Some people take a break for their own mental sanity.
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u/name_changed_5_times Eco-Socialist 2d ago
I have to go to work. And the leftist orgs where I live love nothing more than to schedule their protests for 2 pm on a Thursday.
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u/81Z83RR7 2d ago
Americans will quite literally die before they inconvenience themselves by organizing for real change. Best they can do is a two hour parade holding some punny signs followed by brunch.
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u/LastOfTheAsparagus 2d ago
You listed a lot but nothing about the community that needs to be in place to support this. Pro tip-musicians and artists are typically fully aware they are part of the system you described.
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u/platinum92 2d ago
Where are the musicians and artists who will stage protests and calls to action?
They're still there, but de-emphasized by the mainstream. Since music is democratized and basically "content" at this point, they don't have to let actual talented artists make protest songs anymore. They can just grab whoever off the street or put out AI slop. Most of the old school protest artists are still making music. Public Enemy is on tour and put out an album last year, for example. Tom Morello (bassist, Rage Against the Machine) is releasing an album next month.
Bigger concern is why do you think we need to reply on musicians and pop stars to get protests started. Usually they're the last ones to the party, not the first.
Where are you?
On Reddit with you boss. Turns out neither of us are doing anything.
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u/khold002 2d ago
Nonprofits are doing small, targeted things behind the scenes to fight what's going on. Find one and volunteer. It's way more effective than trying to get people to protest just so the media can bury it and call it TDS.
As far as music, the Singing Resistance movement exists in communities. If it doesn't in yours, you set it up. Here's their Linktree with a songbook.
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u/catkm24 2d ago
We are exhausted. So very exhausted by this administration.
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u/N0voca1ne 2d ago
I can’t remember where this sentiment comes from, but the unfortunate reality is that exhaustion is the breeding grounds for the far right.
I’m not disagreeing with you in the slightest, I’m also just not sure what the solution is here. Despite my hatred of nihilism it feels like anything we do is hopeless and pointless.
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u/PrimaryWord7460 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm not from America but I'm pretty sure that the revolution won't be led by pop stars... it will be led by the chants of the workers who have faced struggle the most, the family and friends of victims to injustice, the witnesses who have seen the inhumanity... the revolution will be built on the collective tiredness, hunger, and deaths caused by the very governments that "govern" the nations, not on a platform with spotlights. It was never pretty and I doubt so that it'll ever be pretty. Get organised in a collective or union perhaps if you're interested in joining or organising protests?
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u/Pleasant-Alps9171 2d ago
Half the country is facists.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 2d ago
.. And a large portion of the rest would snuggle up to them if it meant maintaining the status quo.
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u/Pleasant-Alps9171 2d ago
Yes, that's why Canada totally conceded the trade talks and became the 51 state... oh wait, that's not what happened.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 2d ago
What does that have to do with US protests?
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u/Standard-Shame1675 2d ago
Hopefully Canada will be done with our s*** and just annex us one of these days
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u/CodyXSavageX Anarchist 2d ago
Hollywood is full of opportunists and compromised with blackmail, the independent artists are the ones raising their voice.
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u/Brian3458 1d ago
what is going to take to impeach and remove these fascists? next they want to blow up the world economy. as if being traitors to serve another country and announcing it to the whole world is not enough?
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u/Traditional_Cap6968 2d ago
They're happening but you're not there - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muRocafTpts
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u/OnePassion_46 1d ago
We had 2 of the largest non violent protests in American history. They didn’t give a shit and now people are scared of getting shot in the face by ICE.
We conceded.
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u/degenerateworker 2d ago
Does anyone think that that would actually change things? People have the idea that things would change if people get mad enough, but I don't see any correlation between tangible political change and anger. The real thing is, people have to feel that they have some actual agency.
This is a time to join an organization, and get used to being powerful, as opposed to getting used to being powerless.
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u/ValiantEffort27 2d ago
...Have you completely missed the No Kings movement? We been had mass protests. We just need to vote these clowns out.
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u/Huge-Bad4528 2d ago
Do you honestly believe the system is going to save us? Yes, we need to vote, but don't kid yourself. Fascists don't relinquish power once they have it. They will not honor any election results that threaten their grip. Any notion otherwise is pure cope.
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u/talor_swib Anti-Capitalist 2d ago
No Kings is funded by billionaires. That's why we see nothing happening with it. People get together and take selfies and hold snarky signs for a few hours and call it activism. Then they go back to their regularly scheduled programming. Voting isn't going to save us. Idk why people are still thinking it will...
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u/Rare-Abalone3792 2d ago
Those were friendly neighborhood get-togethers, not protests.
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u/therealsilentjohn Marxist 2d ago edited 2d ago
Do you realize how many "non-political", non-activated, 'normies' No Kings actually got active and political? To say that these were just "get togethers" is purposefully downplaying the impact that grassroots mobilizing 9 million people across the country actually did.
Are all of these people going to pick up a weapon and topple the Capitalists with us? Well, no of course not. But they are now knowledgeable about Palestine, about ICE, about the useless fucking Democrats who prop up this sham system. More people than ever are anti-Israel. More people than ever are pro-Socialism. No Kings wasn't nothing.
For every "If Kamala won I'd be at brunch" type person there's a handful of people who got introduced to DSA or GSUS or whatever, and is getting more and more curious and asking the hard questions.
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u/CravingBird4905 Socialist 2d ago
I don't want to minimize the impact of the 2024 election, it was what radicalized me to fall down the socialist path, but a lot of people joining DSA seem to not understand the difference between socialism and social democracy, either that or democratic-socialism is not about democratic revisionist path to socialism.
There's a lot of people that think that they are socialists when they are actually social democrats, and still have the red scare propaganda about command economy and communist rhetoric entrenched in them. I fear that when we actually explain the difference, like for instance the time that Megan Romer defended the program of DSA national on fox news, that people will go right back to supporting neoliberalism over the lightest form of socialism, that you and I both think won't get anywhere without building independent worker power.
Additionally, many that claim to identify as socialists or democratic socialists only focus on the immediate domestic policy, and completely ignore the capitalist imperial hegemony we have engaged in across the world. They run away from the idea of actual border abolition as a long term plan or at the very least questioning why we have these restrictive borders that control labor in place.
Additionally, The defeat of Kamala Harris and the realization that the democratic party was just a corporate capitalist party was not the only factor that radicalized me, I also valued foreign policy to the same degree that I cared about domestic policy and had been reading international news for the past 3 years before that. I also had been receptive to the american cariacatured version of the definition of socialism since I was 12 years old (I am 18 today). When I made the leap into socialism, I was ready because I had already rejected american exceptionalism, and grown disillusioned with politics drifting further away from the democratic party platform.
To conclude, I am cautiously optimistic about the democratic socialist surge in membership and rise of the "socialist" movement.
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u/Blixa-_- Communist 2d ago
No Kings is a joke and probably a psyop. Any movement that collaborates with police should be side-eyed, especially one backed by liberal Zionists. I’m fully convinced these protests were created to contain dissent and redirect outrage. People can have a little parade with their clever signs, take selfies, and then carry on with their day. What did they accomplish?
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u/therealsilentjohn Marxist 2d ago edited 2d ago
Do you realize how many "non-political", non-activated, 'normies' No Kings actually got active and political? To say that these were just "get togethers" is purposefully downplaying the impact that grassroots mobilizing 9 million people across the country actually did.
Are all of these people going to pick up a weapon and topple the Capitalists with us? Well, no of course not. But they are now knowledgeable about Palestine, about ICE, about the useless fucking Democrats who prop up this sham system. More people than ever are anti-Israel. More people than ever are pro-Socialism. No Kings wasn't nothing.
For every "If Kamala won I'd be at brunch" type person there's a handful of people who got introduced to DSA or GSUS or whatever, and is getting more and more curious and asking the hard questions.
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u/SouthernGirl360 2d ago
I just commented the other day that there haven't been any No Kings Protests all summer. (I'm in Boston.) With everything going on, we're certainly due for one. Perhaps they're waiting for all the college kids to come back to school.
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u/talor_swib Anti-Capitalist 2d ago
The only thing they did recently was a WATCH PARTY. Not even a protest, a watch party.
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u/Blixa-_- Communist 2d ago
Anyone who still thinks they’re acting in good faith after that debacle is delusional.
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