This isn’t the strategy you think it is. If someone who isn’t already on board with what you’re saying sees/hears “IOF terrorist,” they’re going to either not grasp what you mean and be confused/think you made a mistake, or get what you mean and see is as petty, edgy, and reaching. It’s like calling U.S. troops terrorists: it’s not actually going to land with anyone besides those who already agree with you.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how right you are, what matters is what gets people to change their minds.

“Israeli soldier” pushes back on the “defense force” euphemism but isn’t going to confuse anyone and won’t be written off as too hot of a take.

The Dachau example is a good one to raise whenever there’s handwringing about Cuban peasants killing Batista thugs or Chinese peasants killing landlords.

“Eventually, they let me go because there was no evidence.”

We’re supposed to believe this is some 1984 totalitarian hellhole

The point of comparison is the pressure campaign against apartheid in South Africa, which took decades to succeed.

A ruling that Israel is committing genocide could provide a lot of cover to expanding boycott/divest/sanction activities (this happened to South Africa over less, including high-profile actions like banning them from the Olympics for 30 years), and those combined with the ruling itself could solidify public consensus against Israel. Imperial governments don’t run on consensus, of course, but public discussion could go from “you must support Israel to run for even local office and you’re an antisemite if you don’t” to a contested issue, to being a liability.

This would work more quickly outside the imperial core, and as the U.S. declines that will matter more as every year passes.

EDIT: It would also have secondary impacts on all the other accusations of genocide that are tossed around more and more casually.

It’s more that both parties support an imperialist foreign policy (even if they’ll quibble on the details), while there are real partisan differences on domestic issues.

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I put that I quote a lot of Michael Parenti on mine. If you know, you know.

This seems futile, but it’s a decent point to hammer on. Libs who believe international law means something get put in the uncomfortable position of rethinking that, it’s more grounded than “I disagree with this as a matter of policy,” and you’ll smoke out plenty of people who will show their asses with “that shit doesn’t apply to us” takes.

Point out to libs that “give me everything I want and then we’ll negotiate” is not actually negotiating

Class is not an immutable characteristic. It’s determined by material conditions, and consciousness of one’s class is a function of that and the ideas they’re exposed to.

The settler class is no different. If the proletariat class can grow and proletarian consciousness can be developed, the settler class can shrink and settler consciousness can be destroyed.

First things first we will destroy the American and later the Canadian, and Mexican states

With what numbers? With what resources? Why is now different than the last 500 years, when indigenous movements in better situations lost? The lack of answers to these questions is why writing off the majority of the U.S. population is interpreted as defeatist.

We have yet to see one come out of the settler (or Imperialist European) working class for its 300 year existence.

You’re right, we are in uncharted territory here with no clear historical precedent. Whatever you propose is just as theoretical as whatever I propose.

To me, it would be easier to destroy the imperial machine with more people on our side, not less. As material conditions continue to deteriorate the long-entrenched mass defenses of the machine (the settler ideology in white Americans) matter less and less.

I referenced one of your links in my reply. Just because you post something doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with it, and disagreeing doesn’t mean someone didn’t understand what you wrote.

while not being any more difficult to attain than the normal communist aims

This is what I disagree with. I see no rationale here, and I explained why (we have to start from where we are, not where we would like to end up, and tons of people have legitimate interests in land they don’t live on in the most literal sense of the word).

does the collapse of the USSR deny tested praxis of the Bolsheviks?

The USSR ultimately failed, yes. This doesn’t mean their contributions were worthless, but it does mean we should be generous with our criticisms and that we shouldn’t hold them up as a model to copy step-by-step. We should do the same with movements that achieved far less than the USSR, too.

The total abolition of private property is undeniably a radical goal and people will be afraid of it at first. After that

We can’t think in terms of “what will people think after we’ve already won,” because to get to that point we have to win first. That means taking the world as it is today and moving it towards our ideal, not theorizing from a point where the ideal is already in place.

As for who cares about land they don’t live on, all sorts of people do! One of your links breaks out agricultural land as and where no one actually lives, but anyone with an interest in food production has an interest in agricultural land. The land immediately outside of any currently lived-on land is usually of interest to the people living next door; the first place you’re going to grow is often there. Tons of people use land for various recreational purposes. Any sort of post-capitalist economic planner will be interested in the mineral wealth of land where no one lives.

There is a real problem here: anything short of “we should turn all American land over to the indigenous” is saying you can, to a large extent, get away with genocide if you do it thoroughly enough and long enough. But leftism isn’t the absolute pursuit of perfect justice over everything else (there are police and prison abolition arguments that go quite far in this direction). And accepting nothing less than perfect justice here would mean we do nothing, and would perpetually criticize any AES state that too accepts less than perfect justice, which is too close to ultra-leftism for my taste.

Settlers makes pretty clear these were frequently rather successful, but the problem comes when they get co-opted or hijacked by white people.

If you have to say “we were successful until…”, how successful were you, really? Ultimately, every leftist project in the U.S. has at most a few significant wins, and none have achieved anything resembling the success of AES states, or even that of groups like the Zapatistas. A movement’s resilience against reaction and other right deviations is a key part of its viability; I’m guessing that’s part of why most of us here are MLs.

There’s also the argument (I’m pulling from In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil, which cites Settlers repeatedly) that co-option/hijacking of potentially greater successes broke down more along ideological lines than racial lines.

A problematic idea promoted by patsocs is that since most people on this land are white it will be our revolution ie. finders keepers rule of genocide. We must combat that by putting the interests of those to whom this land belongs first.

It might be the most just to hand the keys of the U.S. to an indigenous government, but I don’t see any realistic way that happens. I don’t think this means you abandon the idea entirely, but I do think it means we’re going to have to choose between a less-just outcome that might be feasible or nothing.

Plus pro-Palestine sentiment is decently common among libs, and while the military skews right there are plenty of lib idealists who join.

Liberation requires colonized peoples gaining power by taking it away from white settlers.

Many white people see this as “defeatist”, believing that if they personally aren’t the subjects of revolution, then revolution must not be possible or desirable.

I’m sure plenty of white people resist the idea of a black-led revolution for something similar to this, at least unconsciously. But a much stronger critique of the Settlers philosophy is looking at stuff like this:

• Settlers itself argues that modern racism was invented specifically to divide the emerging proletariat;
• U.S. history is littered with examples of leftist movements that ultimately failed in part because even white leftists had reactionary, racist views; and
• Movements that were predominantly black, or black only, have similarly failed;

And concluding that a multi-racial, anti-racist leftist coalition is necessary for victory. In such a coalition (like in any coalition), you can’t expect a large group of members to contribute without some say in leadership. Settlers implies (can’t remember if it outright states) that such a coalition is impossible, which is why many leftists read it as defeatist.

Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776 has all the good parts of Settlers without this and the latter work’s other flaws.

I think it is very optimistic to think this (taking it as read, and assiming it’s an issue throughout the military) would seriously impact U.S. involvement, no matter the cause.

The people in the military self-selected there, largely while the U.S. was fighting simmering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That means they do not have even a basic understanding of U.S. imperialism and don’t have the mental outs draftees have. Shovel them some propaganda about duty and commitment and the vast majority will fall in line. A few will quietly go AWOL before deployment, but that’ll be it.

Hard to tell how much is pro-Palestine, how much is actual anti-Semitism, and how much is simple self-preservation/people who actually thought they would be “defending their country” when they joined the National Guard. It’s also possible (assuming this is real, of course) that, like many higher-ups, this general does not actually have his finger on the pulse of the people under him. If he does, we don’t know if this is localized to his troops or present more broadly.