The Power of Offline

I’d like to start with a public correction. In a recent debate, I pushed back on @aaronfrancis's argument for "logging off" and I was wrong. I’d missed the point. My reaction came from a place many of us know: being "terminally online." In my gut, I knew that simply being angry online wasn't enough, but I was defending the act of paying attention as a moral imperative.

I was treating online attention as a moral duty, but he was arguing for strategic focus. It's a vital distinction. Many of us feel trapped in a cycle of righteous outrage and total paralysis—the feed shows us every injustice but robs us of the agency to build power.

It made me realize that "terminally online" is simply the 21st-century's version of an old archetype: the "armchair socialist." It’s the same critique in a new technological form. This realization sent me back to the thinker who, arguably, leveled the most powerful critique against that kind of passive intellectualism: Rosa Luxemburg. "Red Rosa," as she was called, was a towering figure of the European socialist movement. A theorist, economist, and activist, she argued fiercely that socialism could not be a set of ideas debated in drawing rooms; it had to be a living movement, born from the direct action and mass participation of the working class. She saw passivity as a mortal threat to the movement. Looking at her work today provides a stunningly clear lens through which to view our own digital cages and, more importantly, a map for how to break out of them.

What would she call our endless scrolling and debating? Pseudo-activity. It’s the sensation of political work without the substance. It gives us the emotional release of resistance while leaving the material conditions of our lives completely unchanged. It's a trap.

Luxemburg would see social media as a powerful tool for agitation, yes. But a tool must build something. If your online work doesn't lead to offline organizing—a meeting, a union drive, a protest—it has become a cage that pacifies you.

Her directive for us today would be simple and severe: Turn digital agitation into physical ORGANIZATION. Every post exposing an injustice must be a bridge to a real-world action. The goal is not to win the timeline; it's to win an election and pull of a successful strike.

This means we must sometimes log off to listen. You learn more about class power talking to one coworker about their pay than from 100 hours in a Discord debate. Look at unions like Efling that builds power through strikes, yes, but also through community. They organize family events. They are a physical presence in workers' lives. It’s about building a tangible force, not just curating an online identity.

So, I'm grateful for that exchange with Aaron. It was a needed reminder. We must trade the fleeting validation of the screen for the difficult, essential work of building power together, in person. The revolution requires us to close the tab and join the struggle.