Like all things taking a talking point down to its basics like this is just a logical fallacy, do various levels between non-violance and violence exist? Yes. Have various approaches in the past worked? Also yes. To say one is the ONLY way to effect change is not the way of going about it. Revolution/change is a nuanced topic and cannot be boiled down to a simplistic answer.
My impression was that many successful civil rights movements had both approaches: a peaceful one where people pushed what they were hoping for, and then a separate more militant movement with kind of the implicit message of "this is what you'll get if you don't listen to the peaceful guys". And that both movements did their own things, without even really coordinating with each other.
Yes and no in many cases, however also keep in mind disruptive protest (walk offs, sit downs, gridlock, etc) that aren't violent outwardly towards people but to the system. While they are called non-violent they have an element of intent and power behind them that most peaceful protests don't. Peaceful protests would be things like Birmingham March or other such actions meant to gain social notoriety and show the violence being used on the peaceful protesters.
By pacifist, I imagine people who don't try and personally physically hurt anyone else, possibly at the expense of themselves. "Violence against the system" sounds like a phrase used by their political opponents.
Correct, Birmingham and the Freedom Riders are great examples of peaceful protests since they showed the excessive use of force in a peaceful situation. Literally it's displays like this that got white Americans who never saw this type of violence outwardly in their lives before to take notice and later action.
And it can be but it's also a social tool used by unions and groups of individuals who have no direct recourse to affect change in a work environment. Violence against the system has also been really abused over the years to where people think attacking the system is some kind of moral failing when in truth it's how you can make a statement without hurting others... think the farmers in France, garbage collectors, etc are great examples of violence against the system to affect change.
But, back to my original point, my impression of successful historical civil rights movements, is that there is often more militant parallel movements who implicitly create a comparison to the pacifist movements.
Exactly, media presence is critical to have any message get out and be shown. Optics have always been essential to any movement and this occurred when we started seeing the TV revolution
Sadly all we can do is demand it from politicians and understand it on our end for the propaganda that it is. Until we can have a regulation on media to hold them accountable for misinformation there isn't much we can reasonably do.
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u/Toutatis12 Jul 28 '26
Like all things taking a talking point down to its basics like this is just a logical fallacy, do various levels between non-violance and violence exist? Yes. Have various approaches in the past worked? Also yes. To say one is the ONLY way to effect change is not the way of going about it. Revolution/change is a nuanced topic and cannot be boiled down to a simplistic answer.