ITT:
Everyone thinking that the only two options are being quiet or being violent.
Strikes are currently making those in power very uncomfortable, and are resulting in genuine progress for workers.
In my area, people camping out in thousand year old trees has protected them time and again from being illegally logged.
Black Lives Matter protests were loud and made the powerful uncomfortable, and despite media narratives it wasn’t “violent protesters” that made the powerful uncomfortable.
It is true that any form of protest that is loud and inconveniencing enough to actually be productive will be met with state violence.
It’s also true that some working for progress do use violence. But make no mistake, it’s not guns that made those in power uncomfortable when it came to Malcom X and the Black Panthers.
The most radical and intimidating (to those in power) things the Black Panthers did were to give free food to schoolchildren, and free healthcare at their People’s Free Medical Clinics.
Building community and mutual aid is subversive.
Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.
Building community and mutual aid is subversive.
This. Both the government and the major corporations depend on being able to extract wealth from real people getting what they need. If we build dual power structures, help one another out and cut the owner class out of the transaction entirely, we weaken them. Growing food in your garden is revolutionary. Clothing swaps are revolutionary. Cutting the old lady next door’s lawn, then eating the soup she made is an act that strikes at the fundamental underpinnings of the power structure set up by those who think that they should be entitled to our labor because they’ve been arbitrarily designated as the “owners” of things. We can and should remove them from the equation entirely.
If you wrote a book I’d read it.
Why wasn’t I taught about the free food and medical care part of what they did?
You were quietly taught that armed black people were scary. That’s what they wanted you to remember, not what they armed themselves for.
Ugh… this just makes me feel all sorts of awful. I struggle to find the exact words.
Shit, at least you were taught about them. Never even heard about the Black Panthers until later in my adult life on a random reddit comment.
Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.
Small mutual aid for local communities grow out into large social aid organizations that have political power. Politicians can make them redundant by unemployment, healthcare and pensions, or try to nip them in the bud.
Politicians can try.
That can’t stop us from trying though.
Socialism bad! Sending people to die in wars good!
Squeaky wheel gets the grease
Exactly. The louder and more obnoxious you are, particularly towards those in power, the more likely they are to actually listen, even if just to get you to fuck off
That sounds dirtier than it should be.
The entirety of history also shows that a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.
So, still feeling up for it?
That is the question:
live in an unjust and amoral society
or die trying to make a righteous one.
The stoics, at least Seneca, opted for the former.
He really wasn’t given much of a choice. He just chose his stance on the one option he had.
Seneca was one of the wealthiest Romans of his time.
He more than 99% of the Empire had a choice. He happened to be rich and choose status quo. Who ever would have guessed that ?
I think I confused Seneca with Socrates (head-slap…)
or die trying to make a righteous one.
. . . and realize that your new, righteous society will quickly collapse into corruption and amorality because a society is filled with people.
The best way is to just nuke each other to oblivion then.
I’m beginning to think so.
Far more people than you seem to think so are feeling up to it, risk of bodily harm nonwithstanding. That same history shows that whole lots of people do and have gotten that fed up.
The current challenge imo is the hyperfocused and extremely well funded tools to disorganize and fracture populaces globally.
They are so abstract, so psychologically targeted and so pervasive that they enable the rise of fascism again even though many of the players are frankly cartoonishly inept (more so than in the past; fascism is cunning and bullish, but seldom clever) to the point that the banality of evil of yesterday is nearly preferable to the bumbling cruelty of today.
Yes, still feeling up to it, but while the precipice nears, there’s still both time to turn the car around and get ready to violently brake. We’re just careful drivers until there’s a need to maneuver.
Joke’s on you, I already wish I was dead
They’re gonna kill me if I don’t
When doing nothing becomes so intolerable and the potential gain is high enough to make the risk of death is worth taking then the answer becomes “yes”. That’s why people don’t take extreme actions easily.
Putting it another way, if enough people are willing to take big risks, then the status quo must be pretty damned awful in their view.
a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.
For the change to not happen, a whole lot of people need to be ready to keep dying from the status quo. It’s incredible that some people still think a war isn’t being waged when we don’t resist the oppression and exploitation. Here you are implying those who are ready to fight for themselves—and for you!—are your enemies, when your real enemies know the lesson you refuse to learn:
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.
—Warren Buffett
So, still feeling like leaving us all to continue being slowly murdered as you sit and do nothing?
The question is, do you think more will die from the status quo or from a revolution?
Nope. That’s really not the question, in fact. What a shitty, boring, “utilitarian” view of the struggle for liberation. Why are you even in this community, liberal?
Yes, it’s exactly the question that needs to be asked in relation to my original argument. If people feel that more will die from a revolution than from the status quo then good luck convincing people to increase their chance to die.
Heck, the fact that we’re here and able to discuss this in the first place shows how spoiled we are even if things aren’t as good as they could be. People that are really poor don’t have a computer or a cellphone to communicate on a niche website.
People in first world countries are walking with a pebble in their shoe and some are complaining that we need to stop and remove it, the majority doesn’t care when they see people from third world countries walking with a broken foot.
Yes, I get it. Already got it, in fact. But thanks anyway for reporting on yourself.
Reasonableness is for the status quo.
People didn’t get their rights asking for them nicely.
Look at the US, they begged England for representation. Even after they gave an ultimatum they begged to stay but it didn’t work and they had a war that France won
It’s amazing how a perspective can change when one’s head is rolling around on the cobblestone.
Very effective gaslighting by those in power.
It depends on the kind of change you are attempting to make. Revolutionary changes aren’t going to be accomplished without someone getting hurt, but if you are trying to change the name of your town from Lincolnville to Frankville that likely won’t require injury.
This reminds me of the Douglas Adams thing from ‘last chance to see’
context required…
Its time to sharpen the guillotines
Dull is fine.
It also comes with a big body count on both sides.
It doesn’t have to have a high body count on one side, there aren’t many at the top holding the rest of the world back because they only care about stock prices and shareholder value.
There’s a reason people on the left who actually bother actually learning a bit of history become Marxists.
There is only so much that revolutions could do though. Attacking police and authorities because they attacked you for having peaceful protest? That’s reasonable, it is self-defence. But looting businesses and attacking properties? No. People love the French revolution and abolishing a corrupt regime, but not its subsequent Terror by the revolutionaries.
Not sure what point you’re trying to make here to be honest. Nobody is talking about justifying random violence here.
Edit: after further, conversation. The person I replied turned out to be a communist of whatever type to be turning a blind eye to communist atrocities.
Edit2: The high level of sophistry, deliberate lying, the constant shifting of goal post and gaslighting indicates egomaniacal and psychopathic tendencies. Specimen nonetheless exhibit high level of intelligence, yet vapid statements, which reinforces hypothesis. The interlocutor also deliberately and selectively avoid questions being addressed and performs whataboutism to hide issues brought up. The person constantly creates non-sequitur points such as “So, if the person is trying to make the argument that communism is the reason atrocities happen, then the burden is on them to explain why they also happen under capitalism.” Premise A is the position communism causing atrocities, which does not follow Premise B which is demanding to explain why atrocities happen under capitalism, in order to explain why Premise A happens. The circular logic is standard practice among trolls and bad faith arguers. Moreover, did the person just admit that he/she is okay with the killing under communism because capitalism does it too?
Nobody is talking about justifying random violence here.
At least you’re not one of those leftists.The Marxist-Leninists always advocate for violent revolution simply because of slight inefficiencies. They blame everything as fault of capitalism. I remember at the height of the pandemic, there is the famous news of long line of cars queuing in the motorway in Texas for shopping. A guy (turned out to be a forum moderator) blamed it on capitalism. I pointed out it is straight up lie when it’s clear that it is the fault of the pandemic messing up the supply chain. No one could have foreseen the pandemic and its effects. The guy proceeded to ban me for pointing out the obvious lie.Leftist know that if violence is to be used, it must be targeted at specific people not random. As for the pandemic messing up the supply chains, the only reason international supply chains exist is because someone can make more money shipping pineapples to china to exploit the workers there and then ship them back to the US to sell for a 250% markup. If providing pineapples to people were the end goal a lot of supply chains would be much shorter and more robust.
Good point. But at the same time, reality dictates that only certain countries could export such and such because of climate and geography. You mentioned pineapples, they could only be produced in tropical countries because that’s where they could only grow. Of course, that will have to undergo an expansive supply chain. Oil is also only in certain parts of the world. These things will have to travel across the world.
You’re not wrong about worker exploitation. But unfortunately, many governments of third world countries actually negotiated for Western businesses to set up shop with them to provide jobs for their own population. They offer cheap services in exchange for high capital and return on investment. However, as these countries become richer, they are also increasing their demand for higher wages and better treatment. Foreign companies then would relocate to another country to continue the cycle, until they run out of countries for cheap labour. That’s why companies would love AI and robots to develop more, so they don’t have to pay for expensive humans.
No actual Marxist-Leninists say anything of the sort.
You’d be surprised.
No, I don’t think I would. And if you learn a bit about Marxism-Leninism you’d see that either people you talked to didn’t understand what they were talking bout, or you yourself didn’t understand what they were telling you. ML theory is pretty clear on why revolutions happen, and how to conduct revolutions properly.
Well, it’s not like people don’t have different interpretations of things. There is a reason why there are so many violent far left. The Red Army faction, Indian and Filipino communists and Bolsheviks comes to mind, all of whom profess to be Marxist-Leninists.
@[email protected] is a troll and a liar completely misrepresenting what he is being told, which is that the same kinds of atrocities that happen under communism also happen under capitalism, and often on a far bigger scale. So, if the person is trying to make the argument that communism is the reason atrocities happen, then the burden is on them to explain why they also happen under capitalism.
It’s almost as if bad things happen in every human society, and what we actually have to look at is what system does a better job mitigating these problems. Of course, this is an adult concept that a troll here isn’t able to comprehend.
So the solution is to rear a generation of children who believe violence, riots, revolutions, and coup-d’etat is the solution for social change? Because the big problem you are glossing over is that these changes throughout history essentially all involved violence to some degree.
Small progress over time happens through peaceful protest, canvassing, voting, and generally making your voice heard.
But you can’t vote your way out of authoritarianism. You can’t vote away a broken system that incentivizes those in power to keep it broken. That change has to come with grand action and all at once.
What “grand action” do you suppose is appropriate in this scenario? I seem to recall some people taking a grand action on January 6, 2021 also. What separates them from you, besides their radically different ideology?
That’s not the right way.
You know what? They were misguided and wrong, but at least the Jan 6th wankers did something. Now there are politicians who are afraid to do their jobs because the same sort of people threaten them.
What has “being better” done for anyone?
Then what’s the way forward? Jan 6 V2 but this time it’s left wing people instead? Ok, then what? You can storm in and overthrow all the evil geriatrics and install the utopian government of your dreams, but then what do you do about the 50% of constituents who oppose that move?
The bedrock of democracy is compromise. If you seize power and install a government that works to further your interests and not strike balance between your interests and their interests, you’re an authoritarian in disguise.
Compromise needs two parties, and it depends on perspective. If we put people who organize coups, murderous cops and their enablers, or corporate ghouls imploding our planet while making common people miserable into prison for decades to life, it could be a compromise between not doing that and mobs indiscriminately killing everyone with any kind of authority.
There are two big problems with violent political measures, one is that if they start, they are very hard to stop, one coup may be followed by three more in the same year, and that the democratic system being made ever weaker by corruption out in the open makes it inevitable.
Im not willing to compromise with people who want to kill my friends. I don’t know why that’s so hard for so many people, including yourself.
You’re right, we need to kill half of trans people, otherwise we are exercising authority on right wingers /s
I for one think it is reasonable to exercise authority when someone is trying to oppress others
Here in the UK they are slowly but surely banning protesting, peaceful and non peaceful. Take away peaceful protesting there only is one way. Like it or not, they don’t want to hear you or your voice, they just want you to rot and die.
What separates them from you, besides their radically different ideology?
I hear this in an obnoxious German accent with a nazi being shot by a red army soldier in the background
They’re not glossing over it, nor is it a “big problem”; that’s the whole entire point of the tweet. You can’t defeat tyranny 100% non-violently, period.
Oh, ok, so then it is in fact an incitement to violence. Isn’t that swell, we aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.
Liberals think the status quo of capitalist and state oppression isn’t violent. News at 11. yawn
Yes that’s correct
Sounds like Mao to me lmao.
