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   Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:00:56 JST Madeleine Morris

   This thread is going to meander a little. I'm trying to get my thoughts together in a coherent manner, so apologies that I'm doing it here. Feel free to mute me.

   1/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:00:58 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     So... I'll leave the subject of leadership there and move onto the problem of virtuality.

     Effective resistance requires concrete action. And concrete action is always hyper-local. It can be organized and incited through communication channels, but it cannot stop there. That's not a resistance.

     But social media (and 'the medium is the message' theory) has led us to believe that posting a protest on a platform IS action.

     It isn't. Action is embodied. It is concrete. It means physical change. 8/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:00:59 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     One of the most tragic examples of this failure was the Spanish Civil War. Of course, history doesn't repeat itself exactly. And the internet really does fundamentally change the dynamics of human movements. But yeah... a refusal, on the left, to be led, to coalesce, played a big part.

     Now, it may be a failure of imagination on my part to see how an effective resistance is possible without concrete leadership. I hope so. Because our appetite for rejecting the imperfect seems limitless to me 7/

     anban repeated this.
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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:00 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     But the irony of any successful resistance is that the perfection of its leadership doesn't actually matter. It is the power and unity of purpose they manage to infuse followers with that counts. The reality of any effective resistance is that it is a cohesive mass movement in a specified direction. Resistances require good structural engineering. They require coherence. They require agreement on a very large scale. How do you do that without leadership? 6/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:01 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     Meanwhile, I do not want to downplay the appalling betrayal among the leadership in the mainstream political class and the media who very effectively warned us of the death of democracy in the US, and who have gone back to business as usual. Having tea in the Whitehouse with a convicted felon and the author of the attempted coup of Jan 6. Dining at Mar a Lago.

     These people either can't recognize the threat or don't care to. They cannot serve as the leaders of a pushback. 5/

     Mr. Bill repeated this.
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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:02 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     It enables us to find every objectionable flaw and amplify it into the unforgivable. I simply don't see how, with our great appetite for unmasking the faults in any given leader, we will ever allow ourselves to coalesce, with the passion and energy required, behind any person or people who can act as directors of our efforts to stop this viscous tide of authoritarian, overtly cruel, state sponsored acts of inhumanity.

     I don't see how real, concrete pushback can be organized at the moment. 4/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:03 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     These two themes: lack of leadership and the dominance of the virtual are frustratingly woven together.

     One thing that really does work well on social media is character assassination, fault-finding and airing and ideological purity demands. While this medium works beautifully to rally authoritarian minds to a personality cult, it does almost the exact opposite to people who are not natural authoritarians... it breeds a cynicism in us. 3/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:04 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     I am not very optimistic about the success of a pushback against Trumpism and the very public blossoming of this tech billionaire oligarchy.

     While the anarchic quality of social media protest may feel empowering and positive and wavelike, I don't have high hopes for its effectiveness for two reasons:

     1. I can think of no historical examples of leaderless revolutions that have been lastingly successful.

     2. The virtuality of the present erodes concrete and embodied pushback in the real.
     2/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:11 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     • Sheldon
     • Christo. London, England

     @Christo_459 Look, there's no way to say what I needed to say that isn't going to be taken personally as a criticism of their lack of concrete action.

     But I am not asking you to justify yourself, Christo.

     I am pointing out a truth: effective resistance requires ACTS. Concrete, physical IRL acts. It won't succeed without it.

     You can't do those acts. Hey, I'm an old lady in Spain. Neither can I. But if they don't get done by millions, we're stuck with a looming horror.

     @sysop408

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     Christo. London, England (christo_459@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:13 JST Christo. London, England

     in reply to

     • Sheldon

     @sysop408 @Remittancegirl
     I've been active out there but are not able to do much now due to age and health. There are very good reasons why some are vocal online but not out there.

     anban repeated this.
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     Sheldon (sysop408@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:14 JST Sheldon

     in reply to

     @Remittancegirl I recall a study done in the early days of online activism that showed that people who were highly vocal online were not always quite so dependable in the flesh. The hypothesis was that people who feel like they've done their part by speaking feel like they've partially fulfilled their intent and are less motivated to get their hands dirty.

     I've always taken that finding to heart and valued actions before words and similarly support people who are doing acts even if they're not saying things that validate my belief system.

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 20:01:15 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     But it seems that there is so much psychological satisfaction in doing, ironically, what I am doing right here. I'm using language in a virtual space, easily lulled into the fantasy that I'm making a difference. But I'm not. My words 'fork no lightning'. Not IRL.

     The cinematization of our imaginations has gaslit us to believe small acts in a local environment are too small to matter. It's not global enough, grand enough. It's made us feel too small individually for any of our acts to count. 9/