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  • krothotkin [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    I don't like our fetish for violence. The rhetoric here scares me quite a bit. Death and destruction shouldn't be objects of admiration and desire. Having a good faith discussion about when violence is justified is very different than gleefully reveling in the suffering of others.

    There was a post the other day, I don't remember by who, talking about leftist unity that had a tankie and an anarchist in a tank together purging reactionaries. It made me sad. It was like the only mode that we could imagine leftist unity through was a shared impulse to kill.

    • glimmer_twin [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      I don’t think most good faith leftists have a “fetish for violence” I think it’s mostly memeing.

      On the other hand, at some point you have to face the reality that the powers that be aren’t just going to roll over and pass power to the workers. “A revolution is not a dinner party” and all that.

      • grylarski [they/them]
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        4 years ago

        I'm worried that memeing will invite a lot of reactionarises who take this sort of thing seriously and then we'll be no different than the chuds

    • 0xACAB [she/her]
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      4 years ago

      paulo freire would be shaking his head at us tbh (and he would be right)

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Yes, there were some really creepy posts recently, like the one asking for footage of cops getting killed or hurt, with people posting some really hard to watch and scary shit.

      • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        I haven't seen that post but I can understand why people would feel that way after seeing so many videos of cops murdering and brutalizing people and getting away with it.

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          I understand someone who wants to see a cop being punched and humiliated etc. But it's not very healthy at all to watch creepy ass videos of some nutjob gunning down cops who were scared shitless over some license plate ticket or whatever, complete with horrific death sounds, for enjoyment. Some people in that thread creeped me out.

    • Comraragi [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      Having a good faith discussion about when violence is justified is very different than gleefully reveling in the suffering of others.

      That is fair, but IMO people who don't have the stomach for violence will never be part of a revolution and may as well stop pretending like they support one. If your stomach turns because of the Romanovs then your stomach will turn when Bezos and co decides their bank accounts are worth more than their life, and they may have children and spouses and it will be up to them to decide if their life is worth more than their bank accounts.

      For what is worth I think there is a fundamental difference between outright fetishization and "preparation". You can be ready and understand the true cruelties of our society without making a post every 5 minutes whish for a guillotine, nobody needs to see or be reminded of this constantly.

      At the same time, we should accept the world is cruel and justice is relative, remember Marx's quote

      We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.

      • krothotkin [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        I will always reject that quote from Marx as being bad and wrong. Someone who makes no excuses for their terror is a monster, not a revolutionary.

        Killing the Romanov children was an abominable, cruel, and disgusting act. Shooting their family in front of them was an abominable, cruel, and disgusting act. Attempting to do something similar to another contemporary family would be wrong.

        This is not the popular opinion on this board, but it remains my firm conviction.

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          Tbf Marx has other quotes praising the Paris commune for abstaining from unnecessary violence, "unlike bourgeois 'revolutions'". To understand that other quote, you have to first understand that terror didn't really mean the same thing it does now, and also he wrote it as a response to some monarch or whatever he was who shut down the newspaper the communists were publishing and prosecuted them, so it was more like a threat than a general rule.