this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Didn’t realize the black panthers did all this lol
Not just them. I’ll probably make a more truthful meme than this post humous false accreditation. But without Black Panther's bloodshed, there wouldn't be civil rights. Liberals scared off their belongings and their families next relented for 1,2,4,5,6&7. 8&9 were indigenous bloodshed, 3 was quite Reganomics. Liberals really really didn't want women to vote. It took Stonewall deaths to get there.
Stonewall was decades after women won the vote so that part is a bit puzzling.
Overall I don’t find your retort to be any more accurate than the meme.
But the bigger issue is that successful political movements usually involve huge numbers of people, often in coalitions that include diverse ideologies and tactics. Attribution of the movement’s success to one group or person is very difficult to prove—and it seems likely to me that every part of the coalition contributes in various ways.
People on Lemmy often love to say that MLK didn’t matter and it was all due to the black panthers or Malcolm X or some other more controversial figure. But I’ve never seen any real historical evidence to support this, and I have no idea how such a thing could even be proved even if it was true.
Anyway this tribal bickering is kind of pointless. I care more about where people stand on the issues and the actions they are taking than how they label themselves. There are effective agents for change who might think of themselves as liberals. Others might label themselves leftists. But I usually find that the most effective actors recognize that they should put such labels aside and cooperate with anyone who shares their goals. Even when, at times, there may be tactical disagreements.
While I want to agree with:
However, American liberals are collaborating with the fascists. Not a single ICE facility has been taken down in the past 22 years this gestapo has existed.
We say the opposite: his tactics didn't push the level the way Black Panther praxis did. Black panthers were going to bourgeois homes, burning them, and killing cops. You are welcome to deny how violence is the language to properly communicating with fascists the freedoms they abhor we desire to have. The last two chat leaks proved they want to enslave us again. If liberals do not want slavery back, they have to start demolishing ICE facilities as a proven “diverse coalition.”
If you want a start, there’s a liberal state waiting to be liberated.
I’m not denying anything. I’m challenging you to support your claim that black panther tactics were more effective with actual reasoning or evidence instead of mere assertions.
One could just as easily claim that their campaign was counterproductive—and people do claim this. But what reason is there to believe one claim over the other? I have no position in this debate because I’ve seen no compelling reason to adopt one. As such, I respect anyone who is genuinely working for liberation by any means that seem plausibly likely to push the needle by any amount.
And there are plenty of liberals involved in opposing ICE right now, if you want to focus on that specific issue. And there are some leftists who argue against combatting ICE for various reasons. So it’s not a simple ideological dichotomy like you and OP imply.
This is because leftism and liberalism are broad ideological categories, not homogeneous orthodoxies. There are enemies and allies that fall into both categories in my experience. And after all, we’re all individuals. While ideology and organizations do matter, they only matter insofar as they influence those individual actions.
PS: The article on MLK was interesting but it didn’t really say anything directly related to this topic of tactical effectiveness and its connection to ideological camp.
And I am challenging to praxis liberation…
There are ICE facilities to topple, let’s go!
But how? That’s the key question. No one has succeeded in this yet.
On second thought, I guess it might not be safe for you to articulate your preferred strategy publicly. But if there’s anything you can say in general terms, I’d be interested.
Personally, I think the challenge of dismantling ICE is not a physical or military challenge but a political one. How do we destroy ICE’s popularity to the extent that people stop protecting it, and toppling it becomes feasible? Because today, it simply is not.
See point ¹