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[-] Jordan_U@lemmy.ml 107 points 1 year ago

ITT:

Everyone thinking that the only two options are being quiet or being violent.

Strikes are currently making those in power very uncomfortable, and are resulting in genuine progress for workers.

In my area, people camping out in thousand year old trees has protected them time and again from being illegally logged.

Black Lives Matter protests were loud and made the powerful uncomfortable, and despite media narratives it wasn't "violent protesters" that made the powerful uncomfortable.

It is true that any form of protest that is loud and inconveniencing enough to actually be productive will be met with state violence.

It's also true that some working for progress do use violence. But make no mistake, it's not guns that made those in power uncomfortable when it came to Malcom X and the Black Panthers.

The most radical and intimidating (to those in power) things the Black Panthers did were to give free food to schoolchildren, and free healthcare at their People’s Free Medical Clinics.

Building community and mutual aid is subversive.

Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.

[-] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 35 points 1 year ago

Building community and mutual aid is subversive.

This. Both the government and the major corporations depend on being able to extract wealth from real people getting what they need. If we build dual power structures, help one another out and cut the owner class out of the transaction entirely, we weaken them. Growing food in your garden is revolutionary. Clothing swaps are revolutionary. Cutting the old lady next door's lawn, then eating the soup she made is an act that strikes at the fundamental underpinnings of the power structure set up by those who think that they should be entitled to our labor because they've been arbitrarily designated as the "owners" of things. We can and should remove them from the equation entirely.

[-] Cookiesandcreamclouds@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

If you wrote a book I'd read it.

[-] Cookiesandcreamclouds@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Why wasn't I taught about the free food and medical care part of what they did?

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

You were quietly taught that armed black people were scary. That’s what they wanted you to remember, not what they armed themselves for.

Ugh.. this just makes me feel all sorts of awful. I struggle to find the exact words.

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[-] shiveyarbles@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

Socialism bad! Sending people to die in wars good!

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 year ago

The entirety of history also shows that a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.

So, still feeling up for it?

[-] MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com 30 points 1 year ago

That is the question:

live in an unjust and amoral society

or die trying to make a righteous one.

The stoics, at least Seneca, opted for the former.

[-] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

or die trying to make a righteous one.

. . . and realize that your new, righteous society will quickly collapse into corruption and amorality because a society is filled with people.

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[-] Promethiel@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Far more people than you seem to think so are feeling up to it, risk of bodily harm nonwithstanding. That same history shows that whole lots of people do and have gotten that fed up.

The current challenge imo is the hyperfocused and extremely well funded tools to disorganize and fracture populaces globally.

They are so abstract, so psychologically targeted and so pervasive that they enable the rise of fascism again even though many of the players are frankly cartoonishly inept (more so than in the past; fascism is cunning and bullish, but seldom clever) to the point that the banality of evil of yesterday is nearly preferable to the bumbling cruelty of today.

Yes, still feeling up to it, but while the precipice nears, there's still both time to turn the car around and get ready to violently brake. We're just careful drivers until there's a need to maneuver.

[-] Zehzin@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Joke's on you, I already wish I was dead

[-] Uranium3006@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

They're gonna kill me if I don't

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

When doing nothing becomes so intolerable and the potential gain is high enough to make the risk of death is worth taking then the answer becomes "yes". That's why people don't take extreme actions easily.

Putting it another way, if enough people are willing to take big risks, then the status quo must be pretty damned awful in their view.

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[-] pigup@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

Squeaky wheel gets the grease

[-] Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Exactly. The louder and more obnoxious you are, particularly towards those in power, the more likely they are to actually listen, even if just to get you to fuck off

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[-] lobut@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 year ago

Reasonableness is for the status quo.

[-] Cookiesandcreamclouds@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

People didn't get their rights asking for them nicely.

[-] schwim@reddthat.com 16 points 1 year ago

Tweeting your fury is a great example of forcing change.

[-] irmoz@reddthat.com 46 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Eating breakfast won't force change

Brushing your teeth won't, either

Nor will telling your mother you love her

Being an anarchist doesn't mean every action you do has to be praxis

[-] schwim@reddthat.com 10 points 1 year ago

I'm sure you're right and OP is out there wreaking havoc on the system.

[-] irmoz@reddthat.com 15 points 1 year ago

Did I say they were? I'm just saying you know literally one thing about them. You have zero evidence to prove anything else other than they made a comment here.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Says the lemmy comment.

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[-] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

It's amazing how a perspective can change when one's head is rolling around on the cobblestone.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

Look at the US, they begged England for representation. Even after they gave an ultimatum they begged to stay but it didn’t work and they had a war that France won

[-] Peaty@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago

It depends on the kind of change you are attempting to make. Revolutionary changes aren't going to be accomplished without someone getting hurt, but if you are trying to change the name of your town from Lincolnville to Frankville that likely won't require injury.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

There's a reason people on the left who actually bother actually learning a bit of history become Marxists.

[-] VantaBrandon@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Its time to sharpen the guillotines

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[-] oroboros@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Very effective gaslighting by those in power.

[-] casmael@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

This reminds me of the Douglas Adams thing from ‘last chance to see’

[-] WiLiV@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

So the solution is to rear a generation of children who believe violence, riots, revolutions, and coup-d'etat is the solution for social change? Because the big problem you are glossing over is that these changes throughout history essentially all involved violence to some degree.

[-] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Small progress over time happens through peaceful protest, canvassing, voting, and generally making your voice heard.

But you can't vote your way out of authoritarianism. You can't vote away a broken system that incentivizes those in power to keep it broken. That change has to come with grand action and all at once.

[-] WiLiV@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

What "grand action" do you suppose is appropriate in this scenario? I seem to recall some people taking a grand action on January 6, 2021 also. What separates them from you, besides their radically different ideology?

That's not the right way.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

You know what? They were misguided and wrong, but at least the Jan 6th wankers did something. Now there are politicians who are afraid to do their jobs because the same sort of people threaten them.

What has "being better" done for anyone?

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[-] Specal@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Here in the UK they are slowly but surely banning protesting, peaceful and non peaceful. Take away peaceful protesting there only is one way. Like it or not, they don't want to hear you or your voice, they just want you to rot and die.

[-] OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What separates them from you, besides their radically different ideology?

I hear this in an obnoxious German accent with a nazi being shot by a red army soldier in the background

[-] Perfide@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago

They're not glossing over it, nor is it a "big problem"; that's the whole entire point of the tweet. You can't defeat tyranny 100% non-violently, period.

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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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