I will preface this by saying I understand that I am more radical, revolutionary, and extreme of a leftist than most. Despite that, I still ask that you actually engage with this as I’m asking in good faith.
When is enough enough? We have elected a fascist into the highest office and handed the keys to him and his friends. Is now not the time to actually get organized, involved, and armed? In my opinion, the time for peaceful, democratic means of avoiding fascism was before the election. But we have failed to do so, and as such there will soon be a tyrant in power. Are we going to wait until troops are rolling down the street to stage any form of resistance, because by then it’s far too late. Now I want to be clear that I am not advocating for random acts of violence or an insurrection like January 6th. But is this not a point of radicalization? Is this not where we start organizing within our communities and getting involved in mutual aid and resistance? How much more do we need before people are actually ready to stand, fight, and maybe even die to avoid continuing down the path that we are on? Fascism is not on the horizon, it is here. Are we really to do nothing about it as a society except lay down and accept our fate? Because that doesn’t jive with me. That makes absolutely no sense to me.
ETA: To the people responding, I will admit that I was heated and frustrated when writing this post. Having had time to cool off, reflect, and get some differing viewpoints my stance has changed to focus more on what needs to happen first and what’s practical. You may have seen that in my responses. That being said, I don’t disagree with what I said here, and I’m still frustrated we’re at this point at all. I’ve linked a comment though that elaborates upon what I actually want to see done though, which is a lot more reasonable and is still inline with this post.
Are you expecting someone to provide you with all the answers?
Organize literally anything; a labor union, tenant union, alternatives to capital, a community garden, etc. Getting involved means doing whatever you have the capacity to do. Sometimes organizing is long and challenging, sometimes it’s short and sweet. The thing is, there’s different recommendations for different types of organizing. A post like this really can’t get any more specific, because organizing is actually that broad of a topic.
Arm yourself to defend yourself and others from random acts of political violence. Use the arms to defend drag time story hour. Use the arms to protect the people you care about. Use the arms to watch cops. Get a gun, learn how to use it, and then only use it in emergency self defense. Having a substantial presence of guns at a protest against capital is already self defense, because cops know they can’t push the crowd too much. That’s why you shouldn’t wait for tanks to be rolling through before you arm yourself.
Mutual aid is part of organizing, and will become incredibly important over the next few years. If you want more insight then I recommend reading Kropotkin’s book on the matter.
If you’re looking for someone to follow, I recommend following yourself and your ideals. It’s very obvious that the point of the post is to take action, not to follow OP.
Only to explain the answers that they’re already bringing up.
And, honestly, your answer and OP’s answer are exactly the sort of answers I needed. Thank you.
I guess the short restatement is something like “work with others to create an alternative to depending on the capitalist/fascist system for crumbs and then protect that alternative system on a self-defense basis with firearms. (And be ready to before you actually have to.)”