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[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 64 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There are entire Game Theory textbooks dedicated to grappling with the question of when and how one engages in violence. Because broadly speaking, violence is bad. The destructive social forces inhibit socio-economic development, degrade global quality of life, propagate disease, and cause catastrophic shortfalls of critical goods and services.

Whether you're working at the micro-scale of domestic abuse or the macro-scale of the bombing of Hiroshima, you're talking about a gross net negative for everyone involved.

But if a detente is one-sided, or a violent actor is free to act uninhibited, there are huge immediate rewards for looting and pillaging your neighbors, pressing ganging people into forced labor, and seizing neighboring property at gunpoint. It works great for perpetrators who engage in violence unchecked. Its only a problem when the perpetrator runs into a countervailing force.

But then over the long term, the violence takes an increasing toll. People don't build in neighborhoods that they think will be bombed. They don't invest in communities that are fracturing and falling apart. They don't befriend people they feel they can't trust or work alongside people they're terrified of.

Go look at Yugoslavia before and after the wars of the 1990s. Huge unified economy capable of operating on par with France or Italy, only to be splintered by violence and reduced to a near-pre-industrial state for over a decade. Who won the Yugoslav Wars? Who benefited from Bosnians and Serbians and Albanians and Croats pounding their plowshares into swords and slaughtering one another?

People talk about a "Peace Dividend" and you can see it in any country that's avoided a protracted military conflict for a generation or more. You can't be a successful country if you're always trying to hold one another at gunpoint.

[-] nooneescapesthelaw@mander.xyz 3 points 1 day ago

The US is a successful country and has almost always been at war.

Britain at its peak was holding 10s of countries at gunpoint.

Violence works best if you are much much stronger than the other party.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The US is a successful country and has almost always been at war.

The areas of the US that are most successful are those most insulated from social conflict. Areas that are subjected to state violence through overpolicing or are left to flounder in the face of industrial abuse, mafia violence, or unchecked domestic violence do much worse. Comparing Ferguson, MO to neighboring St. Louis illustrates this dynamic. One neighborhood is alternately brutalized by the city police and left exposed to domestic crime, dragging its socio-economic state into the gutter. The other is judiciously policed and socially supported by state and private largess, resulting in a far healthier and happier population.

Britain at its peak was holding 10s of countries at gunpoint.

And those countries suffered immensely. Meanwhile, Britain itself endured pockets of chronic crime and substance abuse specifically in areas that hosted military bases and other enclaves. The country saw an explosion in wealth inequality during its economic peak with the new wealth almost entirely accruing to the aristocracy. Victorian England was a hellhole for the Dickensian proletariat.

[-] Fredthefishlord 1 points 1 day ago

Areas that are subjected to state violence through overpolicing

Chicken, egg

Both of those are just chicken, egg

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Chicken, egg

The police trace their roots to military officers, cattle rustlers, and plantation overseers.

The conception of police-as-civil-servant intent on discouraging violence rather than initiating it is a relatively new one.

[-] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 13 points 2 days ago

I really like your comment. Gave me lots to think about. I don't have much to say in return, other than that, and that your comment is really well written. I don't find many comments on here that are a pleasure to read; most long ones are incoherent rambling, or canned talking points.

Thanks for providing something for my brain to chew on and making it palatable.

[-] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 7 points 3 days ago

Very wise, you should reincarnate as a 2nd century Chinese warlord

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

China's a great example of the Peace Dividend in action. You get a generation or two of peace and the country explodes with riches - both physical infrastructure and flowering culture.

Then warlords start poaching the wealth of the nation and the country plunges down into poverty, famine, and epidemic, immolating decades of social process.

After the burn out, you get a peaceful renaissance, and the country flowers again like a forest after a wildfire.

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 16 points 2 days ago

The answer is obviously codifying the position of power that violence granted you in a set of laws, hoping they won't be challenged by further violence

[-] N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com 192 points 3 days ago

Peaceful protests were meant to be a compromise to warn that something worse was coming. Black Panthers. Weather Underground. IRA and Sinn Fein.

Effective peaceful movements had potentially violent components. The more radical elements disappeared and peaceful protests became useless.

Unions were a compromise. Before unions, you’d drag the factory owner into his front lawn and exact justice.

[-] random_character_a@lemmy.world 60 points 3 days ago

I think this guy hit the nail in the head.

Peaceful protest only works if politicians and financial elite has fear and/or respect towards the commond man/woman. Too much elitisms strips away the respect, too many years of peaceful protests takes away the fear. Sometimes ivory towers need to come down, but violence has a tendency to spread and spiral out of control. It's a balance trick.

[-] JayDee@lemmy.world 29 points 3 days ago

Nelson Mandela was released on the terms that he would preach peaceful protest, as the movement he had formerly been leading was a serious threat to the South African Government.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was a proponent of peaceful protest, though it could be argued he was losing faith in it near the end when he was assassinated. right after his death, the Holy Week Uprisings occurred, which saw immediate action from the federal government to pass the Civil Rights Act.

At the same time, acts of violence lie on a spectrum, and I think there is a fair amount of conversation to be had about what degree of violence and what type of violence are most effective.

[-] skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 days ago

Martin Luther King Jr was able to succeed with his peaceful protests because the threat of Malcolm X was looming directly over his shoulder. One requires the other. Either of them alone would not have made nearly the progress they did.

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[-] Odd_so_Star_so_Odd@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yea only under the threat of violence has power ever changed hands. You need both peaceful and violent components to any movement to make any change last though.

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[-] PineRune@lemmy.world 100 points 3 days ago

"Violence is not the answer" says country that won its place in the world through violence.

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[-] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 40 points 3 days ago
[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 38 points 3 days ago

To quote the onion, violence is never the answer, if you ignore all of human history.

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 114 points 3 days ago

The people saying "Violence isn't the answer" are the people who don't want to see anything change

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[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 22 points 3 days ago
  1. Whenever violence is involved, either both sides are violent, or violence wins.

  2. When neither side is violent, violence is not the answer.

  3. Now both sides look at #1 and ponder if the other side is ready to be violent.

[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

I think killing people through apathetic business practices that are specifically designed to maximize profit over human life is not just murder, it's genocide.

I also believe that a justice system that is curtailing law for the wealthy based on some sense of increased personal worth compared to that of a "lowly commoner" goes against the fabric of our nation and is a personal attack against the culture of our country. I also believe that anyone lending support to these traitors are themselves traitorous filth that deserves to be imprisoned in a public gallows to send a message that that behavior will no longer be tolerated.

short answer though, yes violence begets violence.

[-] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 days ago

It’s murder for profit, don’t dilute the term genocide. The last thing we need is people calling everything genocide and making the literal genocide in Gaza seem more normal.

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[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension

a political policy wherein violent struggle is encouraged rather than suppressed. The purpose is to create a general feeling of insecurity in the population and make people seek security in a strong government.

🤔

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 57 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)
[-] A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 1 points 1 day ago

We overthrown Pinochet with music and in the polls and since then most of our problems have been resolved in the polls too.

Democracy is the answer.

[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 23 points 3 days ago

Violence is not the answer.

Violence is more of a question.

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[-] DragonsInARoom@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago

The answer is violence, but to advocate for peace in principle.

[-] Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

Peace and principle... or else

[-] Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 35 points 3 days ago

A notable uptick in web queries for "guillotine for sale" is not a DDoS.

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[-] gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 32 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There's a lot of evidence that says that non-violent resistance is more often effective, and when it is effective it's more effective, than violent-based resistance.

Can't grab the source info link at the moment, but this video talks about it.

https://youtu.be/5Dk3hUNOMVk

Edit:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780231156820

https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/about/civil-resistance/

[-] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 32 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

non-violent resistance is more often effective

It's only ever effective when a credible violent alternative is present.

No oppressed person in history has ever gotten their rights by appealing to the better nature of their oppressor.

Civil rights weren't won when black people asked politely and just moving everyone's hearts at how unjustly they were being treated, when MLK died, he had a 75% disapproval rating. Civil rights were won through repeated demonstrations of power and showing what would happen if their demands weren't met.

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[-] Not_mikey@slrpnk.net 14 points 3 days ago

A few questions for the study:

  1. What's the data source? If they're just doing news reports and traditional history that can hide a lot of failed non-violent protests. A non violent protest, especially one against the medias interests, is way less likely to show up in the historical record then a violent insurrection. Only the successful movements like the civil rights movement will get mentioned on the non-violent side whereas every insurrection or riot, successful or not, is captured in the historical record.

  2. What's the breakdown by method? It seems they're including strikes in this which has a very high success rate and high occurrence, so much so it could drown out all the failed protests.

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[-] 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 days ago

I thought we were supposed to learn from history and NOT repeat it.

[-] ignotum@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

Learn from history and do it better this time

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[-] Hudomi@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

Violence is not the answer. It is the question, and the answer is YES

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 3 days ago

Pacifism is only good for aggressors and cowards

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[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

Predictably, people are arguing if violence can be an answer. But the best rule of thumb is "speak softly, but carry a big stick". If peaceful demonstration and diplomacy ran its course, then violence is the only path forward. I mean, the abolition of slavery in the United States could never be done by peaceful means (unlike what UK had done) so war was the only way.

[-] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

It’s a double edged sword, because people who you don’t agree with will resort to violence as well. Like the Taliban.

[-] BackBreaker909@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 days ago

Everyone knows violence isn't the answer....its the question. And the answer is yes!

[-] yournamehere@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

fall of the berlin wall...not a single shot was fired.

this sounds like a genZ meme

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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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