How should the non-party political left respond to the rise of the far right?

[smokedout]

Sort of inspired by this post advertising an online meeting I thought this might be a useful discussion. I'm using left quite broadly mainly to mean those seeking to oppose the far right who are active or interested in being active outside of the party political system, rather than those seeking to build an electoral alternative or work within existing parties.

What has been successful historically? How do we challenge far right and conspiratorial views in workplaces and communities? What can we learn from campaigns like Don't Pay, the struggles against workfare, and other recentish initiatives that had some success at least in terms of raising issues outside of the usual activist scene? Should we be confronting them on the street and if so how, given we are usually outnumbered and the demographics of far right protests have changed considerably? What role does online media play and can we find a way to use it as effectively as the far right have done? How do we build support for an alternative bearing in mind we don't have much time? How should we respond if/when things escalate?

Stuff like that basically. What the fuck do we do?

Also what are people doing already and how we can amplify that?

 

[LDC]

It's broadly the same stuff we should be doing anyway; building independent militant class power where we live and work that has mutual aid, ecology, feminism, anti-capitalism etc. deeply embedded within it. I've not read, seen or heard of anything else that has worked for what we want. How (or can) we do that will vary according to where we live and work, but broadly it's about the hard long term slog of on the ground work based around a broad radical left politics rather than specific national campaigns or issues (although they can and will come into it) and it also needs some cultural, fun, educational, multi-generational non-subcultural stuff as an integral part of it.

There's some stuff you mention (online media) and the rise of conspiratorial thinking that can only really be dealt with face-to-face work as above, but I have to say I am far from 100% convinced that it's possible now, that box might well be open and have deeply broken something in the human realm. If you then add in the time pressure we have with the potential of a global war, climate change and the broader ecological outlook I think it's very far from a rosy picture. Giving up on any chance of radical change or becoming a prepper are both pretty understandable reactions to where we find ourselves now tbh.

I wrote this last summer, it's a shorter edited version of a longer piece, but it was a stumbling attempt to try and think this stuff through on a strategic level rather than leaping from one thing to the next. The short version is that nearly all of activism and left politics is fundamentally completely broken and unfit for the tasks ahead, and we need a complete shift in how we do things.

What is to be done… now! - Angry Workers

Developing a revolutionary strategy for the years ahead We document this text written by a comrade of ours. Enjoy! This is the text of a pamphlet written for a talk and discussion at the 30th Earth First! Summer Gathering in July 2024 by someone involved in Earth First! and various ecological...

www.angryworkers.org

Just to add that I'm not wedded to that as a strategy at all, give me a better/more achievable one (or more) and I'll be very happy!