Comment on Anti-government violence is growing. The response needs to be more than just increased policing
shirro@aussie.zone 4 days agoIn Australia we generally view government as our servants not masters. We don’t elect a tyrant to rule us. We elect a local member who we can meet and talk to and ask for help with problems.
I disagree with my local member’s politics but I don’t regard him as a bad person or someone out to get me.
I really don’t understand this. Any group of people living together inevitably creates rules and governance to serve their common interests. How are the roads going to be maintained and garbage collected without people contributing money into a pool and electing someone to administer it.
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
There is a cultural belief that we elect people and it’s good and fine and works, but that’s observably false. It’s a fantasy idea of what government is supposed to be, but that’s not what it is in practice.
The reaction to people wanting their “representatives” to actually represent them has been an increase in oppressive violence, things like ramping up state violence and introducing anti-protest laws.
The people in my community have been hospitalised, deported, raped and even killed because they wanted things to be better. We’ve gone through all the officially sanctioned channels, we’ve used protest to make ourselves heard, but we’re only being beaten.
As you said, any group of people are going to create rules, but they don’t need to create hierarchical government to effectively enforce those rules, or organise the day to day activities of society. We’ve organised without government plenty of times before.
We’re not just saying things purely out of anger, there’s a massive amount of theory behind it. If you really do want to understand, then if recommend you read some of the anarchist faq or any leftist theory tbh. At the very least, you’ll likely find the ideas interesting even if you don’t agree with everything. I tend to find most people who seriously engage with these ideas agree with a good deal of them. All we’re asking for is society to organise in a more just and equitable way, while disabling or limiting the avenues for corruption to take hold.
I once thought the same as you, we’re literally drowned in propaganda from birth so it’s extremely hard to break out from the dominant ideology, but there are better ways if you decide to evaluate the alternatives on their own merits and not pre-concieved notions of what they are.
shirro@aussie.zone 4 days ago
I have been down libertarian and anarchist paths and in the end I want to live in a society where we are least likely to suffer at the hands of despots. There is no realistic path away from democratic society that doesn’t return us ultimately into the hands of kings and warlords. Democracy is imperfect but it’s the best chance we have to live the lives we want.
Not opposed to Marxist critiques of capitalism but left and right, authoritarians and anarchists both form a horseshoe. The end game for either tends to be a single party state controlled through force by a corrupt elite.
Social democracy or democratic socialism can both be made to work. Libertarianism and syndicalism deny human nature and experience.
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
I’m really not sure how anarchy leads to any kind of state when it’s specifically stateless. I’d say it’s far more resistant to corruption and centres around a more robust and empowering form of democracy than any representational system, which is inherently corruptible.
Horshoe theory is silly
Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
Source: I made it the fuck up