politics

I'd like to see funding via comrades, i.e. selling shares or equity for micro grants. None of us are millionaires but there's probably enough of us that can spare $100 to get something going.

I wasn't necessarily saying that they should do that but I suppose it's an option. I would have hesitations about that route though.

Vegan businesses are absolutely a potential ally. Not sure what lifestyleist businesses you're referring to. I think the biggest one to really figure out is businesses that people feel help them personally. This is why the far right are targeting self-improvement. They are tying people's personal growth and genuinely felt changes in their material conditions to the fascist movement. The Vegan businesses have a potential role to play in that for the left, people that do make those transitions do genuinely feel a sense of personal accomplishment for having done so and find a sense of community in support and help that exists to make the transition.

I think a major aspect of this is that it's sustainable radicalisation. Once you have a business embedded in a community doing this it really isn't going anywhere if it's making money. This is why pods and streams have been so beneficial too, but they only exist in the digital space there's the physical community footholds to organise around have their own uses.

Some of them are chuddy merch grifts specifically intended for fundraising. Now, you could argue that printing shirts and stickers and posters and flags in a co-op is something leftists have done forver, and you'd be right about that, but when you start a store for thin blue line merch or an agitprop site selling reprints of public domain theory or a food supplement grift or whatever these bozos are doing, it makes a difference when you have the funding to start out with several full-time employees, can afford advertising to make yourself known, can data mine information on potential donors and get additional funds if it takes longer to get everything going. It's much easier to scale this kind of stuff up when you go in with more capital than a used screen printer.

Anything that performs a genuinely useful social thing with members of the local community can play a role in spreading local class consciousness. Here in the UK back in the day these were working men's clubs, which were both drinking venues and connected to various local sports activities.

The fightclubs that the fascists are constructing are modernising the format of working men's clubs (I guarantee they're 100% male) and embedding themselves in the local community. The role that these working men's clubs can play in a community hasn't changed, just the aesthetics of them hasn't ever updated so they've declined. In particular it's not really obvious why you should join one, whereas it is pretty obvious why you would join a gym for self improvement.