6 ms·

Insurrections, Ancient and Modern (and Also Meet the Academicats)

31 points by parsecs 6y ago

pattusk 6y ago
This is very interesting, but likely violating the current political detox policy.
roenxi 6y ago
It is an interesting perspective. I disagree with Dr. Devereaux in his take, but agree with his proscriptions. His analogy has strengths and weaknesses. Dealing with the main weaknesses: ancient Athens is not modern America. In a Greek city state, most of everyone would have in the city so having the power to size the public spaces while your opposition was in them would have been equivalent to breaking their military - citizens and military were largely equivalent. A modern insurrection and and ancient insurrection play out very differently. Dealing with the main strength - yeah, the animating spirit of the mob and the ancient insurrections would have been somewhere between similar and identical. A large mob of people will sometimes attempt to do something and will try to make it happen until they meet resistance or go to bed. That is a general risk that large groups of people transition to mobs, and that is why modern states, by and large, need some sort of military and policing power. But the issue here is that the punitive measures are being escalated to right-wing political leadership without any sense of perspective to (1) a rather extended series of "peaceful" left-wing protest in 2020 that went violent in 5-10% of cases with enormous community costs and (2) Republican leadership, including Trump, are fighting ... using the court, which is a perfectly acceptable avenue and the three tries of "Peisistratos" is now called "having an election every couple of years" - also an accepted avenue. There is manifest evidence that most of the mob did not intended to be violent the morning of - violent protestors would come prepared with guns. It escalated on the day as protests are known to do sometimes. The police were underprepared. It isn't acceptable, a lot of people need to be arrested, changes are needed to police tactics if nothing else. But the retaliation including an internet purge of right-wing aligned personalities and businesses (and impeaching Trump without taking the time to draw breath) is much more damaging than the ghostly ember of a mob. The knee-jerk overreaction is a low-thought decision making response that has far more in common with mob mentality than the thoughtful approach to governance and discourse which work in the long-term. The hazard posed by this mob - as in, the part inherent to it without considering the government response - was arguably not worst the States has seen in this decade. Even if it got further into the Capitol than most.
- watwut 6y ago
  > There is manifest evidence that most of the mob did not intended to be violent the morning of - violent protestors would come prepared with guns. And part of did intended exactly that. They had zip ties ready, there were pipe bombs in RNC the same day. Video of meeting where they talk about plans leaked. The messages they used for communication leaked debates about plans. Politicians complained about their panic buttons disappearing from offices that day.
  - krapp 6y ago
    I don't know if it was planned, but it was brilliant PR. The "public" face of the riots are some bumbling clowns putting their feet up on Pelosi's desk and taking selfies for social media that the movement can point to the claim the entire thing was just harmless shenanigans if the serious stuff happening elsewhere doesn't go off as planned. And then there's the question of complicity by Capitol police, by other Republican staff, stories going back since last year of Trump placing loyalist extremists in certain positions of power. All these signs something bigger was supposed to happen, but all Trump supporters have to do is point to that schmuck in a buffalo hat and say "come on, that was never serious."
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  I disagree that the hazard posed by this mob was not the worst the States has seen (even this century), as resorting to violence as a putative alternative to elections is not a good place for a nominal democracy.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  He specifically mentions that Greeks are a better comparison than Romans because their citizens were less militarized.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    If you are referring to the paragraph with "fall of the Roman Republic was so heavily influenced by the involvement of the Roman Army" that isn't what he is saying. He is saying that Roman insurrections involved the military, so this riot isn't a close parallel to a Roman insurrection. US insurrections will involve the army too - that is what weakens the comparison with ancient Greece. The Romans (and US) have professional, geographically dispersed militaries and the Greeks by and large didn't. That completely changes the dynamic of how revolts happen.
inglor_cz 6y ago
Do not take my words as an endorsement of the stupid and shortsightedly evil insurrection. I do not endorse it. But I cannot completely agree with the article and given that the comments on site are turned off (understandable), this might be the place to raise objections. I think there is an obvious flaw in the comparison. The larger the entity you want to have under your control, the less likely is that you succeed just by occupying one concrete location. An ancient city-state was tiny compared to even modern Greece, much less so than modern and fairly decentralized USA. By storming an important government building, you can do some damage (esp. reputational one), kill certain people, but overthrow of a political system in a huge country is much harder to pull off. In modern history, such primitive actions usually fell flat on their face after mere hours. Which is precisely what happened here. I would be more worried about a potential "rebellion in the provinces", which is basically what Francesco Franco did. That would have a potential to spin into a full fledged civil war or violent secession. This is something that was effective in certain cases.
- watwut 6y ago
  I think that this is the risk the article see for future: > we’ll see a shift to a campaign of domestic terror (something like The Troubles, in terms of the violence committed), or if, as with the Nazis after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, the folks who supported this insurrection will focus on trying to use the democratic process to abolish the democratic process.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >if, as with the Nazis after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, the folks who supported this insurrection will focus on trying to use the democratic process to abolish the democratic process. I think the Reichstag (sp?) fire is the better comparison there. The Nazis didn't really do much to get rid of democratic institutions and civil liberties until after they were in power (and the fire was their excuse to do so).
    - watwut 6y ago
      Why is Reichstag better comparison? It was not started by Nazi although they used the fire for their advantage. > The Nazis didn't really do much to get rid of democratic institutions and civil liberties until after they were in power. I think that is what "focus on trying to use the democratic process to abolish the democratic process" is meant to mean. Although Nazi did engage in quite a lot of elections related violence and suppression before they were in power. Intimidating or attacking people who came to vote, trying to discourage unfavorable demographic by harassment on streets near voting places, spreading rumors about marked ballots and subsequent retaliation of you vote wrong.
myWindoonn 6y ago
None of this is new. Hitler based his Beer Hall Putsch on Mussolini's March to Rome and his Jewish Question on the Ottoman Empire's Armenian Question. Our Capitol insurrection riot has elements of both the Beer Hall Putsch and also the Reichstag Fire. Because fascism is mythic and traditionalist, its adherents will always seek to reuse and appropriate as many symbols and rituals as possible from ancient cultures. We need not just to pursue a legalist approach to justice and reconciliation, convicting and punishing terrorists and seditionists, but also expose the historical details of each insurrectionist action, so that we can build a society where people have the knowledge required to actively be antifascists.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  > so that we can build a society where people have the knowledge required to actively be antifascists. I know this comes from the right intentions, but, ironically, even here you have to be careful : proto-Antifa often allied with Nazis because the ruling Socialists were "the real fascists" according to the Stalinist party line. This even continued after proto-Antifa properly became Antifa, and likely helped Hitler to take power.
  - myWindoonn 6y ago
    Let's apply some history to this yikes. The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) explicitly positioned themselves as anti-fascist in the 1920s; in 1932, they created the Antifascist Action [0]. At no point did they ever ally with the Nazi Party. You may be thinking of KPD's opposition to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who came into power in 1918 by opposing the Communist revolution that year [1]. The social democrats opposed the communists in general, which led to the social democrats allying with the Nazis. This is an instance of the common phenomenon known as corporatist-fascist alliance, where corporations and capitalists (anti-communists) agree to work with fascists under the banner of free-market and free-speech principles. The alliance lasts either until the corporations grow tired of the fascist attempts to run the government into the ground, or the fascists gain enough power to destroy the corporations and seize control. In Weimar Germany, the latter happened; in 1933, after the Reichstag fire, the KPD was blamed for the fire and banned by decree [3], and then the SPD was banned for voting against the Enabling Act [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism#Germany:_against_the_NSDAP_and_Hitlerism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism#Germany:_against_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany#Weimar_Republic_(1918%E2%80%931933) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Social_Democrat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree

31 points by parsecs 6y ago

This is very interesting, but likely violating the current political detox policy.

It is an interesting perspective. I disagree with Dr. Devereaux in his take, but agree with his proscriptions. His analogy has strengths and weaknesses. Dealing with the main weaknesses: ancient Athens is not modern America. In a Greek city state, most of everyone would have in the city so having the power to size the public spaces while your opposition was in them would have been equivalent to breaking their military - citizens and military were largely equivalent. A modern insurrection and and ancient insurrection play out very differently. Dealing with the main strength - yeah, the animating spirit of the mob and the ancient insurrections would have been somewhere between similar and identical. A large mob of people will sometimes attempt to do something and will try to make it happen until they meet resistance or go to bed. That is a general risk that large groups of people transition to mobs, and that is why modern states, by and large, need some sort of military and policing power. But the issue here is that the punitive measures are being escalated to right-wing political leadership without any sense of perspective to (1) a rather extended series of "peaceful" left-wing protest in 2020 that went violent in 5-10% of cases with enormous community costs and (2) Republican leadership, including Trump, are fighting ... using the court, which is a perfectly acceptable avenue and the three tries of "Peisistratos" is now called "having an election every couple of years" - also an accepted avenue. There is manifest evidence that most of the mob did not intended to be violent the morning of - violent protestors would come prepared with guns. It escalated on the day as protests are known to do sometimes. The police were underprepared. It isn't acceptable, a lot of people need to be arrested, changes are needed to police tactics if nothing else. But the retaliation including an internet purge of right-wing aligned personalities and businesses (and impeaching Trump without taking the time to draw breath) is much more damaging than the ghostly ember of a mob. The knee-jerk overreaction is a low-thought decision making response that has far more in common with mob mentality than the thoughtful approach to governance and discourse which work in the long-term. The hazard posed by this mob - as in, the part inherent to it without considering the government response - was arguably not worst the States has seen in this decade. Even if it got further into the Capitol than most.

watwut 6y ago
> There is manifest evidence that most of the mob did not intended to be violent the morning of - violent protestors would come prepared with guns. And part of did intended exactly that. They had zip ties ready, there were pipe bombs in RNC the same day. Video of meeting where they talk about plans leaked. The messages they used for communication leaked debates about plans. Politicians complained about their panic buttons disappearing from offices that day.
- krapp 6y ago
  I don't know if it was planned, but it was brilliant PR. The "public" face of the riots are some bumbling clowns putting their feet up on Pelosi's desk and taking selfies for social media that the movement can point to the claim the entire thing was just harmless shenanigans if the serious stuff happening elsewhere doesn't go off as planned. And then there's the question of complicity by Capitol police, by other Republican staff, stories going back since last year of Trump placing loyalist extremists in certain positions of power. All these signs something bigger was supposed to happen, but all Trump supporters have to do is point to that schmuck in a buffalo hat and say "come on, that was never serious."
082349872349872 6y ago
I disagree that the hazard posed by this mob was not the worst the States has seen (even this century), as resorting to violence as a putative alternative to elections is not a good place for a nominal democracy.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
He specifically mentions that Greeks are a better comparison than Romans because their citizens were less militarized.
- roenxi 6y ago
  If you are referring to the paragraph with "fall of the Roman Republic was so heavily influenced by the involvement of the Roman Army" that isn't what he is saying. He is saying that Roman insurrections involved the military, so this riot isn't a close parallel to a Roman insurrection. US insurrections will involve the army too - that is what weakens the comparison with ancient Greece. The Romans (and US) have professional, geographically dispersed militaries and the Greeks by and large didn't. That completely changes the dynamic of how revolts happen.

inglor_cz 6y ago

Do not take my words as an endorsement of the stupid and shortsightedly evil insurrection. I do not endorse it. But I cannot completely agree with the article and given that the comments on site are turned off (understandable), this might be the place to raise objections. I think there is an obvious flaw in the comparison. The larger the entity you want to have under your control, the less likely is that you succeed just by occupying one concrete location. An ancient city-state was tiny compared to even modern Greece, much less so than modern and fairly decentralized USA. By storming an important government building, you can do some damage (esp. reputational one), kill certain people, but overthrow of a political system in a huge country is much harder to pull off. In modern history, such primitive actions usually fell flat on their face after mere hours. Which is precisely what happened here. I would be more worried about a potential "rebellion in the provinces", which is basically what Francesco Franco did. That would have a potential to spin into a full fledged civil war or violent secession. This is something that was effective in certain cases.

watwut 6y ago
I think that this is the risk the article see for future: > we’ll see a shift to a campaign of domestic terror (something like The Troubles, in terms of the violence committed), or if, as with the Nazis after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, the folks who supported this insurrection will focus on trying to use the democratic process to abolish the democratic process.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >if, as with the Nazis after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, the folks who supported this insurrection will focus on trying to use the democratic process to abolish the democratic process. I think the Reichstag (sp?) fire is the better comparison there. The Nazis didn't really do much to get rid of democratic institutions and civil liberties until after they were in power (and the fire was their excuse to do so).
  - watwut 6y ago
    Why is Reichstag better comparison? It was not started by Nazi although they used the fire for their advantage. > The Nazis didn't really do much to get rid of democratic institutions and civil liberties until after they were in power. I think that is what "focus on trying to use the democratic process to abolish the democratic process" is meant to mean. Although Nazi did engage in quite a lot of elections related violence and suppression before they were in power. Intimidating or attacking people who came to vote, trying to discourage unfavorable demographic by harassment on streets near voting places, spreading rumors about marked ballots and subsequent retaliation of you vote wrong.

myWindoonn 6y ago

None of this is new. Hitler based his Beer Hall Putsch on Mussolini's March to Rome and his Jewish Question on the Ottoman Empire's Armenian Question. Our Capitol insurrection riot has elements of both the Beer Hall Putsch and also the Reichstag Fire. Because fascism is mythic and traditionalist, its adherents will always seek to reuse and appropriate as many symbols and rituals as possible from ancient cultures. We need not just to pursue a legalist approach to justice and reconciliation, convicting and punishing terrorists and seditionists, but also expose the historical details of each insurrectionist action, so that we can build a society where people have the knowledge required to actively be antifascists.

BlueTemplar 6y ago
> so that we can build a society where people have the knowledge required to actively be antifascists. I know this comes from the right intentions, but, ironically, even here you have to be careful : proto-Antifa often allied with Nazis because the ruling Socialists were "the real fascists" according to the Stalinist party line. This even continued after proto-Antifa properly became Antifa, and likely helped Hitler to take power.
- myWindoonn 6y ago
  Let's apply some history to this yikes. The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) explicitly positioned themselves as anti-fascist in the 1920s; in 1932, they created the Antifascist Action [0]. At no point did they ever ally with the Nazi Party. You may be thinking of KPD's opposition to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who came into power in 1918 by opposing the Communist revolution that year [1]. The social democrats opposed the communists in general, which led to the social democrats allying with the Nazis. This is an instance of the common phenomenon known as corporatist-fascist alliance, where corporations and capitalists (anti-communists) agree to work with fascists under the banner of free-market and free-speech principles. The alliance lasts either until the corporations grow tired of the fascist attempts to run the government into the ground, or the fascists gain enough power to destroy the corporations and seize control. In Weimar Germany, the latter happened; in 1933, after the Reichstag fire, the KPD was blamed for the fire and banned by decree [3], and then the SPD was banned for voting against the Enabling Act [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism#Germany:_against_the_NSDAP_and_Hitlerism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism#Germany:_against_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany#Weimar_Republic_(1918%E2%80%931933) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Social_Democrat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree