Those non-violent protests shook them so bad they wanted to charge non-violent Quaker protestors with terrorism.
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.
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 as terrorists. 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 demonstration was literally a riot.
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? 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 isn’t necessarily 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.
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!
The best part it does not matter how you feel about Penny… media coverage is what really exposes the hypocrisy.
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.
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.
Not opposing your comment at all, more of a rare occurrence fun fact: Even an actual (ie financially or personality effective) show of power is enough sometimes.
Eg unions in USA haven’t killed any tycoons for the longest time. But they do get a loaf of bread per week more in wages when they stop working for a few days.
Not all revolutions need to be as complete as the French or Russian (tho that works, but also costs a few years of instability & political power struggles), 10% of the elite de-elited (eg losing their wealth bcs of direct demos actions) would send a big message in USAs case.
Even just for something as mundane as protected bike lanes, I’ve found through personal experience that just a couple instances of direct action against motorists who tried to park in them was infinitely more effective than years of begging peacefully for barriers.
Lol, yes, exactly.
That strategy is spreading, BTW: https://momentummag.com/vision-zero-campaign-bricks-vancouver/
I’m also a big fan of:
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.
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.
I don’t think John F Kennedy said that.
Receipts! 🧾
“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)
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.
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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 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.
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.
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.
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
A protest has to have teeth. If the teeth are economic, then that’s ok. If the teeth is violence, then that can be ok. Martin Luther King was successful in part because the threat of violence of Malcom X.
Protests do nothing if they can be ignored. If they can be ignored, they WILL be ignored.
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…
https://blowback.show/BLOWBACK
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.
I think the assessment that the history of the Iraq War is important to understand our current place in history. Especially not prosecuting war criminals and how that lead to not prosecuting Trump.
They’re blaming the USA for making the USSR arm nukes in Cuba and invade the Gulf of Mexico? Fucking tankies, smh.
I mean the US has been consistently aggressive against Cuba, and while I hate the idea of mutually assured destruction, when it was the accepted strategy to get a country to stop fucking with you, it makes sense that Cuba would want the ability to threaten that against the US unless it stopped trying to overthrow their government. Plus the US literally just armed 2 countries near the USSR, so it’s not like it was an unreasonable escalation by the USSR or anything, the US kinda did it first lol.
both sides irresponsibly escalated the conflict in the name of imperialism.
Oh yeah 100%, I don’t place the blame solely on the US or the USSR, it’s on both. I don’t like any state, US and USSR included, and imperialism isn’t exclusive to capitalist states. The USSR is way too demonized in the US education system though, it gets treated as some ultimate evil of history, only responsible for bad things, when it wasn’t really doing anything the US wasn’t also doing.
Yeah, the US education can be very chauvinist. It definitely was in the part of the US where I grew up.
“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.
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.Goes to show how effective non-violent protest is.
Note that the people who got into these wars are still running the country. They have political support from the older people and their base is boomers, esp more affluent. This is not a left/right issue, war happened because the system as whole willed it.
Owners gotten wealthier since then every critical industry now is operated by an oligopoly protected by the US law and regulatory regimes catered specifically to their needs.
Health insurance industry is merely top of iceberg, this is something every person who works for money has to endure at some point in their lives. If you have not seen it in work, your family did.
Since COVID they improved algos and assaulted us across all sectors via this new found pricing power along with FUD related to COVID.
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
Shinzo Abe was assassinated.with a doohickey made out of a wood board and metal conduit pipes wrapped up in electrical tape
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Just want to plug the movie and book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Also the book Rattling the Cages.
I called for a massive peaceful protest that, occasionally, takes a shot.
Yeah, the point of a peaceful protest is meant as a neutral option, just to show that a large group exists who has some demand, and if the demand is not met it will escalate, either via disruption to the economy with strikes or disruption to society with violence. It shouldn’t be blamed on protesters if it ends up escalating that way, because the protest was meant as the warning. Most people wouldn’t blame a country that has repeatedly warned a neighbor to stop annexing it’s land for fighting a war with them. If the country never went farther than warnings then they would all be empty threats. Somehow protests are thought of differently though, and if one turns violent it’s blamed on the protesters and not the government for basically completely ignoring every protest movement in recent memory.
There’s two episodes in the podcast Cool People who did Cool Things that talks about basically that in regards to the violent wing of the nonviolent civil rights movement. You need both.
A massive peaceful march from home to home of owner-class individuals. With a little occasional shots, as a treat?
Heavily armed and peaceful
Ftfy
Yes.
Otherwise the unarmed get shot by the police.
American problems require American solutions
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.
It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism that made people support whatever the president wanted to do in the middle east.
Protests mean nothing if it doesn’t change how people vote.
Voting means nothing if no candidates represents how 75+% of the nation feels on the biggest issues.
It feels to me that all the issues of concern are represented on the ballot. People are just too stupid to figure out which door tells only lies.
Not in USAs case.
On every big economically significant issue of the last 40 years both parties have been on absolutely the same page, none of the candidates would make different choices (at least for both houses and presidents, not sure about state levels, Im not from over there).
Even policies that one party publicly “opposed” were then carried on by the same party when it came in power (eg Bill Clinton).So both parties would and have brought constant deregulation (financial markets especially), the same wars & anything war industry related, public infrastructure cuts (healthcare, schools, etc), taxation of profit, etc.
They bicker by design on issues that are huge for the non-elite (but meaningless to the elite as they can circumvent such issues), like lgbtq+ and reproductive rights.
This is simply a lie
Health care is a prime example of how badly youre lying.
59 Democrats voted for Single Payer, 0 Republicans, it failed
60 Democrats voted to expand medicaid and protect preexisting conditions, 0 republicans, it passed
The USA then elected more Republicans. Republicans used that majority to cut taxes for the rich, raise taxes on everyone else, a plan that would have expired in 2026 if the USA didn’t just elect more republicans AGAIN.
Seems pretty fucking diverse, mate.
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What’s funny is the majority of the country supported the war, at the time. Less than a quarter of polled citizens were against the war. (That’s me! I was there!)
When polled now, the majority of the country claims they were against it at the time.
Echoes of the Civil Rights era, where at its peak, it was deeply unpopular, but the Boomers spent the last 50 years re-writing their own history to pretend they were always on the right side of history… only for Trump to make them feel safe in being racist again.
Who are you supposed to vote for when both parties drift right indefinitely?
I see it differently; despite campaigning to attract cowboys Kamalla still wanted to cancel student debt, tax the rich, and legalize weed.
The old Democrats are dieing of old age, the young ones want Green New Deal.
If you elect 60 democrats you might not get single payer because only one of them has to object, but if you elect 60 Republicans you will get pure privatized healthcare and millions of people will die stupid unnecesary deaths because of it.
So you see people don’t feel represented when neither option gets them what they want? FPTP-voting is the problem.
I mean personally I do vote every election I can, but people did change how they voted after protests were ignored. The pro-Palestinian protesters and the uncommitted movement during this 2024 election had a basic demand they wanted met, that was ignored by the Harris campaign and some number of them didn’t vote because of it. And yet a lot of people blamed the protesters for Harris’s loss (of Michigan at least), even though that is literally changing your vote because a protest didn’t get her to change her position.
And that’s also skipping over however many people didn’t show up because of other positions she changed, like healthcare, fracking, the border, etc. And I do get it, I know Trump will be so much worse, and like I said I did vote, straight Democrat down ballot like I always do. But if the point of a protest is meant to show that a group of people is unhappy and you’re losing their support, having that group turn around and vote for you anyway means that you can just ignore protests.
And again, I know I’ll probably need to keep saying this, I voted for Harris. But the fact that the lesson a lot of the DNC is seemingly taking from this is that they should go more centrist just boggles my mind, because the point of people not showing up to vote for her after they protested and were ignored is literally that going more centrist and ignoring your base will lose democrats elections.
It’s no surprise though, the DNC receives a ton of corporate donations so why would they seriously support policy that hurts those donors income. Like Josh Shapiro condemning the killer and those who supported them, and thanking the police who caught him in PA isn’t surprising when he received $10,000 dollars from UHG in 2023 (the second most of any candidate). This is what people mean when they say voting is pointless, even if you somehow voted in a senate of 100% democrats, a house of 100% democrats, and Bernie Sanders as the president, they wouldn’t support a proposal for something like single payer healthcare because most of the other democrats in the house and senate get money to not support major reforms like that.
You didn’t like blood so you helped elect the river? I at least hope most people at those protests weren’t as stupid as you imply. The whole point was to get the institutions being protested to divest from Israel.
Honestly, at this point I’m not convinced that Trump will be significantly worse for Palestine than Harris would have been. Neither one is going to stop sending weapons, and the stuff Trump supports are so extreme that Israel wouldn’t want to do them anyway, like nuking Gaza. Either way in 4 years I can’t see the US being the reason anything changes there.
I’m also talking about specifically the uncommitted movement and protests at the DNC, which were meant to get Biden and then Harris to support an arms embargo. The consequence promised by those protests was losing voters, so if that didn’t happen it would mean that the Democrats could see these as empty threats and safely ignore them.
There are only so many times you can say “vote for me because the other candidate is so much worse” before people get tired of voting against their interests just to prevent someone else who is also against their interests just more so. Either way you’re voting for something you don’t support, and eventually people will give up. Blaming voters for a candidate losing and not the candidate for abandoning voters doesn’t make sense. It’s not the voters job to represent a candidate, it’s supposed to be the candidates job to represent their voters.
Yeah thats true, real change is going to come from the house and senate, not the president.
