Disclosure:
as a Communist, a former competitive shooter, a Regular Army veteran
(active duty 1959-1962) and a veteran of the Civil Rights, Alternative
Press, Anti-Vietnam-War and Back-to-the-Land movements, I remain firmly
committed to the Second Amendment right of armed self defense,
especially now with the Trump-emboldened JesuNazis and their fascist
allies running amok, frequently with police protection. Nevertheless...
The protest's potential significance therefore goes far beyond its immediate demands because it includes a definitively revolutionary potential few dare acknowledge. Henri Giroux does so indirectly by noting in a new essay that such "momentary protests" could "become broad-based movements." However, as I write these lines (26 March 2018), most other Left-leaning commentators and public intellectuals have remained curiously silent on this matter. In all probability they see the protest's potential as clearly as I do -- indeed how could they not? But they are no doubt terrified to silence by the professional and socioeconomic consequences of violating the ever-more-ruthlessly enforced taboo against acknowledging, even obliquely, that revolution is our only alternative -- that if we are to survive as a viable species on a livable planet, we must overthrow Capitalism before it murders us all.
We as socialists and particularly as Marxists should therefore be asking whether the legitimate fear and fury U.S. high school students are expressing in response to their repeated victimization by mass murderers might evolve into the class consciousness that is prerequisite to such a revolution. It is obvious to us as enemies of Capitalism that if these students are to eliminate the root cause of the atrocities against which they mobilize -- specifically the deadly combination of unyielding hopelessness, murderous rage and conditioned moral imbecility that is Capitalism's unique legacy -- it is Capitalism against which these students and their international comrades must ultimately arise and do battle.
This is not to ignore or downplay the other important issues raised by the form and content of the students' campaign. These include the campaign's limited focus, specifically the fact the students' are apparently unable or unwilling to recognize that school shootings -- like the murders of unarmed suspects by the Empire's militarized local police -- are domestic manifestations of the endlessly repeated atrocities that have become the defining reality of life and death anywhere the Imperial United States has its boots on the ground. A corollary issue is thus the fact the majority of student protestors seem to be children of the One Percent's white Ruling Class vassalage or at least of the white petite bourgeoisie. This of course puts the primary focus on mostly white upscale victims -- which some of the protestors themselves admit is one of the primary reasons their activism has been gifted with such lavishly affirmative publicity by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. The other reason for the outpouring of favorable publicity is the strategically timely boost the protest is giving to -- and in return getting substantial support from -- the decades-long Ruling Class campaign for forcible proletarian* disarmament, for details of which scroll down to the linked report's final dozen paragraphs.
Obviously the protestors are prime targets for co-optation, an effort Time magazine's disclosures in the preceding link tell us is already well underway.
Meanwhile two of the world's most influential journals of women's fashion have awarded protest leader Emma González the coveted laurels of...
(To read the rest, go here.)
