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To quote the onion, violence is never the answer, if you ignore all of human history.
I thought we were supposed to learn from history and NOT repeat it.
Learn from history and do it better this time
yeah, and although sometimes violence is required sometimes, its best we avoid that.
If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not doing it enough
Violence is the question? Right?
Violence is not the answer. It is the question, and the answer is YES
The answer is violence, but to advocate for peace in principle.
Peace and principle… or else
Violence is not the answer.
Violence is more of a question.
And the answer is YES! GET THINE AXES KITH AND KIN! WE GOT A DUMBASS TO GO FUCK UP!
“Do you want to be next? DO YOU?”
“Because you’re a rightfully pissed off woman who had her claim denied and spouted off over the phone, you will now be charged for using terroristic language against a poor, defenseless corporation and your bail is $100,000. But that dude who killed a homeless man on the NYC subway? Well, boys will be boys.”
Violence leads to counter-violence.
The only thing that will improve something is to put meaning into the world.
Your statement is too vague to convey an actionable suggestion. I’m intrigued by the thought you seem to be hinting at. Would you expand on this, include a recommended method, and reason about why it’s an alternative to violence?
There are PLENTY of examples where violence wasn’t the answer. Those moments made gradual changes that didn’t have epic struggles with heroic figureheads, so they’re boring, they’re not obvious, and nobody talks about them.
There are a lot more examples in history where violence was used as a tool to oppress, threaten, conquer, destroy, or completely wipe out, by great and powerful entities.
Violence is sometimes the answer, if used by cool heads on specific targets with plans on what to do afterwards.
The problem with the fetishization of non-violence is that it ignores that most transformative non-violent social movements have occurred concurrently with violent co-movements. Ghandi preached non-violence, but at the same time, violent Hindu radicals were running around slitting the throats of every British official they could get their hands on. MLK preached non-violence, but the Black Panthers were waiting in the wings, offering a much more unpleasant option if MLK failed.
Violent social movements have very real tangible value, but their value isn’t in the violence itself. We’re not going to change the health insurance system through pure violence, no matter how many CEOs lay dead on the streets of Manhattan.
On the other hand, non-violent social movements rarely succeed either. Even the most modest, centrist, and conciliatory of reforms are derided as extreme or “Communist.” Look at Obamacare, a reform designed from the ground up to NOT disrupt the profits of the insurance or healthcare industries. This was a modest market-based reform that was originally a Republican reform plan. The right spent a decade going nuts calling it the second coming of Mao. And they still oppose it to this day. In the end it tinkered around the edges, but it was hardly transformative change.
The real value of violence is that it makes modest peaceful reforms much more palatable. The civil rights amendments and acts passed in the 1960s and 1970s would have never passed if there were only peaceful movements behind them. They amended the damn constitution! That took people on both sides of the aisle saying, “damn, we really need to change some things. This is getting out of hand.”
And that kind of broad bipartisan consensus that reform was needed was only possible because of the threat of violence. Violent radicals like the Black Panthers made MLK palatable to middle America. Without them, MLK would have just been another radical socialist to be demonized. And even then, they still killed him anyway.
The real value of violent social movements is that they make non-violent social movements possible. In fact, without violence, non-violent social movements rarely succeed. You need BOTH violence and non-violence if you want to make substantial change to the system. The violence puts the fear of God into the placid middle classes and wealthy corporate interests. This allows the non-violent reformers to show up with a solution to the problem that allows these centrist factions to feel that they’re not giving in to the violent radicals. Violence and non-violence are two sides of the same coin. And they are both essential.
It seems the technique you’re describing is a kind of societal “good cop, bad cop”. Similar scenario to an interrogation too (trying to get information from someone who does not want to share the information) because in this case the challenge is “how to get people to share the capacity for self-determination, quality of living, and dignity when they clearly prefer to hoard it, even to the detriment of others”.
apart of me still holds out that we don’t need this type of system to push progress, taking america for example, this will not go well and many lives will be lost as there will be “both sides” and they will stay divided. The propaganda machine from Eurasia has worked. There plans are moving quite well, and i for one, will not play into that hand.
Lives are already being lost. Today, approximately 186 people will be murdered by their insurance companies through the wrongful denial of life-saving, medically necessary care. By raw body count, Brian Robert Thompson killed far, far more people than Osama Bin Ladin ever did. The health insurance industry racks up a 9/11 worth of deaths every 16 days or so. That is how many people are currently being murdered by the private health insurance industry.
Thanks, that’s got me thinking
Non-violence is often and most effectively a direct threat of imminent violence.
Or as a promise for the cessation of ongoing violence.
Violence is always a valid answer. It’s just not always the best answer. The problem with violence is it’s been proven time and time again to be impossible to control and hold to a limited use since there are no cool heads at that point. Nor do specific targets exist-- just collateral damage.
And no successful revolutionary has ever had a sound plan for after the victory beyond “I want the power now.” And they can either hold the power or not. But the idea of “for the good of the people” gets put to the side pretty quickly.
Source?
History.
“Violence is not the answer” says country that won its place in the world through violence.
The USA would still be a colony of Britain if it wasn’t for a violent revolution.
The USA would still be a native american land if millions of people had not been wiped out by Europeans
The Native Americans would have been much better off if they had simply strangled Columbus and all his crew the moment they made landfall…
I get the humor in what you say, but it’s worth noting that the Native American civilizations were collapsing due to disease brought by earlier European visitors by the time Columbus set sail.
Granted, history probably would’ve been largely the same if Columbus’ expeditions were unsuccessful, given the English, French, Dutch and Spanish appetites for empire building
There’s a saga that is about “what if Columbus arrived to America but never got back to Europe?”. It’s “the tale of the feathered serpent”.
You can say that about almost everywhere white explores showed up
And it’s true!
No it wouldn’t
“Violence is bad” statements are in the same vein as “stove is hot”. Both are told to children because they cannot properly gauge the consequeces of using it, but are naive and condescending when told to adults.
Violence is bad but sometimes it’s needed.
Anyone who believes that violence doesn’t solve anything has clearly never paid attention.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, Mandela failed, there is nothing like a peaceful protest in SA.
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.
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.
Also: we’ve got where we are under threat of violence. Charlottesville and Jan 6 in the USA, the recent gammon riots in the UK, everything Putin does, etc, etc. The Authoritarians have weaponised both peace and violence against us.
Everyone knows violence isn’t the answer…its the question. And the answer is yes!
