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A diversity of tactics is worthwhile, but indiscriminate violence or even insufficiently targeted violence is fucking stupid. The state will demonize us, but that's an opportunity to be openly and visibly in the right and to reduce trust in state narratives
Build alternative structures. Help people. Don't destroy before you have alternatives.
Absolutely right, violence by itself solves nothing and only creates more problems, but a completely non-violent movement is also doomed to failure because they will be violently repressed and victimized by the establishment if they show any sign of succeeding.
A successful movement must contain elements willing to escalate and threaten violence, and also elements who disavow that same violence and seek a peaceful resolution. We've seen this time and time again throughout history, but a few recent examples which would be familiar to most are the LGBTQ+ liberation movements which turned the tides with the Stonewall riots, and the civil rights movement, which had a whole spectrum of activists - MLK, the Black Panthers, and Malcolm X.
How to ensure to remain on the unpopular fringe.
It’s the same mindset as: „someone called me racist once, so i will become a full on Nazi now“.
If you want actual revolution, you need to appeal to a wide audience for support.
You need to pick your fights, but always avoid becoming the "liberal cuck" as the alt-right likes to call people who fall to their "we go low, you go high" tactic.
The mistake here is to think you have to fight your political opponent directly. You have to fight to gain popular support.
Yes, of course, but that wide audience needs to be willing to use every tool available to effect change. Non-violent protests simply do not work if the protesters are unwilling to escalate. This is ultimately a shitpost so that nuance is intentionally excluded, but that's the truth of it
That’s ahistorical.
The far left terrorist groups in the 1960s to the 1980s in Europe (Germany: Rote Armee Fraktion, Italy: Brigade Rosse, France: Action Directe) were largely unsuccessful. Meanwhile civil protests and peaceful popular movements were successful at changing society. Their history demonstrates really well how your kind of thinking fails.
To pick a different example: Greenpeace are pretty hands on with their direct action, but don’t directly destroy their targets. They have been very successful overall. Far more than any more violent group.
The IRA in Ireland was unsuccessful for decades until they gave up armed struggle.
There’s always a lot of context to consider. What society does the movement happen in? An open democratic society is different than an authoritarian one. Even an authoritarian government can have limits on how much force they are willing to use to suppress a popular movement. A nationalist independence or freedom movement works differently than one that wants to replace the type of government.
Non-violent protests can be very effective in the form of strikes. A general strike needs wide support among the population, but can force governments to negotiate and compromise.
The movements for revolutionary change in the former Soviet block were largely non violent and successfully toppled an empire and dozens of governments. That’s the biggest historical change in recent history. Of course leftists tend to ignore these.
willingness to escalate
There are many ways to escalate, that don’t involve violence.
There’s also a pretty big scale of violence. Breaking into a building to occupy it, throwing stones at cops, shooting a politician, hijacking an airplane, and blowing up a crowded market are not in the same league.
every tool available
It’s good strategy to purposely and consciously select the tool to use. Using the wrong tool can lead to less popular support, internal division, marginalization, tougher state reactions, etc.
I think you misunderstand what I'm trying to communicate - violence by itself accomplishes less than nothing, but for a peaceful movement, there must be people who support that movement who are willing to use the threat of violence for that movement to succeed. For your own examples, in Ireland, Sein Fein as a political movement would not have liberated Ireland if it wasn't for the threat of continued and escalating violence from the IRA.
Both violence and non-violence must remain on the table as options, or else the non-violent movement can be completely ignored and the activists supporting it will just be oppressed, suppressed and victimized.
For some more examples, the civil rights movement wouldn't have succeeded without the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ+ movement needed the Stonewall Riots.
The role of the non-violent sect of the movement is to disavow the violence of the violent sect, so by all means, continue to disavow the violence, that may be the role you choose to play.
Violence must always be a last resort, but you should recognize that unless others are willing to escalate, then your non-violent movement is doomed to failure.
I'd recommend checking out The Failure of Nonviolence by Peter Genderloos if you're interested in learning more.
That’s often repeated, but not historically true.
Okay, can you give me an example of a movement which was completely non-violent, which had no violent sects or threats of violence, which resulted in a long term change?
Solidarność
I barely know anything about the Polish anti-communist efforts, but I know for a fact that it absolutely did involve violence from both sides. Again, just because one sect is dedicated to non-violence, the larger movement requires the threat of violence to succeed long term.
Also, you kinda prove the point of this post, the Solidarity movement were dedicated anti-violence, but they were brutally repressed by the regime regardless.
Broken link. Alt:
Thank you, fixed!
This whole thread is why I've been enjoying reading Peter Genderloos "Failure of Nonviolence"
If anyone is interested, here's a link to read The Failure of Nonviolence by Peter Genderloos at the Anarchist Library.
I just meow at them, it makes people go crazy meow :3
The problem is that violent revolutions rarely produce anything other than more and worse chaos, and are usually settled by the biggest despot in the room who is often worse than the guy being deposed. The vast majority of actual social progress made in history was due to peaceful, not violent revolution.
I agree, but every non-violent movement needs an underlying threat of the willingness to escalate and ultimately become violent to succeed. We need people who are willing to use violence.
Non-violent resistance is yin, violent resistance is yang. They need to be in balance.
Exactly. There needs to be a stick to accompany the carrot. But if the carrot is refused, then the stick does its job.
Bullshit. Once all the dark tetrad are helping grow sunflowers, there is no one left to take over (that won't end up the same).
You just need a willingness to commit constant, never-ending violence that would make the Nazi camp guards faint.
Keep giving the bad guys CPTSD, the one reason a despot took over after, was that people stopped fighting, believing they had won.
They believed that things will be good because they "earned" it.
No, safeguarding humanity requires eternal vigilance, and the tree of liberty to be constantly watered with the blood of psychopaths.
I disagree with this. Violence always leads to more violence, so it should always be our last option on the table. Remember that those who commit violence will also suffer from PTSD.
We need to be willing to escalate, but also to de-escalate. We need a peaceful revolution which is willing to defend itself. An implicitly violent revolution does not remove the ruling class, it simply replaces the existing ruling class with a different ruling class (e.g. the American Revolution, the USSR). We need to completely abolish the ruling class and prevent them from ever returning.
I love it when someone actually challenges my opinions.
Me too! I figured you probably didn't genuinely hold these viewpoints, but someone reading this thread might, so I appreciate the opportunity to speak directly to those people through you.
I'm open and understand of other's views, but I skew towards horrific revenge that will make it very clear what happens to bad people, once the good ones have enough. This is from experience, knowing that peace brought us nothing, made us look like weak victims for the picking, ensured we have no real resistance.
No, this is the Godzilla threshold. Woe to anyone who has escaped lawful justice!
Though for certain reasons, I am forced to fight economically for now, which is my main plan on Lemmy. Let me show you something: 
Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate that and I understand your position. Your values align closely with mine, but my #1 top value is that no one should have power over anyone else, because most humans are predisposed towards using any power they have to benefit themselves - so if you have someone even with 1% more power than others, they will use that 1% of power to their own benefit, and to grow their own power. Over time, that 1% will grow and grow until we have a situation like we have now, where the ruling class have overwhelming power over the majority.
I totally get the drive for revenge, I'm very sympathetic -- I used to feel the same. What I have come to realize though, is that negative reinforcement isn't very effective at all. We have a whole prison industrial complex which is unbelievably cruel and punishing towards those in its grip, the ultimate tool of revenge against those who have wrong society, and it is completely ineffective in reducing or preventing any crime. Cruelty against those who have wronged us just hardens hearts against our larger goal, the liberation of all living things, because it gets both "sides" stuck in an escalation trap of using escalating levels of violence against the other.
The only way we can fix our broken society is by convincing everyone that using coercive power/violence against others leads to bad outcomes. We need to be willing to use violence (and the threat of violence) because if we do not then our enemies will indeed make us victims, but it must always be the option of last resort.
My approach to this, is self-sufficiency, and community building. I do not want power over others, I want to empower them, while protecting myself. To do this, we still must orchestrate a huge community to push people into positions of self-sufficiency.
Can you explain what you mean by self-sufficiency?
Short on time, but basically, Growing your own food, having your own energy source, the basics like that. Everything that is not "basic" you can just trade for.
This creates a situation where you can't force people to work, as even a little money would be enough to pay off the land tax. garbage bill, etc. That would put massive pressure on corporations, who would have to offer better conditions, as employees could quit whenever they feel like it.
I disagree. Hard data shows that peaceful protest works in a way that violent protest absolutely does not
The moment violence happens, the whole movement loses its credibility and high ground and opens the road to despotic overthrow of the movement. This is why it's so important to guard against the tactic of your enemy installing agitators to discredit your movement and open the door to violent suppression of it.
Let's take a look at the so called "successes" of violent revolutios:
So my assumption of anyone pushing for violent overthrow of the government is that they want a king, a single party totalitarian government, or a military dictatorship. This being Lemmy, the most likely case is that you want to install a communist single party system.
I personally want nothing to do with it.
Disavow the violence all you want, and indeed doing so is very much the role of the non-violent sect of the movement, but you need the threat of violence to succeed, that's just the reality. The Civil Rights movement never would have succeeded without the Black Panthers. The LGBTQ+ movement needed the Stonewall Riots.
Well, I'm sure they'll bury you on your moral high ground while they install countless systems to disenfranchise you and everyone you know. But I'm sure if you just ask them kindly not to do that, it'll all work itself out.
And they'll bury you in the despotic regime your violence creates.
Child, this is not the place for you. Go back to l/memes
What if I just want violence in general there is no end goal? /s