“Now he is a communist”
What part of that sounds like he’s doing nothing? Do you have any clue what communists do? Like, you can go ahead and open What is to be Done and at no point does Lenin say “yes and at this point you wait and do nothing,” feel free to investigate the matter and call me out if I’m wrong.
You need to zoom out. Imagine you’re looking back at this moment from 100 years in the future. If people said “the Dems won’t make it better but at least they won’t make it worse” and just kept the system going, do you think it will ever lead to progress? Will the whole system ever improve?
You need to look for a solution outside of that system. Stop looking for lesser evils in the ballot box. First, look to the people immediately around you and try to join local organizations that might be directly working to improve their conditions (soup kitchens, women’s shelters, etc). Then, organize labor: figure out how to join a union, if there isn’t one read the IWW (or any other big union near you) manual on organizing your workplace and find support to start organizing your workplace. Then from there, your objective should be to take the workers’ struggle to the national and international stage. Change doesn’t come from the ballot box, it comes from building alternative power structures ourselves.
actually this time it’ll be different, we just won’t have another crisis of capitalism that requires the stamping out of revolutionaries
Sure, show up and vote in a primary that was already decided by AIPAC money, if not the various other super PACs that have the power to decide elections. Trying to cause radical change through elections, via a party that is structurally designed from the ground up to suffocate radicalism, is like trying to stop the spread of STDs by hoping everyone stops having sex. You need a different approach. Join a union, if you’re in the US join the PSL, if you can buy a gun and learn how to use it, and get started on building parallel power structures. You won’t elect away climate collapse and fascism, they will be overthrown by force.
When I learned of her, her name started appearing all over the place!
In all seriousness though, the RAF seems like it was unreasonably effective for the extreme amount of resistance they faced from the state. Many of the other “urban guerilla” groups did not achieve anywhere near as much as the RAF. Even with that, though, they failed in their strategic goal of heightening the contradictions via acts of terrorism which they thought would lead to a critical mass of people getting radicalized and organizing a revolution. I think the takeaway from this movement of urban guerillas is similar to what Lenin had to say about adventurism despite the fact that other forms of organizing seem similarly hopeless.
I recommend CCK Philosophy’s video on the urban guerilla groups including the RAF, he talks about the COIN efforts by the states who these groups were fighting and particularly how the RAF was destroyed.
The furthest left democrat with any sway is Bernie “Israel has a right to defend itself” Sanders.
I think you don’t have to be online to understand several incredibly acute contradictions that are mounting at the moment, between the horrible brutality of genocide in Gaza, concentration camps at the border that have been active since the Obama years in addition to CECOT and Guantanamo, the coming climate collapse, erosion of queer rights, and all manner of civil rights. These phenomena signify a movement of the entire capitalist ruling class, who wield empire in their hands, to the most extreme forms of violence. It’s a bipartisan affair. They aren’t carefully measuring public opinion, Joe Biden deliberately went out and confidently lied about Palestinians beheading Israeli babies while the IDF massacred the children of Gaza. There is no calculation of how to balance public concerns in that action, they only want to control you and brutalize the weakest among the oppressed people of the world, to consolidate power in uncertain times and weather the storm. If the public rejects the carrot, we get the stick and that’s Trump. They want you to be a good little peasant and go back to the carrot while they slaughter the people of the oppressed nations and the most marginalized minorities.
She’s only one woman, but she’s probably the most visible example of this myth. AOC is not a “bartender and community organizer turned political leader” she’s a Democratic Party plant who operated an LLC that received mysterious funding and became a prominent political figure out of nowhere. Obama has a similar legendary backstory as a “community organizer” but his family on his dad’s side has intelligence ties. I don’t think every single local politician is part of some crazy conspiracy, though, but you’re engaging in some level of magical thinking if you think the Democratic Party can somehow be run by well-meaning local leaders, in a world where the establishment can create an AOC to capture and redirect public sentiment very easily.