this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Why would corrupt leadership care that people are marching in the street if there's no consequences to ignoring the protests?
Peaceful protests are a statement that the people are upset and want change. There has to be a threat of escalation if protests are ignored.
That's not to say we should jump straight to violence. It's recognizing that in the event a government ignores laws, suppresses the vote, and uses violence against its people that the people may eventually need to hit back.
Because there are consequences and everyone knows it. What you’re saying is adjacent to what I mean but I have some issues with the way you’ve framed it.
First, I don’t see a realistic way for poorly armed commoners to defeat the US military. It’s just not viable.
But the key is that political struggle requires leverage. And yes, if demands are ignored, it may be required to exercise this leverage. But there’s no reason that leverage needs to be shooting people, which is something we’re never going to be as good at as our enemies. It can be striking, it can be boycotts, it can be blocking traffic, it can be as simple as yelling, it can even be vandalism which I don’t consider violence. And yes (sorry blackpilled leftists) it can be voting.
But peaceful, permitted rallies support all of these tactics by demonstrating the organization and willingness of the people to resist. So criticizing these tactics is just ignorant.
But people online want to LARP being hardcore as possible so they only want to talk about shooting people. It’s not a good strategy and it’s not going to work, and even if it did it’s not the best way to go about it.
I don't think we should be going around shooting people. But I do think that there is some sense to the idea that an armed populace is more difficult to control, which is often a problem in the US, but can occasionally work for the greater good.
And if things got really, really bad, the plan wouldn't be to line up in front of the army and trade blows - this isn't 17th century Europe.
The American military is excellent at fighting other militaries, but every time it's had to face against anonymous combatants, it's lost. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia. And in none of those cases did they have to worry about disloyalty among the troops like they would here.
More difficult to control I believe but that’s not the same a winning a political struggle for human liberation, which at least for me, is the real goal.
Those other conflicts were lost mainly because it wasn’t the top priority of the US military to win a war on the other side of the world, and militants were able to outlast and make it too costly for it to be worth it anymore. The calculus will be very different when you’re rolling out guillotines in their own neighborhoods. They will fight to the death. Why wouldn’t they?
People won’t like this but elites often capitulate because a movement is able to construct a scenario where that’s what’s in their best interest. That means, yes, we should threaten to make things bad for them if they don’t capitulate. But it also means we need to offer some reconciliation if they do back down. If you’re fighting a war of annihilation then that’s a tough signal to send.