I’ve been a communist for quite a while now, but it really seems that my “activism” has solely been focused on arguing with people online. I’ve attended one public meeting organized by a local pro-Palestinian organisation, that’s it.
A big portion of the reason for that is most likely me being lazy, but I feel that’s not the whole story here. You see here in Estonia, a nation the size of a small city anywhere else in the world, there are zero outlets for real left wing activism (besides the pro-Palestinian organisation I mentioned before).
I’ve made this kind of post before, i failed to find a satisfying answer. Nearly all of them required a pre-existing foundation onto which something could be built — that does not exist here. Decades of neoliberal indoctrination, nationalist posturing and the hollowing out of whatever was left of the old communist parties have led here.
The attitude has drastically shifted to the right, people openly talk about the Russian minority being a problem needing to be dealt with. Everything is couched in euphemisms, of course. But the message is understood. After all, imagine the alternative! “Little green men”, as they like to call them, creating a fifth column inside the nation. How horrible!
I’ll reiterate the title — what do I do? As much as I’d love to just create the vanguard party, that is not realistic. If that were feasible, then the world revolution would have already been completed. A party needs mass backing, it cannot simply be 1 or 2 people deciding to soap box. A party also cannot just be created, it needs to form. It is an organic growth, something that responds to it’s environment and adapts to it. You cannot plant a flower seed in infertile soil, in the wrong season, and then expect it to miraculously blossom that night. If it is necessary to branch out from the level of a book club, then that will be done. If the situation proves a vanguard necessary, and the prerequisite organisation is there, only then is the formation of a vanguard even to be considered.
On that note, where do I begin then? I do not even know where to find like-minded individuals, such spaces simply do not exist.
The pro Palestine group might be a good place to start. You could start a reading group, staring with books on Palestine, then colonialism and imperialism, then some socialist theory.
It also helps that (I think) two of the resistance groups are communist/socialist. So it would be worthwhile for OP to study those groups and their contribution to the struggle now and in the past. Everyone knows Hamas (seeing how basically all media paints them as the whole of Palestinian revolution) and should be made more aware of really all of them. Might at least be good starting point and better show how shared efforts are needed to fight imperialism.