Comment on YSK: A real American Civil war will NOT be like Battlefield or COD.

• theacharnian@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m not denying fear, violence, or victimhood. And I’m not equating oppressors with the oppressed. I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.

  I’m talking about how societies slide, not about who deserves what. Those are different conversations. I’ve been on the receiving end of state violence. I’ve marched, been gassed, watched movements radicalize too fast and burn themselves out. That’s exactly why I’m saying this: jumping straight to existential framing and armed horizons doesn’t protect anyone it only narrows the future until only catastrophe is left.

  You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless. Yes, fear is justified and preparation is understandable and necessary. But when fear becomes immune to critique, it stops being a warning signal and starts being a steering wheel.

  My point hasn’t changed: there is still space, Real Political Space, for non-violent (not peaceful!) resistance, that can be powerfully disruptive. Once that space collapses, it doesn’t reopen because people were right about how bad things felt. I’m arguing against that collapse, not minimizing what’s at stake.

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  • MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.

    You can absolutely analyze cultural patterns. I’m just saying “you’re a violent culture” wasn’t the right choice of words. It’s also important to, while analyzing cultural patterns, to consider the role of privilege, and that words and actions are two different things, especially when the critic is looking in from the outside. I’m not talking about you specifically, but I’ve seen a lot of European/Canadian schadenfreude in left-wing online spaces (like Lemmy) over the situation happening an America. While they aren’t wrong that America is brash and needed to be taken down a peg, and there is a place for analyzing the political trajectory, sometimes these people forget the millions of people who aren’t gun-blazing, beer drinking, flag-waving patriots who are in danger, and that if they had the bad luck of being born somewhere else, they themselves might be in the exact same situation.

    In both situations, I ask: How does it help in these left-wing spaces to make blanket statements about Americans, when most of the posters in these spaces are the exception to Americanism and not the rule? Who is the “you” in “you’re a violent culture”?

    You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless.

    I agree with this. But the message is everything. OP was just trying to make plans for a worst-case scenario and probably not jumping immediately to violence. While it indeed is important to recognize the spectrum of resistance, it also isn’t wrong to prep for the worst in addition to that. Currently, the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota, are resisting non-violently, and the Administration is still assaulting and murdering people and Trump is still threatening the Insurrection Act and martial law. For you, it’s a golden lining, but for us living it, we’re questioning whether that will work this time and bracing for impact. Is continuing nonviolent resistance the thing that save America? Maybe. Maybe the regime still won’t give us that chance. Maybe they will just make up lies to cancel elections and enact martial law. And if all options are extinguished and violence breaks out from that, it won’t be our fault for not being nonviolent enough.

    Again, there’s nothing wrong about your underlying point – nonviolent resistance is important – but how it was worded.

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