this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 year ago (6 children)

ITT:

Everyone thinking that the only two options are being quiet or being violent.

Strikes are currently making those in power very uncomfortable, and are resulting in genuine progress for workers.

In my area, people camping out in thousand year old trees has protected them time and again from being illegally logged.

Black Lives Matter protests were loud and made the powerful uncomfortable, and despite media narratives it wasn't "violent protesters" that made the powerful uncomfortable.

It is true that any form of protest that is loud and inconveniencing enough to actually be productive will be met with state violence.

It's also true that some working for progress do use violence. But make no mistake, it's not guns that made those in power uncomfortable when it came to Malcom X and the Black Panthers.

The most radical and intimidating (to those in power) things the Black Panthers did were to give free food to schoolchildren, and free healthcare at their People’s Free Medical Clinics.

Building community and mutual aid is subversive.

Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Building community and mutual aid is subversive.

This. Both the government and the major corporations depend on being able to extract wealth from real people getting what they need. If we build dual power structures, help one another out and cut the owner class out of the transaction entirely, we weaken them. Growing food in your garden is revolutionary. Clothing swaps are revolutionary. Cutting the old lady next door's lawn, then eating the soup she made is an act that strikes at the fundamental underpinnings of the power structure set up by those who think that they should be entitled to our labor because they've been arbitrarily designated as the "owners" of things. We can and should remove them from the equation entirely.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

If you wrote a book I'd read it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why wasn't I taught about the free food and medical care part of what they did?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You were quietly taught that armed black people were scary. That’s what they wanted you to remember, not what they armed themselves for.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Ugh.. this just makes me feel all sorts of awful. I struggle to find the exact words.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.

Small mutual aid for local communities grow out into large social aid organizations that have political power. Politicians can make them redundant by unemployment, healthcare and pensions, or try to nip them in the bud.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Politicians can try.

That can't stop us from trying though.

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[–] Kecessa 39 points 1 year ago (10 children)

The entirety of history also shows that a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.

So, still feeling up for it?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (6 children)

That is the question:

live in an unjust and amoral society

or die trying to make a righteous one.

The stoics, at least Seneca, opted for the former.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Far more people than you seem to think so are feeling up to it, risk of bodily harm nonwithstanding. That same history shows that whole lots of people do and have gotten that fed up.

The current challenge imo is the hyperfocused and extremely well funded tools to disorganize and fracture populaces globally.

They are so abstract, so psychologically targeted and so pervasive that they enable the rise of fascism again even though many of the players are frankly cartoonishly inept (more so than in the past; fascism is cunning and bullish, but seldom clever) to the point that the banality of evil of yesterday is nearly preferable to the bumbling cruelty of today.

Yes, still feeling up to it, but while the precipice nears, there's still both time to turn the car around and get ready to violently brake. We're just careful drivers until there's a need to maneuver.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Joke's on you, I already wish I was dead

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

They're gonna kill me if I don't

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

When doing nothing becomes so intolerable and the potential gain is high enough to make the risk of death is worth taking then the answer becomes "yes". That's why people don't take extreme actions easily.

Putting it another way, if enough people are willing to take big risks, then the status quo must be pretty damned awful in their view.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (50 children)

Anytime I hear people say dumb shit like this I just start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit, they absolutely didn't give a single fuck about any of this struggle session bullshit wreckers like to trot out to sabotage effective resistance

Then I end with the date Roe got overturned, but they still somehow cannot connect the dots and want to talk about registering new voters or some fucking bullshit

My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit

The problem is that this form of violence is implicitly endorsed by the state and by a majority of the ruling class. They don't see it as competition to their monopoly on violence.

However, if leftist groups were to emulate this level of violence it would be condemned by every media outlet for weeks. Liberal politicians would rush to condemn the violence and lay the groundwork to justify an even more violent retaliation.

I'm not saying that violence is never the answer, but if you are not on the side that has a monopoly on violence then you have to be much more aware of how your actions may validate the state's ability to do violence upon yourself and your cause.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Squeaky wheel gets the grease

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Exactly. The louder and more obnoxious you are, particularly towards those in power, the more likely they are to actually listen, even if just to get you to fuck off

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

Reasonableness is for the status quo.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I think there was a guy who once said where power grows from, but I can't remember the quote mao-wave xi-gun chavez-guns marx-guns-blazing malcolm-checks

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

uhhh... eenie... meenie... miniey... mao

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

People didn't get their rights asking for them nicely.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

In my experience, most people know this, but they change their rhetoric based on how much they sympathize with the cause in question. If they sympathize a lot they support disruptive action, if they're only kinda sympathetic they call for civility and "reaching out to people", if they don't at all they say they'd only support a letter writing campaign.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

This reminds me of the Douglas Adams thing from ‘last chance to see’

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I think mao said something about this dax-stoked

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Look at the US, they begged England for representation. Even after they gave an ultimatum they begged to stay but it didn’t work and they had a war that France won

[–] oroboros 10 points 1 year ago

Very effective gaslighting by those in power.

[–] Peaty 10 points 1 year ago

It depends on the kind of change you are attempting to make. Revolutionary changes aren't going to be accomplished without someone getting hurt, but if you are trying to change the name of your town from Lincolnville to Frankville that likely won't require injury.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

It's amazing how a perspective can change when one's head is rolling around on the cobblestone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

context required...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Its time to sharpen the guillotines

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (54 children)

There's a reason people on the left who actually bother actually learning a bit of history become Marxists.

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