4 ms·

I agree that we should not try to resolve America's current problems with violence. (And to be clear, I am an ardent pacifist and urge change in the ways of Kin

I agree that we should not try to resolve America's current problems with violence. (And to be clear, I am an ardent pacifist and urge change in the ways of King, Gandhi, etc.) Still, violence has been the answer in many (most?) political revolutions, including the American revolution and separation from Britain.

jeffbee 1y ago
And the American civil war.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  Depending on how you turn the lens, the Civil War is an excellent example of violence not being the answer. The Confederacy tried to replace their Constitutional government and the policies instituted by the leaders elected by the people with a violence-enforced new state inside the territory of their existing one and got (justifiably) multi-generationally brutalized for their trouble. The town I grew up in and moved away from was still raising funds to rebuild some of the places that were burned to the ground in the war. That was fundraising in the 1980s. Every time someone points to the 1776 war as a success story I feel compelled to point out that half the descendants of that war's victors tried a very similar thing in 1861 to absolutely ruinous result. (On this topic: Fort Sumter is an interesting story. While it was never taken during the war, it basically became a target-practice and weapons field-test location for the Union navy: every time they had a new technique or a new cannon they wanted to try out, they'd try it on the fort. By the end of the war, the fort was "standing" only in the sense that the bulk of its above-ground works had been blasted flat and were shoved together into an earthworks bunker; the Confederates were basically sheltering in a hole that a lobbed shell could fall into at any time. And while the fort and its northways sister kept Union ships out of the harbor, it didn't stop them from firing past the fort into Charleston itself, since "war crimes" and "civilian populations" weren't really a concept yet. People very much went into that war thinking there wouldn't be consequences for ordinary folk. They were very much wrong.)
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago
    And it was even a failure for the North - sure, in theory they won, and in practice they just let the South stay as they were but poorer and with a few Black people able to leave.
    - mapontosevenths 1y ago
      The confederates should have been punished, publicly.
      - throw_m239339 1y ago
        > The confederates should have been punished, publicly. No, it would have led to decades or centuries of resentment between the north and the south and eventually another civil war among those lines. It would have destroyed the union for good. The only purpose of the civil war for the North was to save the union, humiliating the south would have ensured that it would never really happen.
        fzeroracer 1y ago
        The North 'saved' the union by allowing the South to continue its brutal practices against the freedmen leading to almost a hundred years of violence, lynching and the Black Codes designed to keep control over the 'freed' slaves. Thaddeus Stevens was proven correct in his opinion that the south should've been treated like a conquered state and the land forcibly given to the freedmen.
        throw_m239339 1y ago
        Yet here we are, and the civil right act passed. On the other hand, The allies humiliating the Germans with the Versailles Treaty led to World War II. The people who want retribution are never the ones to listen after an armistice.
        1y ago
lovich 1y ago
Anyone who says violence is _never_ the answer is frankly, naive to history and power. Violence and politics are both on a spectrum and means to the same end of asserting your will. Vom Kriege is obviously not the forefront of philosophy anymore but it’s a good place to start if anyone reading this hasn’t come across that idea and wants to learn more. Even your non violent examples of King and Ghandi has very violent wings on the side showing society that if a resolution wasn’t achieved by peaceful ends then violence it is. Remember that the civil rights act didn’t get enough support to be passed until after King was assassinated and mass riots rose across the nation
- treetalker 1y ago
  In Savannah, Georgia, there stand historic cannon with an inscription in French (translated here): The final argument of kings.
  - HaZeust 1y ago
    And the Virginia flag has a graphically depicted murder with an inscription in Latin (translated here): Thus always to tyrants.
    - daseiner1 1y ago
      one of the rare latin phrases more famous untranslated: sic semper tyrannis (said by John Wilkes Booth as he shot Lincoln)
  - w0de0 1y ago
    “…and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city of Savannah, and its dependent forts, and shall wait a reasonable time for your answer, before opening with heavy ordnance. “Should you entertain the proposition, I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah…” - W. Tecumseh Sherman’s ultimatum to the garrison of this city, December 1864 Sherman’s March to the Sea was an apotheosis of political violence. It deliberately targeted non-military infrastructure. How long would American slavery have persisted without the march (the war to which it belongs)? How could non-violence have triumphed in the same crusade?
pcthrowaway 1y ago
I'd recommend you watch this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8N1HT0Fjtw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8N1HT0Fjtw) video by Norman Finkelstein about Gandhi. A lot of people get him wrong apparently; he wasn't a pacifist in the way you are suggesting. TL;DW Gandhi knew that to resist the British, they would need a critical mass of people resisting (armed or not). Armed resistance against a superior force is futile. His whole idea of Satyagraha was intentionally self-sacrificial for the nonviolent protestors who would die, because he knew it would stir the masses to action. I also agree that violence is tragic and we should always take care not to glorify or idealize it, but we should also contextualize it when used by people resisting systems of oppression. As Nelson Mandela said: > A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  another book (that i have admittedly been dragging my feet on finishing) that covers this idea is 'The Wretched of the Earth' by Frantz Fanon. i have never personally been directly exposed to the ill effects of state-imposed violence to the degree that others have. it's eye-opening to more-seriously consider the positions of those who have.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  > A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire. Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War: > Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
  > pacifist That pacifism was very much required though. The whole projection of India as this "mystic peaceful place full of peace-loving meditating sadhus that the Beatles and Steve jobs were so enamored by" was instrumental for the way we got independent with minimal balkanization[1], our ability to stay non-aligned in the cold war (which btw, is the original definition of a third world country!) and maintain strategic autonomy throughout the following decades - which we exercise quite well today. Of course, it was nothing but a political image, and we built nukes behind the scenes (by order of the very same politician nehru), but gandhis pacifist outlook and the heavy marketing of this in western countries (see Nehru's rallies in USA at the time), as well as in soviet Russia, was very necessary. People like to say we shouldn't have been socialist back then, but the Soviet help that arose out of that was really useful. In geopolitics there are no morals, so it is also completely OK that we took a U-turn from all that a while later. The only interest is self-interest. My point is, a lot of these political positions are simply projections cast in order to achieve a certain goal, meaning to look at it from a moral standpoint is useless. This is true for any political position held in any country anywhere in the world at any point in history. [1] If you think the partitions were bad... the rest of india would have had a much worse fate had foreign interests gotten involved. Think: other cold war battlefields of the late 20th century. The number of secessionist states at the time in india...the cia and the kgb would have had a field day.
mensetmanusman 1y ago
Actually few conflicts are peacefully resolved purely by violence.
crooked-v 1y ago
Martin Luther King was regularly labeled as a violent rabble-rouser during his lifetime; just look at some of the contemporary political cartoons about him. It was only after his death that he was recast as a figure of absolute peace who made racial progress happen just by giving thoughtful speeches.
- slumberlust 1y ago
  Are you saying he was a violent person or that was just the image pushed by the opposition?

jeffbee 1y ago

And the American civil war.

shadowgovt 1y ago
Depending on how you turn the lens, the Civil War is an excellent example of violence not being the answer. The Confederacy tried to replace their Constitutional government and the policies instituted by the leaders elected by the people with a violence-enforced new state inside the territory of their existing one and got (justifiably) multi-generationally brutalized for their trouble. The town I grew up in and moved away from was still raising funds to rebuild some of the places that were burned to the ground in the war. That was fundraising in the 1980s. Every time someone points to the 1776 war as a success story I feel compelled to point out that half the descendants of that war's victors tried a very similar thing in 1861 to absolutely ruinous result. (On this topic: Fort Sumter is an interesting story. While it was never taken during the war, it basically became a target-practice and weapons field-test location for the Union navy: every time they had a new technique or a new cannon they wanted to try out, they'd try it on the fort. By the end of the war, the fort was "standing" only in the sense that the bulk of its above-ground works had been blasted flat and were shoved together into an earthworks bunker; the Confederates were basically sheltering in a hole that a lobbed shell could fall into at any time. And while the fort and its northways sister kept Union ships out of the harbor, it didn't stop them from firing past the fort into Charleston itself, since "war crimes" and "civilian populations" weren't really a concept yet. People very much went into that war thinking there wouldn't be consequences for ordinary folk. They were very much wrong.)
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  And it was even a failure for the North - sure, in theory they won, and in practice they just let the South stay as they were but poorer and with a few Black people able to leave.
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    The confederates should have been punished, publicly.
    - throw_m239339 1y ago
      > The confederates should have been punished, publicly. No, it would have led to decades or centuries of resentment between the north and the south and eventually another civil war among those lines. It would have destroyed the union for good. The only purpose of the civil war for the North was to save the union, humiliating the south would have ensured that it would never really happen.
      - fzeroracer 1y ago
        The North 'saved' the union by allowing the South to continue its brutal practices against the freedmen leading to almost a hundred years of violence, lynching and the Black Codes designed to keep control over the 'freed' slaves. Thaddeus Stevens was proven correct in his opinion that the south should've been treated like a conquered state and the land forcibly given to the freedmen.
        throw_m239339 1y ago
        Yet here we are, and the civil right act passed. On the other hand, The allies humiliating the Germans with the Versailles Treaty led to World War II. The people who want retribution are never the ones to listen after an armistice.
        1y ago

lovich 1y ago

Anyone who says violence is _never_ the answer is frankly, naive to history and power. Violence and politics are both on a spectrum and means to the same end of asserting your will. Vom Kriege is obviously not the forefront of philosophy anymore but it’s a good place to start if anyone reading this hasn’t come across that idea and wants to learn more. Even your non violent examples of King and Ghandi has very violent wings on the side showing society that if a resolution wasn’t achieved by peaceful ends then violence it is. Remember that the civil rights act didn’t get enough support to be passed until after King was assassinated and mass riots rose across the nation

treetalker 1y ago
In Savannah, Georgia, there stand historic cannon with an inscription in French (translated here): The final argument of kings.
- HaZeust 1y ago
  And the Virginia flag has a graphically depicted murder with an inscription in Latin (translated here): Thus always to tyrants.
  - daseiner1 1y ago
    one of the rare latin phrases more famous untranslated: sic semper tyrannis (said by John Wilkes Booth as he shot Lincoln)
- w0de0 1y ago
  “…and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city of Savannah, and its dependent forts, and shall wait a reasonable time for your answer, before opening with heavy ordnance. “Should you entertain the proposition, I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah…” - W. Tecumseh Sherman’s ultimatum to the garrison of this city, December 1864 Sherman’s March to the Sea was an apotheosis of political violence. It deliberately targeted non-military infrastructure. How long would American slavery have persisted without the march (the war to which it belongs)? How could non-violence have triumphed in the same crusade?

pcthrowaway 1y ago

I'd recommend you watch this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8N1HT0Fjtw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8N1HT0Fjtw) video by Norman Finkelstein about Gandhi. A lot of people get him wrong apparently; he wasn't a pacifist in the way you are suggesting. TL;DW Gandhi knew that to resist the British, they would need a critical mass of people resisting (armed or not). Armed resistance against a superior force is futile. His whole idea of Satyagraha was intentionally self-sacrificial for the nonviolent protestors who would die, because he knew it would stir the masses to action. I also agree that violence is tragic and we should always take care not to glorify or idealize it, but we should also contextualize it when used by people resisting systems of oppression. As Nelson Mandela said: > A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
another book (that i have admittedly been dragging my feet on finishing) that covers this idea is 'The Wretched of the Earth' by Frantz Fanon. i have never personally been directly exposed to the ill effects of state-imposed violence to the degree that others have. it's eye-opening to more-seriously consider the positions of those who have.
FireBeyond 1y ago
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire. Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War: > Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
porridgeraisin 1y ago
> pacifist That pacifism was very much required though. The whole projection of India as this "mystic peaceful place full of peace-loving meditating sadhus that the Beatles and Steve jobs were so enamored by" was instrumental for the way we got independent with minimal balkanization[1], our ability to stay non-aligned in the cold war (which btw, is the original definition of a third world country!) and maintain strategic autonomy throughout the following decades - which we exercise quite well today. Of course, it was nothing but a political image, and we built nukes behind the scenes (by order of the very same politician nehru), but gandhis pacifist outlook and the heavy marketing of this in western countries (see Nehru's rallies in USA at the time), as well as in soviet Russia, was very necessary. People like to say we shouldn't have been socialist back then, but the Soviet help that arose out of that was really useful. In geopolitics there are no morals, so it is also completely OK that we took a U-turn from all that a while later. The only interest is self-interest. My point is, a lot of these political positions are simply projections cast in order to achieve a certain goal, meaning to look at it from a moral standpoint is useless. This is true for any political position held in any country anywhere in the world at any point in history. [1] If you think the partitions were bad... the rest of india would have had a much worse fate had foreign interests gotten involved. Think: other cold war battlefields of the late 20th century. The number of secessionist states at the time in india...the cia and the kgb would have had a field day.

mensetmanusman 1y ago

Actually few conflicts are peacefully resolved purely by violence.

crooked-v 1y ago

Martin Luther King was regularly labeled as a violent rabble-rouser during his lifetime; just look at some of the contemporary political cartoons about him. It was only after his death that he was recast as a figure of absolute peace who made racial progress happen just by giving thoughtful speeches.

slumberlust 1y ago
Are you saying he was a violent person or that was just the image pushed by the opposition?