finally, a grand unified leftist theory
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
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I guess I don't fit anywhere because fuck guns.
Non american leftists tend to have a more reserved take on guns.
It's hard to advocate for armed resistance against tyranny XIXth century style after 150 years of military industrial complex development have made the state's power so asymmetrically strong. Guns nowadays kill kids in schools, but won't do much against tanks, jets, drones, etc.
Paradoxically, it's liberals that like guns in my country (hunting has become a bourgeois activity).
This argument never seemed true to me. A typical uprising isn't suppressed with tanks and fighter jets. It's suppressed with police. Your uprising doesn't have bases and fortifications to bomb. An uprising isn't attempting to control territory. The military and all it's power isn't really built to supress an uprising. The US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan despite having the most powerful military in the world because asymmetric tactics work.
A typical uprising isn’t suppressed with tanks and fighter jets…
Okay sure, give me an example of a modern uprising where the protesters used weapons to achieve their goals.
Eastern bloc collapse, arab spring, sudan, burkina faso… succeeded because the military refused to side with the state against the uprisings, not because civilians had weapons.
And you're straight up wrong (or uninformed?), modern uprisings are suppressed with tanks and jets. It took days for the Syrian military to flatten armed protesters and the entire urban areas in which they attempted their revolution. Same thing in Libya, it was a slaughter, weapons and guerrilla tactics were losing to the military, it took a NATO intervention to turn the tide. For an even more recent example, the Myanmar uprisings were met with artillery, airstrikes, scorched earth tactics on their own land, no fucks given mass executions, etc.
It’s suppressed with police…
Well it's a good thing that we haven't been militarizing the police in every country these past decades then.
The US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan…
Vietnam and Afghanistan weren't attempts to fight against the tyranny of a state. I know imperialist media likes to portray them as proletarian resistance fighters in jungles/mountains, but both were actually an organized military fighting guerrilla warfare in perfect terrain using their own military grade weapons and equipment, with heavy logistical support from outside allies.
TL;DR: Remind me what happened to the civilians who tried to fire at the turkish police in 2016?
It took days for the Syrian military to flatten armed protesters and the entire urban areas in which they attempted their revolution.
Yeah it was a bloody mess, but after hundreds of thousands of dead and eleven years of war Bashar isn't running Syria anymore. A modern military, when it doesn't care about civilian casualties, can utterly destroy an urban uprising, but that's terrible PR and is likely to embolden the revolutionaries at hand. The Houthis also seized control of most of Yemen (by population) through an armed uprising, so there are examples of "successful" 21st century armed insurrections.
The armed uprising by the Syrian population was the 2011 insurgency, which ended in massacres of civilians. Following that, part of the Syrian army defected and formed the FSA. The civil war was an army vs army proper war, not a popular insurgency, there were no "civilians with guns" fighting, only trained military.
The Houthis are a very well organized movement with a lot of external funding and backing, it's much more than a popular uprising (although it does have the support of the population). The people fighting that civil are were trained military, not civilians with guns who decided to fire back at an oppressor. It's really a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
I'm sorry but I think you just aren't well informed enough on geopolitics to be discussing these topics. I don't mean this in an offensive way, but these topics are much more complex than "government vs the people", there's multiple sides and external third parties to all the conflicts you are describing in extremely simplistic ways, none of which look anything like a country's population using its guns to fight against its own military.
The armed uprising by the Syrian population was the 2011 insurgency, which ended in massacres of civilians. Following that, part of the Syrian army defected and formed the FSA.
It didn't "end;" the FSA formed against the backdrop of increasingly militant anti-government resistance. Hell, the first defections from the Syrian army predate the formation of the FSA by months.
The civil war was an army vs army proper war, not a popular insurgency, there were no "civilians with guns" fighting, only trained military.
I mean, yes, because "civilians with guns" is what a failed uprising looks like. If the government doesn't fold, a popular uprising's main immediate goal is to become a proper army. The Syrian civil war is what it looks like when a (particularly gruesome) uprising gets off the ground.
The Houthis are a very well organized movement with a lot of external funding and backing, it's much more than a popular uprising
Definitely, but again the organization and external funding and backing came during the years of insurgency and civil war. It's not like they spawned in 2004 with 300k armed men.
It's really a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Yes, but it didn't start as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Anyway my point here is: A sustainable armed uprising will very quickly stop looking like an armed uprising. Of course it'll seem like popular uprisings don't work if when a popular uprising works you retroactively classify it as something else. I know that the Syrian or Yemeni civil wars don't boil down to "government vs people," but that's (sort of, with a hundred footnotes) how they started.
Actually… of all the people who argued back, you're the one who found the middle ground to agree on.
Your description of an armed uprising is indeed the ideal scenario, and does fit historical caser.
I just don't believe in its feasability against a hyper militarized modern imperial state.
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Afghanistan ain’t called the graveyard of empires for nothing. Both the Russian and American militaries, with all their overwhelming might and superiority, lost their wars against dirt farmers living in caves. Militaries are shit for fighting anything but other militaries.
Russian and American militaries, with all their overwhelming might and superiority, lost their wars against dirt farmers living in caves
The US sent billions to the Talibans vs the USSR, it was a proxy war.
Various sources (allegedly saudis and pakistan) sent billions to the Talibans and Al-Quaeda vs the US, it was another proxy war. On top of that they had a lot of leftover US weapons from the previous war.
They were not fighting proles with guns, they were fighting an actual military with military grade weapons.
Don't move goalposts, we're talking about resisting the tyranny of the state here, demonstrators vs military.
PS: Calling them "dirt farmers living in caves" is straight up racist, try not to do that. Both Talibans and Al-Quaeda had central command, a very organized military, courts, intelligence units, shadow governments, taxation systems, bureaucracy… you're just repeating the imperialist propaganda the USA uses to justify their defeat.
The high explosives were helping the Tainan a lot too. IEDs both killed and fucked-with the US military in ways an even a thousand ARs never could. And cheap drones weren’t even a thing yet back then.
If it turns into a shooting war between the US military and its own civilian populace, apart from the multitude of other unimaginable horrors, you would undoubtedly see countries trying to stoke the flames and make the conflict more involved and expensive for the United States. Hell, I'm pretty well convinced that it's happening right now; if you were China or Russia or any other hostile foreign actor, you would much rather the United States destroy itself from within than try to confront us directly.
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Militaries are shit for fighting anything but other militaries.
That's not true at all. Almost every time an insurgency is cut off from outside logistical support (or doesn't have it in the first place) it's chances of being defeated by conventional militaries is pretty high.
There are lots of examples - the LTTE in Sri Lanka (defeated in the 2000s), the MNLA in Malaya (defeated in the 1960s) - they are simply just not as well-known as the insurgencies that succeeded.
The whole reason the Palestinian resistance had to accede to this (so-called) "ceasefire" is because they simply do not have the logistics to carry on the fight for that much longer - if the Palestinians had a Ho Chi Minh Trail, Israel would be history by now.
Yeah, I'm an American leftist and this is my take. I'm not anti-gun. I'd say I'm pro-responsible-gun-ownership. However, some people (leftists and conservatives) think they could beat the US military in a straight up fight. They can't. It doesn't matter how many guns you have.
If it comes to it it'll be won by gorilla warfare. It'll be hit-and-run tactics and explosives. If you get shot at, you're probably fucked. You'll be hiding in the woods or in caves, or potentially within the populace, and taking opportune moments, mostly just hiding and waiting —slowly wearing them down over years, maybe decades.
There is something to be said about military defectors though. If it gets to the point of civil war, some amount of military personnel will side against the government, and they'll bring equipment with them. Maybe they will sometimes fight head on, but it'll still be uncommon.
It'll be bloody and horrible, and very messy. The number of weapons you start with won't matter. Most will probably be taken from the military, and they won't be what wins the war anyway.
but won't do much against tanks, jets, drones, etc.
Not necessarily, the "conflicts" in the middle east has proven that guerilla warfare can go pretty far, even when against the military of a superpower with all the toys they want
There's a massive difference between fighting the tyranny of the state in an uprising and fighting foreign invaders in a heavily militarized proxy war with heavy outside support.
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Paradoxically, it’s liberals that like guns in my country (hunting has become a bourgeois activity).
Here in South Africa it's the same - probably because it's only the rich (and the top rung of their pet managerial classes) that gets to legally own them. That, and the libs wouldn't dream of hurting the privatised security goon industry (ours is the third-largest in the world, believe it or not).
When the liberal political party in our country is dominated and run by conservatives, can you really blame us?
What gets called "conservatism" in the US is really just far-right, fundamentalist liberalism these days - no conservative from Lincoln's days would be caught dead being pro-corporate power.
What? Conservatives in Lincoln's day were pro-slavery. Republicans were the progressive party when Lincoln was around.
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I see FAR more lefty->liberal hate than liberal->lefty hate.
I also think most people's definition of liberal is wrong and they're thinking of the centrist idiots
"Can't tell leftists and liberals apart" should be in the same segment as "likes capitalism".
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This but with everyone hates liberals
You can tell this is true with how fast they're willing to eat their young when cornered.
If people would just take the time to understand the meaning of liberalism before claiming it's what they are
sounds reasonable...,..
Are gonna really a leftist thing? That doesn't sound right to me.
I've enjoyed the few times I've been at a range, but I don't ever plan to own any.
And I also enjoy a few FPS games, but I wouldn't say I enjoy guns. Not enough to fit in the common part with conservatives. They fucking jizz their pants if they hear the word "Glock" or "Remington".
I don't have a clue what company made the guns I've shot.
The joke goes if you go far enough left you get your guns back. You need guns to have a proper revolution and all.
Yep. I'm one of them. Fascists don't want you to have guns, so I maintain and train with several.
If growing my own food is a 'fuck you' to capitalists, then being able to defend myself is a 'fuck you' to militant brownshirts.
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Only true if you want to form a monoculture, which is a seriously bad goal in a country as diverse and broad as the US.
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