jumpingjacktrash:

nostalgebraist:

I’m a broken record about this but I cannot stand pop radicalism

I mean, the sort of thing where say a post on tumblr gets like 50,000 notes despite assuming a political worldview that if actually adopted would require a wholesale rejection of existing society, probably a vast restructuring of one’s life, probably a vigorous involvement in direct action, and while there may be 50,000 people out there who are doing that, you just know that most of those notes were just from people looking at the post and thinking “huh, this sounds cool and right-on, I guess”

People seem to be leading these weird double lives, where they will just act like “normal people” and then occasionally mouth statements that sound like they come from radical pamphlets like yeah, of course, everyone thinks that, right? and then they just carry on like it means nothing

I respect people who believe this stuff and consistently talk about it like they mean it, but I’m really confused by the people who are in the middle like this

eh, it’s youth. extreme things are very exciting when you’re twenty. when you’re filled with desperate, helpless rage at genuine evil for the first time, not DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT RIGHT THE FUCK NOW seems like the dumbest, most cowardly, most terrible thing.

and then you get off tumblr and look at your life, and like… ok but where exactly do i throw the molatov cocktail? my boss’s office? what happens to my cat if i go to jail? and i have a date on friday and i haven’t seen wonder woman yet. maybe i will go to work like normal today. just for now. just for a while.

eventually you’re thirty or forty, you have a kid, you have a house maybe, some things you’ve worked and scraped to get and keep, and you realize that when you see a picture in the newspaper of some college boy in a mask throwing a flaming bottle, you don’t think “yeah! direct action!!” you think “FIRE IS NOT SAFE FOR CHILDREN STAY AWAY FROM US.” when someone talks about how property is theft, you think, “is that code for you’re going to steal my stuff for the greater good? where will we sleep? what will my children eat?”

when you’re twenty, you have little to lose and a lot of feelings. so you like and reblog and talk about ANGRY COOL ACTION POLITICS FOR HEROES. and probably that’s all you do, because you’re not actually suicidal and you do like living indoors. but the feelings are genuine. the anger is real. hell, the people the more excitable antifascists want to kill with baseball bats are mostly pretty horrible and i would definitely not want to be stuck in an elevator with them. so i wouldn’t say it’s fake or a pose.

i try not to rain on their parade too often. sometimes i just can’t help myself, though. i have the dad nature. every so often i have to be like THAT IS ENOUGH RUNNING WITH SCISSORS FOR ONE DAY PLEASE. sometimes people listen and sometimes they don’t.