Skiluros

Middleeasteye has always been like this. Some of their writers almost come off as being tankie-adjacent in their worldview.

To be honest, I don’t think there is a way to make them happen. At least from global examples, they happen almost in spontaneous manner, more often than not from a spark of some sort (killing of students, a particularly disliked decision etc.). Albeit the spark is of course tied to deeper mass social concerns.

I joined in the protests in my country (even night ones with police raids) and regularly brought supplies for protestors who barricaded in the centre of the capital (not just food, but helpful things like eye protection, masks, fire proof gloves). The government literally lost control of the main square and avenue of the country. This was also happening for months and months, including camping out during winters months. But people weren’t backing down.

The initial spark was beating of unarmed protesting students, that’s what led to the creation a protester controlled zone. There were massive protests all around the country after the initial assault on the students.

The next spark was the killing of protesters by the police. That’s when society’s attitudes hardened and there was a desire to get rid of the shill president and his admin and not back down (not to mention people become accepting of the need to use force by the protesters).

Look at global protest movements and tactics used. Taking over gov. admin buildings, blocking off parts of major cities, taking control of infrastructure nodes. Clear and focused demands (e.g. immediate resignation of Trump and his admin). Continued protests day in and day out. A whole network of protest sites all around the country, not only in the capital.

Mass participation with large parts of the country joining in on weekend peaks and key days (at least 10 million for country with the population of the US, realistically you would need more, as much as 20 million on peaks).

Btw, I am not saying this is easy or they are guaranteed to work, but these things to happen when a broad swath of society gets pissed off and have had enough.

Perhaps that’s just not the case in the US with respect to society more broadly. It doesn’t help that your opposition is trash, but often protests are not spearheaded by established political parties.

Even in such a dire situation (forget Ukraine for a second, I say this as a Ukrainian), they are going to be extremely slow and reactive.

If they had any brains (or balls), the EU leaders would have gone on full war footing (both in terms of industrial production and military preparedness) three years ago. But as we can see they just wanted to kick the can down the road and avoid difficult decisions.

It’s going to require daily nationwide protests going on for months and months with national participation approaching 1-2% of the population (4-8 million) on weekends and clear and actionable demands (resignation of Trump and his goons and corrupt members of the judiciary).

From my experience living in the US, I don’t think this is likely (I do hope I am wrong). Geographic size can actually be managed by having many thousands of protest sites by key admin buildings all throughout the country. The bigger issue is perhaps a lack of experience “operationalizing” beliefs and standing up to a thugs and oligarchs.

What a fucking idiot. Some degenerate from what seems like provincial Washington state is making calls about the leadership of Ukraine?

We should send his family to Pokrovsk (a key frontline town in Donetsk oblast) to do logistics volunteer work.

Hell, they can even come to my apartment in Kyiv. While it’s safe here, I have a feeling they are not going to enjoy daily shahed OWA strike warnings that happen in and around midnight or regular getting ballistic strike warnings at 4 am (and hearing takedowns of said shaheds and ballistic missiles during the night). Or seeing that the building down the street recently got hit my debris from a shahed takedown.

I’m talking like impeaching and removing a broad swath of this administration

I am not American (have lived their though), but I think the likelihood of this actually happening is even less than a focused street protest movement gaining control of key infrastructure nodes (ports, airport, federal and local state buildings, critical highway intersections), Trump’s admin losing control of small parts of the US, local internment of pro-Trump oligarchs and their affiliates and so on.

And the latter is borderline impossible. I would love to be proven wrong though (I will settle for any count).

Who the fuck is Baumgartner?

I am assuming some corrupt American?