Exh Occ

 

Occupy movement : I truly believe the theory that idpol was an intentional subversion of the class-conscious unrest that culminated in Occupy Wall Street. When it comes to any sort of collective action, the simplest way to undermine it is by dividing the collective into competing groups, and idpol does that very functionally.

The fact that people openly assembled and had absolutely wildly different political views is something that has been weirdly decimated ever since OWS. I have the suspicion that pushing singular idpol-driven perspectives and rinsing them of any class analysis is an easier way of guaranteeing that people don't come together in public to hash stuff out than tossing stun grenades (though they did that, also). The cringelord Twitter libs as we know them today were not in vogue 10 years ago.

The idea that someone could come into a public space and actively tell people they did not have the right to express something peacefully would've gotten you a lot of strange looks and LOLs around the time of Occupy. Libertarians, communists, moderates, darn even some cities had some Republicans rolling through to see what was going on.

I don't think Occupy should be looked at like it was some sort of gigantic long-lasting class struggle, but the reality is that people of all different backgrounds were uniting in public all over the US (and the world) to attempt to connect their particular experiences, not harp on differences and try to leverage their own experience as more essential or universal than others.

Shitlib politcal culture is what we get when the elites know that OWS failed but they don't want the potential of something similar catching steam again with the lessons learned from the first time around.