• realitista@lemmus.orgEnglish
    53·
    16 days ago

    The problem is that violent revolutions rarely produce anything other than more and worse chaos, and are usually settled by the biggest despot in the room who is often worse than the guy being deposed. The vast majority of actual social progress made in history was due to peaceful, not violent revolution.

    • bearboiblake@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      71·
      16 days ago

      I agree, but every non-violent movement needs an underlying threat of the willingness to escalate and ultimately become violent to succeed. We need people who are willing to use violence.

      Non-violent resistance is yin, violent resistance is yang. They need to be in balance.

      • zikzak025@lemmy.world
        5·
        16 days ago

        Exactly. There needs to be a stick to accompany the carrot. But if the carrot is refused, then the stick does its job.

      • realitista@lemmus.orgEnglish
        23·
        16 days ago

        I disagree . The moment violence happens, the whole movement loses its credibility and high ground and opens the road to despotic overthrow of the movement. This is why it’s so important to guard against the tactic of your enemy installing agitators to discredit your movement and open the door to violent suppression of it.

        • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          15 days ago

          Well, I’m sure they’ll bury you on your moral high ground while they install countless systems to disenfranchise you and everyone you know. But I’m sure if you just ask them kindly not to do that, it’ll all work itself out.

        • bearboiblake@pawb.socialOPEnglish
          5·
          16 days ago

          Disavow the violence all you want, and indeed doing so is very much the role of the non-violent sect of the movement, but you need the threat of violence to succeed, that’s just the reality. The Civil Rights movement never would have succeeded without the Black Panthers. The LGBTQ+ movement needed the Stonewall Riots.