I don't fight for a better world, I fight when my people need me.

“A better world” is hypothetical. Not impossible, but it does not exist yet. It is a promise. And people are tired of promises!

Which is why today’s political movements get nowhere, too: they dream up a hypothetical better world and then go looking for people to carry it out. They talk about outreach, messaging, education, organizing. They pontificate about the masses; how to awaken them and how to convince them.

All this demonstrates is that they are not genuinely interested in people as people, but as instruments. A means to an end! Another member, volunteer, or donor. Higher headcounts at rallies, more people holding signs. A bigger parade-er… protest!

The political ideal might be good; if it actually happened, it may truly improve people’s lives. I often personally agree with how much better things “could” or “should” be! But because the movement is about the ideality, it is not about the reality. It is about the image of a perfect future, not about the people’s struggle—though it certainly thinks that’s what it’s about.

In truth, “the people’s struggle” is a transaction. The people “struggle” for our vision.

And they are selling something in return: identity, community, and a hypothetical role in history. Political movements, like everything else in contemporary society, now operate on the logic of fandom: gather around the thing, adopt its language, perform your loyalty, and receive a sense of belonging. But the belonging is conditional. The fandom exists to reproduce itself; thus, the movement, a fandom, exists to reproduce itself.

Identity and community are created and cultivated to service the reproduction of attention, loyalty, and labor for the thing at its center. It’s marketing. Selling.

Thusly, it’s no coincidence that political interactions feel like buying a used car. It’s a sales funnel. Friendship is not really friendship; it’s recruitment. Community is not really a community; it’s infrastructure. The ideal is an “Object of Fandom” (OOF), as Kresnika Research puts it; a commodity. Whether that’s communism, anarchism, liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, or whatever.

But as I said, the “OOF” is the ideality, not the reality. If it became reality, that would mean it’s over. The infrastructure becomes useless, the roles lose their power and purpose. The relationships have no basis. Fandom has superseded previous forms of social organization, and in this mode, political movements serve to channel dissent within the current system rather than change it. And people know. People aren’t stupid.

They know that political actors care about what people have to say because they want to find the right opening. They know when “meeting people where they are” really means figuring out how to move them somewhere else.

All of this is standing outside of people’s lives, trying to get in. And with an ideal, with a “vision,” political actors are telling others how to live, and thus position themselves as “superior,” intentionally or not.

This is not the vanguard, as many might think. It’s simply elitism.

We should be interested in politics because we are interested in people, not interested in people because we are interested in politics. When we get this backward, we are the hurdle between the people and progress, liberation, or whatever word you like.

Politics should stem from attachment and integration. It should be rooted in awareness of those on the verge of losing their homes, unable to afford medication, working multiple jobs, raising children alone, feeling lonely, scared, or being marginalized.

Not as examples of “what’s supposed to matter,” either, but as your people.

People do not fight because someone has successfully explained a “better world” in a hypothetical future to them, or even because you correctly diagnose the problem with today's crappy world. People fight when someone they love is in danger, their home is being destroyed, or something is being taken from them.

Agreement doesn’t matter. Messaging is fucking meaningless. And please, please, stop talking about “awakening” others (the claim to be “woke” is to position oneself as better than others—those fascist savages, the masses!). We are not above those people; we are not smarter, we are not better. People know what their lives are about and what they need.

Stop trying to “convince” the masses.
Stop trying to “awaken” the masses.
Stop trying to “organize” the masses.

All of these assume you are something outside of the masses. You are not. You are the masses. If you are talking about everyone like fucking cattle, the difference between you and them is that you see yourself as above them.

Know people. Love people. Need them. Let them need you.

Then, when your people need you, fight.