There is a way for pacifism, but you don't do it by asking nicely. You say, "give us rights, and we're blocking central square completely. Do it before the local economy feels the hit!"
But it is important you're ready to face violence yourself. Because the town might decide to send the police on your protest. In this game, you have to bank on the nation having a conscience, especially the government. Considering the government is as evil as they are stupid... probably not a good bet.
I feel like pacifism is an important part of any movement, the difference between being able to label people as "violent extremists" and limit outreach that way becomes harder when they're not destroying property or anything and just inconveniencing the government. The important part in any movement is outreach, pacifism becomes really effective when you have thousands of people blocking roads or buildings. The sheer number of people sends a message, and even if the government is able to ignore it, it's not really able to get others to ignore it or shun it as easily as violence. Violent protests also play a large part in movements, but you need both. Then again, movements are multifaceted. Art also plays a HUGE role, honestly it's what really drives outreach IMO. Focusing on how to take a stand the 'right' way just causes less people to take a stand at all.
Edit: Another way to look at violent vs nonviolent protests would pretty much be that you need to both prevent people from ignoring the event and also prevent people from ignoring the cause. People need to be willing to understand the cause, and going with only violence is just going to limit that.
If you start with violence, the opposition will always label you as violent extremists and respond the same way. You start with pacificism and escalate accordingly.
A lot of people I've seen think it's a binary choice. Either you do and say nothing or you resort to extreme violence immediately. It's not, that's not how that works.
Pacifism with loud voices, lots of visibility, practiced by a LARGE number of people can be very effective.
The art is in making those voices heard without being perceived as overly aggressive / violent. The more people who join, the longer and more often they participate, the less aggressive they need to be to be heard.
Nobody's saying violence is the only thing that has any effect on power? Power compounds on power and snowballs. The rich and the elites are going to do things that progressively favour themselves unless prevented, that's just the default. And in terms of generations, guess who has virtually all of the political and financial power: old people. They don't need violence to convince themselves to favour themselves, obviously.
The current state of affairs where one very small demographic did well for themselves 60 years ago and have been riding off that income much to the detriment of literally everyone else?
The later boomers were the hippie generation. The economy was generally better, yes, because of the New Deal. But that means they had different things to protest - the Vietnam War, for instance. It was them who ended that.
And let's be clear here that calling shit like vandalism "violence" is oppressor shit. Shooting protestors in the face with rubber bullets is "non-lethal" but spray-painting FUCK PIGS in a cop car is "violence"
Yeah, when I say violent I mean things that can easily be portrayed as violence or destruction of property. Unfortunately not many people get their news from multiple places or even read the whole article so giving people half-truths in the form of misleading titles and wording isn't too difficult.
ehhhhh... Even destruction of property I'm personally not crazy about labeling violence. When oppressors do violence against you they're not smashing windows or whatever.
I don't think burning down a Wendy's is praxis but it damn sure isn't an assassination or tear gassing or murdering cops and shit.
Yeah, the double standard is definitely unfair asf. I was mostly talking about how certain news outlets use purposefully misleading wording to make protests seem a lot worse than they are. I personally feel like a little graffiti or smashing windows is an inconvenience at most, tbh. Violence is like assault and stuff lke that, not inconveniences towards businesses that can definitely afford to fix those inconveniences.
I think it changes if there are people in the building (which is what I was imagining when you said smashing windows). Because that can cause people to feel unsafe and that could be seen as a violent act.
If there's no one there then it's just vandalism and should only be done against small businesses if they're part of the problem.
"should only be done against small businesses if they're part of the problem."
Sorry but WTF, small business are already f over by the goverment for you to say that is okey to attack them in protest
The petit bourgeois are not inherently on the side of the working class, because of their positions between the proletariat and the haute bourgeoisies, they must make their position of being allies of the working class plain and clear, or else they must be treated as allies of the bourgeois.
You've made up a specific scenario of classism rather than a myriad of other reasons to protest.
Such as equal rights and targeting businesses that have owners who refuse to serve people because of their ethnicity/gender/sexuality/marital status/religion, etc.
Depends what you're protesting. If you're campaigning for equal rights for queer people and they've been explicitly homophobic or transphobic or something then yeah, they're going to get some.
If it's just general businesses with nothing to declare, leave them alone.
There's a lot of morally good property destruction. The data center hits, the warehouse fires, defacing fascist politicians' homes, destroying ICE/cop cars, cutting down Flock cameras. It's too broad of a term to be useful for condemning people.
When it’s mine and especially when you’re poor. Most people I see running cover for useless vandals have some money to their name and don’t care if they loose something cause they or their parents can buy a replacement.
Yeah because I get to decide what’s to be done with my stuff. You don’t get to torch my car to satiate your two minutes of hate, no matter how just you try to paint it. Choose a better target.
Human rights are not guarenteed tomorrow from your protests. If a thunderstorm is, then I am guarenteed to get wet when the roof over my head is gone. When my window are broken, the voices of the proletariat no longer drown out the howling wind and debris.
And that's the fundamental issue. The ones we should target, the weatlthy, are safe behind their gated communities. When Ted Cruz and his family are on vacation in Cancun back during the BLM protests, tens of millions of dollars of small businesses owners livelihoods burned in those nights. Was it their fault they didn't have comprehensive insurance on their goods? They were already strained by the impacts of COVID.
When you're oppressed, part of a crowd, there is an energy. Violence, a rage that needs to be unleashed. And, as it happens, you neighbours are alot closer to you than the men on the top of their ivory Towers. But the BLM movement did achieve many goals. Police are no longer allowed to turn off bodycams, no knock warrants have been prohibited in many cities. Yet it wasn't the sight of your local jewelry shop with its windows smashed or hole in the wall Diner boarded up with graffiti that led to these changes. It was corporations and the government, seeing millions of people, in unity, March down the street demanding for something. There is a power to that.
Yeah, that's true. I think it would just spook those who aren't aware of the movements and don't care to be aware of them, since "Group of people destroying property near your neighborhood" sounds a lot more foreboding to someone who doesn't know or doesn't care to know why.
>Focusing on how to take a stand the 'right' way just causes less people to take a stand at all.
that's actually incredibly insightful, I've never thought of that, I myself have kind of been on the fence about what approach is best in general
I think this kind of takes me back to some other advice I received when it came to art and my engineering, part of the experience of gaining proficiency is learning, but most of it is *doing*, you need both input and output to better your craft, and perfectionism gets in the way of the "doing" part, I guess it's the same here if resistance is going to happen, doing it perfectly is the same as not doing it at all
I also think I forgot to actually consider that different situations, different people, etc all exist and one method won't be best for all of them, I was so preoccupied with trying to figure out which one was most effective/most morally correct that I forgot to consider them as different tools in the belt of a population fighting for it's rights
this has been a very enlightening moment, I don't really know how to incorporate this into my worldview quite yet, but I'll figure that out later
Also is easier to get normal people behind non violent protest, not everyone is willing to risk their life or take the life of others, is human nature not to want to die or kill other humans
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u/aarontgp Jul 28 '26
There is a way for pacifism, but you don't do it by asking nicely. You say, "give us rights, and we're blocking central square completely. Do it before the local economy feels the hit!"
But it is important you're ready to face violence yourself. Because the town might decide to send the police on your protest. In this game, you have to bank on the nation having a conscience, especially the government. Considering the government is as evil as they are stupid... probably not a good bet.