https://nitter.net/USA_Polling/status/1712530477448302600
This one really gets me. Had an arguement with a irl lib friend during the George Floyd protests. They were like, "they need to be peaceful like MLK, not blocking traffic." MLK blocked traffic!!! What are you talking about!!!
Of course, libs hate living revolutionaries, but dead ones don't do inconvenient things like support oppressed people or criticize oppressive power structures. Or as Lenin put it:
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.
It's worth noting that (as Lenin notes here) it's not just liberals, it's the oppressing classes. See the conservative rehabilitation of MLK as a moderate who actually thinks there's no such thing as systemic racism.
The one I can't get is why they're so mada bout Che. Dude's as squeaky clean as any revolutionary has ever been but they loathe him.
I remember Michael Moore talking about how he felt when he was a kid, hanging out with a bunch of unionized detroit auto workers, and how they roared with approval when the radio announced King's assassination.
The way I heard him tell it (on the chapo podcast) was he was walking out of church when that happened, too. Kind of a morbid and disgusting irony to celebrating his death amongst your group of “good church-going people” too
MLK was constantly tarred for inciting riots (even when he didn't), for inciting property damages (which he didn't), for his followers being rude or destructive (even when they mostly weren't), and just generally painted as a violent, uppity ****** in his time
Fucking idiots
Seeing all these liberals critique Floyd protests (or honestly most things they critique lol) has made me realize that I don’t think a single one of them read Letters from Birmingham Jail
No you see selma bridge was a foot bridge with no car traffic!
It's disgusting how the history of the Civil Rights movement has been twisted, sanitized, and re-written.
I find it funnier that some people think blocking traffic is more acceptable than burning a flag. Blocking traffic is at least a major inconvenience, burning a flag literally doesn't affect you in any way.
Noooooooo burning the flag will make the founding slaveowners and white jesus sad noooooooooooooooo
Also if youre someone who cares about the flag, there are instances where you're supposed to burn it like you're not supposed to ever throw it out so burning is how you dispose of them
Also I think it if touches the ground you're supposed burn it???
You're just fucking over people who work for hourly wages and/or have childcare issues. People who otherwise might be sympathetic to your cause.
It's the stupidest form of protest there is. Maybe it would be fine in a country with a better social safety net, but in the US it impacts poor working people the most, while wealthier people can just work remotely or stay home and still earn their salary.
Meanwhile some single mom is being blocked from picking her kid up from school.
What kinds of protest action would be most effective, in your view? The point is to be disruptive so that people get pissed off at government and demand change.
I'll be honest; I don't have a great answer. I just know for a fact that blocking traffic hurts the working poor far more than it does the elite who are ostensibly the people being targeted by such protests.
As a union member and union activist, my ultimate answer is always going to be more union organizing and more union actions.
I am all in on Local 10 till I die!
Fair enough. The main issue with union organizing imo is that they're busy with organizing for their worker's rights (which is good!), which means they're not going to lead the charge on eg environmental issues. FWIW I think the reason the forms of protest listed on the survey are allowed is largely because they're ineffective and don't convenience those in power. Obviously I'd prefer if people went and eg camped out on the lawns of the white house, or outside supreme court justice's homes, but when that happens they get called terrorists.
I think we're largely in complete agreement and as such I say let us not allow our small disagreements to sidetrack us from the larger vision that I think we both share.
to be fair, almost everything on this list is extraordinarily tame and nonthreatening to power
That's why it's on the list at all. Limit the definition of political action to the most inert things and relegate everything else to obscurity. Make change or the actions required for a better world unthinkable.
(stopping emergency services is kind of a big deal though)
capitalists care about human health, suddenly (listen to Death Panel podcast)
I promise you any flaws you perceive in the Canadian healthcare system are there because of the "under capitalism" part not because its socialized. (Also because its a piecemeal plan that doesnt cover dental and shit).
And living in a country with a private healthcare system, its 1000% worse than you can even imagine.
Canadian healhcare is also being dismantled province by province these days.
You should look in to how socialist countries have handled healthcare infrastructure. Cuba and the old GDR are notable for the effectiveness of their healthcare system. There's a book called "Stasi State or socialist paradise" that has a chapter or two on how the GDR handled medical care. And of course Cuba is famous for training large numbers of doctors and sending them all over the world. iirc the deal in Cuba is that you can go to medical school, and in exchange you basically get posted to a clinic somewhere for a few years. Could be urban, could be rural, could be anywhere. Once you've done your period of service your options open up to pursue whatever. It ensures they can train a lot of doctors and also that even the most rural areas will have trained medical professionals near by all the time.
Those doctors don't really get a choice in much, it seems. A little over 7,000 of them have defected to the US when they were sent abroad.
The idea of decentralization is important, when you bundle everything into one controlling entity, they get to decide everything. Bad actors will fill that position when they can - if it can be exploited, it will.
There may be some infrastructure techniques we could learn, but there still needs to be a better solution than either handing everything over to the government or handing everything over to massive corporations
Hogs whine about emergency services all the time, but every protest I've ever been in and almost everyone I've ever seen parts like water to let emergency vehicles through. It's a complete none issue that they made up in their heads to be mad abut.
I got roped in to doing perimeter security a couple of times, watching the rear and flanks of protests for potential attacks. Not like I really could have done much. Like, I guess I could jump just before the car hits me so I go through the windshield? idk. Scary shit.
people need to be blocking traffic for shits and gigs. Just walking to the grocery store and take your sweet time in the cross walk. The public space should be for people
I walk the same pace on the crosswalk as the sidewalk and I swear most drivers you're in the way of expect you to fucking run. Always slightly inching past the line to show their impatience, as if they're not getting around 20x faster than me either way, and I don't have to wait just as long as them til I get my right of way
Saw someone drive out of their way specifically to drive through protesters and people went crazy to defend the person that drove through others
I'd love to see this stacked up with an identical poll except instead of asking what is acceptable or not, ask what is effective or not. I don't think even libs are dumb enough to think any of the acceptable things are actually effective. It'd be a real telling chart.
I dunno, usually when I press them on that they agree it's not that effective but then they double down on "it's the only tool we have" and "it's better than nothing." I think they know, I just think they don't care enough to actually do anything differently.
They do and they don't. Part of being a liberal is not questioning the contradictions.
Can we pay some company to do polling for us? and at the end can we show them PPB?
I mean, during the peak of the BLM movement literally every lib I knew was saying "violence doesn't accomplish anything, peaceful protests and civil disobedience is the only way you win support!"
civil disobedience
If there was any organized, serious attempt at a civil disobedience campaign they would hate that too. They only like civil disobedience that happened in the past.
I've talked to so many libs who think that nonviolent protest and calling your congressman are the only things that have literally ever caused changed
i want to meet with the 5% that think creating a petition is "unacceptable"
It’s me, because killing a politician is much more acceptable.
Maybe they think that doing anything but
is undemocratic/undermines institutions or something.Or maybe they're an ancap and think that the only way is to shoot a mctactical nuke into the privatized former public service.
6 % of people think it is unacceptable to call your representative. Half of those think it is not just usually, but always unacceptable.
I think it is fine so long as you just snicker and hang up whenever they answer the phone. You can also ask them if their refrigerator is running.
Wait, your representative would actually answer the phone?
Mine's busy fighting over which Nazi apologist should be Speaker of the House
Annoying as fuck and twice as pointless.
Petitions should be illegal
i think creating a petition is an unacceptable waste of organizing effort
See also:
36% of Americans support US airstrikes that explicitly kill civilians
51% of Americans support ICE raids against illegal immigrants
52% of Americans support US strikes in Mexico to fight the cartel
53% of Americans support stand your ground laws
55% of Americans support the death penalty
58% of Americans support drone strikes in general
65% of Americans have a favorable view of the CIA
82% of Americans oppose defunding the police
94% of Americans support the troops
Real pacifist crowds you got there
Don't we support the death penalty? Surely Elon wouldn't just get prison that would suck
I would support violence in the revolution that's inevitable and necessary for the revolution to succeed (in minecraft). But hell no I do not support literal murder as a part of a justice system, I'd hope most of us aren't that bloodthirsty and retributive
Lock Elon and every other ghoul up, their torture can be spending the rest of their days seeing the world change
I still think the greatest revenge is turning them in to good communists, as that would require utterly destroying the person they were and reforming them as something else.
Yeah you can hate oppressors while still not seeing any human being as inherently evil. I think we're all products of our material conditions, upbringing, education, mental health conditions, etc. People don't just, naturally harm and exploit others because that's who they fundamentally are. I mean, I guess some people probably have imbalances in their brain that effectively make them psychopaths, but I'm also hoping that's eventually better understood and cured under communism
I think there's always going to be assholes, but I think we can build a society where it's real hard for assholes to hurt anyone. I think alot about how women had it better in the GDR because they weren't financially dependent on men for anything and if their partner was a shit they could just leave without being financially ruined. Like that's a change in material circumstances that makes it so abusers have a harder time abusers and victims have an easier time getting out. It's real concrete. i think about it a lot.
Some will need to die during a revolution, but I'm not supporting revolution for vengeance, I want change. It's not that it makes me squeamish, or that I'm not angry enough, it's that killing only for retribution is wrong in my opinion.
99% of cases I'm against the death penalty. But in the clear cut cases where it's obvious someone is an irredeemable Nazi, line them up.
Like Anders Breivik. The relatively comfy imprisonment he's been given is great for most people, but he should have been taken out back, shot, and dropped in a ditch.
There's a fair amount of us that are against punitive/retributive justice as a rule actually. Whenever I post about it I get a fair number of upbears so I assume I'm not alone.
just get prison
Wait till you find out most of us are prison abolitionists as well lol.
Restorative justice is cool and good!
As long as we keep people like musk under tight surveillance so they don't get up to any counter-revolutionary shit they wouldn't be dangerous after we take their stuff. We might have to spread them out over long distances and confine them to rural areas to make it hard to do conspiracies, but there are ways to keep them in check while allowing them a degree of freedom and dignity (which, let me be clear, they do not deserve. It's not for them, it's for us)
Restorative justice is good, but it's not without flaws. One of the big flaws is what happens if the person who committed the crime does not want to engage in restorative justice.
- What if they maintain their innocence, and are actually innocent? Sounds like you need a trial, but what do you do if they don't want to bother with one?
- What if they maintain their innocence even though they are found guilty, and actually are?
- What if they admit to doing it but say they'd do it again?
What I'm getting at is that you need a backstop to make people engage with your justice system if they don't want to voluntarily.
One other significant issue with restorative justice is that society might want a different outcome than what the victim of a crime might be satisfied with. Think of a case where a person is threatened with a gun. The victim is satisfied with moving on after an apology, but what if the community doesn't want the first guy to have a gun anymore?
He will be a waste reprocessing worker third class in the Provisional Martian Worker's Republic. He will be paid a comfortable living wage and proper benefits. He will sleep in the pod, he will eat the algae, and he will be happy.
I mean prison abolition doesnt mean we dont still have places where we put the most extreme cases of people who cant be rehabilitated and are a danger to society if allowed to exist in it. They just wouldnt function like prisons as we know them.
Then again the USSR did do Gulags so
I'm not going to weep over Elon if he's executed or work camp'd I'm just I'm personally against retributive justice in nearly all cases and would advocate for a justice system that isnt retributive post-revolution.If it makes you feel any better I'm sure Elon doesnt survive the process of revolution anyway :)
Yeah, the question of what to do with people who truly cannot play nice in society is one I'm still learning about re: restorative justice and prison abolition. There are a small number of people who are just irrepairably anti-social and I'm not sure how you'd deal with them. Sending them to a rural area or colony where their movements can be tightly monitored while allowing them some degree of freedom within an assigned area is the best I can come up with.
In Iain Banks The Culture, iirc, people who commit serious crimes are assigned a drone that follows them around for the rest of their lives. They're allowed to go anywhere, do whatever, but if they try to do something anti-social the drone will incapacitate them. That's as close as they have to a prison system.
I think there's a significant contradiction between prison abolition and running any sort of state, especially a post-revolutionary one where reaction is inevitable.
To paraphrase
, the day after the revolution, are we suddenly going to treat the fascists with kid gloves? Will they be allowed to go back to what they are doing now and we can't even arrest them?
Once the revolution is over you switch from Louis XVI to Puyi. Truth and Reconciliation is essential to creating a Socialist society and reducing any reactionary fifth colum
I don't. It doesn't work and provably makes things worse. There is no justification for killing prisoners or criminals during peacetime. It's not even a mercy or compassion thing, it provably creates negative outcomes for the community.
I think there could be if there was evidence that they would be a danger to society even if locked up (genocide supporter with a huge following, gang stuff maybe, Warren Jeffs types etc)
Humour and (justified)hate inspired outcomes aside I think the most common hexbear view on what should be done with people like Elon is what the CPC did with emperor Puyi rather than Romanov them
Justice systems shouldn't be about revenge, it should be about reformation. That's contingent on the stability of a revolution, ofc. Some reactionary hardline militants might simply be too much of a risk to keep around before a governing body could really find its feet.
I was reading up on the guy that merked Rabin back in the day, and it really sounds like he got everything he wanted. He was a right wing ethnonationalist religious fanatic that scared other religious fanatics, and now guys who broadly agere with is values run Israel.
"Feel free to protest, just not in a way that makes my life more difficult. Or in my line of sight. Or on TV. In fact, protest somewhere over there where no one can see or hear you. That's always enacted change!"
occupying public spaces
human domestication is real its just normal neoliberal privatization
Same here, Petitions do nothing at all, in the best case or in the worst are used to data mine all your information, so I no longer waste my ink on them
first you make a petition
then they laugh at you
then you lose
Gandhi
In short, they're pointless, make people less likely to actually protest, and adding your name to a list is a horrible idea.
Yea I’m a free speech absolutist (checking always acceptable to everything)
It's all acceptable as soon as you're sufficiently mad.
Rioting is fine, if you're waving a flag and fighting the Deep State.
Blocking traffic is cool if you're protesting mask mandates.
Defacing property is fine, if its the property of some stupid stoner liberal fifth columnist black lives matter
This is an extremally poorly done poll I wouldn't draw any conclusions from it lol.
The 3% that say rioting is always acceptable and the 2.5% that creating a petition is always unacceptable. lol
Show
The 3% that say rioting is always acceptable
Communist revolution is always acceptable, checkmate
i think rioting is cool and fun and is always acceptable but creating a petition is nerd shit and is always unacceptable
If it makes y'all feel any better this was a really poorly administered and unscientific poll.
Sample size of 1000, based on people who responded to an e-mail, more than half of the respondents were over 45, more people over 65 than under 30. (Also apparently more Trump voters than Biden voters?)
I do think this is SOMEWHAT representative of the American mind but keep this shit in mind as well.
Yea YouGov poll sampling is never good
1000 is a very good size though
There's a calculator and some math here if you wanna learn more. Statistics is really weird and unintuitive https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/
Ah ok, well, the other criticisms stand I guess.
I dont think a better administered poll would have results that were more than marginally better tbh but still.
