Violence begets violence. Seeking balance serves only to stabilize this cycle, victim becoming oppressor becoming victim ad nauseum.
Do not allow yourself to be shaped by what is inflicted on you. Strength is demonstrated not by an ability to react, reflect, or respond but endure. To become what has hurt you is the most total defeat. Living as an example others are compelled to follow is the greatest victory. “To thine own self be true”.
Do you think Ukraine should negotiate with Russia for peace and transcend violence?
Living as an example others are compelled to follow is the greatest victory.
Actually, the greatest victory is winning, and violence is what wins revolutions.
(for the actual leftists here who know about the work of the above author, Gelderloos does get a number of things wrong about “the state,” but he was not wrong about any of the above statements regarding “nonviolence.”)
I’m not trying to make a dig at whatever age you are, but I’m just gonna point out that I definitely would have been the one espousing this argument when I was like 22 and still mostly viewing armed conflict as an emotional/psychological phenomenon, without understanding the material and economic machinery at play. I was years away from internalizing the degree to which everything we think and are is shaped by our circumstances, including the ways and tools by which we try to transcend them
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This is completely wrong, idealistic, and ignores all of history, which shows that violence is nearly always required to overcome an oppressor.
The “victories of pacifism” are almost always used as propaganda to maintain the status quo.
- What about Pacifism / pacifist socialism? Is violence necessary to acheive socialism? What about Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi? audiobook
- Why not just vote leftists into office: what’s wrong with democratic socialism?
- Is a bloodless revolution possible?
- “Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.” - Arundhati Roy.
- What is imperialism?
- The CIA, Gene sharp, and it’s pacifist color revolution regime change tactics.
- Regime Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s liberal non-violence.
- Was the civil rights struggle in the US really nonviolent? Malcolm X - message to the grassroots.
- FBI cointel directives on “nonviolent” groups.
- Is a state really necessary to transition into communism?
- Engels - on authority.
- An Overview of Leninism, audiobook. Lenin - State and Revolution , audiobook
- Luxemburg - Reform or Revolution, audiobook
Idealism is perhaps the trait I am most proud of, and what I genuinely believe has the best chance of leading us to a brighter tomorrow. ‘Victories of pacifism’ is not a term I am familiar with, and I am neither going to read all those links or start citing bhagavad gita at you. I would love to continue exchanging ideas directly, but am realizing there is a hostile and well-entrenched audience here impeding that process. A sense of unity predates, has endured, and will outlast every empire. Acceptance of the tools of your oppressors as all-powerful and inevitable is perhaps the most fundamental defeat there is. Whatever is built with them must crumble like all that came before. Feel free to DM me.
So theres a little confusion here, you’re using idealism to mean optimism, they’re using idealism to mean “pertaining to ideas as opposed to material reality and existing social relations”.
The latter tends to be used in political texts, particularly marxist ones.
Idealism is perhaps the trait I am most proud of
I am neither going to read all those links or start citing bhagavad gita at you. I would love to continue exchanging ideas
Amazing
I guess we should have told all slaves to forever be slaves then?
“We shall overcome” was one thing they told themselves. You’re like the third person to throw this specific gotcha at me here. To exaggerate your own logic, should they have started taking slaves of their own?
Understanding history is a “gotcha” now.
Below they called studying history, “reliance on tertiary sources”, and applauded themselves not just on their ignorance, but refusal to learn.
And they did overcome, through violence
What logic are you even talking about?
This is some anime logic bs that has no based in reality or historical analysis 🤣
This is a thought terminating cliche with no “based” in engagement or critical thinking.
So for example slaves should just endure slavery as that’s true strength? Lest they be as bad as the slavers…?
I made a genuine effort to bridge understanding and am saddened by this response. To endure is not to accept.
What do you think ended slavery? What were those people before being enslaved, and what do you think would be the best way for them to move on (or return) to something better?
Would enslaving others in turn be desirable?
I made a genuine effort to bridge understanding and am saddened by this response. To endure is not to accept.
But to resist is bad as you say. And you cannot resist violent suppression without violence back. You don’t just lie down and just say “I am better than you” while being attacked like what the fuck.
What do you think ended slavery? What were those people before being enslaved, and what do you think would be the best way for them to move on (or return) to something better?
Violence ended slavery. Also on the BOLDED PART, I WILL ASK, what the FUCK are you implying here?
Would enslaving others in turn be desirable?
What are you implying here? That it’s “eye for an eye” crap? You think it’s always on equal measure? Can’t even think that perhaps people just want to not be enslaved, not be killed and not be displaced?
… what the fuck are you yapping about? Violence is a tool used by the oppressed against oppressors.
What do YOU think ended slavery? You think slave liberators wanted to enslave white people in response? Too much anime. NEXT
It’s hardly the point at all here, I know, but most anime I’ve seen has been pretty violent. Anti-violence is often equated with cowardice, actually.
In a prior response I posit slavery was ended by technological progress, specifically the industrialization of agriculture. You contribute nothing here, and the vitriol of your dismissal impedes genuine engagement with those who actually seek it.
Slavery was ended by revolutionary liberation. You think you’re being intellectual (or something) but you’re instead being racist & diminishing the accomplishments of revolutionary black liberators and civil rights leaders etc.
I do not even want to dignify the idea that ”slavery was ended by technological advances in agriculture”. Might be the most racist thing I’ve ever seen on Lemmy so far.
It’s like you guys have meetings on who can be more Nazi Apologist, more ignorantly racist and anti Immigration, and then you say “alright, we’re gonna go be progressive online!”
You don’t think a cotton gin requiring vastly less effort to maintain/oppress had anything to do with it? This was the one time the American empire engaged in a just war that was in no way economic?
…the very idea might be the most racist thing you’ve seen on Lemmy so far?
The cotton gin intensified and prolonged slavery by making the labor of farming more valuable, cotton harvesting increased almost 20x between 1800 and 1860, with per-slave productivity roughly doubling.
What ended slavery was slaves using violence against their oppressors to gain freedom. What ended fascism in Germany was overwhelming violence against the Nazis. What ends oppression is violence against the oppressors.
What “ended” slavery was technology making it economically unfeasible, and the violence of it still resonates through American society today. What “ended” fascism in Germany was… Hard to fit in a one-liner and I’m not sure I’d actually say it did end, but I’m sure you can agree the violence of that ideology is all too with us today. Oppression has in no way ended or even been reduced as the result of violent response. It has only grown and spread.
What “ended” slavery was technology making it economically unfeasible, and the violence of it still resonates through American society today.
This is also completely false. What ended modern slavery in the western hemisphere was two tremendously violent events: The Haitian revolution lead by former black slaves, which defeated french colonialism to end slavery (and whose proclamation to end slavery was subsequently adopted by Bolivar, which sealed its end in the southern hemisphere), and the US civil war which brought an end to slavery in the US south with a bloody conflict.
Oppression has in no way ended or even been reduced as the result of violent response.
Also completely false. The biggest example is the eastern front of WW2, the bloodiest conflict in world history, where the USSR defeated Nazi expansionism and its attempt to enslave eastern europe.
I recommend you read the article I linked above, to learn how truly disgusting pacifism is as an ideology.
Good thing America doesn’t currently have a gestapo and concentration camps. All thanks to the restorative power of violence. Things have in no way escalated since then, fascism has been thoroughly defeated. Mission accomplished, Dubya.
Uhhh so what violence from the US population are you trying to imply the US state’s nazification is to blame for?
Good thing America doesn’t currently have a gestapo and concentration camps. All thanks to the restorative power of violence.
Unfortunately the pro-slavery forces rallied during the period of reconstruction, and were able to transmute slavery into a system of mass incarceration. Opposition to that wasn’t non-violent, but you can’t blame oppressed peoples for not always winning their confrontations. You can read about that in WEB dubois’s black reconstruction in america. Your unwillingness to read even short articles above, is probably why you’re so ignorant of the history of these class struggles.
Things have in no way escalated since then,
This is interesting coming from someone who avows pacifism, and thus thinks that reactionary violence shouldn’t be challenged in any threatening way, and that we shouldn’t dare fight back.
Anyway, you can keep offering Gandhi’s advice that “jews should’ve offered themselves to hitler’s knife, as it would purify them”. But the rest of us in the real world know that when someone attacks you, the best course of action is to stand up and fight back.
this is such new-age pseudo-spiritual horse shit
Unrelated, but I love you saying “horse”.
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”What do We mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it.
The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.” -John Adams
Maybe don’t put quotes from slaveowners glorifying their imperial project under a post on Kwame Ture.
The American “Revolution” was a capitalist one. It’s nothing worth celebrating.
Violence can be a very effective political tool. It can also backfire horrifically. History is littered with revolutions that failed, or led to worse outcomes than what started the revolt in the first place.
History is also littered with the even-worse consequences of not trying, such as our western cowardice and complicity resulting in the Gaza genocide.
And the civil war would have been a lot different if the escape slaves had started burning farms in the North. I’m just saying indiscriminate violence will hurt a cause as much as failing to support it. If Luigi had bombed the hotel, rather than shot one insurance exec, he wouldn’t be seeing the public support he has.
Yeah good thing we live in the real world where none of that happened. Seriously there is something wrong with liberals fundamentally. I used to think it was just the liberalism but yall are fuuucking broken
Sure, in the alternate realities where the oppressed directed their violence randomly at everybody like hostile NPCs, that would be bad. But in the reality we inhabit, we have seen time and time again that they have used violence very effectively and selectively to achieve liberation.
Exactly. It’s a common lib trope that all the superhero movies play into where everyone who want to improve society somewhat is a supervillain. Libs see the oppression but fear the victims more than the oppressors. They fear for their own little privilege in the hierarchy they fully recognize as unjust.
The truth is, they aren’t against violence at all. They just choose to punch down rather than up. They choose the easy path and I think, at some level, they know they’re choosing evil (according to their own standards even). They invent all those bullshit excuses to cope with their own cognitive dissonance. That’s why they hold on to a logically indefensible position and get lost in contradictions.
You’re fighting with ghosts here, no one is promoting senseless and undirected violence. But the system as it is is violent, it kills. And putting an end to it will also require violence, too.
Yeah, if a person did bad things rather than good, other people would like him less. Don’t go swimming in any pool or large body of water, you can’t breathe water and almost certainly will drown since you are seemingly incapable of discerning between air and water.
National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.
…
Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the “thing” which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself.
In decolonization, there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation. If we wish to describe it precisely, we might find it in the wellknown words: “The last shall be first and the first last.” Decolonization is the putting into practice of this sentence. That is why, if we try to describe it, all decolonization is successful.
The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists. That affirmed intention to place the last at the head of things, and to make them climb at a pace (too quickly, some say) the well-known steps which characterize an organized society, can only triumph if we use all means to turn the scale, including, of course, that of violence.
You do not turn any society, however primitive it may be, upside down with such a program if you have not decided from the very beginning, that is to say from the actual formulation of that program, to overcome all the obstacles that you will come across in so doing. The native who decides to put the program into practice, and to become its moving force, is ready for violence at all times. From birth it is clear to him that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence.
~ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Your point, that the oppressed should stay subservient and exploited because the struggle for liberation will bring about violence from the oppressor, ignores the generations of violence done onto the vast majority of the world and the violence that continues to weigh upon and threatens to crush everyone under this capitalist-imperialist hellscape. You should fight because of that violence.
the assumption that political violence must mean dead or maimed people says something about the people saying.
back in 2017, the mexican threw a couple bricks and broke a couple windows like americans used to do during the civil rights era and they ended up getting president Shienbaum because of it – meanwhile our aversion gave us trump.
Absolutely, some of the most effective violence has been entirely aimed at property. In most cases causing collateral damage hurts the goal of political violence more than it helps. Because the main way it’s effective is with public support. Start hitting stray civilians and you can forget public sympathy.
As a black man, without violence my ancestors would still be slaves, so I would take violence against my white masters every day even if I die trying.
o7
Yes, ideally only the morally correct and righteous causes would justify the use of violence, but unfortunately it’s also the misguided, misunderstood, or misrepresented causes that also justify violence. People want to use quotes like this to justify THEIR desire for violence, but sometimes their causes are just bad.
