:vote:
If we're thinking of the same people (White Rose), didn't they all die?
Yeah, most of them were publicly executed and the rest imprisoned
In his mind this just makes them better. They died heroically for what they believed in. The fact that they died must be a sign that they did everything they could. (Which they probably did, but it was too late at that point.)
Should have just sent back a link to the Wikipedia article for World War 2.
What kind of nonviolent protest leads to your enemies shooting themselves in the head?
Asking for a comrade.
I guess nonviolent protests do tend to be more effective when the red army is marching in the distance.
Even if you were only talking about the UK/US/AU it's complete bullshit. Battle of Cable Street and other such fights: famously non-violent
When it is a binary that is created its bad. Obviously you need to have power and not seldom that (military power) comes from the barrel of a gun.
It still is true, that non violent struggle can be good, however it is a strategic choice. The methods of Gene Sharp and ON STRATEGIC. NONVIOLENT CONFLICT: THINKING ABOUT. THE FUNDAMENTALS. Robert L. Helvey, make that clear.
That said, commonly those methods were used from liberal angles to reduces the power of actually existing socialist states. Within the USA for example it is much harder.
To circle back to the example of the Rosenstraße Protests your prof mentioned (and wrongly contextualized): this was indeed a non violent protest that achieved for that moment to free over 1500 people who would've been killed from the Gestapo. That doesn't mean it would've ended the Shoa, though.
One thing Helvey makes clear is that you have to look at what power dynamics and pillars of powers your structures and authoritarian government leaders have. This is still correct - even though Marxists will differ in the analysis - for us in my opinion. They suggest to create a wide web of places of power in which people meet each other, trust each other, interact with each other (Helvey suggests to even chose as mundane things as book clubs, postage stamp clubs etc.) which don't have to be overtly political (this way it is harder to crack down on them) and also organize via decentralized groups of that kind.
Furthermore they say you ought to gather information about the structure and power of the enemy, which is the army, the police, the political party, the ruler and its henchmen (who in itself are contradictory), but also the factory owners - also infrastructure e.g. power plants, television stations etc.
Then you are supposed (like the CIA manual for coups and the KGB guide to topple capitalist third world states) to make lists of all the units and what contacts you got in them, how many people are dissatisfied and might refrain from shooting you (without this information any action will be met by unpredictable police force - as BLM noticed and MOVE experienced in 1985 by being bombed) or even join the movement.
Those things can in my opinion be combined with any Marxist strategy - even party building in dual and triple structures.
So true. Gig workers in California made their voices heard just this year!
These are the people who advocated committing vandalism in order to voluntarily go to jail. Cool, I love getting arrested for no reason.
Voluntarily get yourself arrested, and have your name end up on a list of "radicals".
There is no way anything bad could ever come from this.
advocated committing vandalism in order to voluntarily go to jail
that's the opposite of Gandhi/MLK, who strategically broke laws they found unjust. These PMC dorks are literally just Adbusters
You laugh but the plethora of successful nonviolent revolutions is proof enough:
spoiler
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
Either an op or bougie larpers with their heart in the right place but don’t know what they’re up against.
A little bit of an op, a little bit of sincere people, who really want to change things, but since they are a product of their environment, they are afraid of anything remotely violent or confrontational, and have been brought up to believe that violence is bad, debate is king and change is achieved through peaceful protests and voting. I think there should be plenty of people that one can potentially radicalize there.
I think it should be noted, that many groups of XR are locally organized and may have their own politics ranging from lib-light to actual anti-capitalist/communists. I've definitely seen local XR accounts tweeting stuff like "capitalism is the root of our environmental catastrophy and there will be no solution without abolishing it", which is at least at a superficial level better than the pure lib approach.
Th alternative is worse: They're serfs sacrificing themselves so the good feudal lord can rule
no, for the love of god stop being such conspiratorial meatheads. they are privileged, naive idealists who believe the official lines. this should be obvious. im kinda concerned with you guys for trying to establish this line
counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_undercover_policing_relationships_scandal
if you think this kind of thing has magically stopped, you might be the meathead, bub
They do shit like have their members commit vandalism then go turn themselves into the police. Whenever or not it's an out-and-out op the net effect is the same: it halts radical progress and turns its members over to the state.
"Every single member of an organization has to be a direct CIA operative in order for something to count as an op" :very-smart:
every single exhibition of liberal idiocy have to conceal some nefarious motive
I'll keep that in mind in 50 years when the CIA releases a sanitized report that turns to ash the second it is exposed to outdoor air.
we are talking about white anglo liberals who believe non-violence is effective you just to reiterate this complete utter baffoon
do you think capitalists just leave XR alone and hope it continues to do what it's supposed to?
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/05/06/extinction-rebellion-training-or-how-to-control-radical-resistance-from-the-obstructive-left/
There are great nonviolent tactics like striking and shutting stuff down. However, those are always met with violence - and these folks should already know that.
Please be mindful of our proper internet protocols @Nakoichi and refrain from doxxing yourself
Like I realize you can't very well tweet "hi, we're the extinction rebellion and we're distributing AKs outside the Amazon warehouse this Sunday" but like....this is an obvious grift, yah? The fuck do they think a revolution is?
Extinction Rebellion is literally the goofiest and most ineffective organization out there
Like, their combined effort has had the same effect of putting a "global warming" sticker under the Stop of a stop sign
Which someone did at an intersection I drive through sometimes
And yes, it was a branded Extinction Rebellion sticker
If they're not, they're doing a really good job of seeming like it
the vast number of “nonviolent revolutions” that failed
when you don't have materialism and don't understand why the British empire ceded to Gandhi but not Hitler
Isn't that the study where one of the successful non-violent revolutions they used as an example was a campaign to have more bike lanes in New York?
Bike lanes is not a bad cause but it's hardly a revolution.
I don't know what the deal is with some of the people in XR's main organisers, some of them are like this tweet while others are like the founder of Palestine Action who have cost weapons factories in the UK months of productivity hours in downtime by attacking their facilities. There's a real mix of personalities.
In a bizarro world twist Richard Barnard is on trial this week not for Palestine Action activities but for XR activities that were completely harmless.
Anyway are they using a hunger games reference on the XR logo now?
Yeah some of it definitely is. It's difficult... I think there are some genuinely effective people in it that are doing good stuff, but then there's also a lot of utterly useless loser utopians.
I'm not willing to completely condemn their work though because from what I've seen of spin-off orgs they've been absolutely fantastic. I don't think the spin-off orgs would exist without XR, so maybe it's been useful in at least acting as an entry-level form of "direct action" that has brought people together who are willing to perform more radical direct action? Palestine Action in particular attack political offices, shut down factories and do a lot of extremely cool-zone stuff, and they're effective and supported by local populations around those factories who come out to help them when they're shutting the place down.
I think there might be a pipeline here. Get people in at the XR level for activities then harrass them into joining more radical orgs after cutting their teeth. Arguably the hardest thing about doing radical direct action is getting the courage to do the actions you know will lead to the first time you get arrested. Every arrest that happens after the first one is easier.
Among the many problems with libs who pontificate about the moral superiority of non-violence are:
- The assumption that oppressed people have the privilege of deciding whether or not their struggle should be violent. More often than not the violence comes from the bourgeois state who uses its formidable capacity for violence to quell dissent.
- The assumption that the status quo is non-violent and that violence starts once some protester throws a brick. Shilling for imperialist wars, wrecking the planet and getting rich by keeping people in poverty is assumed to be non-violent whereas breaking the window of a McDonald's is assumed to be violent.
Nah, IMO it is mostly based on fear too. If you accept violence exists and is practiced as a matter of course in every human society in order for it to function then you have to accept you either participate in it or suffer from it. And so the easiest way to cope is to pretend there is no violence, if you are not ready to die or kill for what you believe, not because of lack of conviction but simply because of comfort(being a warrior is historically the most short lived occupation).
It is very similar to the problem of evil for religious Christians, accepting the premise means the possibility God isn't good forcing you to make your own moral decision that will naturally inevitably either conform or conflict with your society, again a matter of comfort.
I'm reminded of the BLM protests which were plagued by police violence, reactionary violence, and liberal subversion.
Inevitably, they were criticized as "too violent" while these other gross got a pass.
Fascists are historically known to cede power to whoever asks nice enough :big-cool:
Going to build a mass movement of people who politely line up in orderly fashion for the prison camps, because that is how we win.
