somebody explain to me the difference between peaceful protest and adolescent self harm. I literally can't think of anything.
It's basically a psy-op. It's a way of making people think they've "done something" when actually nothing is ever challenged and it's excessively easy for those in power to completely ignore it.
I'm British and the iraq war protests (2003) being completely ignored despite looking like this went a long way towards radicalising me. I was 10 years old when I saw that on the news and I remember thinking for weeks how fucked it was that a protest of that scale can happen but the government still proceeds with whatever they wanted to do anyway. Definitely the moment I realised that you don't say "please" to power.
people like you make me want to tie some shit around my arm tap a vein and do a hope.
Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Peaceful Protesting Real Hahahaha Just Walk Away From The Protest Like Close Your Streets Haha
I don't know, I think it is more like a sedative for liberals. Like you walk around your city a bit and when you go home you can tell yourself you did what you can.
"What do you mean there was no societal change? Did they not SEE my cardboard sign with a Harry Potter joke on it?"
I might be completely wrong here, but it seems like a misapplication of the idea of non-agression. You see in non-agression/peaceful protest, you would not seek to hurt people, start fights or do terrorism, but instead will target property, processes and structures, so that you actually do create a lot of inconvenience and force your opponents to take measures. In addition by not being the one to initate violence, you also take the higher moral ground and should garner the sympathies of people.
But, somewhere along the way it became just walking around (usually with the permission and cooperation of the authorities) to shout slogans, show off signs and then go home happy that you made yourself heard and did a democracy. In addition this is also a lot safer, meaning you are not risking anything, and most importantly - dont really have to do anything. And of course somehow believe that the people in power will indeed hear you and enact reform, even tho there is absolutely no incentive for them to ever do so. In additioyn to this, the majority of people, especially those in middle and upper class are simply not used to "violence" - even if that is just breaking things, and it also goes against a lot of social programming about following the rules, and how anything remotely aggressive is absolutely horrible and terrifying. A lot of middle class people have a very bland existence, where the most shocking thing they see is some plot twist in a movie (which is why I think, shows like Game of Thrones had such a big success). So seeing all this violence in real life is absolutely terrifying. Like what if they stop breaking windows and start hurting people? Applying force to things is scary. Walking around creates a sense of purpose, sense of community, makes you feel like you did a lot cause you're tired of all the shouting and walking, and you dont feel uncomfortable from doing things against the rules.
You could also make the argument that a peaceful march or a protest is a precursor to non-peaceful one. As in - look at all these people, we come in peace, to ask you, the people in power, to change things, otherwise we will not remain peaceful.
violence against property, apparently, is WORSE than violence against people (did not know this before, still working on it).
and yeah I get the precursor argument, but it actually has to happen a few times to be meaningful, it has to seriously ruin some shit.
Lots of bad takes here, peaceful protests are a valid and useful tactic, in some cases more effective than violent protests. A sit-in, for example, brings awareness to an issue by causing a disruption in day-to-day life, and can also demonstrate popular support and passion for an issue. It allows you to start a discussion or negotiation on an issue on reasonable and amicable terms. It's incredibly foolish and ahistorical to dismiss the utility of peaceful protests.
What's even more foolish is to limit yourself by thinking that peaceful protest is the only valid form of resistance. A major reason that peaceful protests can be effective is because they're backed up by the threat of violence.
In the present conditions where our leaders get assassinated, rioting is an unfortunate necessity. It would be much better to have a peaceful demonstration of force, and then have organizers go to people in power and say, "Give us these specific concessions and we'll all go home, otherwise, things might escalate." Rioting is less effective in that nobody in power knows what concessions are necessary to make the problem go away. They're more inclined to just wait it out because without organization it'll eventually just burn out. Also in the specific case of opposing the police, it would help to be able to demonstrate that we are capable of providing peace and order without them.
Diversity of tactics means diversity of tactics. There are cases where violence is more effective, but there are also cases where nonviolence is genuinely more effective.
If you want an example, look at the 1890 Iranian tobacco boycott and protests. The issue had tons of popular support across all sectors of society. Just by demonstrating their numbers and cohesion, the protest was able to achieve its goals, and also served as a "proof of concept," for another series of protests that were able to establish a whole new constitution that made the shah a figurehead beneath the new parliament they established. This was against a government that didn't even pretend to be democratic or to care at all about its people - the shah just wanted to keep his head.
If you write off peaceful protest as useless, then you're just an edgelord.
starving myself to make boys (or girls. or anybody) notice me. valid tactic. hurting myself to get across that I NEED FUCKING HELP to the adults? valid tactic. throwing a fit to make mom embarassed and need to go home? valid tactic.
im not saying it's completely useless. I just don't see how it's different from childhood outbursts, and it's completely infantilizing. slavery didn't end until john brown made the slavers feel fear.
im not saying it’s completely useless. I just don’t see how it’s different from childhood outbursts, and it’s completely infantilizing.
Oh, I see. Well I'm sorry that this tactic for achieving social change doesn't make you feel enough like a badass, since, you know, that's the important part.
slavery didn’t end until john brown made the slavers feel fear.
I don't recall John Brown ending slavery, but even if he did, cherry-picking examples where violence worked is no different from libs cherry-picking examples where nonviolence worked. What I do recall happening with John Brown was that he was overpowered and killed. In other words, it's a case where violence - however justified - ultimately failed.
Is that your goal? You don't actually care whether you win or lose, so long as you get to die a martyr? Because that's what strikes me as "childish." Feeling like you have to prove yourself or some shit, ignoring viable tactics because they don't mesh with your identity, your oh-so-precarious self-image. Fuck that shit. Being mature means being able to ignore that, being able to do what needs to be done and being able to hold back from things that are counterproductive even if they might feel really satisfying. We are not in a cozy enough position that we can afford to place your feelings before strategy. We have to be willing to do whatever works to win - whether that means violence or nonviolence - because frankly, our situation is desperate.
okay so this is late because of life stuff but here's what I mean:
when you're infantilized, people don't fucking listen to you. it might work once or twice, but if you keep using it, its effectiveness diminishes rapidly, along with your voice outside the protest.
i did in fact self harm and threaten/attempt suicide frequently in my teens. it did... some stuff. there were better approaches I could have taken, and it cost me a lot. if you don't endorse children self harming, you're a hypocritical shitbag for doing peaceful protest.
john brown eventually died, and that was a failure. but his tactics worked, and they were working before the raid that killed him. before john brown, abolitionists were publicly beaten on the senate floor. after john brown, they were afraid. they knew they had to listen and compromise at least a little, and that eventually lead to the civil war. he did not succeed because of his death; his effect was in place years before he died, and if he'd kept his raids conservative (or not made that one epic fuckup) he would have done more for the cause of abolitionism.
no civil rights are won without riots crime or bloodsheed. literally. fucking. none. the US civil rights act was only put in place after the riots sparked by dr. king's assassination, when it became clear black people couldn't be suppressed with the occasional assassination. women's rights were won with bloodshed (seeing it happen abroad in similar cultures, and after like one night of riots here, they realized that, yes, it COULD happen here). even undoing prohibition only happened aftermany many slaughtered pigs.
The problem is that you fundamentally misunderstand the way peaceful protests are meant to work. There is nothing infantilizing about bringing out thousands of people as a show of force. The objective is not merely to appeal to people's sympathy and beg leaders to change. It isn't a cry for help. It's a tactic that fits into a larger strategy.
Or rather, I should say, it can be a tactic that fits into a larger strategy. It can also be completely performative, or well meaning but with no thought given to how the action fits into a bigger picture. Due to a lack of leadership on account of assassinations, most protests in modern America do not fit into a broader, coherent strategy. The same is also true of non-peaceful protests, unfortunately.
Here are some examples of how peaceful protest can accomplish strategic objectives:
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A march can show that a large number of people care about an issue, which can inspire them to future action and coordination.
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Peaceful protests can serve as a proof of concept. As in the example I provided, a peaceful protest in the form of a boycott paved the way for a revolution, because it demonstrated the power of collective action.
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A sit-in can cause the same kind of inconvenience and loss of profit that a riot would, while potentially being harder to disperse due to optics.
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It is often said around here that "Bullying works." Bullying doesn't have to be violent - shouting profanities at people is still peaceful.
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Hell, fucking STRIKES are an example of nonviolent protest. Are you really trying to tell me that strikes don't work and are "infantilizing?"
I suspect that at some point you were fed some drivel about how peaceful protest is meant to appeal to the better nature of the opposition or some shit and you've internalized that. But that's not how it works at all. If appealing to their better nature was all it took you wouldn't need to a protest at all, peaceful or otherwise.
That sort of thing is absolute nonsense. It seeks to use nonviolence as a strategy in itself, rather than as a tactic, and it's born out of the reasoning that violence is bad, and then afterwards they come up with how nonviolence could maybe possibly work by itself in fairy dreamland. What I'm saying is, the strategy should be based around winning, and in the cases where nonviolence can be tactically useful, we use nonviolence - and the same goes for violence.
You're right that most change involves some form of violence being used before it happens. That's because violence is also an effective tactic in some situations. It's like... seeing that most checkmates involve a rook or queen and refusing to ever move your pawns because "they're not as good." It's dumb. Every piece has it's use. If both violent and nonviolent methods were used, how can you be so sure that it was only the violent methods that were effective? How do you know that nonviolent efforts didn't have a role in recontectualizing how the violence was percieved? Aren't you just assuming that violence is more effective?
Bit of a tangent, but do you know that torture doesn't work? During the "War on Terror," no useful evidence was ever extracted through the use of it. In fact, it often got in the way of conventional interrogation techniques, which generally involve a more diplomatic approach. The torturers never really had any reason to think it would work, they just wanted to be the cool antihero guy from 24, willing to the things nobody else would because they were too chicken or whatever. There was just this implicit assumption that the more violent and cruel option would be more effective, because... they liked the narrative?
To be frank, I feel like you're falling into a similar mindset (no offense). The peaceful part of a movement is boring and lame and I wanna be the cool, badass rebel who's willing to do what others don't to get things done. But the thing that people don't understand about "the ends justify the means" is that, while it does sometimes mean doing something drastic and morally questionable, it can also sometimes mean doing something that's boring and difficult, if that's what it takes to achieve your end.
Please note that I am not commenting in the current situation, where violence may be the more applicable tactic. But what I am saying is that it's nonsense to write off the entire tactic just because it's not applicable at the present time and place, and because some people use it without actually understanding how it works or fitting it into a larger plan. In any case, I see no connection at all between organizing widespread collective action and using self-harm for pity. Tbh I can only guess and how you're making that connection, because to me they seem to have nothing at all to do with each other.
"show of force" so.... the john brown argument? where someone needs to make them afraid BEFORE your numbers mean shit, and can only ever possibly have meaning if the majority of your number are amenable to violence? so then your simple presence in numbers carries an implicit threat? except now facial/gait recognition. that complicates things. but by this logic, repeated throughout your post, your 'peaceful' protest is only meaningful when the blood of the guilty already flows. and a child throwing a fit while their parents forcefully argue against a thing that's troubling their family, it's probably not useless. but it's literally worse than useless on its own. "people care" juuuust enough to take a walk, not enough to actually do anything? I was raised by the parasite class. this is legit what they think, and unfortunately, depressingly, I agree with them on this one point. sure; blocking roads and shackling yourselves to buildings and burning shit d-wait, shit, you stop there? so it's just a day's lost labor? the whole logic of the strike is based on the logic of the parasites needing that income to continue to exist. this is no longer the case. these parasites will never want again for their entire lives; strikes are only an annoyance for them, and only seriously stress the resources of labor. the economy has changed; straight strikes are no longer meaningful unless you can act on a global scale.
torture is not an effective interrogation tool. it does not reveal the truth. it coerces weak people to say what you want them to. or to say what you want them to about things they do not give a fuck about. torture, also, is something done by someone with power to people without.
childish outbursts, scaled up to the level of a population, are EXACTLY peaceful protest. like, almost 1-1. it's literally the same behavior; anorexia/hunger strikes, tantrums/slogan-shouting, cutting+suicide/self immolation. it is literally the same fucking behaviors.
for peaceful protest to work, for your 'look how many of us there are! listen to our voices!' thing to mean shit, the people you're protesting need to see you are more than cattle. they will never see you as human, but you can make them see you as a threat to be mitigated via negotiation and compromise.
I thought I'd been clear about this - peaceful protests are effective when they are backed by a threat of force. It may be different in the modern US, but in most times and places this threat is already implicit without anyone using violence to make them afraid beforehand. I think you're too caught up in the current context and trying to apply that universally. Here in the US it's understood that people will march just for the fuck of it or to get a selfie and that they aren't necessarily committed to more than that. Marches here are accepted and normal, which makes them less compelling as a form of protest, but in a society where they aren't accepted and normal, it shows that a large number of people are willing to defy social customs for the sake of a cause, which implies that they may be committed enough to fight, should the situation escalate.
I want to establish clearly what I'm arguing for vs what you're arguing against. The position you're arguing against is that of absolute pacifism. The idea that you should only ever use peaceful means to achieve your goals, no matter the situation. The idea that I'm arguing for is that peaceful methods can have a place in one's tactics, in the right situation. I have no interest in defending the position of absolute pacifism that you're criticising. However, just because pacifists may use certain methods in ineffective ways does not mean that some of those methods cannot be used effectively by others who are willing to escalate to violence.
for peaceful protest to work, for your ‘look how many of us there are! listen to our voices!’ thing to mean shit, the people you’re protesting need to see you are more than cattle. they will never see you as human, but you can make them see you as a threat to be mitigated via negotiation and compromise.
And this is exactly what I meant when I said you've been fed some drivel about how peaceful protest is about "appealing to the opposition's better nature or some shit." This is completely divorced from anything I was saying. Peaceful protest is not supposed to be about getting the opposition to "listen to our voices." That's a strawman of my position, and as long as you're thinking in those terms I won't be able to explain my point. Peaceful protest is meant to achieve the tactical goals that I mentioned, not to "appeal to the opposition's better nature," which is a completely ridiculous goal. I cannot stress enough how much this is not goal. The goal is to achieve a tactical objective like the ones I listed previously. If all you're doing is hoping the opposition decides to give you what you want because they're secretly nice, then yeah you're correct that it's useless and childish. That has nothing to do with what effective peaceful protesting is actually about, though.
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