There is a book “how to blow up a pipeline” that talks about most of these figures and how they succeeded only because the existence of more radical and violent wings of their movements. It is a good read.
There is a book “how to blow up a pipeline” that talks about most of these figures and how they succeeded only because the existence of more radical and violent wings of their movements. It is a good read.
I can’t address the book directly, since I haven’t read it, but I’d point out that:
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There is a vast fucking difference between asserting the flank effect exists and asserting that success is only possible because of the radical flank in all cases.
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That asserting that no one has ever gotten their freedom via moral persuasion necessarily implies that moral persuasion has never been the prime mover of the grant of rights to oppressed and marginalized groups, which, itself, necessarily implies a level of violence, capacity for violence, and fear of violence that is often vastly disproportionate compared to what the historical evidence actually suggests.
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That the reverse can be applied much easier and much more consistently in light of the evidence - that violent wings of a movement have never succeeded in the fundamental goal of eliminating oppression without moral persuasion towards oppressors; movements which rely only on violence can only succeed in establishing themselves as an oppressive regime and flipping which side is oppressed. And, for that matter, pointing out that the long history of violent movements by the oppressed do not have any track record of establishing alleviation of the oppressed in the greater polity without substantial moral persuasion; reducing a conflict to balance of power, as was often done historically before modern methods of communication and analysis resulted in more coordinated and universalist approaches towards liberation, simply results in the oppressors waiting for an opportunity to reduce the gains of the oppressed that were won by pure vigilance of arms.
most of these figures and how they succeeded only because…
I am talking about the figures on the picture and not all of them at that.
I do not have the context for all liberation movements in history by far.
I am talking about the figures on the picture and not all of them at that.
The only point that doesn’t apply to the figures on the picture is 3.
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The last time the Palestinians tried a non-violent way of fighting oppression they were gunned down by the Zionists.
There are some oppressors you can’t reason with.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/10/gaza-great-march-of-return/
Yes, this is certainly true. Like I said, violence and persuasion are BOTH tools. Sometimes you need more of one, and sometimes you need more of the other.
Can somebody do some deep dive nuanced research to see if the oppressors truly had a change of heart or if they instead simply found it to no longer be beneficial to continue oppressing?
I have been to many Nelson Mandela museums, and spoken with a lot of people who lived through the end of Apartheid. When he took power, both the black and white populations were gearing up for civil war. One guy told me that there were charts up at his school showing the likely kinds of grenades that could be thrown at him. Anyway, Mandela managed to calm things down. He might have been the only guy who could have navigated that exact time period. He did it through a series of policy changes, meetings with key leaders, and speeches. Entirely peaceful, but importantly, there had also been huge amounts of violence leading up to his release from prison and becoming president.
Did the racists change their minds? I don’t know. But the transition to the new government was peaceful.
I would suggest that the oppressors found it no longer beneficial because many of the oppressors’ recruitment pool for the instruments of oppression had changes of heart.
I would not count on the ‘hearts’ of those in power under any circumstances, but if you consider oppression to be imposed by society, then there are many oppressors whose opinions can be swayed, even if violence should not be surrendered as an additional, conditional, or potential tool.
Appealing to moral sense doesn’t mean your victory relies on the powerful changing their hearts - sometimes it just relies on their allies withdrawing support.
See, specifically, Ferdinand Marcos fleeing when the nonviolent EDSA protests made him realize he was blockaded on all sides and the CIA would no longer prop him up.
Violent and nonviolent resistance often go hand in hand. They amplify each other’s effectiveness, ideally leading to the nonviolent side teaching its goals.
I feel that right now we do see the American people moving in a similar direction – on the one have we have large protests that try to be as peaceful as possible, on the other hand we have people running ICE agents out of town.
This will probably intensify before the government is willing to negotiate, in lockstep with the government increasing its use of force. I hope that the violence will not escalate to an outright civil war before the government relents.
Good luck to everyone over there.
Edit: To be clear this is meant to agree to the caption
You mean the man who spent the last year of his life ardently advocating for attempting to persuade the oppressors before breaking out the metaphorical and literal big guns again?
Yes, sounds like he was very opposed to appealing to the moral sense of the electorate.
EDIT: Sorry, didn’t catch your edit.
I think the problem is people don’t understand the third path. Nonviolent means are not physically violent towards people - it works because of violence all the same though
Protests themselves are just a show of solidarity. They will never change anything - unless they are large or sustained enough that the implied threat of violence causes fear in the leadership. They are just a symptom of discontent, police and the military can disperse the people, and they will, without the implied threat of what happens when you close this outlet
Then there’s economic violence. You can shut down a city or grind the economy to a halt with enough motivated people. That will piss people off… At first. If you keep it going, it will transform from an inconvenience to a threat to normalcy - at first, most people will be annoyed at the protesters, but once they feel their life disruptered they will be more angry at the state and just want it to stop
You can do the same legally. You can gum up the works, get yourself arrested for a specific reason to challenge that reason in court, over and over until you freeze up the legal system. You can even win, and push back the boundaries of the law oppressing you
Then there’s martyrdom. You can force the state to commit violence on you. You can set yourself on fire. You can give up your life to amplify your message. This makes people very uncomfortable
There’s always violence. It can be implied, it can be against yourself, it can be against property, it can be against the feeling of normalcy itself - but there’s always some kind of violence. Because ultimately, violence is asserting your will over others, and that’s what a movement does
Nonviolent means are not physically violent towards people - it works because of violence all the same though
Nonviolent means can (and often do) work when oriented towards pressuring a population. That’s not a reason to discount the value of nonviolent means oriented towards moral persuasion. That’s all I’m saying.
There’s always violence. It can be implied, it can be against yourself, it can be against property, it can be against the feeling of normalcy itself - but there’s always some kind of violence. Because ultimately, violence is asserting your will over others, and that’s what a movement does
Is persuasion, then, violence as well?
I’m not writing off nonviolent means - I’m a strong believer in the third path. But you have to understand what you’re doing… It is not enough to hold signs and march. It matters where and how you march, when you march, and the physical consequences of you marching
Is persuasion violence? Sometimes. When there’s any degree of coercion, it’s violence
You need the coercion. You need to wake people the fuck up and make them pay attention.
They want to live their lives and ignore the scary reality of this takeover of society. They want to stop watching the news. I understand it… This shit is terrifying to live through. I feel the urge to put my head in the sand too
We cannot let them. And that is coercion. That is violence… Just a far better kind of violence
Don’t expect nuance from people who naturally default to all or nothing thinking.
To the point of denying that Mandela, Gandhi, and MLK Jr. engaged in moral persuasion. It’s utter insanity.
It wasn’t the moral persuasion of Mandela that ended Apartheid though.
It was a sustained isolation and economic boycott combined with mass action, that the state would consider violent, like breaking the barrier and occupy places, which led to massacres like the Bisho massacre that subsequentlty increased pressure for negotiations, because people were absolutely not going to stay put with being massacred.
I feel like the story of the end of Apartheid South Africa is told in a very whitewashed version to undermine the importance of direct mass action, including responding to government violence by fighting back.
Mandela wasn’t some mythical figure that came and solved things by the mgaic of his words. It was the blood, sweat and tears of millions of people in South Africa and beyond that brought an end to Apartheid and it was not in the terms of what the state defines as “peaceful”.
It wasn’t the moral persuasion of Mandela that ended Apartheid though.
It was the moral persuasion of Mandela that ended apartheid in South Africa as we would recognize it. It’s not a fringe opinion that without Mandela’s leadership, South Africa had a very good chance of descending into civil war instead of a multiparty democracy.
It was a sustained isolation and economic boycott combined with mass action, that the state would consider violent, like breaking the barrier and occupy places, which led to massacres like the Bisho massacre that subsequentlty increased pressure for negotiations, because people were absolutely not going to stay put with being massacred.
… the Bisho massacre was performed by the security troops of a Black-dominated Bantustan attempting to resist reintegration into the central government (though at the demand of the ANC), not by the white-dominated central government.
While the massacre did increase pressure for negotiations, it did so because parties wished reduce the risk of violence escalating into a civil war, with Mandela greatly reducing the ANC’s demands in the massacre’s wake and restarting negotiations with the government, not because the massacre improved the position of the oppressed by stoking passions.
I feel like the story of the end of Apartheid South Africa is told in a very whitewashed version to undermine the importance of direct mass action, including responding to government violence by fighting back.
Responding to government violence by fighting back is important. But it is also important to recognize that Mandela’s work in prison and after his release was largely oriented around moral persuasion as an alternative to violence - not because violence was completely off the table if things went sour, but because he did consider moral persuasion as having a greater capacity to achieve the goals of the ANC. And his work after his release from prison is one of the most stunning examples of what genuine appeals to the moral sense of a population - even one as steeped in racism as white Afrikaaners under the apartheid regime - are capable of doing.
Mandela wasn’t some mythical figure that came and solved things by the mgaic of his words. It was the blood, sweat and tears of millions of people in South Africa and beyond that brought an end to Apartheid and it was not in the terms of what the state defines as “peaceful”.
Downplaying Mandela’s very significant contribution and leadership are not really a good alternative. Apartheid was going to end, sure - but there was no guarantee that South Africa wouldn’t end with it.
Those who still retain the smallest fractions of their humanities can still be reasoned with… But how many of those are left, especially in the West? I know those in power are maniacs, but can the people cheering on the current violent repressions and slide into fascism in America be talked into sense? Oh well.
… I would go so far as to suggest that Mandela, Gandhi, and MLK Jr. were addressing significantly more hostile audiences than protesters in the modern West.
Hmm, yes, now tell me how persuasion stopped the Nazis.
It’s almost like violence and persuasion are BOTH tools with applications in fighting oppression, rather than picking one or the other as The One True Faith™? 🤯
In case reading the title was too much effort for you.
The problem here is that you are positioning this as if what we are dealing with today is the same as what those people dealt with in their day, and it is not. We aren’t dealing with rational politicians who believe that they must do something to appease the common people to avoid losing their jobs, we’re dealing with fascists who are willing to crush any and all descent, regardless of how it makes them look, because they are already working on changing the law to ensure they cannot be removed from power.
Speaking of reading, read a little something from one of my favorite authors: “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.” ― George Orwell
The problem here is that you are positioning this as if what we are dealing with today is the same as what those people dealt with in their day, and it is not.
Me: “People have, in the past, acquired rights by moral persuasion, even though violence is also a valid and useful tool in pursuit of the same.”
Speaking of reading, read a little something from one of my favorite authors: “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.
Holy fucking shit, have you still not read the fucking title I posted?
It’s almost like violence and persuasion are BOTH tools with applications in fighting oppression, rather than picking one or the other as The One True Faith™? 🤯
Oh wow, you are right, your title does say those things, and I have now seen the light and throw away my means of defending myself in the face of fascism, since we only “sometimes” need weapons to protect ourselves from blatant fascism according to your holy words.
There, I acknowledged your title, now return to your centrism and fence sitting. The adults are working on dealing with actual issues.
Oh wow, you are right, your title does say those things, and I have now seen the light and throw away my means of defending myself in the face of fascism, since we only “sometimes” need weapons to protect ourselves from blatant fascism according to your holy words.
“You sometimes need violence.”
“Clearly you’re telling me to throw away our weapons!”
Christ.
There, I acknowledged your title, now return to your centrism and fence sitting. The adults are working on dealing with actual issues.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Mandela literally founded the paramilitary wing of the ANC which murdered children, robbed banks and fought proxy wars as mercenaries in neighbouring countries where they committed heinous war crimes. But he did give good speech. He is literally the embodiment of the statement in the image.
His wife was evil through and through though.
And also literally turned to negotiation and persuasion later in life, with which he successfully achieved what he could not during his paramilitary days.
Sometimes the hammer is the right choice, and sometimes the screwdriver is.
