Nearly a third of Americans – 30% – say people may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
It’s a sharp rise from 18 months ago, when 19% of Americans said the same.
Nearly a third of Americans – 30% – say people may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
It’s a sharp rise from 18 months ago, when 19% of Americans said the same.
I mean… is it? I think it’s pretty obvious in the context of the regime essentially giving itself carte blanch to perpetrate political violence on its desired scapegoats and opponents.
I’m frankly getting pretty fucking tired of people complaining about how this is a startling development and being shocked by what’s happening. They wrote a playbook back in 2019. They published it on the open internet. They said they would follow it. They are now following it. You are not allowed to be surprised by any of this.
This country is BUILT on political violence. The revolutionary war. The civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people died in those conflicts. Only more recently have non-violent protests accomplished anything and that was only possible because of the more free atmosphere those wars established in this country. That freedom is now almost entirely gone. What choice do people have left?
Incredibly recently. The Civil Rights movement included advocacy for political violence, and arguably one of the only reasons it worked was Malcolm X and the Black Panthers saying “hey here’s our alternative if our nonviolent fight doesn’t work, we’re all strapped and willing to hand out more guns if shit requires it”.
Don’t forget the riots and strikes between 1900 and 1920 (or 30?).
Successful application of violence today is complicated by the sophistication of surveillance and the electronic, centralized distribution of money.
It’s difficult to pull together a large enough coalition to be able to fight effectively because the process of finding those people is short circuited by early discovery.
Nonviolence is the only way until a large enough segment of the population is desperate enough to trigger action.
Before that happens, effective leaders must be found and a support network must be readied to go into action quickly to professionalize and unify it when it happens, but before that is used to manage nonviolent action…
While I agree that non-violent is the way to go, I think we need to change our definition of “violence.”
Property destruction should not be considered violent. Especially when precautions are specifically taken to ensure that no people were harmed during act of property destruction or sabotage.
On the other side of things, actions such as destroying wildlife habitat or polluting the air, water, and soil systems of the Earth should be considered “violence.” It is violence towards all of humanity, and towards life itself.
And a healthy dose of “or else” political violence.