3d ago

TIL the phrase "Do Not Split", meaning leftist pacificists and leftist radicals shouldn't condemn each others' tactics

www.teamhuman.fm

Matthew Remski: Antifascist Dad | Team Human

Learned about it from this episode of the Team Human podcast

But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.
And when they are, that's going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it's going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we're not going to criticize them openly, and they're not going to criticize us openly.
If we're the pacifists, we're not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don't know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we're not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.
It's not like they have to come out and tell the media, oh, we approve of our more sort of confrontational colleagues. They just keep quiet. They just keep quiet.
Understanding that a range of tactics is probably going to be necessary. Nobody really knows what's going to work. But if everybody's pushing back against a particularly violent state, then everybody's really on the same side.

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Me, a nonviolent person, when someone chins a fashy cunt
- chins a fashy cunt
- Im not sure im a pacifist but that is what im trying to be and I can't condemn folks fighting for their and others lives. Really comes down kill or die and what an individual finds acceptable given the situation. I can't say violence is not an appropriate reaction to violence even if I don't want to partake.
- and remember to grow that spine and vote for the party most likely to beat the fascists in the elections
- Ironically you channel the Split vibes this post elaborates about: you give the same energy as someone who picks a white mage, but never casts any heal spells and just stays in the back while everyone does all the work so you can lazily enjoy the fruits of everyone elses hard work.
  
  Pacifist ≠ passivist
  
  What in the sweet LARP-ing fuck are you talking about? Healing spells? The grownups are trying to have a conversation about the world we live in, friend.
Solidarity forever.
If this is a difficult principal for you, remember to rank your battles appropriately:
Number One will always be the people you actually disagree with on a fundamental level, the people you mean to be resisting. Way down on the list is the people on your side who are resisting in ways you don't condone, but resisting nonetheless.
Never fight a low priority battle when a high priority fight is still going on.
Understanding that a range of tactics is probably going to be necessary.
All successful movements have to have a radical flank in order to make the moderates look moderate. Otherwise, the moderates look radical and the Overton Window doesn't shift.
- Very well said.
Not fighting other leftists just makes sense. What grinds my gears are people who think we HAVE to embrace Democrats. Embrace, not just vote for the lesser evil. Those people can fuck right off with their big tent politics: The EXACT thing the Democrats used to get us here.
- This concept doesn't apply here. Democrats aren't on the left. Liberals are not a part of leftist infighting or lack thereof.
  
  Tell that to all the people constantly hounding leftists to treat Democrats as leftists.
- As a non-American it's kind of wild to me that people are still complaining about the democrats when you elected Trump.
  Yeah they're not good. And you should fight them. But if my only choice is the democrats or trump, I'll choose the Dems and then immediately get back to fighting them.
  
  The problem is that the Democrats are as crucial to them being the "only choice" as are the Republicans. And we see how they still fight tooth and nails to prevent progressives being put on the ballot from inside the party.
  At some point you got accept that repairing your old heap of crap car is more expensive than getting a new on, where the old rusty parts aren't constantly making the replacement parts rust away too.
  
  It's a two party system. They're half of the entire government. It's important. Like I said, it's NOT the people saying to grit your teeth and vote for the lesser evil, but the people who say Democrats should be embraced. Democrats are the pieces of shit that backstabbed Bernie and surprise picachu faced TWICE against Trump. Even assuming ignorance, they're fucking fools of the highest calibre and deserve zero respect what so ever.
This part, this part.
It’s not like they have to come out and tell the media, oh, we approve of our more sort of confrontational colleagues. They just keep quiet. They just keep quiet.
You don't have to tell everyone your business and why you're right. "Divide and Conquer" is a long time phrase.
- You don’t have to tell everyone your business and why you’re right.
  You don't. However, corporate media is dirty as shit. So you'll inevitably get the "Why won't you condemn the Palestinian Intifada!" heckled at a guy running for NYC Mayor, simply because he's a Muslim who also disapproves of genocide. And if you don't say "I :heart: Israel and condemn all forms of Islamic Extremism" on a loop whenever prompted (and sometimes even when you do), the inevitable NYT headline is "Radical Mayoral Candidate For Most Important Job On Earth Supports Hamas And May Be Ineligible For Office So Don't Even Bother Voting For Him".
  Not entirely unlike the inevitable flood of "Politician X is Literally Dying!" headlines that we get whenever a swath of corporate media has you in their sights.
  People often fall into the trap of trying to explain themselves or defend or clarify their positions. And this inevitably gets spun as "Divisions in The Left! Leftists in Disarray!" It's why you'll often find politicians talking as though they're stuck on repeat, even to the point of stumbling over the same prepared remarks on what feels like autopilot. That's because they have trained themselves to stay so rigidly on topic, in order to avoid these pitfalls.
  Broadly speaking, this is how modern liberal journalism functions to degrade democracy.
  
  Absolutely, but we have to be the ones to point out that that's what happening. And in the same comments, we also have to point out what the person stands for and then walk away.
I may not agree with an anarchist but we can sort that out once the fascists are gone.
Something else I appreciated:
“You know, and this point of view, you probably came into contact with through the work of people like Gene Sharp, who was, you know, kind of the main theorist of nonviolent resistance.
But then someone said he got revealed now that Gene Sharp, someone did a book, that Gene Sharp was revealed as a neoliberal apologist.
Well, it isn't a book. But what has happened is that the researchers that took up his sort of project of let's establish that this was the goal, really. Let's establish that nonviolent resistance is the primary way in which successful social movements are successful.
A person named Erika Chenoweth and her and their colleague Maria Stevan wrote a book called Why Civil Resistance Works in 2011. But as a sociologist of street rebellion named Ben Case has shown, they really are working with a very poor data set because they fail to disambiguate between things like armed violent resistance from a violent militant like Gorilla Flank and unarmed violent resistance as in rioting within a protest movement where there are marches or there are protests or there are various gatherings that might involve stuff that we're seeing in LA recently, right? Like people throwing stones at cop cars and setting waymos on fire and shit like that.
And so the problem with with Chenoweth's book is that it convinced a whole bunch of people that if you are trying to smash the windows of cop cars that you're actually doing a form of violent resistance that will not work. But actually, according to the classification of their data set, smashing the windows of police cars are within the nonviolent category because they're not armed, right? So there's a big confusion about the actual data.
Fred Hampton understood this principle very well, which is why the US government murdered him.
I will totally butcher this and I can't remember where I heard it but "An imperfect ally is better than a perfect enemy".
The way I understood it was basically what you are saying here. If someone is on your side don't push them away, use their talents to advance your cause.
This reminds me of the 100th South Park episode, "I'm a Little Bit Country." Although the original topic was about the Iraq War (and I'm not looking to unpack that right now), the same point of the episode can apply here - those who want to fight and those who don't want to fight ultimately need each other. One side provides the action and muscle, while the other side provides the heart and compassion.
If South Park can find a way to apply that lesson to the US as a whole, there's no reason leftists can't support each other the same way. As long as we have the same interests at heart, you can choose to fight or choose to protect your own - society needs people who do both. The only thing we don't need is the in-fighting that artificially separates us.
This is all well and good, especially in the far more dire situation of Hong Kong.
I don't think we're quite there yet globally, or at least not in the US. Could be there fucking tomorrow, but not quite yet today.
There are times when open criticism is warranted. I don't agree at all that more tribalism is the true solution to the situation we see at least in the US. We can't just mass execute the people who voted Trump into office.
I don't think most people have trouble keeping their mouth shut when appropriate.
So yeah, don't get in the way of good things happening in imperfect ways. But I swear if I start seeing this shit bandied around as a thought terminating stopper of valid criticism I'm going to blow a gasket.
Not everyone on your side of the political divide is an ally. Not everyone on the other side has to be an enemy. This also applies to the more complex mult-axis political compases.
- We can't just mass execute the people who voted Trump into office.
  Why not? Obviously you can't execute tens of millions of voters. But you could execute party members and those who were active during his presidencies and other supporters within or without the party.
- You’d probably enjoy the full podcast, cuz that’s basically the overarching theme of not just the episode but the whole series.
"Splitter!" as a pejorative:
https://youtu.be/WboggjN_G-4#t=1m09s
- Came here for this. The rest of this post is shite.
meaning leftist pacificists and leftist radicals shouldn't condemn each others' tactics
You can be radical and a pacifist. Framing it otherwise sounds like typical Judean People's Front bullshit to me... /s
In Germany we say "Friedlich oder militant - wichtig ist der Widerstand", and I think that's beautiful.
- That's the whole issue with how radical is used as a negative term, even slur, by media and establishment politics.
  Even nowadays media and "experts" are warning that the youth radicalising is bad.
  The truth is, radicalism itself isn't bad. Quite the opposite. It's only bad when it falls on the right side of the political spectrum, i.e. fascism or religious radicalism like Christian nationalism or Islamism.

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