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  • Violence isn't the answer!

    The answer is.. checks history book

    wait not that one.. starts flipping pages

    uhh if you hang on a second uhh furious page-flipping

  • The State only respects power. If a group of people show that they have more power than the State, change can happen. However, what is power?

    Power comes in many different forms.

    There is economic power which is showcased through strikes and boycotts.
    There is democratic power which is showcased through the ballot box.
    There is soft power which is showcased through the lobbying, and speeches.
    There is non-violet power which is showcased through protests, marches, and sit ins.
    There is violent power which is showcased through physical violence such riots.

    While, the populace has access to many different forms of power. The State is limited to either soft power or violent power. Depending on the State, soft power might not even be contemplated.

    Riots are just one form of power for the populace to exercise.

  • Funnily enough there's a very similar situation to the US that's going on in Serbia, where a canopy falling and killing a bunch of people due to government cheapening out led to lots of outrage and exploded into a massive student movement against the president due to corruption, election rigging, suppression of dissent and executive branch abuse.

    At first, they did peaceful protests, blocked roads and all that jazz constantly, but after seeing that it had led them literally nowhere (they got nothing except for a fake concession that was some minister resigning) except on getting arrested and beaten up in jails, they decided to give a green light to civil disobedience, violence, trashing ruling party's headquarters all over the country.

    What did this escalation result in? A whole load of nothing except cracked skulls, mostly for the students.

    If you're looking at reformism 'fixing' things during the course of history, civil disobedience the vast majority if not all of the time was noise. What eventually got implemented or changed wasn't because the ruling class got scared, but because they were either getting major gains in terms of compromise as a result of the reform, or the reform itself was beneficial to their interests and only a small minority didn't want them to pass.

    • If you’re looking at reformism ‘fixing’ things during the course of history, civil disobedience the vast majority if not all of the time was noise. What eventually got implemented or changed wasn’t because the ruling class got scared, but because they were either getting major gains in terms of compromise as a result of the reform, or the reform itself was beneficial to their interests and only a small minority didn’t want them to pass.

      So, in your opinion the woman's suffrage movement, or LGBTQ activism, for example, were just wastes of time? These people didn't need to do or say anything since the bourgeoisie were about to give them everything they wanted anyway?

      • If they held no benefit to the ruling class, then no. LGBT opens up more industry focused on identity (via pride merch, medical needs) which means more profitable industry for bourgeois, while women's suffrage legitimizes capital's rule further by allowing more people to vote + liberates capitalist women which is what bourgeois feminism is primarily about.

        Whether these reforms would have happened without the noise though, can't really say - there's no mirror that looks into alternate realities. Still, these kinds of reformist mass movements are usually a result of bourgeois infighting, not some spontaneous working class action - just look at who organizes and funds them.

        Thats not to say liberal working class are idiots for joining them and acting as footsoldiers, no - there are definitely benefits to be had for one's identity no matter the class, like in the case of LGBT, but the things won aren't full-on liberation, just specific compromises that are capital-friendly(women getting voting rights but still being discriminated against to encourage births/staying at home and raising more workers, LGBT getting essentially bare minimum recognition and care to be sold merch but not enough to significantly attack the traditional family for child-raising). Therefore, true liberation can only happen via the abolishment of the class society, else it's gonna be endless compromises that miss the mark.

    • To give a bit of hope to the liberals in the US though, what's happening there isn't new and the state of things from before (as in liberal democracy functioning normally) is going to sooner and later return, it's a cycle that happens every now and again due to falling rate of profit, crisis and rise of reaction that happens as a result.

      Eventually, liberal capitalists will start fighting the conservative capitalists to get their place in the sun again, maybe it's going to happen electorally or maybe there's going to be a slaughter of millions of workers in the name of liberal democracy or anti-fascism, after which wholesome democracy will reign supreme once again and the countdown towards another crisis and rise of reaction will start once again. Isn't that lovely?

  • Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men.

  • The response by quasi-normalcy reads like a cherry picked simplification to lead to a likely incorrect conclusion.

    The statements suggest all (or most) riots:

    • change public policy for the better; they don't
    • are justified by the rioters; they aren't

    Here are some examples:

    Battle of Blair Mountain

    For five days from late August to early September 1921, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers (called the Logan Defenders)[6] who were backed by coal mine operators during the miners' attempt to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields when tensions rose between workers and mine management. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired,[7] and the United States Army, represented by the West Virginia National Guard led by McDowell County native William Eubanks,[8] intervened by presidential order.[9]

    In the short term the battle was an overwhelming victory for coal industry owners and management.[52] United Mine Workers of America (UMWA or UMW) membership plummeted from more than 50,000 miners to approximately 10,000 over the next several years, and it was not until 1935—following the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—that the UMW fully organized in southern West Virginia.

    This union defeat had major implications for the UMWA as a whole. As World War I ended, the demand for coal declined adversely impacting the industry. [citation needed] Because of the defeat in West Virginia, the union was also undermined in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. By the end of 1925, Illinois was the only remaining unionized state in terms of soft coal production.

    So in this example, most of us today would say the riot was justified as the coal miners were seeking safer working conditions under unionization. This riot failed and largely destroyed the union.

    So was the riot justified: yes. Did it lead to positive change: no.

    Tulsa race massacre aka Tulsa riot

    The Tulsa race massacre was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist[13][14] massacre[15] that took place in the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, between May 31 and June 1, 1921. Mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city government officials,[16] attacked black residents and destroyed homes and businesses. The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.[17][18] The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street."[19]

    More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 6,000 black residents of Tulsa were interned, many of them for several days.[20][21] The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead.[22] The 2001 Tulsa Reparations Coalition examination of events identified 39 dead, 26 black and 13 white, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates, and other records.[23] The commission reported estimates ranging from 36 up to around 300 dead.[24][25]

    So in this example most of us today would say the riot was NOT justified as the black residents were just trying to live their lives in peace and prosperity before the white supremacists came in with violence and murder of black residents.

    So was the riot justified: no. Did it lead to positive change: no.

    The original premise by that poster is questionable as only through the lens of history can we pick out specific riots that lead to positive policy or positive societal change.

    • The Tulsa massacre is a wild example, because while it led to no positive change, it did help accomplish the white supremacist's goals of keeping Black people from building generational wealth. The terrorism of the KKK and non state sanctioned attacks against native Americans played a crucial war in building all the inequities of America. The injustice wasn't inevitable or even based on legal discrimination alone, but bolstered and reinforced by extrajudicial actions they knew the state wouldn't stop.

      Does this mean the left can do anything close to the same thing as the KKK? Fuck no, we'll pay extra in jail time and executions. The state allowed an encouraged that evil. It does make the moralizing bullshit about illegality being the only way to change things even more hollow.

      • it led to no positive change, it did help accomplish the white supremacist’s goals of keeping Black people from building generational wealth. The terrorism of the KKK and non state sanctioned attacks against native Americans played a crucial war in building all the inequities of America. The injustice wasn’t inevitable or even based on legal discrimination alone, but bolstered and reinforced by extrajudicial actions they knew the state wouldn’t stop.

        I agree with 100% of what you said here. It is an absolute travesty that this occurred at all, but then was hidden from mainstream recorded history for decades.

        Does this mean the left can do anything close to the same thing as the KKK? Fuck no, we’ll pay extra in jail time and executions. The state allowed an encouraged that evil. It does make the moralizing bullshit about illegality being the only way to change things even more hollow.

        I wasn't defending the "illegality" argument. I was pointing out that the supposition of the thread post ascribes riots as the primary driver of liberal democracy. I'm pointing out that that is only true if you pick out specific riots and ignore dozens of others that don't support the thesis. Even riots whose outcome could have shaped liberal ideas but didn't like Blair Mountain have to be ignored for the thread post to be true.

        I also reject that riots were the only shaping device of liberal democracy in the USA. I would argue FDRs New Deal was a bigger driver of modern liberal democracy than any riot. While the New Deal was certainly influenced by protest from the Bonus Army, but there was no riot from that. Further, the Race Riot of 1943 had occurred in Detroit under FDR's watch, but FDR stayed silent on it and I'm not aware of any changes in policy that occurred because of it though I admit I only know of the riots occurrence and not much more.

    • You aren't going to win every battle, even if you end up winning the war. And obviously, winning any battle is never a foregone conclusion, but sometimes you have to fight anyway.

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