Because there's no other way to have a voice. Do you think anyone would have cared about Black Lives Matter if they didn't disrupt something? When you have no voice, no avenues to affect change, you have to act disruptively. This does lend itself to violence, but not always. Point being, it is going to be a side effect of any actions which are disruptive enough to get any sort of media attention.

Also, remember how Occupy Wall Street was treated - people were very peaceful and organized, and it ended in riot police using one-sided violence. Part of the rise in violence is probably a result of people making peaceful disruption impossible.

Mentioning OWS really undermines the point you make about BLM in your previous post. OWS' legacy, I think, is profound, and profoundly underestimated. Before 2011, it was a faux pas to talk about income inequality in American politics. It's really an important point to underscore just how significant and important a change that was. Before OWS, talking about income inequality would put you in with the "communist", redistributionist loonies in the 2000s. It wasn't an issue that you could talk about in serious circles.

But after OWS, the enormity of income inequality became impossible to ignore, and it had a large impact on the 2012 elections, with Obama riding it's coattails, presenting himself as the pro-labor alternative to Romney, who ran a pro-capital, pro-business campaign. Furthermore, OWS laid the groundwork that made Bernie's message so resonant.

But even leaving aside whether or not OWS was an antecedent of Bernie's "movement", considered on its own, Sanders definitely demonstrates that one can profoundly change -- or, to use your word, "disrupt" -- the national discussion without resorting to violence. One third of Democratic senators now support his medicare for all plan. That's a pretty massive achievement, in how it suggests a real shift in the Democratic party.

On the other hand, I don't know if the violence associated with BLM has helped it advance its policy agenda at all. I don't really know what you're trying to say about violence. It sounds like you sympathize with it though, and especially when you say:



It sounds like you think the ends justify the means, no matter who has to pay the price.

The Democrats may have pandered to OWS, but they had 6 years to act on it and didn’t do anything. Look at the Podesta emails. The DNC and Clinton campaign specifically had the utmost contempt for anybody concerned about economic inequality or labor conditions.

The only legacy of OWS to date is showing just how little the US government cares about economic problems. (Edit: and the fact that the government will only respond to public concern about wealth and corruption with extralegal violence.) Same with similar protests in Canada and elsewhere.

As long as the victims are Footlocker windows, who gives a ****?

The person who owns the Foot Locker franchise? Or whomever is the victim of any instance of violence. Or their relatives and loved ones, in the instances where people have died.

But, you're dodging all of my arguments...

The main problem with civil resistance is that it requires the government to value the people who are resisting. That might mean having moral compunctions against persecuting someone for having a different opinion, or it might just mean that persecuting those people would be too impractical, either logistically or because their contribution to the economy is too important to lose.

A long time ago, it was western think tanks that fingered civil resistance as an effective way of causing change in authoritarian regimes. It worked, too. But the part they didn’t tell you is that western governments also learned what a threat those movements could be, and they developed countermeasures to them. These countermeasures include radicalizing movements by introducing agents provocateur, and otherwise discrediting nonviolent movements in order to justify police retaliation and prosecution on the basis of association. Framing these movements isn’t unusual either. The RCMP in Canada does this sort of thing all the time, including staging real terrorist attacks (bombing oil wells) in order to frame anti-corporate activists for them.

So that’s the real problem that needs to be addressed. How do you effect change peacefully when your opponent considers peaceful efforts threatening and responds with their own violence? Serious question, at what point does violence become appropriate?

Why should Reid care about those people? They are part of the capitalist society, and an outgroup. Take them away.

Yup, that's what I believe. Not that "peace politics" of the sort Eversor is espousing dampens and silences the voices of Americans, and that a bit of property damage matters far less than the livelihoods of Americans.

I'm a member of the United States Senate on a diplomatic mission to Azerbaijan. Like I'd tarnish my name and join Colonal Sanders' Chicken Alliance. You think rebellion is noble? Try sucking up to the rich and powerful, now that takes guts.

Or sending letters telling activists to kill themselves, or the conservative forces condemning the violence on "many sides" during the civil rights era (literally true), the FBI doing "raids" on labor leaders, or FBI coordination against OWS protesters and surveillance, and the classification of antifa as a terrorist organization. Yet, somehow, the KKK isn't really a problem - I mean, the FBI did quietly publish a report on how the KKK is invading law enforcement, how there have been repeated cases of white supremacists purposefully targeting and profiling black people and Mexicans, and there's no shortage of news articles of police being caught at KKK rallies, or wearing white supremacist ****. Or the amount of times various white supremacist groups use violence and are ignored (or wrist-slapped, like the guy in Charlottesville who shot at somebody and was charged with discharging a firearm near a school).

But at least peaceful left-wing protesters suffered violence so it's okay for us to talk about inequality now!

At any rate, what other chance will you get to fly one of these?

when they try tu take muh guns

Let's not forget that Trump's father was arrested after a big brawl with the KKK and the police. Hmmm...

TRIE Interceptor

Ugh, holy ****. Ironic or not both of those lines are ****ing awful.



Yeah, the guy sounds like a real tool. I did read an article or two of his and they didn't seem insane or reprehensible.. but as a.. person to like.. be around.. he seems ****ing awful.

https://cryptome.org/2017/06/NSA-Report-on-Russia-Spearphishing.pdf

For those still interested, here's an actual intelligence report on Russian attempts to penetrate election systems, unlike that weird press release document thing they released in 2016.

https://antifascistnews.net/2017/10/25/how-the-alt-right-was-decimated-after-charlottesville/

On Cloudflare pulling the Daily Stormer from their servers:



Ahaha, so that was the reason you shut down a neo-Nazi site?

Effectively my perspective.

So then you don't think that



? Or do you think, to the contrary, that the violence somehow improves the livelihoods of Americans, and thus it is legitimate and fair?

I don't see how you can say that some political violence is legitimate, and that other political violence isn't. It seems like you only sympathize with left-wing political violence because you're on the left. Am I wrong about that? Or do you think that political violence is permissible as a tactic across the political spectrum? Do you believe, for example, that just as its a legitimate form of protest for a left-winger to smash the window of a store because they despise capitalism, that it's also a legitimate form of protest for a right-winger to destroy a store window because it's owned by someone who happens to be African American or Jewish or hispanic? If the first is permitted, why isn't the second? Just because you happen to find the former acceptable, and the latter abhorrent? (While many, by the way, would find both abhorrent.)

I mean, how would you feel if someone punched you in the face because they hated capitalism? Don't you see how utterly arbitrary and nonsensical the destruction of personal property and physical violence are? You don't seem to be taking the victims of such violence into account at all, or, the fact that there's no relation between the motivations of the perpetrators of the violence and the victims of the violence that would legitimize the violence.

Oh man, that reminds me of Star Wars: Rebel Assault II... the first Star Wars computer game I ever played.

It's as if slaves revolted and you criticized them for damaging the plantation.

I mean, people today aren't slaves, but you're ignoring systemic oppression that people have no recourse to because it sucks for some people to have their **** broken. Of course it does, but it's an inevitable consequence of that sort of thing.

I guess my point is, when people are struggling for civil rights, and your first point is to give a quick acknowledgement and then spend dozens of posts harping on violence, it comes across more like you'd rather just have them stay home and make angry blog posts than try to affect change in their lives.

I.E. who cares about the problem of racist policing, the real problem is some well-off middle class white person's store got damaged.

Seriously, go look at the debates regarding the civil rights movement, and you should find you sound exactly like many of the social reactionaries during that period. Most people weren't so openly racist, but spent a whole bunch of time criticizing those uppity blacks for the violence and acting out.

To adapt your crude metaphor, it's more like if slaves revolted against their slave owners by beating other slaves.



While we're throwing around ad hominem attacks, I could equally say that you're likely being flippant about the consequences of political violence because you don't believe that if violence becomes a more prominent feature of American politics that you might be targeted by it because of your background.



Has nothing to do with what I said -- but, again, I don't really expect at this point that you'd actually try to engage with me. Regardless, my response: condemning violence as a tactic does not condemn the cause that those who use violence care about.

I've agreed with you so far that, like, violence is bad and is not preferable, I just don't see what your vision is for a meaningful protest where nothing incidental happens. How do people effect meaningful changes in the world in a way that suits you?

The idea that violence is an "inevitable" or "necessary" response to certain conditions -- a kind of spasm, or unreasoned, instinctive response to external stimuli -- does more to dehumanize than anything that I've said. French or English or German Muslims make a choice to drive vans into swarms of pedestrians as an act of protest. It's not something that they're compelled to do by their circumstances, and there's no correlation between the victims of their violence and the pain that they suffer. The people whom they murder are not the architects or agents of their circumstances. And they themselves aren't slavish victims of their circumstances who lash out like animals in the same way that a bull responds to being struck with a cattle prod: they chose to do it.

You may say that this violence is repulsive. Or maybe you think that the economic circumstances of Muslims in EU countries is comparable to the betrodden victim of capitalism in the US. But it's the same reasoning that explains your left-wing violent protester. I've said this before, but I'll say it again. You sound like Sam Harris in the Chomsky-Harris debate, when Harris claims that good intentions somehow makes some violence purposeful and legitimate, but malign intention makes other violence deplorable.

Bernie's doing a great job.

So I take it you aren’t going to answer this question, Eversor.

You're the one who seems to think violence is an appropriate tactic to use to bring about social change, at least under certain circumstances. I don't think it is, and I believe that categorically -- although I could be persuaded to change my view. Isn't the ball in your court to convince me when violence might be appropriate?

...

You can just admit you don’t read what people post. I won’t be surprised.

Speaking of intransigence,



Wilbur Ross is an imbecile.

Ah, the old switcherooni. I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. In any large protest, thousands of people, the odds that nobody is going to do anything destructive at all is very slim. What I mean is, even in the most good-intentioned, peaceful attempts, something is going to happen. Because there are many different people with many different ideals and with different reasons for being angry. What I mean is, you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, emphasizing the opportunists or otherwise ****ty people who act out at these events, when they aren't or don't represent the mainstream.

That's what I mean when I say a certain degree of violence, destruction is inevitable. Not that it's good, or right, but I do think the primary message, and the injustices faced by the average person, are overall worse than what kind of damage is done.



Systems of oppression don't always need an "architect of circumstance". That's actually partly the point, people get politically alienated by de facto principles, sometimes of which no person has consciously decided to make for the intended result.

The fact that you would compare left-wing protests to ISIS terrorism is interesting.



Chomsky's view is that, if it could be seen by a reasonable person that the actions taken would lead to a large amount of collateral suffering, than it shouldn't be done. He doesn't say that Harris is wrong absolutely, of course intentional violence is worse, but that moral calculus is too simple. The thing is, you're acting as if left-wing protesters are somehow like, one single organized unit, or that there's a ringleader who's disregarding the violence or something. There's not really such a thing, it's just a bunch of loosely connected individuals. The same logic you apply to organized, hierarchical structures you simply can't apply to a mob.

What's Bernie doing to scrub police departments of white supremacy?

Sorry you have an organized crime government next door trying to collect protection money. At least I live in a swing state now so my votes count.

I didn't respond to the first two paragraphs because I disagree with the premise that the fact that the government employing illegal and abusive counter-measures to clamp down on civil resistance renders peace protest obsolete. It's evidently the case the progressive change can happen as a governmental response to protest movements and political organization among private citizens. Look at, for example, the Supreme Court decision to make gay marriage legal. Or look at the fact that Obama mandates that the licenses for private prisons should allowed to expire, something that he passed once private prisons became an important issue during the 2016 primaries (no matter that Jeff Sessions cancelled this policy once he came into office: Obama's decision is still reflective of the government willingness to act in response to non-violent protest).

As I said, nothing about what you said convinces me that violent protest is necessary, the only appropriate recourse in the face government abuse of citizenry, or effective at creating change in government. So, your turn: tell me under what conditions violence is appropriate.

So as long as occasionally the people power let us have nice things, we should tolerate the rest?