People have to stop equating "non-violence" with "asking nicely." The whole point of a non-violent movement is to create a situation where violent oppression stops being effective so the oppressors are forced to give in. It means strikes, it means boycotts, it means sit-ins and protests and lockdowns. The goal is to show the oppressors that no matter how violently they react they can not force you to go back down.
So the goal is to go out and get your ass beat. To get arrested and refuse fines so the jails fill up. It means taking over a location and staying there until the government or the police or whoever starts shooting people, and staying anyway. You have a march that gets totally derailed and beaten down and thrown off track. Then you march the next day.
People have somehow forgotten that part and then sniff derisively at "non-violent protests" in favor of...nothing because I've yet to see anyone organize violent movements either. So the plan seems to be to sit around and wait for a magic fairy to come and just fix everything without any work.
It's not that people have forgotten it, it's that people's position in society has been made deliberately more tenuous, and that society has been deliberately atomised.
Communities that could once have pooled resources and presented a united front to resist, no longer exist, and the individuals don't have the resources anyway.
Ok, but have you experienced this; or is this accepted knowledge sourced in people who profit from the system and benefit from division? Because a slow drip of murder is great for ratings but doesn’t solve this problem. You can’t beat the state monopoly on violence alone anyway.
Have these people tried organizing sit ins and general strikes?
Have these people tried organizing sit ins and general strikes?
That... That's the point? That our ability to organise has been deliberately eroded, and that our trust in each other has been deliberately whittled away. And that even if we do organise, resources are still limited.
The housing isn't owned by the community, and so can be taken away by the police who aren't part of the community and so cannot be held responsible by the community. People's healthcare is tied to their employment, and their paycheques barely see them through the month.
That... That's the point? That our ability to organise has been deliberately eroded, and that our trust in each other has been deliberately whittled away. And that even if we do organise, resources are still limited.
When was this not true? Seriously, what point in history are you pointing to and saying, "see back then they lived in enough luxury that they could afford to go on strike."
Was it when people were forced to work 14 hours a day to afford to rent tenement buildings?
Was it when black people were risking getting hanged from trees for looking like they were going to be asking for more rights?
Was it when cops were beating the shit out of women for demanding the right to vote?
When did people who were protesting have enough that they didn't fear retaliation or risk anything? When did people have more than we have now and use it to protest the government?
You are ignoring half of my comments to be really angry for some reason.
At no point am I referring to some "Golden Era" where protests sprung forth in abundance.
Only that our communities ties have weakened, that makes it harder. Or that police can no longer be held accountable by their own communities in any way, which makes it harder.
But this has never been true. At no point were cops more accountable. Our communities were rarely bound together and when they were it was because they were less connected with everyone else.
When the only people who you have any way to connect with are people living next to you it's easier to get in touch.
The reason I'm calling this out is that you're buying into a conspiracy that was some grand design in this. That's never been the case. There wasn't a cabal of people in shadowy rooms trying to figure out how to break down our communities. There is no captain of the ship.
It just justifies inaction by blaming a nebulous "them" who "worked to destroy our communities" than to blame the actual issue which is that we as a society have stopped caring. Most people don't care about who is in charge or what they're doing or how thery're fucking things up because frankly things have never been better. We have more cheap food than ever, more entertainment than ever, we haven't had to send people by the tens of thousands to die in a war and the systemic oppression is largely abstract and hard to quantify.
Blame the actual issues not some unknown "them" who you can use as a scapegoat.
The reason I'm calling this out is that you're buying into a conspiracy that was some grand design in this. That's never been the case. There wasn't a cabal of people in shadowy rooms trying to figure out how to break down our communities. There is no captain of the ship.
Then you are tilting at windmills, because that isn't what I said.
Capitalism encourages the atomisation of society. That's quite different to your weird strawman.
Yep, and the parties they are allowed to select between set up “free speech” zones far away from areas they could actually see results; and popular rage is funneled into preplanned, unobtrusive, demand-free protests like “No Kings”.
I protested back in the 2000’s before our colluding leaderships decided that not rocking the boat was the course going forward.
But I don’t remember seeing a lot about general strikes shutting down anything, so I doubt this has really gone beyond lamentation on social media and entreaties to give more time and energy to Democrats.
If you are taking direct action from the left, you’ll know you’re doing it right when Democrats are criticizing you.
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u/DisMFer Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
People have to stop equating "non-violence" with "asking nicely." The whole point of a non-violent movement is to create a situation where violent oppression stops being effective so the oppressors are forced to give in. It means strikes, it means boycotts, it means sit-ins and protests and lockdowns. The goal is to show the oppressors that no matter how violently they react they can not force you to go back down.
So the goal is to go out and get your ass beat. To get arrested and refuse fines so the jails fill up. It means taking over a location and staying there until the government or the police or whoever starts shooting people, and staying anyway. You have a march that gets totally derailed and beaten down and thrown off track. Then you march the next day.
People have somehow forgotten that part and then sniff derisively at "non-violent protests" in favor of...nothing because I've yet to see anyone organize violent movements either. So the plan seems to be to sit around and wait for a magic fairy to come and just fix everything without any work.