Submitted 1 week ago by SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone to [deleted]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/bd4f0b4f-3c28-48b9-a0a7-dd26714b49a1.webp
A sticker slapped in a NYC subway reads:
“One person with a pistol just shook the ruling class more than decades of peaceful organizing”
Is true.
That is why so soooo many headlines everywhere are preaching how this should have been done through voting & protests or whatever.
Iirc majority of Murikans want public healthcare for at least two decades now, yet nothing has changed (expect living generations).
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
But taxes!!!
Said anyone who doesn’t know that minus $600/month that only covers the basics plus $300? in taxes that covers a lot more is a net savings.
Lol, “voting”.
Peaceful protest, electoralism, those are spooks. If you want to stop something, try physical destruction.
What’s that old JFK quote? Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable?
The state draws its legitimacy from the social contract. When people no longer feel like the social contract is beneficial to them or to society - ie as one might feel with a healthcare system that is 100+ years out of date and has received one (1) bandaid for normal folk in the past 40 years - the state can no longer expect individuals to uphold their end of the social contract (adherence to laws, norms, and peaceable conduct).
This doesn’t mean “the overthrow of the government is coming tomorrow”, but rather means that the social contract is beginning to fray, and a failure of those in power to recognize and accede to that fact (by making major concessions) will result in this sort of incident continually intensifying until… well, until the social contract is gone to a large swathe of people, and then at that point, the overthrow of the government will be imminent, for better or worse.
All interactions between state and citizen are implicitly negotiated. Negotiations require leverage. Violence has always been a form of leverage. But assassinations are far more powerful leverage than riots.
This last election made me into an anarchist for now. I do not believe there is any way to salvage this system we have in any meaningful way. I’m not a violent person so I can’t see myself doing anything like Luigi, but Democrats aren’t going to save anyone and are just one part of the problem.
I think Donald could be the death blow to our country as more and more of our social contract is upended, especially with talks of killing the ACA and other popular programs.
“we can shoot them?”
“yeah apparently you can just shoot them”
This is why peaceful protest is legal, it accomplishes nothing.
Gandhi disagrees
(Unless he’s playing Civ)
One of the funniest programing bugs ever. Gandhi’s code was meant to be the least aggressive AI in the game, but if something made Ghandi become even less aggressive it could overflow backwards and set his aggressiveness to max. This creating a Gandhi that wanted to always be at war.
FYI, the supposed “Nuclear Gandhi” bug is not a real thing:
Then why do peaceful protestors get arrested and brutalised by cops all the time?
Target practice. Did you see the video where they shot the teenager standing still on a hill doing nothing? The shot him in the head with a rubber bullet, causing concussion and permanent damage.
The kid was literally just standing there doing nothing
Easy targets.
There isnt a secret group of evil lizard people planning out society. The evil in our society comes from the ways our oppressive systems shape people.
Our culture and systems believe(or at least act like) it is perfectly fine for a police officer/rich person to do murder/social murder.
So many people base their morals on what is legal/what the state penalizes, meaning if a police officer’s or ceo’s actions result in the death of innocent people, it is perfectly okay because they’re dont get in trouble. This normalization of violence done by the state and the rich means that more people are going to feel okay doing shitty things.
Funsies.
Only liberal protesters get harassed. If you have a gun, they hand you a bottle of water.
Thats not true. As much as I see the need for violent protest sometimes, peaceful protest can change things. See the fall of the berlin wall.
Yes, but also no. The GDR and the Soviet Union who supported it and supplied it were both almost bankrupt and economically broken. Infrastructure was falling apart because the state couldn’t afford to fix it.
The potests sure helped, but the government of the GDR was also in a state where it would accept the demands as a way out. The protests probably did accelerate the downfall a bit, but it would have happened either way.
Similar protests years before were leading nowhere.
So you’re saying that Gandhi accomplished nothing but leading the most significant and largest non-violent struggle in all of history? To each their own I suppose.
He just didn’t sit with placards, he refused to co-operate with the British establishment, and when millions followed him, they couldn’t just arrest them all. He got India independence through a non-violent struggle, the basis of which lied in subjugating the British trade and administration.
They could arrest Gandhi and Congress leaders all they wanted to, but the movement they inspired couldn’t be stopped.
This might just be the American train of thought, but you’re wrong here. When millions follow you, and refuse to cooperate, the ruling class will suffer, because they’re dependent on you for power. Checkmate.
I think it’s not really fair to compare 1940s India with current American politics.
It feels somewhat like saying “the Mongolian army took over half of Eurasia with mounted archers, Ukraine should just use those against Russia!”
It’s just not comparable, different cultures, different opponents, and wildly different technology. And this isn’t just the US, it is a worldwide class war. Organized resistance on that scale, especially when the ruling elite can monitor nearly 100% of all communication, just isn’t something that’s going to happen, even with a charismatic figurehead.
Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right.
~ M. Gandhi
Something often missed about Gandhi’s efforts was that it was still more about what he did do than what he didn’t (violence). He still used resistance and force, including illegal actions that he believed were just, and massively hurt Great Britain’s bottom line and sense of control.
The trick is to locate efforts that aim to accomplish that in modern US politics.
A protest has to have teeth. If the teeth are economic, then that’s ok. If the protest is violence, then that can be ok. Martin Luther King was helped by the threat of violence of Malcom X.
Protests do nothing if they can be ignored. If they can be ignored, they WILL be ignored.
So you’re saying that Gandhi accomplished nothing
Gandhi achieved a socio-economic mass mobilization. Boycotts, work stoppages, supply chain failures caused by mass mobilization. It wasn’t just people parading through the streets. They inflicted real economic damage on the British Imperial State.
when millions followed him, they couldn’t just arrest them all
Thousands were killed by British-aligned police. Millions more were impoverished in retaliatory trade sanctions, embargoes, and other economic retaliations. The Indian state was set back decades by the English response to independence - not unlike how Cuba and Haiti have been deliberately impoverished in retaliation for bucking the American and French former overlords.
They could arrest Gandhi and Congress leaders all they wanted to, but the movement they inspired couldn’t be stopped.
The current Modi government is a stark reversal of policy from the Gandhian Indian socialist state. They’ve embraced a very western-oriented capitalist-friendly militant hierarchy that has fully rebutted the movement Gandhi lead. That is, in large part, through continuously aggravating tensions between caste cohorts and between Hindu and Muslim regional populations.
When millions follow you, and refuse to cooperate, the ruling class will suffer
Mobilizing and orienting millions of people requires a large, cohesive popular media campaign. Gandhi was able to tap into a huge underground of anti-British opposition. But even that wasn’t able to overcome the base anti-Muslim sentiment that the Brits had fostered for centuries. Gandhi himself was the victim of this unfettered hatred, when he was assassinated at age 78 by an anti-Muslim fanatic during an interfaith prayer meeting in 1948.
Assassination of leading civil rights activists and organizers by hyper-partisan radicals has consistently worked dismantle national movements. From the slaying of US civil rights leaders in the 1960s to the bombings and assassinations of Latin American, African, and Pacific Island socialist organizers in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, we’ve seen the ruling class triumph through a persistent campaign of organized violence and stochastic terrorism.
Not American. Ghandi’s mission was to give “untouchables” caste some human equality. Technically, women’s/lgbtq movements were peaceful. Unlike US/Israel first oligarchy, there is complete/absolute media loyalty for it, in a way that the British Empire is harder to defend as benevolent to Indians. The support for oligarchy’s wars and supremacy is unconditional. If we don’t give them everything we have then China, Russia and Iran will win, and you all nod along.
Nonviolent action has accomplished many things, it is just that nowdays the ruling class is mostly desensitized to protest. If you want to change society through nonviolent action, your action needs to convince others to support you. You need to convice the ruling class and all who help them to give in to your demands.
Modern day peaceful protests do nothing because they dont have any credibility. The rich rightfully believe that they can ignore you and nothing else will happen. Nonviolent protests are just one way to send a message
Not in the USA in recent years. Peaceful protestation is one way to push back, but if it still doesn’t work, it’s not the last resort.
You’re also only allowed to peacefully protest where it’ll have no impact. Stand with signs on the sidewalk and have people honk as they fly down your stroad.
Individual, spontaneous acts alone are not sufficient either. This is adventurism, which is fun to celebrate but does not actually change the equation. The answer is neither peaceful organizing nor individual aggression, but mass, millitant organizing! Throughout all of history, there have been no successful changes in the status quo without a mass, organized movement. Read theory and get organized. If you need a place to start, I suggest my introductory Marxist reading list.
The answer is neither peaceful organizing nor individual aggression, but mass, millitant organizing!
This is true, but also extremely difficult, especially in an era of mass media induced paranoia and alienation. Mass militant organizing requires a large cohesive social class that has a center of gravity - a church house or a social club or a workhouse floor - that increasingly no longer exists.
Social media was supposed to be the new venue for mass mobilization, and we saw the beginnings of it in the early '00s. But media consolidation, saturation from automated marketing accounts, and counter-programming have largely washed it out.
Read theory and get organized.
One is significantly easier than the other.
That said… go look for local unions in your town or neighborhood. Look for chapters of the DSA or the PSL or other labor-friendly organizing groups. Go to your local PTA meetings and city council meetings when you can, and get to know the people who show up there regularly. Get out of the house and meet people where they are.
That’s all good advice. But its also hard, exhausting work. And its done in the face of enormous headwinds. Don’t mistake the failure of leftism as a simple failure of “human nature” or whatever. We’re in an entrenched system and attempting a Herculean feat to change it.
Revolution, rather than being easy or impossible, is simply and truthfully hard. I agree, and that’s why it is important to start building that and contribute to those who have already started.
If enough people do it it won’t be individual anymore.
I disagree that that would accomplish anything. Assassinations do not “transfer power” as the SRs once claimed, but create a void that is filled by the next in line, always bourgeois or bourgeois adjacent. What is required is revolution, but through organization.
One observation several have made is that audiences are defying their conservative influencers over this issue.
Maybe it’s not individually important, but I think it could be a “start” that finally gets through to so many otherwise impenetrable minds and captive audiences.
I agree, I came to the same conclusion. However, that only further necessitates taking advantage and striking while the iron is hot by pressing a correct line, there’s no benefit to letting this end in celebration alone.
politics is not about morality. it’s about power & control.
🌍🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
I was just recently informed of a podcast called “blowback” the other day on Lemmy and their first season actually goes into Iraq and the lead up to it. It’s a very good podcast for anyone interested in the topic of American intervention in other countries. Very well produced for the subject matter.
Long story short there was nothing that was going to stop us from going after Iraq. “We” wanted that for a long time and it’s not just a simple “cuz oil” thing.
Listened to the first season a while back, I genuinely had one (1) note/dispute, for a series spanning nearly 11 hours on the Iraq invasion. They brought receipts, sources, archived media snippets, and a lot of context that mainstream media still glosses over with 9/11 remembrance justifications.
Very listenable, add it to your queue if you remotely enjoy geopolitics
They need to make it easier to find their podcast on their website, instead of dumping everyone into the Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts pipeline…
There’s a playlist of the episodes near the bottom of this page.
Reminds me of the graphic novel “The Bush Junta.”
Episode Zero with H. Jon Benjamin as Saddam Hussein is pretty gold.
They’re blaming the USA for making the USSR arm nuke sin Cuba and invade the Gulf of Mexico? Fucking tankies, smh.
And the gun was 3d printed. They will not stop at making 3d printing illegal.
honestly if you can 3d print something you can make something almost as strong out of wood, it just takes more effort
one could also easily make a disposable mold for a low-melting-point metal alloy, those are much stronger than 3d prints and many can be melted on a normal stove
I think the problem is more that information on how to make guns is now easily available, rather than the specific usefulness of 3d printing as a manufacturing technique
Shonzo Abe was assassinated.with a doohickey made out of a wood board and metal conduit pipes wrapped up in electrical tape
It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism that made people support whatever the president wanted to do in the middle east.
It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism
Its so easy for people to forget the decades of violent acts committed in and around the Saudi Peninsula, and fixate instead on a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests. The Battle of Mogadeshu, which involved Black Hawk helicopters obliterating Somali mosques with hellfire missiles. The brutal occupation of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, from 1992 to 2001 as a US-backed narco-state. The entire Iran-Iraq War, sponsored by US arms dealers and double-dealing diplomats, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Persian young people. The occupation of Saudi Arabia by a western-backed military dictatorship going back nearly a century. The violent overthrow of democracies from Indonesia to Egypt in pursuit of neoliberal international trade policy.
9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum any more than the Brian Thompson assassination or the aborted coup in South Korea. These have long historical tails that trace back to a geopolitical policy that’s racked up a staggering death toll.
To quote Mark Twain:
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Jesus fucking Christ. Utterly unhinged.
Let them cook.
Oh yeah because I forgot they totally proved Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were secretly the same person.
Iraq had zero to do with that terror attack but was used as a pretext for war based on the lie that the two were connected somehow.
Very large* act of violent terrorism.
American problems require American solutions
“largest worldwide non-violent protests in history”? I remember living through that time and don’t remember that. Do you have a source? I myself was opposed the second Iraq war because Saddam had agreed to let in any inspectors the west wanted but we went “too late, we’re coming in anyway” and I knew it was a scam invasion.
We were also just a couple of years into Afghanistan and it made no sense to be starting a second war on a second front when there was no immanent danger. Again, it made to sense.
Start here: en.wikipedia.org/…/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot…
Specific news articles about that day:
web.archive.org/web/20040904214302/…/record.asp?r…
From Guinness World Records:
On February 15, 2003, anti-war rallies took place across the globe – the largest occurring in Rome, Italy, where a crowd of 3 million gathered to protest against the USA’s threat to invade Iraq. Police figures report that millions more demonstrated in nearly 600 cities worldwide: on the same day, 1.3 million rallied in Barcelona, Spain, 1 million participated in a peace march through the streets of London, UK, and 500,00 people in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, joined the biggest marches since the Vietnam War peace protests.
web.archive.org/web/20100326221254/…/art.php?id=6…
The French political scientist Dominique Reynié has estimated that, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, some 36 million people took part in nearly 3,000 protests around the world against the Iraq war.
web.archive.org/web/20190921125652/…/2765215.stm
Between six and 10 million people are thought to have marched in up to 60 countries over the weekend - the largest demonstrations of their kind since the Vietnam War.
I was a bit skeptical as well, but there’s at least one seemingly reputable academic researcher who says as much: en.wikipedia.org/…/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot… (first citation).
So even if it wasn’t, one could easily be forgiven for the mistake.
Goes to show how effective non-violent protest is.
I remember huge student protests for weeks on end. Then, over spring break when all the students were off elsewhere - the bombs began to drop.
Just want to plug the movie and book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Also the book Rattling the Cages.
Cool sticker on your cybertruck!
Cybertrain*
As someone that was at the protest, at no point did I think it would result in the war stopping. It was still worthwhile, however. In retrospect, the war was so much worse than any of us knew at the time and also based on flimsy and/or no evidence of WMD. Business as usual in America. We’d do it all over again today, I have no doubt.
They knew there weren’t WMDs and used the fear of 9/11 attacks to push the war. They had OpEd pieces published to further push the idea of WMDs.
I would say it laid the ground work for OccupyWallstreet, which laid the ground work for modern progressive movement.
What change was accomplished by OccupyWallstreet?
They were angry about economic inequality – it’s worse today than in 2011.
They wanted an end to corporate personhood – still totally cookin’ in 2024 with no end in sight
More regulation of the financial sector – we are more deregulated than ever today
I had to admire their aims, but as a movement it was profoundly ineffective…
The protests were amazing, nothing like it before or since. The media suppressed coverage of them as best they could. They couldn’t totally ignore them but gave almost 0 coverage. Masses and masses of people packing the streets. Wish we’d had drones back then to get some good aerial footage.
I called for a massive peaceful protest that, occasionally, takes a shot.
Indeed and wait until Mango Fucking Mussolini decides to invade Iran. That will be one hell of a protest.
Protests mean nothing if it doesn’t change how people vote.
This is why the ruling class pushes gun control so hard. Don’t let them do it.
We want public healthcare. This act of violins highlights the anger we feel. It doesn’t bring us closer to a solution. But imagine the roles swapped. We continuously live in fear of getting sick and then going bankrupt and homeless because of it. But what about from the other side…imagine a wolf in a house eating his sheep dinner. Imagine that asshole dancing around and humping several wolfority mates every night having the time of it’s miserable life…and suddenly that wolf peaks at the window and has a sudden realization… Sudden because he suddenly opened the window. It realizes that there’s nothing but sheep outside, all looking at him thru the window. Goes up to the roof top and observes himself surrounded by million upon millions of sheep all looking directly at him. The wolf sees one fellow wolf nearby as the sheep trample him. The wolf listens to his friend’s bones crackling into mush. So just close the blinds and have another sheep from the fridge? Or maybe address the impending problem?
I don’t want to shake the ruling class, I want to take away their power to exploit people. I want insurance companies reigned in. Getting Obamacare passed did more than what a thousand vigilantes could, and that was after the Republicans and lobbyists gutted it.
If people really want to stick it to the man (conservatives and liberals alike), then they can vote in representatives and Senators who will actually legislate for the people, rather than ones who will enrich themselves off their backs.
You can revolt, you can eat the rich, it feels great. But what matters is how the system gets changed or doesn’t change. Plenty of revolutions have replaced the system was something worse, with these heros who took down the ruling class in their place. Keep a close eye on Syria, here’s hoping for the best.
Partially because “peaceful” and the definition of what would or would not be accepted as valid protest became co-opted by the management/ ivy league class.
Compare the Seattle WTO protests to the 2003-2005 Iraq protests.
Peaceful protest is a spook
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 week ago
And thats why they tell you its not the answer. Now to be clear, it isn’t always the answer, but we’ve been calling on deaf ears for as long as I can remember, and as I’ve heard from the Older Guard, its been twice as long as that at least.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Well, and as I’m trying to make clear, being non-violent doesn’t make you not a target. The US government was busy trying to target the most non-violent group that exists in the US. Violence is so antithetical to their religion they cannot be drafted into the US military, due to freedom of religion. The real name of their religion isn’t Quakers it’s “The Religious Society of Friends.”
The more non-violent you are, the more likely these freaks are willing to view you as easy to take down and remove from the conversation.
It’s just like… the first Gay Pride was literally a riot.
lukes26@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Like I said in another thread too, every state (as in nation, not US states), uses violence as an answer all the time. Police violence against criminals or protesters, military violence against other states, death penalties against those deemed too dangerous to live, prisons in general. So what is it about state sanctioned violence that is considered moral by most people who would also decry individual violence as immoral? Even Brian Thompson oversaw an increase in claim denials from ~10% to ~30%. How many people did that kill, or torture, or cause suffering too? Obviously a lot of people have already talked about social murder, but again, why is social murder more justified? Just because it’s legal and allowed by the state?
Laws aren’t some inherent measure of morality, and states don’t have some inherent sense of justice that is superior to that of their people. Just look at slavery, it was fully legal and rescuing slaves was a crime. That didn’t make it moral, or the abolitionists who ran the underground railroad immoral. Or look at prohibition, or the current version we have with the war on drugs. What makes someone indulging in a vice like weed, or mushrooms, or honestly even something more addictive like cocaine be guilty of a crime, when someone indulging in alcohol, or cigarettes, or caffeine, or sugar isn’t? And what makes someone doing that on their own, assuming they don’t harm others because of it, worse in the eyes of the law than someone who gambles?
In order to see the imbalance of power and violence, you only need to look at the recourse each party has for violence by the other. Look at what happened when an individual committed violence against UHC by killing the CEO. There was a national manhunt, tens of thousands of dollars offered in rewards for finding them, and once a suspect was arrested they were humiliated by the police, put in jail to be held until trial, and are likely facing life in prison if they are convicted. None of that would happen to any of those responsible for a wrongful death due to an illegally denied claim. In that case, in order to get recourse, the family would need to sue the company, which takes a crazy amount of time, money, and effort. And if by the end of it they win, what punishment would UHC face? The CEO wouldn’t be given jail time for murder or manslaughter. The company wouldn’t be broken up or shut down. At most you’d get some money, and they’d maybe have to pay a fine to the government. During the lawsuit the CEO and board would be free to continue business as normal, killing or hurting who knows how many people while doing so.
So obviously the government, corporations, politicians, and billionaires will denounce this as a “tragedy”, a “horrible act of violence”. Those celebrating in it are “advocating violence” or simply the minority, existing in “dark corners of the internet”. Because admitting that violence is an acceptable strategy means they’d accept it turned upon them, instead of being the sole group allowed to use it as they see fit.
This very much isn’t me advocating for violence either, as I think in general neither one should be accepted, no matter if it’s done by an individual or a state. But the legality of that violence is also not what should determine its morality, and there are exceptions to every rule. Personally I consider myself a pacifist. I’m vegan, I would go to jail before being drafted because I would never want to serve in a war, and obviously like most people I would always prefer a non violent answer to a conflict if possible. But things don’t always work out that way, and it’s nonsensical that anyone would consider Brian Thompson, or any other CEO of a major company, better or more morally acceptable than the one who killed him. State approved violence, legal violence, is not and should not be seen as any more acceptable or moral.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
The Daniel Penny verdict couldn’t have come at a better time to show all this to be true.
Kill a CEO? You’re a horrific monster!
Kill a homeless person broken by the system we live in? You’re just protecting yourself!
marron12@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah. And how is it that corporations, or big businesses in general, have elevated themselves to an almost holy status? Why is it murder when Blackrock kills 17 civilians in Iraq (Nisour Square), but not when an insurance company denies an operation that a doctor who’s at the top of their field says could save your life? And the hospital helpfully tells you it will cost over a million dollars. For all the non-Americans, that’s not an exaggeration.
And even with Blackwater, it was only the individual employees who got convicted. The company just kept going under a different name. And the employees got pardoned later.