The Mamdani campaign and its narrative aftermath are an exercise in counterinsurgency – they are being used to co-opt resistance narratives and political passions back into institutional paths and narratives. It is pacification. 🧵
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Mamdani, far from being an achievement or victory for the Palestine movement, is a profound betrayal. The most important parts of any movement, the essences of its organizational capacity, are its principles & narrative. To betray these principles is fundamentally disorganizing.
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The Mamdani campaign is exactly that. They have betrayed opposition to israel and zionism. They have hung the movement out to dry. And they have made common cause with institutions of brutality (the NYPD). This is explicit. Mamdani has already made these commitments.
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The social democrats argue that the betrayal is worth it in order to win bussing and limits on rent increases. But these are fundamentally two different sets of principles, two different narratives, and so two different bases for organizing.
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Encouraging confusion on these principle differences is social democracy in action, which aims to replace revolutionary political aims with economic negotiation and collaboration.
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The Mamdani campaign isn't the first time social democrats have attempted to co-opt the Palestine movement, to “electoralize dissent.” They exposed themselves attempting the same operation at the 2024 DNC, seeking to regain "engagement" & channel the mvt to the Harris campaign.
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The Palestine movement caught these opportunists flat-footed, precisely because it asserts a different set of values and a narrative that runs counter to the politics of social democracy. How does economic negotiation address genocide?
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And so the mission of the social democrats since 2023 has been to channel the mvt back into their comfort zone, to make resistance less relevant & economic negotiations more central to political discourse. It has been an insidious attack on resistance and solidarity.
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They think they've “won.” As with Obama & Biden & Sanders & AOC, the victory is illusory. The paint of bad faith principles is peeling off Mamdani, and betrayal “in power” will demobilize their own organizing, as their negotiations flounder due to larger dynamics of capitalism.
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Those of us opposed to capitalist immiseration of the natural world & imperialist genocide can't afford to be confused here. There are fundamentally different narratives & politics at play. There is either resistance or collaboration. The two cannot live in the same mvt.
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Our cause must be defended against these attacks if we are to protect our ability to organize around these values at all. It's this or acquiesce to the narratives and institutional structures of collaboration, which are the organizational basis of Mamdani & the social democrats.
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