One of the reasons they only teach whitewashed history at school
One of the reasons they only teach whitewashed history at school
ITT:
Everyone thinking that the only two options are being quiet or being violent.
Strikes are currently making those in power very uncomfortable, and are resulting in genuine progress for workers.
In my area, people camping out in thousand year old trees has protected them time and again from being illegally logged.
Black Lives Matter protests were loud and made the powerful uncomfortable, and despite media narratives it wasn't "violent protesters" that made the powerful uncomfortable.
It is true that any form of protest that is loud and inconveniencing enough to actually be productive will be met with state violence.
It's also true that some working for progress do use violence. But make no mistake, it's not guns that made those in power uncomfortable when it came to Malcom X and the Black Panthers.
The most radical and intimidating (to those in power) things the Black Panthers did were to give free food to schoolchildren, and free healthcare at their People’s Free Medical Clinics.
Building community and mutual aid is subversive.
Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.
Building community and mutual aid is subversive.
This. Both the government and the major corporations depend on being able to extract wealth from real people getting what they need. If we build dual power structures, help one another out and cut the owner class out of the transaction entirely, we weaken them. Growing food in your garden is revolutionary. Clothing swaps are revolutionary. Cutting the old lady next door's lawn, then eating the soup she made is an act that strikes at the fundamental underpinnings of the power structure set up by those who think that they should be entitled to our labor because they've been arbitrarily designated as the "owners" of things. We can and should remove them from the equation entirely.
If you wrote a book I'd read it.
Why wasn't I taught about the free food and medical care part of what they did?
Building community and mutual aid makes those in power uncomfortable.
Small mutual aid for local communities grow out into large social aid organizations that have political power. Politicians can make them redundant by unemployment, healthcare and pensions, or try to nip them in the bud.
Politicians can try.
That can't stop us from trying though.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease
Exactly. The louder and more obnoxious you are, particularly towards those in power, the more likely they are to actually listen, even if just to get you to fuck off
That sounds dirtier than it should be.
The entirety of history also shows that a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.
So, still feeling up for it?
That is the question:
live in an unjust and amoral society
or die trying to make a righteous one.
The stoics, at least Seneca, opted for the former.
Far more people than you seem to think so are feeling up to it, risk of bodily harm nonwithstanding. That same history shows that whole lots of people do and have gotten that fed up.
The current challenge imo is the hyperfocused and extremely well funded tools to disorganize and fracture populaces globally.
They are so abstract, so psychologically targeted and so pervasive that they enable the rise of fascism again even though many of the players are frankly cartoonishly inept (more so than in the past; fascism is cunning and bullish, but seldom clever) to the point that the banality of evil of yesterday is nearly preferable to the bumbling cruelty of today.
Yes, still feeling up to it, but while the precipice nears, there's still both time to turn the car around and get ready to violently brake. We're just careful drivers until there's a need to maneuver.
Joke's on you, I already wish I was dead
They're gonna kill me if I don't
When doing nothing becomes so intolerable and the potential gain is high enough to make the risk of death is worth taking then the answer becomes "yes". That's why people don't take extreme actions easily.
Putting it another way, if enough people are willing to take big risks, then the status quo must be pretty damned awful in their view.
a whole lot of people need to be ready to die for the cause for social change to happen.
For the change to not happen, a whole lot of people need to be ready to keep dying from the status quo. It's incredible that some people still think a war isn't being waged when we don't resist the oppression and exploitation. Here you are implying those who are ready to fight for themselves—and for you!—are your enemies, when your real enemies know the lesson you refuse to learn:
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.
—Warren Buffett
So, still feeling like leaving us all to continue being slowly murdered as you sit and do nothing?
Reasonableness is for the status quo.
People didn't get their rights asking for them nicely.
Look at the US, they begged England for representation. Even after they gave an ultimatum they begged to stay but it didn’t work and they had a war that France won
It's amazing how a perspective can change when one's head is rolling around on the cobblestone.
Very effective gaslighting by those in power.
It depends on the kind of change you are attempting to make. Revolutionary changes aren't going to be accomplished without someone getting hurt, but if you are trying to change the name of your town from Lincolnville to Frankville that likely won't require injury.
This reminds me of the Douglas Adams thing from ‘last chance to see’
Its time to sharpen the guillotines
Dull is fine.
It also comes with a big body count on both sides.
It doesn't have to have a high body count on one side, there aren't many at the top holding the rest of the world back because they only care about stock prices and shareholder value.
So the solution is to rear a generation of children who believe violence, riots, revolutions, and coup-d'etat is the solution for social change? Because the big problem you are glossing over is that these changes throughout history essentially all involved violence to some degree.
Small progress over time happens through peaceful protest, canvassing, voting, and generally making your voice heard.
But you can't vote your way out of authoritarianism. You can't vote away a broken system that incentivizes those in power to keep it broken. That change has to come with grand action and all at once.
They're not glossing over it, nor is it a "big problem"; that's the whole entire point of the tweet. You can't defeat tyranny 100% non-violently, period.
Oh, ok, so then it is in fact an incitement to violence. Isn't that swell, we aren't even trying to hide it anymore.
Sounds like Mao to me lmao.
Liberals think the status quo of capitalist and state oppression isn't violent. News at 11. yawn
Yes that's correct
Tweeting your fury is a great example of forcing change.
Says the lemmy comment.
What the fuck are you doing here? Time is money, dude!
What is your local municipality doing? GO. NOW. HURRY.