To what extent do you think political violence can be justified? From a purely strategic perspective, do you believe tactics like the anarchist 'propaganda of the deed' are effective?
Propaganda of the Deed has long been discredited. As in no, the stereotypical bomb throwing anarchist that mass media wishes to sell DOES. NOT. WORK. At best you end up with the political figure merely replaced and business moves on with the attacker vilified, or at worst the now deceased has become a martyr and support is generated.
As that is trying to force a systemic change through one giant act on a population that won't know what to do with the opening.
It is far better to work within local communities to educate and help build support networks of aid and reliance on eachother rather than systems that can punitively be taken away. That way if an opening presents itself through the course of events, you have a population that will know roughly how to make the best of a situation.
WITH ALL THAT SAID....
The death of the united Healthcare CEO is interesting inthat all attempts at media whitewashing and lionization have fallen on deaf ears.
Luigi taught us how to do propaganda of the deed right:
A big part of the original propaganda of the deed was just that. Killing royals in Europe to show that power of the monarchies is limited
People have a right to exist, and if they have no other options but to enforce that right violently, they will do so and let that be called justice.
I'm of the opinion that political violence is only worth considering is if it only affects political players. Once any innocent bystanders are involved, it becomes questionable. Harm or death of child or the elderly is repulsive. It's never acceptable.
Yeah, I think that's what made the political violence of the 1960s so gross - it seemed to be random acts of violence against commuters and low ranking functionaries.
Luigi's attack on someone who was directly responsible for horrible stuff is much easier to understand.
he assassinated a general in an invisible war that CEO knew he was participating in
he just didn't know that Luigi was also participating in it, and mocked the powers that be and showed how easy it is for the lone wolf to find its pray
...which is probably why Musk 'has been wearing that kid as a hat ever since that CEO was shot'.
While I agree that it should be avoided if possible, making a kid watch his dad get assassinated is justifiable if that dad is 1) a literal global supervillain, and 2) using the kid as a meat shield.
Sorry Lil Timmy - it's childhood trauma for you, or oppression for an entire planet. If you have a shred of decency, you'll grow up to hate your dad just as much as the rest of us.
Yeah, but you need to be strategic about it.
Low level violence of any sort needs to lead a side to enter negotiations as the cost of political concessions is less than continuing as us.
Of course, there also needs to be a recognition that you need a path to a negotiated agreement. Otherwise, you're starting a civil war.
All liberty is guarded by four boxes. The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. They are in order.
Political violence is largely a terrible idea that results in continued suffering or retribution. People online flock to it as a remedy and often aren't fully aware of the structure of their local government. The best means of change are by convincing locals of a better alternative that is amiable to all parties. Online activism has a broader net but ultimately reaches less people in positions likely to be able to remedy local matters. Carrot beats stick.
Violence tends to be a double edged sword. Whether or not things get better as the result of an outbreak of violence is hit and miss. A lot of authoritarian regimes in history just get replaced with new authoritarian regimes that have a better PR team and create a leniency period before cranking back the progress once people figure everything has been fixed. Long term it's not great prospects. Anarchist activities tends to create this sort of thing. It creates a power vacuum to which the first one to break the faith and assemble a new loyal hierarchy while murmuring a smokescreen of empty hymns of the old cause is rewarded by becoming the new tyrant. Oftentimes there is a promise of whatever state of oppression being a transitory period. You aren't supposed to notice that the transitory period after which they say that they will surrender their stranglehold to the rightful inheritance of the people never comes to fruition and instead just becomes a new dynasty of effective monarchs living it up.
But other times it's just another tool in the box of movements that are fighting against occupation. It usually helps if there's a peaceful arm of the movement who will get most or all of the credit after the fact whom can hold the dialogue space. Every Civil rights fight that had a non-violent movement leader also had "unrelated" people in the field under a different banner solving some problems with violence. Black Panthers, Butterfly Brigade, bomb weilding suicide suffragettes, indigenous anti colonial movements... These are part of the landscape and the actions they took were given space to be picked over by contemporaries because provocative acts lend punch to rhetoric. If you have no legitimate means to solve the violence done to you other than violence then the problem still needs solving so violence it is. What is effective in this model is collective directed action with planned objectives to fit into existing systems or that come with fully drawn up replacements for old systems. Not as sexy as anarchy but the wins are on the whole more stable and enduring. If you want a democracy then your problem solve should at least should have a true core of people whose ultimate intention is to operate democratically. Violence has a seat at that table too but weilding it justly is a commitment.
Violence is justified to defend oneself or one’s allies from violent aggression, and that’s it.
How do you define “violent aggression” then?
If someone poisons the air you breathe or the water you drink, is that violent aggression? Because there’s a long history of corporations knowingly doing just that to communities they believed were powerless to stop them.
If officers under the color of law routinely harass members of your community, openly admitting that they can choose who they want to stop under perfectly legal pretextual stops and then find a reason to beat or intimidate you, is that violent aggression?
Violent aggression can take many forms. What does violent aggression look like? If I buy the company that employs the people in your town and then fire everyone and move it overseas so I can make more money, that’s aggressive certainly, it will cause suffering, is it violent? Is violence just physical force? If I put a sheriff between me and the violence, if I use economic means but then enforce them at the barrel of someone else’s gun, am I being violent or are they?
Violence up close is easy to define, but how many layers of indirection do we need for violent acts to become ok. Politics is all about choices and a lot of choices end up harming a great number of people. We are living through and will continue experiencing natural disasters super charged by climate change. Communities flooded and burned down and destroyed by hurricane force wind, all because a few people would like to have more money and convinced some politicians that it was ok. Is that violence?
Sure if I said I was going to burn your house down that’s violent, but if I aggressively pursue bribing (sorry, lobbying) politicians so that they will support policies that my own scientists tell me will result in your house burning down, is that still violence?
That’s the real question people struggle with.
Social violence is still violence. The ruling class tries its best to blur the lines and make it seem okay because it’s legal. But in many cases social violence is even more deadly than regular violence. Most people understand that, which is why the ruling class needs a strong police state in order to feel safe.
Our legal justice system, checks and balances, nonviolent protests, etc... have all completely failed.
Violence is all that's left.
But according to some of the mods here in the fediverse, you're AdVoCaTiNg violence as if there is somehow a magical whimsical answer there to solve all of the world's problems. /s
I am still waiting by the way, for anyone to tell me what is there left to really do to try and tell the most powerful classes in society, to convince them to stop their bullshit. So far, I've heard none.
I've been temp banned a few times over it. The alternative is the status quo, which is violent as fuck... a solution that's quick, bloody, and targeted to only the worst of the worst offenders; but leaves society in a rehabilitated state afterwards is overall the least violent option on the table... but yea, advocating for status quo violence seems to be the only kind Lemmy mods tolerate as a general rule.
Oh well.
What do you call 'political violence'?
Violence motivated by some sort of political thought process.
I religious violence political? Probably. The line between the two is incredibly blurry.
What about violence caused by mental illness? No. The action probably has delusional thinking behind it, which differs from the other examples, but the line is once again very blurry.
There are religious people who believe it is their religious duty to hurt other people and bring about a political change in the world. Peer pressure, cognitive biases and even delusions can be involved, which further muddies the water.
Extreme cases are clearly in one category or another, but between them we have plenty of unclear cases and a very wide gray area. Humans love to categorize things in black and white terms, but life rarely fits in these binary definitions.
Think of definitions as a flimsy cardboard box with many holes here and there. Think of life as a huge angry octopus you’re trying to force into this tiny box. As soon as you manage to close the lid, 3 tentacles have found some holes here and there. You poke those tentacles back in, but that just forces the lid open again. The octopus is sort of, maybe, partially in the box, kinda, but not really. Eh, close enough.
Nice try mr FBI.
FBI and CIA are both busy gong through their own version of Squid Games thanks to the current regime wanting to get rid of anyone who's investigated them in the past.
Once you have significant support against a regime you can over throw them. I'm talking like 70-80% of the country want then out.
Violence when your ideology doesnt have majority control hurts your cause and gives your opposition major propaganda.
Martin Luther King only succeeded because of Malcom X.
Rule of thumb when it comes to combating conflict is to be as minimalist as possible. There have been conquests in history that occurred without a single drop of blood shed, surely that's not beyond modern rebels. The first people to go extreme lengths come off as needy, if you know what I mean.
True, but it's not something you should completely shy away from, either.
"Speak softly and carry a big stick" isn't just advice for international diplomacy.
But you don't carry a big stick. We gave those sticks away for safekeeping and the thief now owns the safe.
The only stick we have is numbers and these numbers are a pain to gather and organize so let's get to it. When we show people that they will have a chance fighting these fucks we will get the support.
Right now elon and Alice seem like the only option. We need to show them differently.
No, if you use violence you don't fix anything, you jus taking the pendulum to your side so it's you and your friends abusing power, instead of the others.
I don't think the British fighting were abusing powers. The violence to fight nazism was needed to end nazi rule in Germany.
The question is not if violence is useful, but when?
"Political violence" is a broad term; it can cover anything from throwing rocks at cops to assassinations and bombings.
Generally speaking, it's counterproductive. Look at the Russian revolution. Instead of spreading out to engulf Europe, the Revolution caused dozens of Fascist states to come to power. People in 1932 were much more frightened of Stalin then they were of Hitler.
Political violence can only create a violent new regime. If you want peace, you have to fight peacefully. Yes it's harder, but it's the only way. But peaceful doesn't mean passive (or law abiding)!
t new regime. If you want peace, you have to fight peacefully. Yes it’s harder, but it’s the only way. But peaceful doesn’t mean passive (or law abiding)!
Oh sometimes, violence works to build peaceful gouvernments after. In Romania political violence created a functioning democracy. Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed by the revolutionaries after a 30 minute farce of a trial, but the country is now a democracy for more than 35 years.