Comment on fighting evil by moonlight
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 days agoThat’s ahistorical.
The far left terrorist groups in the 1960s to the 1980s in Europe (Germany: Rote Armee Fraktion, Italy: Brigade Rosse, France: Action Directe) were largely unsuccessful. Meanwhile civil protests and peaceful popular movements were successful at changing society. Their history demonstrates really well how your kind of thinking fails.
To pick a different example: Greenpeace are pretty hands on with their direct action, but don’t directly destroy their targets. They have been very successful overall. Far more than any more violent group.
The IRA in Ireland was unsuccessful for decades until they gave up armed struggle.
There’s always a lot of context to consider. What society does the movement happen in? An open democratic society is different than an authoritarian one. Even an authoritarian government can have limits on how much force they are willing to use to suppress a popular movement. A nationalist independence or freedom movement works differently than one that wants to replace the type of government.
Non-violent protests can be very effective in the form of strikes. A general strike needs wide support among the population, but can force governments to negotiate and compromise.
The movements for revolutionary change in the former Soviet block were largely non violent and successfully toppled an empire and dozens of governments. That’s the biggest historical change in recent history. Of course leftists tend to ignore these.
willingness to escalate
There are many ways to escalate, that don’t involve violence.
There’s also a pretty big scale of violence. Breaking into a building to occupy it, throwing stones at cops, shooting a politician, hijacking an airplane, and blowing up a crowded market are not in the same league.
every tool available
It’s good strategy to purposely and consciously select the tool to use. Using the wrong tool can lead to less popular support, internal division, marginalization, tougher state reactions, etc.
bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 days ago
I think you misunderstand what I’m trying to communicate - violence by itself accomplishes less than nothing, but for a peaceful movement, there must be people who support that movement who are willing to use the threat of violence for that movement to succeed. For your own examples, in Ireland, Sein Fein as a political movement would not have liberated Ireland if it wasn’t for the threat of continued and escalating violence from the IRA.
Both violence and non-violence must remain on the table as options, or else the non-violent movement can be completely ignored and the activists supporting it will just be oppressed, suppressed and victimized.
For some more examples, the civil rights movement wouldn’t have succeeded without the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ+ movement needed the Stonewall Riots.
The role of the non-violent sect of the movement is to disavow the violence of the violent sect, so by all means, continue to disavow the violence, that may be the role you choose to play, but you should recognize that unless others are willing to escalate, then your non-violent movement is doomed to failure.
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
That’s often repeated, but not historically true.
bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 days ago
Okay, can you give me an example of a movement which was completely non-violent, which had no violent sects or threats of violence, which resulted in a long term change?
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Solidarność