If you investigated first, you would know PSL talks like it’s in it for the long-term, not like it thinks a single election is going to be revolution. But you are yourself “failing to do any kind of analysis” if you think that when dealing with such a violent state as what you describe, people can organize around the idea of anti-imperialist revolutionary violence in broad daylight, through a campaign megaphone, without having busses pick them up to take them to prison, not to mention how it will sound to the segment of the population who has been primed to believe the contradictory notion that the endlessly violent US empire is somehow a force for peace and that nonviolence is the only way to do change. I remember at one point reading about the history of the IRA and how they had both the guerilla aspect of it that was extremely disciplined and covert, and then they also had a public-facing part of the struggle that could act more freely. I’m not sure how connected those two parts were (it has been some time since I read about it and I’m not sure how much detail it went into on that), but that is an example of how these things can be multifaceted. There is no surefire playbook for overcoming imperialism, especially from within the heart of the empire’s current center. Although it is true that thinking electoralism alone can overcome it is naive to say the least, it is also naive in its own way to speak of the alternative like it’s a “just do it” alternative, when it involves a lot of logistical hurdles and sacrifice, and is not the sort of thing that is advisable to speak of flippantly in contexts where it’s easy for the state to view it as threatening, especially when considering its violent history of suppression and infiltration. I mean, hell, The Black Panther Party had its kitchens targeted when doing a breakfast program for schoolkids. People work with what they can get away with where they can, in order to build momentum and organize, in the context they’re currently living in. The empire both plays by its own rules and has a certain amount of own-hands-tying due to a need to maintain some degree of legitimacy of its layers of legalese, in order not to collapse the facade of “democracy.” Sometimes there is room within that to break through the propaganda.
An example that comes to mind recently is the contradiction showing in how the US talks about Palestinian resistance leaders vs. how israel acts as a state. Helping people who are already on the side of “free Palestine” notice how they call somebody a terrorist who is resisting occupation. This sort of thing is obviously not making a revolution on its own, but the point here is, use what is there to use. That is what PSL appears to be doing, in spirit. They are using electoralism as a vehicle, rather than an end goal. The question, in other words, is not, “Is this the end-all, be-all that will end imperialism once and for all and bring about global communism?” The question is, “Is this advancing the goals of anti-imperialism and communism? Is it contributing or detracting from?” Sometimes the answer really is “it’s detracting from” and in those cases, reformist-like movements can be more of a capture of revolutionary energy than a help. It’s a fine line. Probably one example of that in the US is the corporate pollution(dilution?) of the black lives matter movement, which was already vulnerable to being watered down from (as far as I can tell/remember) being more of a moral value around which people were spontaneously rallying than a centralized organization with ideological discipline and specific goals.
If you investigated first, you would know PSL talks like it’s in it for the long-term, not like it thinks a single election is going to be revolution. But you are yourself “failing to do any kind of analysis” if you think that when dealing with such a violent state as what you describe, people can organize around the idea of anti-imperialist revolutionary violence in broad daylight, through a campaign megaphone, without having busses pick them up to take them to prison, not to mention how it will sound to the segment of the population who has been primed to believe the contradictory notion that the endlessly violent US empire is somehow a force for peace and that nonviolence is the only way to do change. I remember at one point reading about the history of the IRA and how they had both the guerilla aspect of it that was extremely disciplined and covert, and then they also had a public-facing part of the struggle that could act more freely. I’m not sure how connected those two parts were (it has been some time since I read about it and I’m not sure how much detail it went into on that), but that is an example of how these things can be multifaceted. There is no surefire playbook for overcoming imperialism, especially from within the heart of the empire’s current center. Although it is true that thinking electoralism alone can overcome it is naive to say the least, it is also naive in its own way to speak of the alternative like it’s a “just do it” alternative, when it involves a lot of logistical hurdles and sacrifice, and is not the sort of thing that is advisable to speak of flippantly in contexts where it’s easy for the state to view it as threatening, especially when considering its violent history of suppression and infiltration. I mean, hell, The Black Panther Party had its kitchens targeted when doing a breakfast program for schoolkids. People work with what they can get away with where they can, in order to build momentum and organize, in the context they’re currently living in. The empire both plays by its own rules and has a certain amount of own-hands-tying due to a need to maintain some degree of legitimacy of its layers of legalese, in order not to collapse the facade of “democracy.” Sometimes there is room within that to break through the propaganda.
An example that comes to mind recently is the contradiction showing in how the US talks about Palestinian resistance leaders vs. how israel acts as a state. Helping people who are already on the side of “free Palestine” notice how they call somebody a terrorist who is resisting occupation. This sort of thing is obviously not making a revolution on its own, but the point here is, use what is there to use. That is what PSL appears to be doing, in spirit. They are using electoralism as a vehicle, rather than an end goal. The question, in other words, is not, “Is this the end-all, be-all that will end imperialism once and for all and bring about global communism?” The question is, “Is this advancing the goals of anti-imperialism and communism? Is it contributing or detracting from?” Sometimes the answer really is “it’s detracting from” and in those cases, reformist-like movements can be more of a capture of revolutionary energy than a help. It’s a fine line. Probably one example of that in the US is the corporate pollution(dilution?) of the black lives matter movement, which was already vulnerable to being watered down from (as far as I can tell/remember) being more of a moral value around which people were spontaneously rallying than a centralized organization with ideological discipline and specific goals.