Hardly semantic. The way you fix a broken system is by working within the system to gradually shift it back to normal. The way you destroy a working corrupt system is by literally tearing it down French revolution style. Which path are we going to take? It's only semantic if we ultimately decide to take no path at all, and simply lay down and die.
Semantics is the field concerned with the meaning of words and sentences. Let's take a look at two sentences.
The weather sure is nice out today
The bourgeois class must be destroyed in order to end the oppression of the proletariat
These two sentences have a semantic difference. And sure, they also have emotional and political differences, but those differences are a consequence of semantics.
The move to brand semantics as irrelevant is a conspiracy by people who don't want words to have meanings. /hj
Look at the way monkeys communicate with each other. They hoot, screech, and throw poo. That's communication without semantics. That communication is pure emotion, no meaning. The people who think semantics doesn't matter are people who wish we all communicated more like monkeys.
Can't those both be true at the same time?
The "system" is working as intended by the rich elite/<insert antagonist>, which means that it's fundamentally broken for the general populace, and therefore must be fixed, which is easiest done by first destroying and then rebuilding it?
Seems like an oxymoron to me, but I'm not entirely sure of the context.
As the OP said, they are the same thing.
The only difference is where you draw the line around "the system" and what you decide to put outside of it. The entire difference is on your head only, and other people have different ideas on theirs.
Can’t those both be true at the same time?
Yes, but actually no.
If a system exists to serve a purpose but does something else it is broken. People may consider completely changing the system into something new to be fixing it, but those who think it needs to be destroyed don't want the chance of problematic parts of the existing system to be carried over or may even think it doesn't need to exist in the first place.
Let's take the FBI. It fucking sucks for minorities because it has always been a shitty, racist, and bigoted organization. Sure, it occasionally enforces civil rights and handles federal crimes, but it is absolutely rotten to the core. Some people might think that firing everyone but keeping the structure could fix it by replacing the horrible people, but it is likely any reform will retain some level of shittyness because continuing to exist means the underlying structure and culture is likely to hang around because it is the same literal agency. Others might want to destroy it by eliminating it by name and replacing it with a new agency that enforces federal laws or maybe they don't want it at all and want other agencies to handle enforcement on their own. The latter will most likely result in some of the old shitty FBI staff to be hired into either of those outcomes due to having experience, but the idea is that destroying is significant enough that there is a chance that the next time around we might avoid the same mistakes.
A more relatable example might be an old bike. Is it worth trying to repair when the underlying structure is worn out or is a replacement that achieves the same things more likely to have a better outcome. Or maybe you don't even need a bike because you moved somewhere you can easily walk everywhere and you have other options for exercise.
I'm not a revolutionary and I disagree that the semantic difference is unimportant.
"The system must be destroyed" implies, assuming we're talking about national politics, at the very least a short period of very deep constitutional and institutional reform, but really refers to nothing less than civil war, violent revolution, and the systematic dismantlement of existing institutions from which proponents of such action generally assume that their preferred method of government will naturally emerge.
This is opposed to a belief that, flawed may they be, democratic institutions also act as safeguards against the tyranny of the majority as well as the tyranny of whoever has the most money/guns, and slow incremental change to these institutions is preferable to their dismantlement.
Of course everything in the world isn't so black and white. Nonetheless the existence of gray doesn't diminish the difference between black and white. "The system must be destroyed", by virtue of the violence it implies, is an extremist statement and different in nature to "the system must be fixed".
The difference is fixing it doesn't require destroying. Its rarely ever easier to rebuild something from the ground up than it is to fix an issue.
It's rarely ever possible to fix something that is fundamentally and compositionally flawed. No one is arguing that it's easier. They're arguing that it's necessary.
Always looking for what's easy instead of what's necessary is part of how we got here in the first place.
Simply destroying something is the easy road. Because it means you don't have to think about what the problem is, only know that it's bad.
It's definitely harder to build something from nothing, but that's not the "solution" being offered. It's tomorrow's problem that you don't have to worry about yet.
It's not the easier solution, but it is the easier thought.
If you think this, you did not understand either if those statements.
There is no division because it's an ontologically different view
The trick, imo is if you call for chaos and violence to get from a to b.
If you do, you're admitting to being ok with a gamble, and that "your brand" wins out, that the power vacuum is filled in an orderly manner, and that a greater level of peace and "quality" of society arrives after the dust settles.
I think prefiguration is key. It's important to have the new system already established to fill the power vacuum before a despot can
For sure. I'm not shitting on change, I'm only calling out that if someone successfully invokes chaos, there's 50%ish of people who see that vacuum with very different eyes
