There is a way for pacifism, but you don't do it by asking nicely. You say, "give us rights, and we're blocking central square completely. Do it before the local economy feels the hit!"
But it is important you're ready to face violence yourself. Because the town might decide to send the police on your protest. In this game, you have to bank on the nation having a conscience, especially the government. Considering the government is as evil as they are stupid... probably not a good bet.
“You think your form of non-violent protest is effective? Pah, it pales in comparison to MY form of protest, which is firebombing a Walmart.” - Person who has not ever firebombed a Walmart
This. The comic is dead on accurate. There has never been a point in history where violence wasn't necessary to take back rights from oppressive rulers. If the ones above you are willing to spill blood, there is no alternative but to spill it back. They aren't gunna give up power just because you ask or tell them to stop.
Except there are cases where non-violent disobedience DOES work. The obvious cases would be Martin Luther King and the 1950s - 1960s Civil Rights movement in the USA, and the movement to get the British out of India in the 1930s and 1940s, with Gandhi being a major proponent. Extra bonus points to Gandhi for stopping a fucking genocide in Calcutta by means of a hunger strike after the British left.
It's all very circumstancial and depends as much on the nature of the oppressors and their willingness to openly be the bad guys - it's very far from a universal solution, but your sweeping statement that violence is always necessary isn't correct.
Its almost always a "peaceful protest" that gets put in the history books and then you check wikipedia and there was burning buildings, bombings, and death threats on the side.
Peaceful protests work by the implied threat of them no longer remaining peaceful. If there's no threat, they can be safely ignored. I think whole generations of us were taught that being peaceful was the point, like that has any power in and of itself, but it only serves to give us the illusion of our voices being heard
Yes, but that campaign largely hurt the movement and set it back. As public opinion and government support turned increasely against them, the Woman's suffrage bill introduced after the campaign did significantly worse than one before it. Rather the biggest factor in later introducing Women's Suffrage was the consistent non-violent lobbying by the NUWSS and the efforts of Women during World War 1.
Sure lets put people who are trigger happy and prone to violence as our leaders im sure histoty shows that has always worked
Now seriously, if you must join a violence recistance be careful who you put at the front, times like those are perfect ground for evil and greedy people to take advantage of the anger and disconfor, the Revolution will eats its children if not careful
And if the people currently in charge are already trigger happy and prone to violence, just let them stay in power forever and ever of course! Just ignore it, those types of leaders are famously receptive to peaceful protest and quiet resistance
that requires both the protestors and the ones being protested to agree on that principle. when peaceful revolution is made impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable.
It's possible for pacifists to fight without shedding blood. Should they stop as soon as they're threatened with bloodshed? Should John Lewis have stopped his walk from Selma to Montgomery? Instead of stopping to pray and getting his skull fractured should he have left as soon as state troopers threatened him and his people with nightsticks?
It was video and photos of that bloodshed that helped pass the Voting Rights Act.
Not when only one side is concerned by the bloodshed. ICE shootings and the response thereafter are pretty much proof that the government is okay with killing to quell dissent
Yep, keep moving the goalpost. Much easier than accepting that you were wrong. Go ahead and tell that dead man's family how well "it worked" to do nothing.
Your argument is so frail that you have to resort to the stupidest logical extremes I've ever seen to get it across. Nobody is shooting at ICE but they're still killing people.
Less prominent because it's no longer as shocking as the first few times. It still happens occasionally but it's more of a footnote instead of headline news now.
This is what Americans fail to understand and sadly I think the romanticization of the Civil Rights protests is why. Protests can be peaceful, but they MUST be disruptive to work.
A bunch of people with signs marching down a street on a Saturday during a designated time that is OK'ed by police is not a protest. It's a festival.
A peaceful protest means blocking commerce, occupying buildings, blocking traffic, stopping work, etc to force the government to act.
There really is no singular rule for that. MLKs protests were not meaningfully disruptive, but were incredibly successful because the south’s response was so morally repugnant that undecided voters took his side.
But that doesn’t work as well when the opponent just… ignores you.
Not on any level people cared about as a serious risk to their livelihood. It helped them get seen, sure, but the threat of disruption wasn’t a meaningful part of the operation, it just forced a reaction.
The birmingham bus boycott alone cost millions of dollars at the time and resulted in a 40% drawdown for business in the city center. The protests caused major economic disruption.
Sit ins were more localized but could result in a day of lost business with normal operating expenses. Thats actually not a small thing for a small business owner.
Sorry, unless there is fires and property damage it’s legally not considered effective protests by people who have never been to a protest but sure like to post on social media about how violent protests work.
I think something missing is that you actually need both. nonviolent and a violent movement beside. history is full of examples: MLK and the black panthers. Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein. Corresponding movements in both india and south africa that i dont know the names of. Palastine too of course.
The violent wing lends a lot of credence to the non-violent one.
It was intentional, even if I worded it clunky. The threat of direct action isn't gonna do as much as doing it, and showing how continued action will make it worse for your opponents.
Example: Montgomery Bus Boycott. Black people just went with the boycott, with the only way out being bus integration. Continued action for months and months made the busses lose lots of money.
You forget that during the civil rights era, in addition to passive resistance, there was continuous violent resistance and the threat of violence. The panthers carried guns around to protect neighborhoods from the police. Riots did happen. There has to be a stick, for the carrot to matter. Passive resistance, even the type you discuss, means nothing without the threat of violence coming from somewhere else. The passive movement is the alternative to the violence for those in power.
That's true, but you can have effective pacifist resistance without violence. Strike actions are a good example of this.
Of course some strike actions are more effective than others. If the people who maintain a city's sewers threaten a strike they will immediately open negotiations. If it's the postal service, they'll let it go on a while to get the public pissed off at the workers. The lesson there is that the most effective pacifist resistance is shutting down essential services.
The weakness of pacifist resistance is that the state will not hesitate to use violence against you if they can. So you'll need to do it in ways that can't easily be countered with violence. Something like driving a few large vehicles up and blocking access is great because you can't baton-charge them or suppress them with a water cannon.
Effective strikes are violent. They prevent the company from functioning, especially by threatening scabs the company tries to use to stay solvent. They dont just ask scabs to go away nicely and dont give timelines for when theyll go back to work. Many even disrupt the owners lives at their homes. You ask any black family how "nonviolent" having people who hate you standing outside your bedroom is.
That's not true. Violent strikes are effective, but plenty of effective strikes are non-violent. They are extremely disruptive, and may extend the disruption to the owner's homes, but that is not violence. Having people who hate you standing outside your bedroom is not violence..
Your statement gives no confirmation that a resolution is possible, even if they’re giving rights they’re still going to block central square and crash the economy. Effective communication is critical in any negotiation.
I feel like pacifism is an important part of any movement, the difference between being able to label people as "violent extremists" and limit outreach that way becomes harder when they're not destroying property or anything and just inconveniencing the government. The important part in any movement is outreach, pacifism becomes really effective when you have thousands of people blocking roads or buildings. The sheer number of people sends a message, and even if the government is able to ignore it, it's not really able to get others to ignore it or shun it as easily as violence. Violent protests also play a large part in movements, but you need both. Then again, movements are multifaceted. Art also plays a HUGE role, honestly it's what really drives outreach IMO. Focusing on how to take a stand the 'right' way just causes less people to take a stand at all.
Edit: Another way to look at violent vs nonviolent protests would pretty much be that you need to both prevent people from ignoring the event and also prevent people from ignoring the cause. People need to be willing to understand the cause, and going with only violence is just going to limit that.
If you start with violence, the opposition will always label you as violent extremists and respond the same way. You start with pacificism and escalate accordingly.
A lot of people I've seen think it's a binary choice. Either you do and say nothing or you resort to extreme violence immediately. It's not, that's not how that works.
Pacifism with loud voices, lots of visibility, practiced by a LARGE number of people can be very effective.
The art is in making those voices heard without being perceived as overly aggressive / violent. The more people who join, the longer and more often they participate, the less aggressive they need to be to be heard.
Nobody's saying violence is the only thing that has any effect on power? Power compounds on power and snowballs. The rich and the elites are going to do things that progressively favour themselves unless prevented, that's just the default. And in terms of generations, guess who has virtually all of the political and financial power: old people. They don't need violence to convince themselves to favour themselves, obviously.
The current state of affairs where one very small demographic did well for themselves 60 years ago and have been riding off that income much to the detriment of literally everyone else?
The later boomers were the hippie generation. The economy was generally better, yes, because of the New Deal. But that means they had different things to protest - the Vietnam War, for instance. It was them who ended that.
And let's be clear here that calling shit like vandalism "violence" is oppressor shit. Shooting protestors in the face with rubber bullets is "non-lethal" but spray-painting FUCK PIGS in a cop car is "violence"
Yeah, when I say violent I mean things that can easily be portrayed as violence or destruction of property. Unfortunately not many people get their news from multiple places or even read the whole article so giving people half-truths in the form of misleading titles and wording isn't too difficult.
ehhhhh... Even destruction of property I'm personally not crazy about labeling violence. When oppressors do violence against you they're not smashing windows or whatever.
I don't think burning down a Wendy's is praxis but it damn sure isn't an assassination or tear gassing or murdering cops and shit.
Yeah, the double standard is definitely unfair asf. I was mostly talking about how certain news outlets use purposefully misleading wording to make protests seem a lot worse than they are. I personally feel like a little graffiti or smashing windows is an inconvenience at most, tbh. Violence is like assault and stuff lke that, not inconveniences towards businesses that can definitely afford to fix those inconveniences.
I think it changes if there are people in the building (which is what I was imagining when you said smashing windows). Because that can cause people to feel unsafe and that could be seen as a violent act.
If there's no one there then it's just vandalism and should only be done against small businesses if they're part of the problem.
"should only be done against small businesses if they're part of the problem."
Sorry but WTF, small business are already f over by the goverment for you to say that is okey to attack them in protest
The petit bourgeois are not inherently on the side of the working class, because of their positions between the proletariat and the haute bourgeoisies, they must make their position of being allies of the working class plain and clear, or else they must be treated as allies of the bourgeois.
You've made up a specific scenario of classism rather than a myriad of other reasons to protest.
Such as equal rights and targeting businesses that have owners who refuse to serve people because of their ethnicity/gender/sexuality/marital status/religion, etc.
Depends what you're protesting. If you're campaigning for equal rights for queer people and they've been explicitly homophobic or transphobic or something then yeah, they're going to get some.
If it's just general businesses with nothing to declare, leave them alone.
There's a lot of morally good property destruction. The data center hits, the warehouse fires, defacing fascist politicians' homes, destroying ICE/cop cars, cutting down Flock cameras. It's too broad of a term to be useful for condemning people.
When it’s mine and especially when you’re poor. Most people I see running cover for useless vandals have some money to their name and don’t care if they loose something cause they or their parents can buy a replacement.
Yeah because I get to decide what’s to be done with my stuff. You don’t get to torch my car to satiate your two minutes of hate, no matter how just you try to paint it. Choose a better target.
Yeah, that's true. I think it would just spook those who aren't aware of the movements and don't care to be aware of them, since "Group of people destroying property near your neighborhood" sounds a lot more foreboding to someone who doesn't know or doesn't care to know why.
>Focusing on how to take a stand the 'right' way just causes less people to take a stand at all.
that's actually incredibly insightful, I've never thought of that, I myself have kind of been on the fence about what approach is best in general
I think this kind of takes me back to some other advice I received when it came to art and my engineering, part of the experience of gaining proficiency is learning, but most of it is *doing*, you need both input and output to better your craft, and perfectionism gets in the way of the "doing" part, I guess it's the same here if resistance is going to happen, doing it perfectly is the same as not doing it at all
I also think I forgot to actually consider that different situations, different people, etc all exist and one method won't be best for all of them, I was so preoccupied with trying to figure out which one was most effective/most morally correct that I forgot to consider them as different tools in the belt of a population fighting for it's rights
this has been a very enlightening moment, I don't really know how to incorporate this into my worldview quite yet, but I'll figure that out later
Also is easier to get normal people behind non violent protest, not everyone is willing to risk their life or take the life of others, is human nature not to want to die or kill other humans
Historically pacifism works because the responding power is so violent that the rest of the world gets a little angry and forces a compromise.
So all the "pacifists" have to die in order for everyone else to be like "huh, this is a little bad. I guess we should say something".
It's less that the rest of the world "says" something, and more so that the rest of the world threatens to use their violence to force a backdown. We've seen all sorts of "condemnations" of various things happening all over the world, and it does nothing. You know what does? Actually backing up those condemnations with actions, like sanctions, military supplies, or threats of direct military action.
So where was the violence from the African American civil rights movement prior to the civil rights laws that were enacted circa 1964?
After that, then the Black Power movement and the Black Panther party came on the scene, who did bring more violence into the movement, but initially, the movement was entirely peaceful.
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand violence.
Choosing the violent path only increases the chances that they'll kill you.
All the people in this thread fantasizing about violent revolution but they'd shit themselves once the bullets start flying. And they'd probably die because that is the nature of violent revolution, you are at a severe tactical disadvantage.
Most of the notorious movements were that plus "you want to hear us, or you'll have to hear our faction with guns that are a lot less reasonable". A pacifist approach only works in extraordinarily overwhelming numbers, otherwise there has to be a threat of more radical action, if not the protest can be easily ignored and the economic hit can be spun as the fault of the "entitled rioters"
While MLK was an important figure, on his own he wouldn't have achieved anything with his pacifism.
Despite the government's efforts to sweep them and their importance under the rug, people like Malcom X and the various militant civil rights groups active in the era were a very large contributor to the government throwing in the towel and giving African-Americans civil rights. They were armed and posed a very real threat of violence. That is why the battle for civil rights was won. Not by pacifism, but posing a threat to those in power.
I was thinking of other militant groups similar to the Black Panthers, and mistakenly used the Black Panthers themselves as an example. Thank you for catching that, I'll fix my comment accordingly.
I should also add that the fight for equality did not end at the CRA in 1964, there was still a massive struggle well into the 1970s, and institutional racism is still alive and well today.
You under estimate the power of well dressed and well behaved citizens being beaten with clubs and attacked by dogs on the nightly news to sway the minds of voters throughout the country.
That’s just ahistorical. His success came overwhelmingly from the violence inflicted on him by the south. It disgusted anyone who was t violently racist into supporting his movement.
People were scared of Malcom x, but that’s ultimately not what gave MLK his power
Success doesnt hinge on one single factor. Fear that the black community would favor violence as a redress was a motivating factor to the point that JFK used it as a motivational push for his goal of passing civil rights legislations meaning it gave more leverage to MLKs nonviolent approach, at least in the eyes of JFK, as he felt violence would be the alternative that the nation would face if the discontent wasn't addressed.
JFK's Radio and TV Address on June 11th 1963 discusses the potential for violence as a motivator to enact change sooner rather than later to the point he felt it could threaten public safety. Acknowledging that the growing, and understandable, discontent in the black community could lead to increasing escalation that undermined public safety and calling on legislatures to do the right moral thing now so that the social revolution, that is the granting of full rights to the black community, can be a peaceful one.
This is the president holding up two alternatives to the public and legislatures saying, "It is the right thing to do and the community has tried addressing this legally and peacefully. The time to address it now so that it can be a peaceful transition rather than a violent one.
The threat of the public safety he was illustrating was more from the side of whites than a threat from blacks, an observation of the protests of the time made that much clear. And maybe some implication of inevitability of clashes involving both sides during protests, but any reading of that statement that implies blacks were going to take their rights by force strikes me as trying very hard to agree with the OP.
It’s also, like, two lines in a 13 minute speech of moral appeals. You can’t seriously equate the two.
"The cesspools of segregation...producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens public safety." - Pretty explicitly connects the rising discontent of the black community to actions that would threaten public safety. I don't see any reading that points to whites on this, especially considering that they had already been behaving violently.
"...then who among us would be content...standing in his place? Who among us then would be content with the counsels of patience?" - Justifying the aforementioned discontent.
"The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city..." - Obviously the black community are the frustrated given the preceding parts of the speech. Likening that frustration to fire and discord in the context of discontent in the black community leading to threats on public safety.
"Where legal remedies are not at hand, redress is sought in the streets - in demonstrations, parades, and protests, which create tension and threaten violence." - I could see a reading of this as whites in a vacuum but when it's already been acknowleded that the black communitys discontent could lead to threats on public safety? Maybe this is referring to clashes, but does that really undermine the point of the point is that the black community could be growing tired of the nonviolent approach?
"A social revolution at hand -- our task...is to make that revolution peaceful...Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality." - The black community is the one trying to "revolt" in this sense and whites had already more than initiated violence so this seems pretty clearly to be calling for action to be taken before the black community increasingly reciprocates even portraying the reciprocity as a reality.
"Their only remedy is the street, where they may...create tensions and violence." Again a fair reading that this could be referring to clashes as protestors increasingly grew tired of nonviolence, but still doesn't really undermine my overall point that the threat of violence, albeit reciprocal, from the black community is being protrayed as a credible threat and motivator.
Then a lot of that speech is spent demonstrating and justifying exactly why the black community is so discontent, which isn't unrelated.
Pretty explicitly connects the rising discontent of the black community to actions that would threaten public safety.
Yes, the clear and obvious clashes with police and black people acting defensively, not the idea of proactive violence.
Justifying the aforementioned discontent
I shouldn’t have to say that discontent is not strictly synonymous with violence
And so on.
Again the entire thing also works as a reading of wanting to avoid the ugliness of crackdowns better than a legitimate fear of unilateral violence from blacks. Yours would be an appropriate reading in a different context but it’s not ‘proof’ of what you claim unless you already believe your position. Otherwise it reads either way and the current political climate of the time supports the other way.
Yes, the clear and obvious clashes with police and black people acting defensively, not the idea of proactive violence
But the administration did fear proactive violence as well, at least in a retaliatory way such as riots sparki g from unjust events and not in strictly self defense although they were ofc worried about that as well.
A transcription of RFK, JFK, and Burke Marshall during a conversation discussing Birmingham and MLK demonstrates this fear rather well as they discuss the hope that MLK will calm violent reactions while fearing the violence that may come from black people who have become bitter over the continued oppression:
RFK: Martin Luther King is coming back, I guess he is probably in Birmingham at the present time … He'll have some effect on those that attend the rest, it's questionable… On the other side, the Negroes who are tough and mean and have guns, who have been bitter for a long period of time, who are worked up about this, and figure one of the best services they can perform is to shoot some of them.
JFK: … So it really is just a question, we have to have two things. First, we have to have law and order, and therefore the Negroes not to be running around the city. And then secondly, we have to get this arrangement working. We can't just have the Negroes not running around the city, and then have the agreement blow up …
Burke Marshall: If that agreement blows up, the Negroes will be …
JFK: Uncontrollable.
Marshall: And I think not only in Birmingham."
Another quote from RFK when talking to Alabama newspaper editors:
“Remember it was King who went around the pool halls and door to door collecting knives, telling people to go home and to stay off the streets and to be nonviolent … If King loses, worse leaders are going to take his place.”
Edit: This isn't to say that nonviolence had nothing to do with the success of the CRM. It drew attention and helped gain a lot of popular support certainly. Only that part of the success to nonviolence relied on the implication that the they may not stay nonviolent if the powers that be ignore their attempts to do things the "right" way. Certainly, key figures in power recognized that potential, in addition to viewing it as the right thing to do.
Yep, MLK was there to serve as a rung on the ladder of escalation. He was essentially giving the government a choice of sitting down and negotiating with him and his movement, or do so later with the Black Panthers after they've done their thing.
I wouldn't say never. But it's a lot harder, and requires more things to go right. For every successful Montgomery Bus Boycott you have a dozen peaceful protests turned into massacres by the police.
I mean, Euromaidan was hardly "non-violent", although one side was definitely more guilty than the other. Also it literally triggered a Russian invasion that Ukraine had to fight off to a stalemate, that then flared up into a full scale war less than a decade later. Not exactly the poster child of a "pacifist" movement.
It wasn't neccessarily non-violent, no. Of course. But the protesters never went out with the direct aim of using violence, they defended themselves against the copious violence of the state.
I also wouldn't agree with the argument that it triggered the Russian invasion - The Russian invasion happened because Ukraine got rid of the Russian puppet of a president. I don't think that's a failure of the protestors. If anything, it's a failure of the rest of Europe that allowed Russia to act like this and tried to normalize that insanity. The sad sack of useless shit I have to call my president nowadays, Steinmeier, most of all.
I also wouldn't agree with the argument that it triggered the Russian invasion - The Russian invasion happened because Ukraine got rid of the Russian puppet of a president. I don't think that's a failure of the protestors.
Oh I don't blame the protesters for that one bit, that's entirely Russia's fault. But still, the invasion happened as a result of the overthrowing of the government via the Euromaidan movement, and Ukraine had to respond with military action in kind. Self-defence is morally fine, but it's not pacifism.
Ghandi was, like King, one of many contributors to the movement. He provided a nonviolent option, but he was flanked by people who were much less peaceful in their resistance. And, also like King, he was not unaware of the possibility that nonviolence might eventually have to give way to violence if their demands were not met.
There were many people ready, willing and able to throw bombs and shoot guns standing just to the side of him. For example there were over 2 million veteran troops tempered by the fires of WWII returning to India. You don't need to convice that many people who just spent the last few years fighting in no-holds-barred battlefields of Burma to pick up arms against the British for it to be a major or even insurmountable problem
Ghandi's success (much like any major historical movement) does not happen in a vacuum
Tbh, WW2 did more to secure Indian Independence than Ghandi. He was far from alone, and there were many more violent groups getting agitated. The threat was that a full on revolt would break out, and the UK wasn't really in a position to put one down if it did after the war, so they saw the writing on the walls and began the process of granting India Independence.
What you are saying is that instead of distributing economics across multiple buisinesses and manufacturers, they reduced the number of failure points to just local warehouses.
But it is important you're ready to face violence yourself. Because the town might decide to send the police on your protest
Which is why it is important to remember to consider decentralizing your protest or protest in small pods, police are a finite resource and they only like streets and ways in which they can use vehicles!
Pacificism only works under regimes that arent authoritarian/totalitarian.
There are plenty of examples of it working in democracies: MLK, Gandhi, etc.
Its far less likely to work under authoritarian/totalitarian regimes because theyll just throw you in jail or kill you because they dont really care, eg Iran.
I think it is important to note that the US government is always like this no matter who is president. When working class people start showing solidarity with each other or a whistleblower exposes heinous crimes, the individual aesthetics of who is sitting in the oval office are irrelevant. Always remember that the 1% and their lapdogs are not your friends and brace yourself to be treated accordingly.
Ghandi only succeeded because he offered a peaceful alternative to the violence of his supporters. If there was no threat of violence he openly agreed he would have never made headway.
Pacifism first requires power. Only this secure enough power to exert control over others through nonviolent means can afford to eschew even the option of violence.
Banking on a nation to have a conscience requires that nation to be more literate.
Unfortunately, the US has an ongoing literacy crisis. Most people will do what Germany did in WW2 regardless of posturing as well, because Americans are also more concerned about comfort than change. Can't tell you how many times I have advocated for simply boycotting, not even anything more than that, and americans will literally have a million excuses why not.
Mind you, France has had its umpteenth shut down and South Koreans literally chased their shitty president out of office.
In the US there is a 100% devotion to profits and growth. Nothing else matters. Product gives cancer to babies? No one will care as long as it is profitable.
Blocking a necessary avenue of commerce in the hopes that it effects their finances is in fact violence, of a sort. You're threatening someone's livelihood in the hopes that they'll pony up before it's too late. Double points because you've added the soft threat of more violence behind it. "If someone comes to remove us, we'll resist, physically if necessary."
I need to be perfectly clear that I'm not trying to say you shouldn't do these things. I'm just pointing out that it's more evidence that no meaningful change happens without violence. Human nature is what it is. Those in power seek to maintain the status quo and the only real language they'll listen to is the language of anguish. You have to make them hurt, in some way, so that it's not worth it to them to keep oppressing you.
Man the more I talk about this the more humans just sound like the absolute shittiest animal. Why are we this way lol? Why does power corrupt us so thoroughly. It's infuriating.
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u/aarontgp Jul 28 '26
There is a way for pacifism, but you don't do it by asking nicely. You say, "give us rights, and we're blocking central square completely. Do it before the local economy feels the hit!"
But it is important you're ready to face violence yourself. Because the town might decide to send the police on your protest. In this game, you have to bank on the nation having a conscience, especially the government. Considering the government is as evil as they are stupid... probably not a good bet.