Those non-violent protests shook them so bad they wanted to charge non-violent Quaker protestors with terrorism.
This is why peaceful protest is legal, it accomplishes nothing.
Then why do peaceful protestors get arrested and brutalised by cops all the time?
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.
Easy targets.
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 officer high fives another officer right after.
The kid was literally just standing there doing nothing. A fucking child was used as target practice by adult civil servants.
Okay, that makes sense.
Funsies.
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.
This is a myth, no such bug ever existed. There’s a whole Wikipedia page about it:
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.
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.
That’s an american matter and I couldn’t be bothered less.
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.
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.
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, and I think the most important thing this ceo killing has done for us is that it sent message.
Indeed and wait until Mango Fucking Mussolini decides to invade Iran. That will be one hell of a protest.
as much as i dislike war, and while on the topic, do you think iran should have its own nukes?
Why not? I assume they too would be subject to MAD.
This is why the ruling class pushes gun control so hard. Don’t let them do it.
“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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
Specific news articles about that day:
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100326221254/http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=6067
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.
(It’s worth noting here that I have been unable to find Dominique Reynié’s paper that estimates this. I have searched and searched for a PDF with no luck. Lots of references to this work, but can’t seem to find the actual document.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190921125652/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/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.
A key aspect of what made it so big was because it was happening worldwide, simultaneously, in multiple cities all over the world.
Goes to show how effective non-violent protest is.
I was a bit skeptical as well, but there’s at least one seemingly reputable academic researcher who says as much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests (first citation).
So even if it wasn’t, one could easily be forgiven for the mistake.
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 50 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.
I don’t think John F Kennedy said that.
Receipts! 🧾
Even if you want a peaceful protest, the state security apparatus will turn into a riot when they need to discredit the protester, ie Floyd Protests is recent example.
Then older people start pearl clutching over “black youth” “looting” a corporate location! The horror!
Liberals will bring some generic race arguments etc
Now we got a proper circle jerk and discussion about police brutality is third order of operation.
its afraid.jpeg because we have not seen such class unity in modern history.
Good.
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.
Just want to plug the movie and book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Also the book Rattling the Cages.
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.
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…
No, not today, but give it a couple of years.
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.
IIRC, Biden championed that, right?
No, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and a bunch of others in the administration championed it. Biden et al supported it. Subtle.
Congress basically believed what they were told by the warmongers.
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.
I want to take away their power to exploit people.
They don’t want that. They control Congress and the courts. It can’t be done through proper channels because we already lost our Republic. They won’t give it up without a fight.
There are people in Congress who want that and are exactly working towards that. It isn’t lost yet, and they are not giving it up without a fight.
There are not enough, by far. At this point (thanks to scotus) we’ll need a new constitution just to reclaim democracy.
That is all without considering what Trump is likely to cause in his second term. Scotus has ruled that a sitting president cannot, officially break the law. That is not a Republic. Scotus has ruled that money is speech, and so our positions on issues have less (/no) value. That is not democracy.
I’m not trying to be a doomer, just realistic.
Yes, we are in agreement on the outlook. As they’ve been saying in Ukraine, “The situation is grim”. My point was more about continuing to fight on all fronts, including the political/legislative fronts.
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.
If enough individuals do it, it will be collective.
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, so that there can be dominance over this sphere entirely, and the working class wrest its Capital permanently and gradually.
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.
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.
Cool sticker on your cybertruck!
Cybertrain*
It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism that made people support whatever the president wanted to do in the middle east.
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.
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.
Old underpantsweevil’s hinges are certainly quite wobbly, but in this particular comment they’re simply providing some historical context for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t know how fair it is to describe the NA regime as brutal, relative to Afghanistan’s current and former governments, but that’s a pretty minor quibble.
They’ve stopped short of claiming that the attacks were justified, and the assertions made are broadly true. What in particular do you find objectionable, if I may ask?
and fixate instead on a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.
Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’
The Battle of Mogadeshu, which involved Black Hawk helicopters obliterating Somali mosques with hellfire missiles.
Not even vaguely what fucking happened.
The brutal occupation of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, from 1992 to 2001 as a US-backed narco-state.
Fucking all of this.
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.
That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.
The occupation of Saudi Arabia by a western-backed military dictatorship going back nearly a century.
Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.
The violent overthrow of democracies from Indonesia to Egypt in pursuit of neoliberal international trade policy.
We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.
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.
'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.
Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.
Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’
The language is provocative, but factually accurate.
Not even vaguely what fucking happened.
Yeah, it seemed plausible, but I couldn’t find any evidence at all that this took place. Fair enough.
Fucking all of this.
Yeah, it’s some real tanky-tonk incendiary language. And the timeline’s all wrong. The US-backed regime started in 2001, and lasted until 2021. Seems like they just grabbed the first couple of years from the wikipedia article.
That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.
It does appear that the current historical consensus is that the Carter administration did not give Saddam the proverbial green light for the invasion. However, there are more than enough contemporaneous claims to the contrary to convince anyone who’d rather believe that they did.
Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.
I mean, fuck the house of saud. And the US does share responsibility for all their depredations, just as it shares fucking bibi’s.
We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.
Yeah, the CIA may have helped coordinate the 1952 coup against the Egyptian monarchy, but doesn’t appear to have precipitated the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak. Happily, this gets me out of diving into whether or not Mubarak’s government could plausibly be called a democracy. Plenty of truth there, otherwise; a misstep, as you say.
'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.
Yeah, the French Revolution parallel is a real stretch.
Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.
Oh, of course I do. I just have really low expectations when it comes to the veracity of claims made by lemmy tankies in general, inclusive of underpantsweevil. I don’t disagree with you—I was just mildly surprised to see your response, given the average factual content of any of their posts.
Thank you for taking the time to respond! I hadn’t read about some of this stuff for a while, and wouldn’t have otherwise. Best of luck to you.
Very large* act of violent terrorism.
American problems require American solutions
And the gun was 3d printed. They will not stop at making 3d printing illegal.
It’s gonna suck to burn to death.
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
Shinzo Abe was assassinated.with a doohickey made out of a wood board and metal conduit pipes wrapped up in electrical tape
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.
Peaceful protest is a spook
Peaceful protests are the opening argument.
We have a second amendment specifically to give the citizens teeth. The idea isn’t to overthrow the military, it’s to make enrollee potential threat.
The more people those in power piss off, the more danger they’ll be in. The way they’ve been treating us, they should all be terrified to step outside.
