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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 removed” 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.
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.
Broken link. Alt:
Thank you, fixed!
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.
Yet 20 million Chinese had to die to achieve that life expectancy.
Are you blaming the deaths from Imperial Japan’s invasion and genocide on China?
Or are you referring to the failure of the Great Leap Forward? You can see the latter on the graph, it’s the one time the growth in life expectancy briefly paused before continuing its overwhelmingly upward trend
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.
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.
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:
- The French Revolution (1789–1799)
- Target: The Ancien Régime, an absolute monarchy under King Louis XVI.
- Result: The instability eventually led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who established a military dictatorship and later declared himself Emperor.
- The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804)
- Target: French colonial rule and the institution of slavery.
- Result: A military state led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who declared himself Emperor for life. The new regime faced extreme economic isolation and was forced to pay massive reparations to France, which crippled its development for generations.
- The Russian Revolution (1917)
- Target: The Tsarist Autocracy (House of Romanov).
- Result: Communist State: The creation of the Soviet Union (USSR). A single-party, totalitarian state that was characterized by extreme political repression and state-controlled social life.
- The Cuban Revolution (1953–1959)
- Target: The military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
- Result: Socialist Republic: Cuba transitioned into a one-party totalitarian Marxist-Leninist state ruled by the Castro family for 60 years.
- The Iranian Revolution (1979)
- Target: The pro-Western monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
- Result: Islamic Theocracy: The establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
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.
The new regime faced extreme economic isolation and was forced to pay massive reparations to France, which crippled its development for generations.
“Faced” “was forced to” why the passive language? Yes, France indefensibly forced Haiti to pay reparations for Haitians “stealing their property” (freeing themselves from slavery), a debt which it still, unbelievably, upholds.
I’m not sure how it’s discrediting for a revolution to be crushed by an overwhelmingly powerful outside source. It kinda seems like you’re just trying to intimidate people into falling in line at that point.
Of course, we should also look at what happens to peaceful reformers who achieve some degree of success at decolonization. Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, for example, is the perfect example of the approach people like you advocate. Peaceful, democratically elected, didn’t crackdown on anyone’s rights. Guess what happened? He faced, as you put it, “economic isolation” as the British blockaded them in retaliation for exerting control over his own country’s oil. Then he was overthrown by the CIA. Shit like that is exactly why anybody with any sense who gets in a position like that does the sort of thing that makes you denounce them as “totalitarian.”
Convenient, isn’t it? The peaceful people who oppose colonialism get quietly deposed or exterminated, while the violent ones get condemned and economically isolated. Almost as if you don’t want anything to change at all.
Result: Communist State: The creation of the Soviet Union (USSR). A single-party, totalitarian state that was characterized by extreme political repression and state-controlled social life.
Result: Socialist Republic: Cuba transitioned into a one-party totalitarian Marxist-Leninist state ruled by the Castro family for 60 years.
Both of which were clearly and unambiguously better than the states that preceded them.
My point in the Haiti point is that you ended up with an Emperor for life, as in all the other cases where you ended up with kings or single party systems. And yes, I can accept that from the very poor starting points of many of these countries, maybe the shakeup at least loosened something that could have opened up improvements in the next century or something. They certainly didn’t produce immediate benefit.
But the USA is not at that kind of starting point yet. They still have an (admittedly flawed and likely compromised) democracy with a strong economy and still very high living standards, even if they aren’t evenly distributed. They do still have some checks and balances and rule of law that has not yet been subverted. Moving from this to a full autocracy, single party system, theocracy, military state or monarchy would not be a step up by any stretch of the imagination. It would be a disaster that would take decades if not a century or more to recover from.
So yes, sometimes things get so bad that you really can just toss it all out and probably not lose much, but that’s not the case in really any western democracy. In most cases today all you’d get is something worse than what you already have.
As for peaceful revolutions, there are tons of examples, all creating far more prosperous democracies than the regimes they replaced, more or less from day one. I have an emotional place in my heart for this kind of revolution as I live in the first country listed and know the benefit we still get from that peaceful revolution today.
1. The Velvet Revolution (Czechoslovakia, 1989)
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Over just 41 days, a student-led movement brought down the Communist government without a single shot being fired.
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Outcome: A peaceful transition to a democratic parliamentary republic and the election of Havel as President, and massive improvements in living standards.
2. The People Power Revolution (Philippines, 1986)
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Also known as the EDSA Revolution, this movement ended the 20-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
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Outcome: The military eventually refused to fire on the crowds, leading Marcos to flee to Hawaii and the installation of Corazon Aquino as President of a democratic nation which grew and improved living standards for decades to come.
3. The Singing Revolution (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, 1987–1991)
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The Baltic states achieved independence from the Soviet Union through a massive cultural and non-violent uprising centered on national identity and song.
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Outcome: Despite Soviet military intimidation, the three nations successfully restored their independence by 1991 and are now democratic members of the EU and NATO with vastly better living conditions than under Soviet rule.
4. The Peaceful Revolution (East Germany, 1989)
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This movement led to the most iconic symbol of the Cold War’s end: the fall of the Berlin Wall, doing away with the communist party rule in East Germany.
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Outcome: The opening of the borders and the eventual reunification of Germany in 1990 as a single democratic and progressive nation which grew it’s living standards in great strides in the coming decades.
5. South Africa’s Transition from Apartheid (1990–1994)
- Outcome: The establishment of a democratic and united “Rainbow Nation” and one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.
It’s funny to me how most of your examples involved the USSR peacefully ceding power. If you’re up against someone with a conscience, sure.
I don’t deny that peaceful movements can be effective (especially when backed with an implicit threat of force). I do deny that they are consistently effective, as proven by Mossadegh and countless similar stories around the world. From The Jakarta Method:
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: Who was right?
In Guatemala, was it Arbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the d’etente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.
That group was annihilated.
Peaceful movements that challenge Western economic interests in regions remote enough for the Western public to not care get massacred. Meanwhile, violent revolutions have provided massive increases in quality of life in many countries, including China, Vietnam, and Cuba. If you want to argue that peaceful methods are more likely to be successful within the imperial core that’s one thing, but if you want to lay it down as though it’s some universal law that violence never works, I’m going to call that out as absurd.
I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me that the government system that oversaw the Holomodor was one with a conscience? As someone who lives in a former Soviet satellite state, I can ensure you they didn’t do this out of the kindness of their hearts, they did it because they collapsed under their own incompetence. And if Cuba is the standard you have for quality of life, I feel sorry for you.
they did it because they collapsed under their own incompetence.
Huh, and here I thought they did it because peaceful protests were just so darn effective.
And if Cuba is the standard you have for quality of life, I feel sorry for you.
First off, Cuba’s quality of life is greatly impacted by the US embargo. Secondly, even with the embargo Cuba’s quality of life greatly improved compared to what it had before. If the standard you have for quality of life is the Batista gangster state, I feel sorry for you.
Funny how you chauvanists always try to compare the quality of life in former colonies to that of the imperial core as if it’s some kind of point in your favor. If you do an actually fair comparison by looking at what came before, Castro was a massive improvement over Batista, the PRC was a massive improvement over the ROC, and the USSR was a massive improvement over the tsar.
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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
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.
Exactly. There needs to be a stick to accompany the carrot. But if the carrot is refused, then the stick does its job.
What if I just want violence in general there is no end goal? /s
