Nonviolent Protest and Resistance Privileged

[The Grand Nudger]

True enough. You can hate the protesters cause. But you can't fault there means if they are willing to die for it.

If the only justified protests were ones we agreed with there would be no protests, peaceful or otherwise, in the world, lol.

[Thumpalumpacus]

What he's trying to say that if someone is willing to die for a cause then that person has justified that cause in their own mind.

That is semantic torture in order to avoid admitting that a stupid mistake was made.  The discussion was clearly about whether or not actions could be justified by those taking part in the discussion and not about what some twisted soul would believe in their own mind.
This is just part of the "never admit your wrong or concede a point" tenure from some regulars and it is becoming rapidly boring.


This--> "At the exact moment that a person is willing to trade their life for change....it's justifiable."

Is stupid. It's wrong. It fails every test of critical thinking and moral thinking. Now, if the people here are so vacuous that they will spend ten pages trying in vain to defend the indefensible, what hope do you think there will be of having any reasonable discussion with this type of person?

I'm guessing you missed my point that justification, like any other human emotion, is inherently subjective? Or perhaps you disagree with my point, but don't want to bother with laying out why?

In either event, there's something you're not addressing in this sweeping dismissal of yours.

[paulpablo]

Not in my book, no.  Didn't I make that clear?  Pretty sure I made that clear..in fact, pretty sure you quoted me making that clear, so...?

If those people are so disenfranchised that they're willing to trade their lives to be heard..why would I change my position..just because I disagree with their cause?  


Hahaha, you still think we're having an argument, that's cute.

True enough. You can hate the protesters cause. But you can't fault there means if they are willing to die for it.

I didn't agree with John protesting against the pedestrianisation of the town centre but that suicide bomb attack against the school he did for the cause was something I can't fault him for.

---

I want to do an update one the things that have been said so far in this thread.

 At the exact moment that a person is willing to trade their life for change....it's justifiable.  I may disagree with them, I might even hate them...but people don't forfeit their lives, their most prized possession, lightly, in my experience.

Which is basically the same as saying.  "That's a lovely dress Brenda.  I think it looks like dogshit but you spent a lot of money on it so it must be lovely inside your mind."

Then.........

You're being intentionally the dullard, aren't you?

When someone takes an action, ipso facto that actor has decided that they are justified....................... Nonsense. People do things they know aren't justified all the time.

  

And now finally you can't fault a protester's means if they're willing to die for their cause.  Apparently someone dying is an unfaultable method of protest.  Like the human catapult in southpark.

[Mister Agenda]

Sorry to bring this back around to me, but I'm a little upset with a conversation I've been having with a RL friend, though I think she may not consider me one, anymore. I didn't notice a post calling for punching racists in advance of them doing anything had been shared by her and opined that getting punched seems to work in their favor, that the guy that got punched is now more famous than ever and more people are aware of what he had to say now than before he got punched. Since we had a similar conversation before, I wouldn't have replied if I'd realized it would show up in her feed. I earned this reply:

"Mansplain to me yet again how well nonviolence works, oh great cishet white man! My poor widdle queer girl brain can't handle it. Not like I haven't had this fucking conversation with him on literally everything that suggests we don't calmly let literal fascists spread hate speech that encourages our fucking genocide."

I probably shouldn't have 'mansplained again' that nonviolent protest isn't about letting fascists spread hate speech encouraging genocide but opposing it by other means than violence, but I did when I probably should have dropped it. It's just an example though of what I'm seeing that prompted me to start this thread. I'm concerned that the resistance's Id is taking over the movement, as this attitude seems to be widespread. How did the civil rights movement manage civility with each other? The unity required was critical but they had this same divide. How did the believers in nonviolent action win out? Was it just a separation of those who could not commit to nonviolent resistance into other groups? And did those more violent groups play an important role as 'bad guys' that made MLK's group look preferable?

[paulpablo]

The only thing I'm curious about is who's the person encouraging queer girl genocide.
And my god queer girl genocide would be an amazing band name.

[Thumpalumpacus]

How did the civil rights movement manage civility with each other? The unity required was critical but they had this same divide. How did the believers in nonviolent action win out? Was it just a separation of those who could not commit to nonviolent resistance into other groups? And did those more violent groups play an important role as 'bad guys' that made MLK's group look preferable?

It's important to remember that the racial tensions of the 60s were not at all nonviolent. The rioting that spread cross-country in the middle of that decade was precisely about racism and the failure of the American promise for its minorities.

Your last question gets to the nub of it, and yes, I think the Establishment was much more comfortable dealing with nonviolent protests.

Sorry about your argument with your friend. It's a shame she cannot see what her vitriol is doing.

[The Grand Nudger]

The deference and preference the state shows to non-violent resistors is a matter of self interest, as is the necessity to indoctrinate it's citizenry into a categorical denial of violent resistance.

We might, naively, think to ourselves "oh, the state made a deal with them because they're the good guys, those other fuckers are the bad guys - we don't negotiate with terrorists!"....but that would be an interesting concession to grant the state....lol.

[Mister Agenda]

Black bloc seems to be the left anarchist expression of using violence to protest. Is it helping more than its hurting? It started in Germany as a reaction to a resurgence of Neo-Nazis, which is about as good as it gets as far as justifying the violence.

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

 How did the believers in nonviolent action win out? Was it just a separation of those who could not commit to nonviolent resistance into other groups? And did those more violent groups play an important role as 'bad guys' that made MLK's group look preferable?

Based on my observations and studies, I would say that face-saving is a distinguishing feature of non-violent resistance.  For example, practitioners of non-violent resistance, such as MLK, did not dehumanize their opponents nor frame societal problems/conflicts in an 'us vs them mentality' (which can be observed in many forms of protest): they framed things via an 'us against the problem' mentality (free from blame, guilt, and judgement, which IMO, takes tremendous self-discipline), which invites the other side to join in the problem solving/brainstorming process and save face.   In addition, another thing that set MLK (and others like him) apart from his more violent counterparts is that he was able to get out of the pain and hatred of the past and continually keep his eye on the prize of obtaining a more constructive future for all of humanity and not just a particular group of people.

[The Grand Nudger]

Whether or not the nonviolent action proponents won out in some internecine disparity seems like a less consequential question than whether or not the non violent protests -themselves -won out. In the context of a country where, 50 years after the civil rights movement, the promise of the same movement has not materialized......