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Russian and Chinese Bots Fueling Online ‘Violence’ After Charlie Kirk Shooting
(www.thedailybeast.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Fediverse vs Disinformation
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Ohhh. Yeah I still disagree with Sanders but I wish I belived the world he thinks could exist could. Unfortunately it seems like political violence has been the only way things have changed throughout history and it seems like it will continue to be that way.
The fuck?
I literally cannot think of a single one of those (or any other issue) where the resolution would have come sooner or better, if the side supporting it had been shooting random leaders on the other side. Sometimes violence is involved, sure, but literally every time I can think of assassination coming into the picture, it was being done by the bad guys, and it made things worse.
Edit: Actually, I thought of two: In reconstruction in the US, and in postwar Germany, I think in hindsight it would have been better if they'd killed more of the political leaders. The difference there is that it was settled on a mass scale first, and then, we're just implementing the will of the majority faction in an already deadly-mass-violence situation. If you're in the minority faction (unable to get your will enacted through the democratic process because 40% of the country supports fascism for example), and you start randomly killing leaders to try to make it your way even so, you're gonna have a bad time. Win or lose, you're not going to get to a destination I want to go to.
None of those happen at all. They never happen without the "threat of force"
Whether implied or actually used. All power flows forth from the threat of force. If the threat of force doesn't exist then there is no reason for bad actors to negotiate at all. They can just roll over anyone they want.
The absence of the Threat of Force is why protest in this country doesn't work. Because those in power know that its toothless. Look to Europe and Asia. To South America. When people protest there the politicians perk up because they know that the protest isn't the end. It's the prelude to God only knows what. Riots. Fires. Farmers dumping tens of thousands of pounds of manure on parliament. Etcetera. Their protest isn't toothless. They have not been taught since birth that "violence is always wrong". They will burn shit. They won't start with burning shit. But that is invariably a potential outcome if protest is ignored.
Completely agree with more or less all of that. In particular:
Yes, we should definitely be doing more of that. And, I think it is particularly interesting that most of the suspicious accounts I observed on Lemmy during the beginning of the "No Kings" protests were super against the idea of getting organized and going out in the streets as a prelude and preparation for things like that. They were saying things like that particular protests were a "false flag," extensively nail biting about the unsafe nature of getting out to protest, that they were going to sit this one out, stuff of that nature.
I wonder why they were so against organized vigorous disobedience, and now they're so in favor of random sudden violence against leaders. Almost as if one leads to much different outcomes than the other, and they're trying to mold things specifically towards one of the outcomes and not the other.