Pls dont do violent protests, think of the poor Gestapo agents you could hurt, instead work with the System
ICE has been shown to deporting legal migrants but im sure your green card will stop them
Every time someone references MLK when promoting non-violence an angel gets its wings
Using whitewashed MLK to try and delegitimize violent resistance, libs pulling out all the classics
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.
I wonder who stands to benefit from perpetuation of the pathological obsession with pacifism and nonviolent protest against state violence? Who would want to turn MLK into a peaceful saint that can be called upon whenever resistance threatens the status quo?
"The Martin Luther King Junior Centre for Non-Violent Social Change, with an operational grant of $2 million, was set up by, among others, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mobil, Western Electric, Procter & Gamble, US Steel and Monsanto. The Center maintains the King Library and Archives of the Civil Rights Movement. Among the many programmes the King Center runs have been projects that “work closely with the United States Department of Defense, the Armed Forces Chaplains Board and others”. It co-sponsored the Martin Luther King Jr Lecture Series called ‘The Free Enterprise System: An Agent for Non- violent Social Change’. " - Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Straight up shit that would get made fun of for being too on the nose if someone did it in fictional worldbuilding
A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war and supports all civil rights movements except the one that’s going on right now.
I don't know if it's just me and the silos I place myself in, but it seems the strength of liberal handwringing about nonviolence is waning. All these absolute fucking bum politicians coming out saying "Don't give Trump what he wants," while they do fucking nothing. The cops unload thousands of rounds of riot munitions on protesters but nobody tells them to stop being violent, yet we are expected to condemn anyone who so much as throws a stone. Then you have all the idiots talking about bots and agents provocateur, like yeah those are tactics the state will use, but have you considered that when the cops start SHOOTING AT PEOPLE it pisses them the fuck off?
We already went through this five years ago. The liberals took power in the aftermath, and they told the abolitionists to fuck themselves. There are literally no police or immigration reforms to speak of. They increased the police budgets across the board and briskly continued the construction of their counterinsurgency training centers like Cop City. What are we supposed to do? Just let them do militarized ethnic cleansing for three and a half years and then vote? They still aren't going to reign in ICE or the police. Fuck that. No one is buying it except the ostriches over at r/Politics and the morons who receive their political education from cable TV.
Like really. People are not content with just waiting around with their dick in their hand for Chuck Schumer to write Donald Trump another fucking letter. The liberals have never had less legitimacy to complain about the pace and tactics of the people they've abandoned to defend their communities all on their own.
All that's missing is for him to tell people to
The oppressed are always held to super high standards while the oppressors can do whatever the fuck they want
Black bagging someone for the crime of being brown when I see a ring on their finger and suddenly I’m like, “oh shit my bad didn’t know you were married”
I really hate the "marry your undocumented partner" suggestion, it creates an unequal power imbalance ripe for abuse where someone has to choose between being deported or being abused
Im currently recovering from a relationship where my ex became so much more abusive once he knew I was dependent on being an authorized user on his credit card to escape my abusive adoptive family and im lucky compared to so many other people in these unequal relationships
Never cared for the Menswear guy
white moderates fuck off and die pls
I think he's vietnamese, his twitter says his parents left after the Tet offensive
"have you considered trusting the system that led us here?"
And just like MLK's take on white liberals, he's still as ever correct with the perfect example here.
derek guy?
more like "get rekt, bye"
boom, gottem.
Another rich white liberal telling the hoi polloi to lie down and take it
They're not white, I don't think.
I think we should send ICE agencies strongly-worded letters invoking the most milquetoast liberal interpretatations of iconic civil rights activists along with platitudes about how love always wins. That'll show them.
"How Nonviolence Protects the State" by Peter Genderloos is an easy read on the subject.
"How to Blow Up a Pipeline" (the book, not the movie) is a good tale.
im sick of all this freakin hate and division!!! im going on the ICE subreddit to debate them about the ethics of their actions!! they will have no choice but to act reasonably when they concede defeat to my logic and the mass deportations will stop
it won't matter if the cops or trump lies, the truth will come out in court during the trial!...
Favorite argument on why it's wrong to escalate when they're running protestors over. Or ignoring how much gop just lies and wins
how tf do people see whats going on here and think a trial is going to save us when the president is literally immune from prosecution lmfao
I live +2 GMT and I woke up to a lot of west wing bullshit this morning.
I'm going back to bed. Fuck these clowns
If ICE ever has a recruiting shortage they should try a strategy like;
Join ICE, help us change things from the inside! Be the difference!
The derek guy's of the world would be out there rubber bulleting old ladies in the street in no time.
Hey it's the Twitter version of lemmy world libs
i hope whoever this prick is gets shot in the face with a baton round
West Wing liberals are THE WORST.
good book on this libs point of view. Pacifism as pathology : reflections on the role of armed struggle in North America
Thanks, I'll DL it tomorrow
😤
I admire the courage of people protesting...
I was going to shit on him at Bluesky but he didn't post that there. The coward. Oh, well - I'll share it here.
--
Do not throw bottles. For many reasons. One, a uniformed officer could be injured. Two, you could damage a man's suit.
My activism is chasing after undocumented immigrants on Tinder, how about that Lenin?
Honestly I didn't expect things to escalate this quickly. Libs and cons are gonna be smug as shit about this
AAAAARGH MLK jr.’s method of protest was only successful because it was the “good cop” to black nationalism’s “bad cop.” It was the threat of Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” that drove the liberal establishment to begrudgingly accept desegregation.
This strategy is explicitly understood and taught by Peace Studies academics as a legitimate method of protest strategy, one that has repeatedly created positive, if limited, change. The only reason to obscure it is either ignorance, malice, or both.
What to the Violence Studies academics think of it?
I've never thought about it that way. And now I need to think about that for a while.
Without going out and checking it appears to be true of every successful nonviolent movement. During Ghandi's time there was absolutely a violent independence movement, and Mandela literally started out as a "terrorist" (and those more active orgs were still around when he rebranded as non violent). Why would the powers that be give in to a group that doesn't threaten them otherwise? Certainly not because they suddenly grow a conscience. If it were just Dr King and a bunch of nonviolent protesters - even a lot of them - why would the American government listen? It's pretty obvious they don't actually have to listen to people's opinions, or they wouldn't be supporting Israel and ICE would either be abolished or at the very least very, very different. Nope, gotta be materialist about these things. Peaceful protest alone has never achieved anything and even when it's successful tends to only be partially so, because the peaceful protesters are there to negotiate and have more moderate demands to begin with - consider MLK v Malcolm X and exactly how much further they each would have liked the civil rights movement to proceed - obviously neither would have been happy with where it ended but I suspect Malcolm X would have been less so and would have driven it further.
Further reading on this topic
I also think that an MLK-style "good cop" is a necessary element in a resistance movement, and should even be more heavily emphasized than the "bad cop" element.
Ultimately, violence is an effective tool for getting what you want. How it is used determines whether it is morally good or bad. The vast majority of people (hexbears included) believe violence is only good when
(Note: I'm just spitballing, so don't expect this to be comprehensive or even correct. I'm sure there are plenty of detailed examinations of the morality of violence.)
The Left, by definition, holds values that the vast majority of people hold. If there are people who oppose the left, it is because they hold incorrect beliefs about our values. Most MAGA chuds hold our values, they just think we're trying to kill all cis people or whatever and they think that's bad.
The Left, also by definition, gets its power from having an absolute fuckload of people pulling in the same direction. To become powerful, we MUST grow and to do that we need to show people that we hold their values.
MLK and Malcom X were both fighting for good, but fighting for good is not enough if you lose. We need to WIN, and we can not win if we don't have enough power.
And so we reach the heart of the problem: how do we balance effective resistance with growing power, which requires appealing to the ignorant, propagandized masses?
First: There are plenty of actions that are both effective resistance and good for growing the movement. I think those actions should be prioritized and promoted as the public face of the movement. That's irrelevant to the discussion of violence, though.
A resistance WILL be more effective per person if it is violent. However, it then runs a significant risk of running afoul of public perception, which slows its growth (and therefore power). Since violence is only appropriate under narrow conditions, our enemy can delegitimatize our violence by suggesting any of the above conditions aren't met ("being trans is bad, actually" or "sure, we want to keep our communities safe too, but there are other ways").
A commitment to nonviolence is a safe public stance, since it is more resistant to misportrayal and many will see violent suppression by the government as immoral. Your movement is sympathetic to the public, and should grow more as a result, but is less effective per person.
If violence is necessary, it may need to be denounced as separate from the moment. Not because it is morally wrong, but because our enemy gets to shape the narrative and they will show us in the worst light possible.
Generally agree. In this specific context, I think the combination of how heavy-handed ICE has been and the legacy of January 6th leads me to think that the protesters in LA aren’t likely to alienate the general public.