I lean leftwards because I want more people to get the help, dignity and peace they need and deserve. Now I feel a wave of being told to "harden my heart" and I feel scared and isolated. I don't have it in me to become a martyr and estrange myself from most people any further, I get nervous with the leftism I see so often expressed as wanting the bad people suffer, and that anything short of revolution is not just not good enough, but worse than doing nothing. And then I have constant guilt that I'm judging people more discriminated than me for how they express things; that my fears aren't valid and expressions of privilege.
By now I'm feeling emotional burnout, I get annoyed by any respone that isn't in-depth analysis because it just feels like watching the same responses happening over and over and never going anywhere.
The easy part is realizing that some people need to be liquidated for the sake of the revolution. The hard part is realizing "some people" includes other comrades. That's the real "harden your heart" moment.
If you read accounts of past revolutionary action, once it reaches past a certain point of intensity, the assumption is that any captured revolutionary has cracked under torture and squealed, making them a traitor to the movement and since the sentence for treachery is death, all captured revolutionary subsequently released will face liquidation regardless of whether they actually cracked under torture or not.
i don't see any value in posting this comment, here, as a response to what OP talks about struggling with in the top post. jumping beyond the issue of necking the fascist to go 'you think that's bad wait till you gotta ice your comrades after the fact for the cause of the future', you are basically leaning on him to commit to a regressive and brutal interpretation of the party line in the specific moment that the demand will cause him to break a different commitment to his own sense of self that you have no business interfering with, here, in casual forum discourse.
pick better weapons and aim them at better targets
The whole fallout with PSL makes me think people aren't taking it seriously enough. In the Civil Rights movement, you couldn't even participate in those peaceful marches without first writing your will. The idea was that forcing you to write your will was a reality check on top of your very probable death be handled as smoothly as possible. That's how serious they took it. This wasn't the BPP or Malcolm X. This was MLK Jr style marches that online revolutionary larpers think they're too good for.
In general, I think it's better to understand your limitations and do what you're personally capable of than to do something incompetently and be a burden towards other when you inevitably fail. And there's a massive chasm between not doing anything and committing revolutionary suicide by joining an underground org. It doesn't make you a failure if participating in a bake sale that funnels money to socialist orgs is the extend of your praxis. You are still doing praxis even if your praxis is just, "I'll take care of my friend's pets while my friend is in jail for protesting against ICE." From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.
I do not know the circumstances of OP's life to make recommendations on what to do. I believe someone should be given information concerning the risks and costs of every potential decision. There's a tremendous cost to becoming a revolutionary, but there's also costs with doing nothing vs joining a mass org vs joining a union and so on. Trying to sugarcoat what a revolutionary entails does a great disservice to OP and OP's potential comrades who expect him to perform his assigned tasks.
if you do not know OP to make recommendations, then the only material you can go on to make an informed guess as to their relative intent to 'become a revolutionary' is the post we are all responding to, right?
where in OPs post does he say he is struggling with his feelings about necessary violence as a means to the end of becoming or not becoming a revolutionary? at what point in OPs post does he signal to you that the proper reference frame for his concerns is a confrontation with the execution of war prisoners for the prefigured crime of treason? he's sad that we have to fight them, for fucks sake. i do not have any patience for this degree of tactlessness. we are not in the cadre educating the cadets, comrade. my former line stands, i want a damn bullhorn
PICK BETTER WEAPONS, AIM THEM AT BETTER TARGETS
I'm not sure why his intent is relevant tbh. Nowhere in my comments have I criticized nor condemned nor insulted OP. I barely made it personal at all. "Are you mentally prepared about what it takes to be a revolutionary" is hardly some ego-destroying question.
This could apply to you at well lmao
I mean, it's not a comfortable thought, but realistic. I could be that comrade. You could be. May as well get used to the idea.
Except thats literally not what happened in Russian or chinese revs
before the fighting started (pre october rev and pre long march) captured comrades were helped to escape and go undergroun and/or into exile. During the civil wars, captured comrades were usually brutally murderes by reactionaries and people were happy if they survived somehow, helped them recover, and sent them.back to work.
I dont know as much about the internal processes and procedures the cpc followed, but the bolsheviks did full investigations for suspected traitors not just kill on suspicion.
Cuba's an even bigger demonstration of how misguided your view is. Even enemy troops were treated well and often recruited! Fidel stressed this "niceness" as the unique element thats made cuba so strong and popular