Went to a Palestinian solidarity protest/rally with some new folks who’d become radicalised against America/the West over the last six months. They aren’t socialists (yet, I’m working on it) - but they’re good people. So, seeing the genocide and its support by our governments filled them with disgust. We talked about the Nakba, the history of Zionism, and the current apartheid etc.
Now, we come to the protest.
Overall, the atmosphere was incredible. Lots of cool signs, different kinds of people, and, of course the pigs. That’s not the problem.
The problem was the fucking speakers. I swear, at least half of them had to be feds whose entire job was to turn people away from turning up at these events.
Some of them, and I mean this literally, wanted the crowd to chant “we support October 7” and “we stand with Hamas”.
I swear, the way the people I was with turned to look at me.
Not every speaker was like this - most were genuine. They talked of labor solidarity, campus organizing, personal anecdotes. But all of that made these speakers stand out all the more.
The worst part is that when it would happen, the organisers was one of them. So this entire thing was a sham from the start.
I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have just brought people to a random protest I saw and should’ve vetted it first.
Like, seriously. I can’t fucking get over this. Who organizes a protests of people from all walks of life in support of Palestine and wants them to chant we stand with Hamas and let’s do one hundred more October 7s?.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Like, of fucking course Hamas is a natural reaction to apartheid and ethnic cleansing and genocide. And of course Oct 7 is nothing compared to the 200 days that followed since (or the 75 years that preceded it). But come the fuck on.
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I stand with Hamas and support October 7th
hell yeah me too
You can repeat this a dozen times in this post and I won’t care (I’ll roll my eyes at you, but I won’t care). My point is simple.
If you’re going to organise a protest, at least let there be some fucking sign (I don’t mean a literal sign, just a mention on the website, the posters, the socials, something) that your gonna be shouting “I stand with Hamas” and are proud of Oct 7 out there - so I don’t end up bringing the folks I brought to it.
Ambushing them (and me) like that doesn’t work. It’ll make you feel better and like you pulled one over us, but that’s it. And the next time you organise a protest, the people you blindsided won’t turn up.
[All this assuming you’re genuine and not a fed.]
You can have the kind of radical protest you want - but it has to have the kind of radical protesters you need. Advertising it like a general one, and then pulling shit like this is fed behaviour, and if you can’t see that, then, well…
My brother was a left-liberal up until October 7th. When I talked to him about it, I immediately told him “this is what the Israelis deserve and it is a military action against colonizers”.
Now he is a communist and goes to more Palestine rallies than I do. He said my answer freaked him out but made him curious to dig further.
Unapologetically standing up for the truth and for anti-imperialism worked on a Liberal. Mealy-mouthed shit did not. By optics cucking yourself you are surrendering your most powerful tool for converting Liberals, being correct. People can smell the insecurity when you handwring and beat around the bush. They respect straightforward honesty.
Your contention doesn’t seem to be that we shouldn’t critically support Hamas. It seems to be that we should keep that quiet. Cowardice, weakness, insecurity. A communist disdains to conceal their views.
Sounds like your friends are losers.
I’m kind of wondering here how caving to libs worked during the George Floyd protests of 2020.
Shut the fuck up, if you want to decide what’s chanted you can organise the fucking protests, you don’t get to turn up to someone else’s work and whine that being political is scaring off your dickhead friends.
For real, instead of just side eyeing their friends and being like “wow such violent antisemitism, amirite?” they could have taken the opportunity to explain why 10/7 happened, the reality of the uprising, and why violent resistance can be effective. Out here posting L’s
You’re not wrong, but it further raises the question of why OP hasn’t already had that conversation with their friends. They’ve obviously talked enough to get them to the protest, but aren’t challenging those kinds of conceptions? “To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong” etc
tell your lib friends that october 7th needs to happen again and again until israel ceases to exist because that’s reality.
when the russian invasion happened everyone got mad at me for saying I support Russia and they need to crush Ukraine. Now everyone has come around to my position. Don’t apologize for being right.
Hezbollah, Ansarallah & Hamas have all shown solidarity with western protests. The least you could do is return the favor and not be a cuck to western lib optics
lmao are you doing a bit
You weren’t ambushed, you were just naive. It’s not organizers’ fault that you cling to this liberalism, either.
Glad the organizers were infinitely cooler than this post.
I’ve seen photos of protestors with Hezbollah flags. We don’t have to apologize for Hamas.
hezbollah, ansarallah and hamas are all showing solidarity with the western protests, and shitlibs like OP want to throw them under the bus for optics
this is why the western left sucks
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The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves, including militarily. That is not in dispute.
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Civilian casualties are always regrettable. Resistance ideally targets the state’s apparatus of repression.
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Just as there were white South Africans who took a role in resisting apartheid, there are Israeli Jews doing so now.µ
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It is indeed important not to alienate liberals. We are at a point where we are gaining wider support among the masses. The size of the protest and the extent to which it is supported by broad sections of the population do matter.
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Pro-Hamas slogans have no positive role in the current wave of protests. Why do we protest? To achieve concrete victories that complicate Israeli imperialism (and in the process grow revolutionary organisations), in casu cease cooperation with Israeli universities (which often have ties to the military) and to disinvest in that country. These things are achievable, which we know because similar demands have already won in quieter contexts. However, shouting pro-hamas slogans now unnecessarily alienates us from people who agree with our demands.
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People’s political consciousness follows from their lived experience. If they see or experience repression at a protest with demands they agree with, their political awareness will progress by leaps and bounds. The chances of that happening because of a slogan is much smaller.
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Hamas was supported for years by the Israeli state because it was to their advantage to divide the Palestinian resistance and it was a strategic goal to limit the influence of revolutionary Marxists. This has been partially successful.
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Despite the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance, we should also be aware of who is organising the resistance and what kind of society they want to create. In the Iranian revolution, the communist party collaborated with the religious movement. Immediately after the revolution, the communists were massacred by the clerics. The society Hamas wants to create is not the one Marxists aspire to. So why alienate yourself from potential allies in your immediate environment by unequivocally supporting Hamas?
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A quote from Lenin to end of with:
“[If we] were to make “recognition of the dictatorship” a condition of trade union membership, we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly “Left” slogans.
The same atittude towards pro-Palestinian protesters who are currently insufficiently revolutionary can be witnessed in this thread.
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I support Hamas and I support the military struggle against Israeli occupation to the hilt. The Palestinian people have the legal right to militarily resist occupation, and the October 7th attack is a realization of that (that of course has been widely maligned and lied about by Western media). I also think that there are right and wrong ways to approach this topic to maintain popular support for a protest movement in the west, and come off as bloodthirsty in respect to any issue and you’ll lose people. You have to maintain a messaging that does not cede ground to incorrect Western narratives, though - so this requires some careful thought. Ultimately, those people who have no sympathy for the resistance and just want the fighting to stop have an incorrect position that must be challenged.
I also think it’s uncomradely to be so hostile to our friends on HexBear. Some people on here always assume the worst and start laying in with the personal attacks and unkind words. I don’t think it’s acceptable. We should correct others where possible in a way that respects them.
“we support October 7” and “we stand with Hamas”
This but unironically.
removed by mod
FUCK OFF
Trying to get the anti-semetic accusations to stick I would imagine. Not that the actions of Oct 7th and Hamas are, but the public would certainly perceive this as antisemetic.
hamas and oct 7th aren’t anti-semitic and pretending they are is already caving to zionist narratives.
God forbid people being massacred by the country with a Star of David on their flag have complicated feelings. Completely racist double standards these HexBearian posters have setup on Hamas and their supporters.
But seriously, I hate this question, but how much evil does the Star of David have to be used for before it loses its original meaning and becomes just a hate symbol?
The swastika originally meant a bunch of shit in several different religions but the Nazis made that unacceptable in at least the west, and with the way Israel uses the Star of David I would be shocked if the same doesn’t happen. You can’t spray paint your religious symbol in an elementary school you bombed and not have people hate it.
Assuming this isn't a bit:
Of course feds are going to try shit. What did you expect?
Did you forget them starting shit during the George Floyd protests?
Don’t let it get you down. This is a war, monsters are going to act like monsters. You just have to keep strong despite them.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Possibly feds but honestly some people got a bit juiced that public sentiment is shifting in what seems like a big way, forget where most people are at, at least as long as “supporting the IDF” is still less taboo in the mainstream I think more people who rhetorically “support Hamas” will actually say it than mean it.
They might also be forgetting where most people are at & supremely confident that almost all of the non-militarized Israelis killed in/around Al-Aqsa Flood were killed by the IDF. Which is certainly plausible, I’d feel comfortable assuming it’s true but like a lot of things it’ll probably be a distant memory by the time we know certainly.
Ideally the *world* could come together to intervene and stop Israel, but sometimes we deal with what we have.
I think more people who rhetorically “support Hamas” will actually say it than mean it.
Nonsensical. The opposition to Israel’s genocide. The people who support the opposition force to genocide don’t mean it???
My org was pushing critical support for Hamas and Oct 7 on October 10 and it paid big organizing dividends.
Folks here need to stop listening to the liberals trying to make them cowards. If you do not project and own correct positions you will abandon allies and leave space for liberals to create their own versions of the narrative you should’ve been running with.
Sometimes I wonder if people who pull stuff like that (I’ve had similar experiences) are feds or if they just don’t realize that the shitposting stays in the designated shitposting areas of the internet and can’t be allowed to leak out to IRL.
it’s not shitposting, it’s the correct anti-imperialist position
I’m afraid you’re gonna stay a very lonely anti-imperialist in that way.
Here’s a quote from Some Points on The Mass Line for you:
Start from where people are at. Since building the struggle is at the core of our agenda, we can then proceed to outline some key principles and methods of work. The first is that our starting point needs to be the felt needs and wants of the masses of people. Good intentions will not do in this case. They might bring us to the demonstration, but we are likely to be lonely there. So to build struggle, we had better have a handle on what these felt needs are and what people are likely to do in order to achieve them. We have probably all been in meetings where some particular is under discussion, and somebody jumps up and says, “The real issue is X or Y.” Maybe that person is extremely insightful or maybe they are dead wrong (more likely). It really does not matter, we need to start from where people are at.
This is a bastardized reading of Mao to justify tailist social-chauvinism. He was talking about understanding the material needs of the people here, not about Liberal optics and becoming crypto-communists hiding our views
This is a bastardized reading of Mao
Here’s what PFLP has to say about the authors of that text:
On behalf of the fighters, cadre, members and Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, we extend our comradely greetings to every member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. As the relationship between our organization and yours grows stronger, we would like to congratulate you for your revolutionary work (…) The challenge of upholding Marxist-Leninist principles in the main imperialist country of the world is a difficult one. But FRSO has done so admirably, and the PFLP is proud to have you as partners in the worldwide M-L movement for socialist revolution.
Went out to a march and still managed not to touch any grass smdh
This feeling is liberalism leaving your body.
This is why I don’t think the John Olivers of the world are part of the radicalization pipeline.
Like if you have a problem with support for Hamas, you have not accepted the severity of the crimes being committed on the Palestinian people. Any movement to stop the Genocide needs to accept the severity of the crimes being committed or they will be diverted the moment liberal Queen AOC comes down to the protests to pretend to care.
It seems we have yet another Israeli-Palestine struggle session that’s turning into a shitshow. I’m locking this.
Z
You should critically support Hamas in their resistance to occupation and so should the people you brought with you.
Protests are meant to push back against the status quo and be a space for sharing understandings and strategies for resistance. They should not be a space that is ideologically comfortable for gullible liberals. If you want liberals to shift you need to get them to read or you need to get them to try organizing and let the failures teach them how the system actually works. Or you need to use these moments to explain critical support to them.
I think that some people have this idea that protests are a kind of negotiation where two forces start at different ends and meet at the middle, and therefore they should make extreme statements that they don’t even really mean in order for the ultimate compromise to be closer to what they want. This is how we are taught to think that public opinion is generated. It’s also not true, at least not for political movements of thinking people.
I stand by it specifically when it comes to protests as part of a larger organizing effort that has demands attached.
You’re always gonna clash with hegemony in one form or another. They’ll always claim you’re being too difficult to work with and will always try to talk you down. So don’t initially dilute your original demands to where it’s already at the minimum you want because after the tense bargaining phase they’ll then be rendered effectively useless.
If you want a $1 raise you ask for $2.
If you want a lower campus police budget you ask for none.
Otherwise you’re getting 50¢ and the cop budget stays the same but they just do more desk work and less patrolling to make it look like they scaled back.Compromising by default is a tactical mistake by assuming the other party is operating in good faith. They’re usually not. Because they’re usually something like the boss or academic administration. Sometimes both. It’s in their best interests to both make you believe they’re on your side and also to fuck you.
However that’s not this.
I think that we should make winnable but meaningful (transitional) demands and achieve them. Strike for $30/hr and no transport of weapons and we bind ourselves to not getting “negotiated down” to $20 and some transport of weapons. The student protestors won’t be satisfied by a 50% divestment. Workers are used to getting promised the sun by politicians and getting a light bulb once they’re in office. If we lead with clear, realistic, meaningful demands and don’t back down an inch, we can set ourselves apart.
I stand with Hamas and support October 7th
In a culture drowned in liberal horseshit protests are actually a great place to share correct understandings that disagree with that horseshit.
Sure. But our correct understanding is like “resistance is justified, and we think this was the character of October 7th, but also it seems to have resulted in Israel kicking off a genocide instead of the liberation of Palestine, and Hamas is a reactionary religious group”. I know there is a tendency for liberals to support Palestinians only when they’re losing. But rather than unlimited support for Hamas 10000 Oct 7ths on the first world I think we should tell them the truth: it’s critical support, here’s the reasons Hamas has surpassed the PFLP or Fatah, etc etc. People don’t arrive at real political ideology by taking the average of everything they’ve ever heard.
And how do you make this a protest chant? There has to be some concise expression to allow a more nuanced conversation to develop, and I struggle to find one better than saying you support the resistance
