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> clearly Please prove it then. I must be a little slow because it is not clear to me at all.

by tsss 7y ago

mlyle 7y ago
You don't view the Selma to Montgomery marches, the Orange Revolution, the Vietnam protests, the UK miners' strike, the spontaneous assembly of Germans demanding the Berlin Wall be opened, etc, as having significantly spurred social change? Just because not every protest is virtuous or successful doesn't mean that protest doesn't have value.
- tsss 7y ago
  It's not clear that protests were actually the driving force in causing those changes, particularly in the case of the Vietnam protests. The Berlin wall was doomed to fail from the beginning. It was only a matter of time combined with the lucky mistake of a government official. At the end of the day a modern protest accomplishes nothing. Let's not pretend that government officials don't know what the populace wants. They chose to ignore it for their own benefit and a protest won't change that. The only thing a protest does is give confidence to other powerful people who want to overthrow the current leaders, again for their own benefit. All the big "revolutions" have simply exchanged one abuser for another. The french revolution exchanged the monarchy for Napoleon's dictatorship. Russia went from a monarchy to a communist dictatorship and then to an authoritarian capitalist state. And in the case of east Germany it was the western capitalists who swooped in and bought out the entire country for western-dictated dumping prices, leaving the eastern populace disenfranchised and economically barely better off than before (and sometimes worse, now giving rise to a new nationalist party). If you actually want to change anything you need to hit the powers that be where it hurts. They couldn't give a shit how many people are unhappy and protesting but what they do care about is money. The strike is the most effective and only effective tool the populace has, short of extreme violence which will just lead to another despot taking power.

> clearly Please prove it then. I must be a little slow because it is not clear to me at all.

by tsss 7y ago

> clearly Please prove it then. I must be a little slow because it is not clear to me at all.

You don't view the Selma to Montgomery marches, the Orange Revolution, the Vietnam protests, the UK miners' strike, the spontaneous assembly of Germans demanding the Berlin Wall be opened, etc, as having significantly spurred social change? Just because not every protest is virtuous or successful doesn't mean that protest doesn't have value.

tsss 7y ago
It's not clear that protests were actually the driving force in causing those changes, particularly in the case of the Vietnam protests. The Berlin wall was doomed to fail from the beginning. It was only a matter of time combined with the lucky mistake of a government official. At the end of the day a modern protest accomplishes nothing. Let's not pretend that government officials don't know what the populace wants. They chose to ignore it for their own benefit and a protest won't change that. The only thing a protest does is give confidence to other powerful people who want to overthrow the current leaders, again for their own benefit. All the big "revolutions" have simply exchanged one abuser for another. The french revolution exchanged the monarchy for Napoleon's dictatorship. Russia went from a monarchy to a communist dictatorship and then to an authoritarian capitalist state. And in the case of east Germany it was the western capitalists who swooped in and bought out the entire country for western-dictated dumping prices, leaving the eastern populace disenfranchised and economically barely better off than before (and sometimes worse, now giving rise to a new nationalist party). If you actually want to change anything you need to hit the powers that be where it hurts. They couldn't give a shit how many people are unhappy and protesting but what they do care about is money. The strike is the most effective and only effective tool the populace has, short of extreme violence which will just lead to another despot taking power.