I’m trying to think of examples that are Closer to the US. The Black Panthers, The Weather Underground, The Molly Maguires of the Pennsylvania coal mines.
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There is a type of US liberal who is genuinely concerned, but more comfortable romanticizing white-led movements from other places than the revolutionary and anticolonial movements here at home. Probably because we learn hardly anything about them but watered-down propaganda in school
The Galleanisti or The Galleanists are probably some of the closest in the US, the Italian anarchists who carried out a wave of bombings. Two of them, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed.
I think the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground are the most relevant examples but it's going to have to be way more DL and really leverage the digital ecosystem to our advantage. Let's see how badly trump and musk fuck it all up because that will be the biggest motivating factor.
I’m not shitting on Yanks who are concerned. But I think this is all stemming from the Tv adaptation of Say Nothing, which made The Troubles seem fuckable. it’s great Tv, but it felt like a gritty fashion shoot at times
Say Nothing is brilliant to watch. I highly reccomend it, because you’ll binge it in one go. It succeeds in all departments as entertainment. BUT, it’s about a Belfast in the 1970s where smoking areas exist and no one has sideburns or flared trousers
The character in Say Nothing that Americans would find relevant is Frank Kitson. Learn how he had Barack Obamas grandfathers nails ripped out of his fingers in Kenya. Kitsons playbook is what informed the CIA/FBI when it came to dismantling any type of serious left resistance in the US
So, I just went and read a little bit about him, and what I read was awful but so familiar. Sometimes I feel nothing is any different. There’s just knowing and not knowing.
I would urge white Americans to instead learn about African American resistance. Black Panthers and how they were vilified by Cointelpro. Read Huey P Newtons bio, he cites James Joyce as influence. Cyril Briggs, Claude McKay, the African Blood Brotherhood and their connection with the IRB
When I was a kid, I had a copy of Evil Empire by rage against the machine. There were all these radical books on the inside sleeve. For years I wondered why James Joyce, portrait of the artist was in there. It seemed out of place. It was because Huey Newton cited it as changing how he viewed power
Something I would seriously urge revolutionary Americans to be aware of is that if you invite religion into your movement it will destroy it. America needs an atheist revolution, never forget that trump was delivered by the church.
I'm sure they learned from Kitson, but the CIA was running live lab experiments across central and South American countries since Guatemala in 1954 - everything from torture and assassinations all the way through the scale of atrocities up to and including genocide.
Starting last night and it’s already has me shook. I mean Americans know so little of World History because we don’t even teach all of our own. But this is where movies, shows, and documentaries excel.
The biggest anachronism of Say Nothing was that it’s Belfast wasn’t Grimy enough. If you look at any contemporary media or photographs everything was covered in a layer of industrial grime.
That film Belfast that won a couple of oscars was HILARIOUSLY clean - not a speck of dirt, pile of old newspapers, empty jamjar, unkempt houseplant or scratch in the wallpaper to be seen; as antiseptic as a bottle of Dettol.
I thought the hair and costuming was fairly decent tbh, lots of 'taches and, yes, sideburns. But not nearly enough smoking and pinting. Only Mad Men has ever come close to conveying the ecstatic truth of smoking and drinking of the mid-20th c. but they still fell short
The thing to understand about Americans is political violence is largely just abstract to us and that lots of us fantasize about it as a means to gain a sense of meaning and status
I read Say Nothing as a yank but it was far from inspo, more like a morality tale of how nebulous “good” and “bad” are written in history, to see the historical through line in modern politics and to contextualize contemporary Irish media I enjoy.
I can’t find the podcast about the Weather Underground that was pretty good…I mean, I have met people who were imprisoned for their involvement and we absolutely didn’t discuss it. White yanks (this person) don’t have a storytelling culture. Different meaning to “say nothing”! Ha
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