AAAAARGH MLK jr.’s method of protest was only successful because it was the “good cop” to black nationalism’s “bad cop.” It was the threat of Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” that drove the liberal establishment to begrudgingly accept desegregation.
This strategy is explicitly understood and taught by Peace Studies academics as a legitimate method of protest strategy, one that has repeatedly created positive, if limited, change. The only reason to obscure it is either ignorance, malice, or both.
What to the Violence Studies academics think of it?
I’ve never thought about it that way. And now I need to think about that for a while.
Without going out and checking it appears to be true of every successful nonviolent movement. During Ghandi’s time there was absolutely a violent independence movement, and Mandela literally started out as a “terrorist” (and those more active orgs were still around when he rebranded as non violent). Why would the powers that be give in to a group that doesn’t threaten them otherwise? Certainly not because they suddenly grow a conscience. If it were just Dr King and a bunch of nonviolent protesters - even a lot of them - why would the American government listen? It’s pretty obvious they don’t actually have to listen to people’s opinions, or they wouldn’t be supporting Israel and ICE would either be abolished or at the very least very, very different. Nope, gotta be materialist about these things. Peaceful protest alone has never achieved anything and even when it’s successful tends to only be partially so, because the peaceful protesters are there to negotiate and have more moderate demands to begin with - consider MLK v Malcolm X and exactly how much further they each would have liked the civil rights movement to proceed - obviously neither would have been happy with where it ended but I suspect Malcolm X would have been less so and would have driven it further.
In the same vein, social-democratic reform in Europe was a release valve to deter more radical, soviet-backed movements from gaining strength.
Yet another reason for the fall of the USSR to be a tragedy; it removed any incentive for western-capitalist governments to even pretend to care about workers.
The peaceful protest side also helps! The state would much rather make concessions to peaceful protest than they would to an armed one, because the latter challenges the state’s monopoly on power. The existence of a peaceful protest lets the state pretend to ignore the armed one, while still giving into their demands. Of course the state would rather make no concessions at all, so both are necessary.
I mean, yes, that’s what I was saying, but you’ve named the problem right here. Peaceful protest doesn’t challenge state power, it can reform things but not make radical change, so if radical change is necessary (it is), peaceful protest serves only to distract from truly effective movements.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying that if you don’t have the numbers for armed resistance to actually win, a parallel peaceful protest movement can still give a path to get concessions (but peaceful protest won’t get anything by itself).
And taking advantage of that phenomena to quell people’s outrage is very explicitly something the bourgeoisie do to keep the more extreme movements from being able to expand to the point that they CAN make the actual, needed, radical change.
Well I see the point in that, too. I’ll note that though Malcolm became peaceful, and mlk2 they both ended up eating lead.
I also think that an MLK-style “good cop” is a necessary element in a resistance movement, and should even be more heavily emphasized than the “bad cop” element.
Ultimately, violence is an effective tool for getting what you want. How it is used determines whether it is morally good or bad. The vast majority of people (hexbears included) believe violence is only good when
- it is used to fight for good (punching Nazis is good and punching children is bad) AND
- it is a last resort (we should give landlords the opportunity to give up their property before we take it by force) AND
- it is proportional (no executions for slurs)
(Note: I’m just spitballing, so don’t expect this to be comprehensive or even correct. I’m sure there are plenty of detailed examinations of the morality of violence.)
Tangent on human nature
I think we can learn a lot about human nature when we consider “trolly problems” where both tracks have significant social consequences, and those consequences direct you to one of the choices. For example, if you see someone drowning and you are able to save them, there is an overwhelming social pressure for you to save them. If you save them, it is rewarded - you’re a hero! However, if you don’t save them, it is punished - you are a coward.
The rewards and punishments don’t match typical social behavior motivators, where one option has a reward or a punishment and the other is neutral. You’re not a hero if you don’t beat your child, and you’re not shamed if you don’t donate all your money to charity.
We can design this type of trolly problem for violence, where you have a gun pointed at an active shooter and you need to decide whether to pull the trigger. If you do, you are a hero. If you do not, you are a coward. Humanity exists in the gaps between what is more “formally” moral and how we feel. It is human to approve of violence in some situations.
The Left, by definition, holds values that the vast majority of people hold. If there are people who oppose the left, it is because they hold incorrect beliefs about our values. Most MAGA chuds hold our values, they just think we’re trying to kill all cis people or whatever and they think that’s bad.
The Left, also by definition, gets its power from having an absolute fuckload of people pulling in the same direction. To become powerful, we MUST grow and to do that we need to show people that we hold their values.
MLK and Malcom X were both fighting for good, but fighting for good is not enough if you lose. We need to WIN, and we can not win if we don’t have enough power.
And so we reach the heart of the problem: how do we balance effective resistance with growing power, which requires appealing to the ignorant, propagandized masses?
First: There are plenty of actions that are both effective resistance and good for growing the movement. I think those actions should be prioritized and promoted as the public face of the movement. That’s irrelevant to the discussion of violence, though.
A resistance WILL be more effective per person if it is violent. However, it then runs a significant risk of running afoul of public perception, which slows its growth (and therefore power). Since violence is only appropriate under narrow conditions, our enemy can delegitimatize our violence by suggesting any of the above conditions aren’t met (“being trans is bad, actually” or “sure, we want to keep our communities safe too, but there are other ways”).
A commitment to nonviolence is a safe public stance, since it is more resistant to misportrayal and many will see violent suppression by the government as immoral. Your movement is sympathetic to the public, and should grow more as a result, but is less effective per person.
If violence is necessary, it may need to be denounced as separate from the moment. Not because it is morally wrong, but because our enemy gets to shape the narrative and they will show us in the worst light possible.
Generally agree. In this specific context, I think the combination of how heavy-handed ICE has been and the legacy of January 6th leads me to think that the protesters in LA aren’t likely to alienate the general public.
Oh yeah, totally agree.
I think the Republican/Democrat split will definitely get hot, but I do not think it will raise to the level of a civil war.
Democrats vs Republicans exists to give people the feeling like they’re fighting for the soul of the country, without actually winning or losing anything material.
Which is NOT to say fighting fascism isn’t important. Obviously it is. The brilliance of fascism is that it defines the fight, and it does so by being obviously, hideously cruel to a small minority of people and daring you to stop it.
We must stop it, of course. But we must also recognize that fascism does not care about which minority it targets, it just needs to distract people from realizing that they are suffering because of capitalism. Minorities suffering is the cost of doing business.
Targeting a minority group obscures capitalism as the problem for both sides of the fight. People think they choose between left and right, but they didn’t build the roads.
The fascist believes that the minority is the cause of their suffering, and wants to exact righteous vengeance of the same variety that hexbears want for capitalists. “The people that have caused widespread suffering are now themselves suffering? Good.”
The liberal sees the immense suffering of the minority, and denies their own suffering because it is less acute. “Yes, I’m having a hard time paying rent, but I’m not being deported. Those people’s suffering is greater, so we should fight for them first.”
Importantly, the liberal will NEVER effectively resist fascism, because the moment they decide their own suffering is “worthy,” they will prioritize themselves over the resistance.
Republicans vs Democrats will never rise to a civil war, because liberals view resistance to fascism as charity for the minority, not as solidarity with them. They see the oppressed as pitiable, not lovable.
And so they will post their signs, uber to their protests, and maybe even throw a rock or two if they get caught up in the moment. But when they’re hit with rubber bullets, arrested, or face charges, reality will set in. They will see the true face of the monster. They will finally picture themselves among the oppressed.
And they will fold.
And the fascists will exact righteous vengeance on the innocent.
And nothing will change.
And liberals will win a landslide election.
And nothing will change.
And the fascists will pick a new enemy.
And nothing will change.
no executions for slurs
Every time someone references MLK when promoting non-violence an angel gets its wings
I don’t know if it’s just me and the silos I place myself in, but it seems the strength of liberal handwringing about nonviolence is waning. All these absolute fucking bum politicians coming out saying “Don’t give Trump what he wants,” while they do fucking nothing. The cops unload thousands of rounds of riot munitions on protesters but nobody tells them to stop being violent, yet we are expected to condemn anyone who so much as throws a stone. Then you have all the idiots talking about bots and agents provocateur, like yeah those are tactics the state will use, but have you considered that when the cops start SHOOTING AT PEOPLE it pisses them the fuck off?
We already went through this five years ago. The liberals took power in the aftermath, and they told the abolitionists to fuck themselves. There are literally no police or immigration reforms to speak of. They increased the police budgets across the board and briskly continued the construction of their counterinsurgency training centers like Cop City. What are we supposed to do? Just let them do militarized ethnic cleansing for three and a half years and then vote? They still aren’t going to reign in ICE or the police. Fuck that. No one is buying it except the ostriches over at r/Politics and the morons who receive their political education from cable TV.
Like really. People are not content with just waiting around with their dick in their hand for Chuck Schumer to write Donald Trump another fucking letter. The liberals have never had less legitimacy to complain about the pace and tactics of the people they’ve abandoned to defend their communities all on their own.
Using whitewashed MLK to try and delegitimize violent resistance, libs pulling out all the classics
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.
I really hate the “marry your undocumented partner” suggestion, it creates an unequal power imbalance ripe for abuse where someone has to choose between being deported or being abused
Im currently recovering from a relationship where my ex became so much more abusive once he knew I was dependent on being an authorized user on his credit card to escape my abusive adoptive family and im lucky compared to so many other people in these unequal relationships
A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war and supports all civil rights movements except the one that’s going on right now.
“How Nonviolence Protects the State” by Peter Genderloos is an easy read on the subject.
“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” (the book, not the movie) is a good tale.
I wonder who stands to benefit from perpetuation of the pathological obsession with pacifism and nonviolent protest against state violence? Who would want to turn MLK into a peaceful saint that can be called upon whenever resistance threatens the status quo?
"The Martin Luther King Junior Centre for Non-Violent Social Change, with an operational grant of $2 million, was set up by, among others, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mobil, Western Electric, Procter & Gamble, US Steel and Monsanto. The Center maintains the King Library and Archives of the Civil Rights Movement. Among the many programmes the King Center runs have been projects that “work closely with the United States Department of Defense, the Armed Forces Chaplains Board and others”. It co-sponsored the Martin Luther King Jr Lecture Series called ‘The Free Enterprise System: An Agent for Non- violent Social Change’. " - Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Straight up shit that would get made fun of for being too on the nose if someone did it in fictional worldbuilding
I think we should send ICE agencies strongly-worded letters invoking the most milquetoast liberal interpretatations of iconic civil rights activists along with platitudes about how love always wins. That’ll show them.
All that’s missing is for him to tell people to
The oppressed are always held to super high standards while the oppressors can do whatever the fuck they want
Black bagging someone for the crime of being brown when I see a ring on their finger and suddenly I’m like, “oh shit my bad didn’t know you were married”
good book on this libs point of view. Pacifism as pathology : reflections on the role of armed struggle in North America
Thanks, I’ll DL it tomorrow
im sick of all this freakin hate and division!!! im going on the ICE subreddit to debate them about the ethics of their actions!! they will have no choice but to act reasonably when they concede defeat to my logic and the mass deportations will stop
it won’t matter if the cops or trump lies, the truth will come out in court during the trial!..
Favorite argument on why it’s wrong to escalate when they’re running protestors over. Or ignoring how much gop just lies and wins
how tf do people see whats going on here and think a trial is going to save us when the president is literally immune from prosecution lmfao
I live +2 GMT and I woke up to a lot of west wing bullshit this morning.
I’m going back to bed. Fuck these clowns
white moderates fuck off and die pls
I think he’s vietnamese, his twitter says his parents left after the Tet offensive
deleted by creator
i hope whoever this prick is gets shot in the face with a baton round
West Wing liberals are THE WORST.
