From what I’ve learned revolutions are often accompanied by circumstances where people are desperate due to lack of basic necessities, especially food.
The French revolution was preceded by a serious food shortage. Remember that “let them eat cake” comment? One of the key events, the Women’s March which displaced the king and queen from Versailles, was specifically motivated by demands for food.
The European People’s Spring saw lots of revolutions across Europe in 1848-1849 including in France, Italy, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary. That was about the same time as a continent-wide grain shortage on top of an economic crisis.
The Russian revolution of 1917 came at a time when a combination of WW1, bad leadership, and an extra cold winter led to food shortages, and fuel shortages so people were starving and freezing at the same time.
I think there was crazy inflation in some countries during the Arab Spring, too. Which also makes it hard to get food.
For the Russian revolution you’ve also got that whole World War 1 thing where the rulers were expecting the freezing starving people to repeatedly bayonet charge machine gun positions with zeal and elan for years on end.
They had a wealthy enclave of British aristocracy who realized they had enough money to militarily fight the British on land, and eventually the crown would get tired of bleeding, and cut and run. Then they would be the only and direct masters of the colonies.
On The Nature Of Mass Movementa, by (I think) Eric Hoffer. One of the things he claims is that mass movements are generally made up of the dispossessed and dissatisfied who want better conditions but are not quite suffering enough that their entire focus is on acquiring food. People have to feel as if they could improve their circumstances by revolting, but not be actively starving.
Most people I know are doing something to help. Maybe not radically changing their lives but they seem to be doing their best.
I don’t see these people that are not willing to change anything. Maybe I’m not in the right country?
What country do you live in?
Most North Americans are too obsessed with cars to consider a world where they don’t drive everywhere.
Most Americans are not obsessed with cars; they see cars as necessary. Those are not the same. Introduce them to good public transit and you would see change.
It’s a small minority of Americans who are really into cars.
I live in a city with solid public transportation and bike infrastructure, easily top 10 in North America. Almost everyone I know takes public transit only when it’s convenient (ie they want to drink) but otherwise drives everywhere. I don’t know a single person who advocates for more public transportation or bike infrastructure.
Top 10 in North America is still pretty bad.
People need to grow up with this infrastructure being in place, seeing it used by regular people for basic tasks like going to work or the grocery store. Seeing it in movies and other media (in a positive/neutral way). It needs to be normalized. Unfortunately, that takes a long time and a ton of money.
The truth is, right now, in the United States, most public transit is absolutely horrible. It doesn’t serve many locations, it’s usually crappy old buses with stains on their seats, there’s often one or more individuals with overt mental health issues, and public transit in general is associated with poverty.
You’re not going to get people using public transit regularly if it’s not normalized, incentivized, clean, safe, etc. It’s a tough problem, to be sure. Some places are making a lot of progress on it, such as where I live in Seattle, but it’s an uphill battle due to the way the United States was built to be car-centric.
By the way, if you don’t know anyone who advocates for public transit and uses it more regularly than you say, I doubt you are in the top 10.
Not quite. Most literally couldn’t survive without a car, due to the infrastructure of the city/town they live in. They are a necessity for the vast majority of folks.
The difference being the path forward wss wideopen back then. Nowadays the path forward is blocked by a gigantic gate shaped like a $ sign
“Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.”
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For anyone curious about this, I highly recommend the following books on the subject:
The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America , Gerald Horne
The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century , Gerald Horne
Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat , J. Sakai (this one comes with free download links)
It’s almost as if we need to be brainwashed in school to believe America is always The Greatest Country Ever™ because in reality we’re one of the worst.
I don’t mean worst monetarily, or by virtue of our graduates skill. I mean worst in how its people are treated, in how we treat the world at large, and how the only thing that Americas so-called leaders really aim for is to be a giant sweatshop.
raises hand
Wow. It’s not like the state is quite good at repression. /s
Posting this on International Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners is quite tonedeaf, too.
There is no way that’s actually a thing
Yeah, I made that one up 🙄 /s
No offense here because i like the sentiment, but just because a random bookstore declares it an “international day”, doesnt make it so.
Those aren’t the people who made it up, though. It was just the first search result.
I’ll be damneded
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Where is that unearned hate for clowns coming from? :(
You must be one of a few hundred people on the planet who know about it so I don’t know why you’re expecting people to care and not post memes that might be related to it.
Still a stupid meme. People are fighting for a better tomorrow. It’s just that the state also cracks down on revolutionary movements (remember Tortuguita and the Stop Cop City protests? Or Lützerath? The fucking Black Panthers?)
Also, activism burnout is also a thing, framing it like people are just too complacent is simply disrespectful. Basically a leftist version of the “still you partake in society” meme.
It also reeks of the defeatist mentality/capitalist propaganda that lefties are fighting for a miserable future. Simply a stupid meme all around and to top it all off on an unfitting date.
You think governments didn’t use to crackdown in revolutionaries? There’s nothing new about that.
Didn’t say that there’s anything new about it. I said that the meme is stupid, because it ignores that fact.
Then what’s the difference between now and back then?
The state’s gotten better at propaganda
Or maybe things just aren’t as bad for people in first world countries and that’s why we still see revolutions happening in third world countries?
It’s not as if governments don’t get violently overthrown anymore, it just happens in places where most people really are suffering a lot more than most people in Europe or North America are. My life isn’t perfect, but I look at the lives of people in Venezuela or Bangladesh and there’s no comparison to be made and I’m sure even poor people feel the same way in most first world countries.
Don’t you feel it’s a bit counterintuitive to call someone tonedeaf for being unaware of “International Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners”, something that more than 99.9999% of people are likely unaware of?
Wouldn’t you be better off, say, helping build awareness of such a day instead of simply berating someone for not knowing about it? At the moment, you’re teaching people to treat it like a joke.
Right… like you didn’t grow up watching the International Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners special every year with the rest of us
Yeah, maybe. That’s not the main issue I have with the meme, though.
Then, construct your comment in a way that conveys such information without automatically ostracizing them from ever having sympathy for your cause. You’re never going to build curiosity in those unaware of your cause if you begin by chasing them away.
something that more than 99.9999% of people are likely unaware of?
Western liberals aren’t aware of it because they’ve segregated themselves off from the folks in their community most subject to political prisoners.
But then lots of Western Liberals clap and cheer when an anarchist group gets raided by the police and dragged off to prison.
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The Black Panthers were notable, back in the 1970s, with their leaders either arrested on phony charges or killed in police raids.
Occupy Wall Street members were routinely subjected to arrest and detention in the wake of the '08 Recession.
Wikileaks was another big one in the early '10s, with its major contributors and journalists all arrested or forced into hiding.
The Black Lives Matter movement had many of its early leaders jailed or killed, before the various social media organizing tags were hijacked by online media personalities.
The Black Panthers were explicitly Marxist-Leninist. There were probably some Anarchist members, but the party line was ML.
So tired of people using the word liberal like it’s an insult. It’s clearly designed to divide the left.
Liberals aren’t on the left, it only seems that way to you because you percieve yourself as left yet support the status quo.
Shut up with that divisive BS. I never said I was liberal, I’m a democratic socialist. You’re clearly an authoritarian trying to divide us by starting arguments with your sockpuppet accounts. Nobody with half a brain is falling for it.
Holy moly, lmao. No, I am not a sockpuppet, nor am I an authoritarian. What in the world scratched you so much?
Also, all Socialism is democratic, do you mean you’re a reformist, or support Scandinavian style Social Democracy?
Liberal is literally defined as being on the left. So excuse me for assuming you’re a tankie spreading misinformation.
Also you’re definitely a sockpuppet or are just very susceptible to misinformation. So either way, not worth my time.
Here’s the Wikipedia page for liberalism, since you’ve clearly never seen it.
Just gonna piggyback on that malcom x comment and say “yeah, I’m real sure mlk was trying to divide the left.”
Yeah Malcom X was clearly trying to divide the left.
He is literally quoted as saying that was his goal, so I have to assume your post is not sarcasm.
It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who’s going to sit in the White House and who’s going to be in the dog house.
Sounds like you’re just blaming people for not being as smart and enlightened as you because you’re so special you knew about an obscure day that almost nobody outside your usual bubble has heard of.
You could have actually brought awareness to that fact, but you decided to be a petulant clown instead. Bravo.
I’m willing, now let’s do it.
Yeah. Once a couple people raise their hands, more will follow.
Literally why I think killing someone’s family in movies is dumb. You Literally left that dude with nothing but hate. Kind of annoying trope that people get broken instead of full vengeance mode. Very rare you see a character like in Foundation that goes “do it and lose your leverage”.
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Exactly! Gotta finish the bloodline, that’s just villainy 101
The government in 1700 didn’t have as strong of a grasp on the military as it does now. And the police kind of didn’t exist in this time. The biggest inventions of the 20th century are mass surveillance, repression, and propaganda. An armed force being able to go from one side of the country to the other in a few hours is also a strength for government stability.
You sonofabitch I want a revolution to IMPROVE my situation, not to make it worse
*1950s
If you wish to eat the rich, you must be willing to risk dying to do so. Until then, you are just whinging and the rich know it.
