Cripple. History Major. Irritable and in constant pain. Vaguely Left-Wing.
- 17 Posts
- 62 Comments
Nobody is out there crowing about the superiority of Iran. Or how Iran is sooooooo great.
There are people in this very thread crowing about just that, though.
A parade is the same as murdering protesters?
For Christ’s sake, at least use something from troops being deployed to LA, not a goddamn parade.
I’d lick Jenny’s boots
Israel has nuclear weapons. Getting wiped out isn’t on the table anymore.
Oh wow, you are right, your title does say those things, and I have now seen the light and throw away my means of defending myself in the face of fascism, since we only “sometimes” need weapons to protect ourselves from blatant fascism according to your holy words.
“You sometimes need violence.”
“Clearly you’re telling me to throw away our weapons!”
Christ.
There, I acknowledged your title, now return to your centrism and fence sitting. The adults are working on dealing with actual issues.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The delusion that discomfort leads to political revolution is not backed up by reality.
“There were violent acts previously” does not refute “These groups achieved success with moral persuasion”
Fuck’s sake, you’re connecting Gandhi’s success with the American Revolution, MLK Jr. with the Civil War, and the fall of the Soviet Union with every major war it was involved in throughout the Cold War.
Mandela led the ANC, hardly a peaceful movement. Heard of necklacing?
I’m so glad you know nothing about Mandela’s leadership.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union came paired with a shelling of parliament.
Do you not understand what the attempted coup was for, or who it was by? Hardliners trying to keep the Soviet Union together.
Jesus Christ. Utter tankie delusion.
The ousting of Pinochet involved assassination attempts on Pinochet.
Oh, is that what led to the referendum? A head of state having what every major head of state has to deal with?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Mentioning Ghandi and pretending the uprising of 1857, which inspired and propelled forward the movement for independence (including Ghandi), never happened is deeply dishonest, and disrespectful to those who gave their lives for the cause.
…
MLK jr., much like Ghandi, was paired with violent methods as well. Ignoring their contributions is ahistorical.
And ignoring the contributions of the moral persuasion that MLK Jr. pursued, instead pretending like some edgelord fascist that only violence creates change, is ahistorical.
The difference is that I don’t deny that violence creates change. I only pointed out that moral persuasion can too.
I’m assuming you’re using “etc etc etc” (etc) to mean “I can’t think of any other examples, erroneous or otherwise”, so I’ll do the same:
I’m sorry, how many examples do you want before the principle is established?
Oh, what am I saying? It would always need to be just one more, because what you’re interested in its validating your own bizarre red fascist worldview, not reality.
The problem here is that you are positioning this as if what we are dealing with today is the same as what those people dealt with in their day, and it is not.
Me: “People have, in the past, acquired rights by moral persuasion, even though violence is also a valid and useful tool in pursuit of the same.”
Speaking of reading, read a little something from one of my favorite authors: “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.
Holy fucking shit, have you still not read the fucking title I posted?
It’s almost like violence and persuasion are BOTH tools with applications in fighting oppression, rather than picking one or the other as The One True Faith™? 🤯
Nonviolent means are not physically violent towards people - it works because of violence all the same though
Nonviolent means can (and often do) work when oriented towards pressuring a population. That’s not a reason to discount the value of nonviolent means oriented towards moral persuasion. That’s all I’m saying.
There’s always violence. It can be implied, it can be against yourself, it can be against property, it can be against the feeling of normalcy itself - but there’s always some kind of violence. Because ultimately, violence is asserting your will over others, and that’s what a movement does
Is persuasion, then, violence as well?
That doesn’t really refute the point, at all?
Manichean as in dualistic, black-and-white thinking.
It wasn’t the moral persuasion of Mandela that ended Apartheid though.
It was the moral persuasion of Mandela that ended apartheid in South Africa as we would recognize it. It’s not a fringe opinion that without Mandela’s leadership, South Africa had a very good chance of descending into civil war instead of a multiparty democracy.
It was a sustained isolation and economic boycott combined with mass action, that the state would consider violent, like breaking the barrier and occupy places, which led to massacres like the Bisho massacre that subsequentlty increased pressure for negotiations, because people were absolutely not going to stay put with being massacred.
… the Bisho massacre was performed by the security troops of a Black-dominated Bantustan attempting to resist reintegration into the central government (though at the demand of the ANC), not by the white-dominated central government.
While the massacre did increase pressure for negotiations, it did so because parties wished reduce the risk of violence escalating into a civil war, with Mandela greatly reducing the ANC’s demands in the massacre’s wake and restarting negotiations with the government, not because the massacre improved the position of the oppressed by stoking passions.
I feel like the story of the end of Apartheid South Africa is told in a very whitewashed version to undermine the importance of direct mass action, including responding to government violence by fighting back.
Responding to government violence by fighting back is important. But it is also important to recognize that Mandela’s work in prison and after his release was largely oriented around moral persuasion as an alternative to violence - not because violence was completely off the table if things went sour, but because he did consider moral persuasion as having a greater capacity to achieve the goals of the ANC. And his work after his release from prison is one of the most stunning examples of what genuine appeals to the moral sense of a population - even one as steeped in racism as white Afrikaaners under the apartheid regime - are capable of doing.
Mandela wasn’t some mythical figure that came and solved things by the mgaic of his words. It was the blood, sweat and tears of millions of people in South Africa and beyond that brought an end to Apartheid and it was not in the terms of what the state defines as “peaceful”.
Downplaying Mandela’s very significant contribution and leadership are not really a good alternative. Apartheid was going to end, sure - but there was no guarantee that South Africa wouldn’t end with it.
Iran, is the heart of resistance against the Evil Empire
Jesus fucking Christ.
MLK, Mandela and Gandhi got results, not because they appealed to morals, but because they were alternatives to violent uprisings.
What alternative method did they present, again?
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was a violent coup and completely destroyed the lives of millions of people, it’s probably the most destructive event in the history of humanity apart from wars and the Holocaust
Jesus fucking Christ.
Yes, this is certainly true. Like I said, violence and persuasion are BOTH tools. Sometimes you need more of one, and sometimes you need more of the other.
Based