“Anyone radicalized by a propaganda poster left up in public is extremely unlikely to be someone serious enough to or later join the communist party or become a revolutionary” - Some fool in 1912 Russia shitting on efforts to spread awareness by postering.
What are memes? Propaganda. They’re digital versions of posters plastered in public places, in this case the digital commons. Is someone who sees a communist poster and agrees with guaranteed to join the party or even inquire further? Of course not. But some percentage will, for some percentage of people seeing these things lights something up in their heads, they realize for the first time there might be people who can put into words and explanation things they’ve felt all or most of their life. They realize they’re not alone. That alone is powerful.
It is not an end unto itself but it is far from useless. Memes spread ideas. In an age and place where the mass media is controlled by the bourgeoisie, where art is funded by the CIA, the ability for anyone to spread an image with an idea is dangerous to the bourgeoisie.
It displeases me extremely to see such an awfully incorrect, dangerously incorrect take. Like really, this is extremely, extremely wrong. This is the lazy take of someone who sees online as laziness and therefore bad.
People are more likely to see and meaningfully engage in this age with memes than street posters. If Lenin were alive today he would be sure the Bolsheviks had good memes. To reject these facts, this proven experience of successful past communists is irresponsible.
Like no shit memes won’t cause or win a revolution but neither did postering and yet that was done, as was printing newspapers, pontificating online in posts also won’t do that yet we do so, we must. It’s all part of a process, it’s all parts of the same machinery. To say it is irrelevant or meaningless is to say the street sweeper is worthless as a human because they don’t do as much as the central planner or surgeon. It’s frankly ignorance.
It all helps. It all helps spread the message. Sure some people aren’t affected but that’s because they’re disinclined to be by material interests anyways. Saying that your communist meme debunking American atrocities was ignored and downvoted without rebuttal by liberals and didn’t instantly create a dozen new communists is not a knock of the meme but of the larger situation. Yet we must keep trying. We must keep spreading class consciousness, we must keep inveighing against empire and this is the way we do it. Some small amount see them, some small amount begin to question. Some small amount who were questioning question further and realize for the first time there is another perspective.
We don’t own mass communication, television, radio stations, major news sites. But we do have this.
“Anyone radicalized by a propaganda poster left up in public is extremely unlikely to be someone serious enough to or later join the communist party or become a revolutionary” - Some fool in 1912 Russia shitting on efforts to spread awareness by postering.
What are memes? Propaganda. They’re digital versions of posters plastered in public places, in this case the digital commons. Is someone who sees a communist poster and agrees with guaranteed to join the party or even inquire further? Of course not. But some percentage will, for some percentage of people seeing these things lights something up in their heads, they realize for the first time there might be people who can put into words and explanation things they’ve felt all or most of their life. They realize they’re not alone. That alone is powerful.
It is not an end unto itself but it is far from useless. Memes spread ideas. In an age and place where the mass media is controlled by the bourgeoisie, where art is funded by the CIA, the ability for anyone to spread an image with an idea is dangerous to the bourgeoisie.
It displeases me extremely to see such an awfully incorrect, dangerously incorrect take. Like really, this is extremely, extremely wrong. This is the lazy take of someone who sees online as laziness and therefore bad.
People are more likely to see and meaningfully engage in this age with memes than street posters. If Lenin were alive today he would be sure the Bolsheviks had good memes. To reject these facts, this proven experience of successful past communists is irresponsible.
Like no shit memes won’t cause or win a revolution but neither did postering and yet that was done, as was printing newspapers, pontificating online in posts also won’t do that yet we do so, we must. It’s all part of a process, it’s all parts of the same machinery. To say it is irrelevant or meaningless is to say the street sweeper is worthless as a human because they don’t do as much as the central planner or surgeon. It’s frankly ignorance.
It all helps. It all helps spread the message. Sure some people aren’t affected but that’s because they’re disinclined to be by material interests anyways. Saying that your communist meme debunking American atrocities was ignored and downvoted without rebuttal by liberals and didn’t instantly create a dozen new communists is not a knock of the meme but of the larger situation. Yet we must keep trying. We must keep spreading class consciousness, we must keep inveighing against empire and this is the way we do it. Some small amount see them, some small amount begin to question. Some small amount who were questioning question further and realize for the first time there is another perspective.
We don’t own mass communication, television, radio stations, major news sites. But we do have this.