If the idea of violent protests don't make you at least little scared I wonder how well you know history. At the same time, real change almost never happens without people putting their bodies on the line.
The right understands this far better than your average liberal/moderate. To be a moderate is to trust that existing systems will (mostly) work.
If those systems fail? What then? To even consider this is moderate treason.
It's not a good thing that one side has all the guns.
I saw a photo a few days ago. I think it was titled. "Vermont politics" -- in it a scruffy cheerful white man held a gun and a sign. The sign said something like "Respect my trans daughter and my right to bear arms!" (did anyone else see this?)
Some people were annoyed at the guy for being so into guns. I could only think how glad I was for his daughter that he had one.
@futurebird As someone who had her politically formative years right along the time when Columbine was just everywhere, I think gun control/access is the issue where I and many others needed to re-think things the most (and still need to) after hearing a community-defence perspective, especially from a non-US perspective
@futurebird
I think the hard right in the USA is trying to sucker the left into gun fight. And the fact is, however much the right wing militias have a reputation for being poorly trained, it's much better than no training at all, and far more numerous. If the left takes the right's bait on guns, the left will be wiped out.
@futurebird@llewelly I dunno, every leftist I know is keenly aware that while community self defence is essential, any reciprocal violence, no matter how justified, will be punished by alt right militias AND the state.
So we take up arms, but we are really really really careful in the ways we push back. Public sympathy is still essential, and we depend on the other guys being the greater threat to state power, because there isn't 100% alignment there yet.
@Adorable_Sergal@futurebird@llewelly
i agree, i think the right is trying to sucker the left into helping start their full civil war. and i have heard a few on the left falling for it and casually saying things like ‘this why we need armed revolution’
If that’s where we land i think it’s going to be much worse than a few violent protests.
@MelonKnee@futurebird@llewelly It's a fine balance when one engages in direct action. Movements can and do get mired by ideas of " we need to work through official channels only."
In this case, remember that most everyone doesn't like these dickbags. Regular folk think it's freakish to own 50 guns, and we would be wise to help 'em hang their asses out for the world to see (even if some of us leftists own 50 guns :P)
Do no harm, but take no shit. Keep givin' 'em that rope.
@futurebird My feelings have shifted on this issue as well. With the rise of white supremacists and their ilk, it isn't an abstract concept anymore, it is about defending loved ones and community in real life/time. I doubt I will ever touch a gun, but I can't take a unilateral stance against it.
Guns take about 10 hours to learn at the most basic level. There are more guns than there are people in America.
The reich wing will have an advantage in days, not months in a civil war due to owning and proficiency in firearms. AMERICANS in general are a highly violent and militaristic culture and conservatives forget that liberals played the same video games and saw the same movies they do, they just dont larp ammosexual fantasies
@futurebird where does the udea that firearms make anybody safer come from, besides NRA propaganda. If anything, carrying a firearm allows your antagonist to shoot you with much less legal consequences.
@futurebird You may be assuming that all the guns are in right-wing homes. You discount the number of people far enough left to get the guns back. The big difference is that those folks aren't often carrying those guns in public while screaming about freedom.
@promovicz@futurebird California has 7x Germany's national firearm death rate, despite having about half the US national rate. The very best state is Massachusetts, with a mere 3x Germany's rate.
Does any Bundesland get as bad as a good US state?
@futurebird Wasn't MLK all about non-violent protest, which changed the world in a good way? Weren't the the other violent revolutions really bad for lots of people? I seem to remember the French revolution ending badly for all involved. Maybe I'm missing the joke.
@your_huckleberry@futurebird
The French revolution ended badly for a lot of people, but it's hard to make the case that keeping the French aristocracy and absolute monarchy in place would have gone well for the vast majority of the population.
The status quo was already violent
You can't only look at the violence of change and ignore the violence of denying change.
@your_huckleberry@futurebird What I'd guess the cartoonist's thought was, is although MLK had strong ideological commitment to nonviolence, he and his methods were not considered nonviolent by the targets of his protests at the time. Mattie's cartoon is from 2015, and the BLM protests then were similarly denounced as violent regardless of how peaceful they were… The point is probs to emphasize no level of politeness is ever enough for bad faith observers.
@mcc@your_huckleberry@futurebird King refused to share a stage with the Panthers, because they advocated for violence in defense. Baldwin did not, which drove a wedge between them. Baldwin's take was, "I also disapprove of this. . . . But I get it."
@mcc@your_huckleberry@futurebird As for the cartoon, well, pure bullshit. King's followers never did anything like what their opposition did. Nothing like it. Not ever.
@GeePawHill@your_huckleberry@futurebird "what their opposition did" Well, but there's an interesting point, re: MLK's inclusion in Mattie's original comic. Even with MLK being as committed to nonviolence as he was, the scene in the comic is still absurd and couldn't have happened. Because Wallace was not committed to nonviolence, civility, or anything other than winning. Nonviolence can work, but when it's put into practice it doesn't look the way civility concern trolls claim to want it to.
@mcc@your_huckleberry@futurebird The right wing agitators, privilege apologists and Nazis try to paint any protest, even looting and graffiti, as violence. Unless done by the Nazis themselves. And cops killing civilians isn't. Hypocrisy is the point.
Can I just say that the cartoon you linked gave me a brief moment of hopeful joy that, somewhere in the multiverse, there's the slimmest chance all or one of these things happened in our history, and just....
It also makes me feel bad, because realistically speaking that's only feeling joy at those systems ending, when the ideal would have been a world where they never happened to begin with.
I really wish we didn't live in the shitstain of a world we do. I hope we learn better.
I don't agree with Dr. King being included in this comic. Yes, he and his supporters put their bodies on the line, but they used nonviolent resistance tactics.
Regardless, speaking as a Black trans US-American, I am opposed to anyone using firearms for any reason.
@funcrunch@futurebird I think (not trying to speak for @futurebird ) that the comic is making the point that violence was involved not that Dr King was actually violent. Dr King definitely used the images of violence that black people suffered while demanding equality and justice. That violence (and the protestors choice not to return it) was a a tool
Agreed - but in the context of this post, it might appear to the uninformed that King actually used and promoted violent tactics himself. Regardless, it's true that he was considered radical and dangerous at the time, hence the violence against him and his followers.
King was accused of inciting violence, through his civil disobedience being pretty much as bad as "violent" reading contemporary news accounts is eye opening.
The idea the King was remarkable & successful because he was "non violent" is a modern retcon.
If a few people do something violent at a protest planned to be a peaceful is it a "violent protest?"
It depends on if it's news from last week's of BLM ... or an attempt to shoehorn King into the US history template.
@futurebird
"an attempt to shoehorn King into the US history template"
There's a pathology in American history where struggles against the US State are metabolized into its own history. There are people out there who will refer to Tecumseh as an American hero even though he literally fought a war against them. Similar reasons to why so many people claim to love MLK without ever being willing to accept more than a few sentences of what he said.
@futurebird@funcrunch@griotspeak I'd always heard and believed this, but seeing it in action (how hard police went to try to incite violence at peaceful protests) in the 2020 BLM protests was eye-opening. I'd seen mistreatment of protestors and misrepresentation of protests before, but nothing on that scale.
@futurebird
What about leftists? We fight the system to disarm these fools.
May we go down in history as people who triumphed us. Those who said we're insane, impractical, and buried us alongside the freedmen in the Great Betrayal.
@futurebird
"The price for extending democracy in U.S. history has always been political instability... because demand for equality and social justice are inherently destabilizing to an order traditionally based on white Christian patriarchal authority... Moments of racial and social progress... have always been conflictual, have always led to a reactionary counter-mobilization that threatened to abolish democracy rather than accept multiracial pluralism..."
-- Historian @tzimmer_history
@futurebird
I think the Left understands violence is the final say in resolving bitter disagreements better than the Right in American politics. One side wants to avoid it more then the other, and that side knows the costs.
Ideology can lead to demagoguery, that is where reason breaks down, as it has on the Right.
@futurebird People are forgetting that there aren't just 2 options when it comes to gun possession,in my opinion it comes down to this:
revolutionary leftists should seek to arm your communities, not via individual ownership but through cooperative armories. A specific individual owning a firearm is no good if the community as a whole is not armed.
Your wielding of a weapon DOEST NOT have to be mandated by law because as soon as it becomes a threat to the state they will outlaw your possesion.
@futurebird
Agreed. It's worth tacking on here for the uninitiated that MLK's non-violent civil disobedience was intentionally disruptive and involved putting people's bodies on the line. (Sure as hell wouldn't have worked in Haiti, though.)
Re: "real change almost never happens without people putting their bodies on the line."
Reminds me of the last words of Sophie Scholl before she was executed by the Nazis:
"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause... It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go."
@futurebird The idea of violent protests scares me mostly via being terrified of applying my ignorance and fucking things up for (or at least embarrassing/ annoying) people with more experience & awareness than I do.
@futurebird
It is worrying what we need to sacrifice & when, to counter the right.
Despite their noise & vigour they're a fairly small % of our society, 'we' outnumber them. Yet we're without the heart for physical confrontation, which we see as weakness.
In the 70s, British National Front was trying to be ascendent & The ANL & others met them on the streets.
Whose bodies does the right imagine putting on the line? At the moment, it seems to be trans people, PoC, and pregnant teenage girls, but not really their own?
@futurebird
I have an EX boyfriend who told me (after he was already my ex) that the way MLK, Jesus, and Gandhi (itself a fascinating list) would solve racism and other bigotry today is sit down and talk to the racists and just show them that racism is bad. In his eyes I was so hateful because I was mean to racists.
I was like...um... Let's set aside the biblical character for a second, but uh... What exactly is it you think those other two even DID?
@futurebird I don't know if things are going to get to the point that violence against the government is the only way to restore civil society; I hope not.
I do know that we long ago passed the point where millions of people should have been marching in the streets and shutting the country down. Like in France and Israel, to name two recent examples. Unfortunately, instead we have bread and circuses.
@futurebird people who lack ambivalence about political violence seem to think “the only thing we have to lose is our chains” but like if you look at stonewall that’s just plainly not true! Many people lost everything! Marsha Johnson was assassinated* by the NYPD (*allegedly) and this story repeats over and over. The only people who didn’t suffer for the rights gained at stonewall or in the civil rights movement were affluent straight white people!
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