this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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It's very rare for some blanket rule like "violence never works" or "non-violence never works" to be accurate about this kind of thing.
The easiest way to resist fascism is for the existing conservative party that it's trying to hijack to vigorously reject it. It works well enough that you don't really hear about examples when it happened, because they didn't turn into fascism. Anyway, we already stumbled at that hurdle a long time ago, so it's irrelevant.
The second-easiest way is nonviolent resistance, or what Robert Helvey called "political defiance.". That stands a pretty good chance of undoing tyranny while also preserving the structures that will enable a decent society in the aftermath. It's historically by far the most reliable path (which sure as shit doesn't mean it is reliable.)
Violent revolution is the hardest way. There's obviously a lot of bloodshed by innocents and the guilty alike, and it also makes it more difficult to galvanize a resistance from "undecided" participants because they may see the resistance as terroristic or dangerous. You have to already have a critical mass of support in order to embark on this path, because you will gain relatively few supporters along the way, and a large number of previously unaligned people may galvanize against you in a big way. And, worst or all, it carries the added risk that the society that comes after the revolution may be even worse than the fascism you just overthrew. Violence that destroys important structures of civil society tends to beget more violence that destroys important structures of civil society.
Sometimes, you need violent revolution, it's definitely not "never" the answer. But it is a very hard and dangerous road.
Something people often miss, is that a violent revolution is extremely painful, and has no guarantees of ever actually fixing the problem.
You need to have a very progressive government come in to fix all of the problems caused by fascism, as fascism almost always relies on an ignorant, angry population, that should be angry at wealth disparity and societal problems, but have had that anger redirected at marginalized people.
The thing is, how do you go from violence, to a progressive, reasonable government.
Even in Germany, their nazi party continues to gain steam over time.
It seems that the core problem is that money people would prefer anything except making the world fairer/making them make less money through taxes, or having them have to follow the same laws as everyone else, or losing their corrupt socialism for the rich and rugged boot strapped individualism for the poor.
It seems universal that the rich would rather redirect anger at the marginalized groups than that any hits to their wealth.
The thing is, the wealth problem is inevitably going to go out of control, so the question really is, how can we stop people from having their warranted anger, redirected in an unwarranted fashion, and I have no idea how to do that.
I feel like 30% of the population is naturally filled with hate, 50% go whichever way they think the public opinion is going, and 20% who generally try to do good by others.
The rich owning media and social media means that they effectively can control what the public opinion appears to be, and therefore can with significant effectiveness control that middle 50%.
Its happened with the Nazis and while not the same style of thing, happens with China and is happening in the US.
We badly need people to get out of the billionaire controlled bubbles they're in but places like where we are right now struggle to hit critical mass.
This kinda got rambly but I really don't have a positive outlook, because it looks like people will be passive until people are dying en masse.
I mean, just look at the recent protests. Its nice so many people cared, but 7 million, lets say 10 to be generous is not even 1% of the population, and they can effectively ignore them.
Anything else, any suggestions of civil disobedience or anything that could be considered violent rhetoric cant even be discussed on most platforms.
People also no longer have third spaces and cant really assemble for this like they used to be able to.
Basically, I'm not sure its possible to have a modern day super pair like Malcom X and MLK where one is the stick, and the other is the notes.
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/126900/8008_FDTD.pdf
Book written by a guy who studied in detail how to solve this problem, how it has been attacked successfully and unsuccessfully in many different countries across the world.
Basically, if boiled down to its core, it is: Strengthen civil institutions separate from government. You need them to knit people together into an effective resistance, and they'll be doing good work regardless even separate from the resistance, and then after the revolution they will make it a lot more likely that the new revolutionary society morphs into something humane and civil instead of just a new breed of violent dictatorship (which yes is a huge question and issue which a lot of revolutionaries don't seem to give enough thought to.)