The 87-year-old whose eviction sparked a domestic crisis and triggered nationwide anti-government protests has died in hospital late on Wednesday. Protesters say they will continue to demonstrate to uphold her legacy.
The 87-year-old whose eviction sparked a domestic crisis and triggered nationwide anti-government protests has died in hospital late on Wednesday. Protesters say they will continue to demonstrate to uphold her legacy.
Ok, i would rather prefer some swift legislation to prevent this from ever happening again and legal proceedings against those responsible (which would be hard to get a sentence for - i don’t think they actually broke any laws, and making new laws and sentencing people after the fact is something we all don’t want, i assure you of that).
But if that doesn’t happen, i’m down with your solution too.
Every successful movement has had two wings. A reasonable, non-violent, and thoughtful wing that offers peaceful solutions, and a militant wing that’s prepared to use less gentle means to demand change. Sin Fein would not have accomplished much without the IRA. Martin Luther King Jr. would have struggled to get concessions if Malcolm X and the Black Panthers didn’t exist. Mandela, Gandhi, all of them exist in juxtaposition with a less restrained movement that we tend to minimize in the history books, because the powers that be don’t approve of people knowing how the real sausage of political change works.
You want a peaceful resolution? Good! You are welcome and needed. But don’t disparage the radical wing. Understand they too want justice. They are a necessary part of the movement as well. They are the implicit “Or Else” at the end of every call for justice.
This is why nonviolence is violence too. Nonviolent movements require their violent counterparts to put pressure on states.
And also, if a movement manages to get a reform passed, it is dependent on the state’s monopoly on violence to get it enforced. Don’t forget that the National Guard had to be deployed to actually desegregate schools in the South.
There is no such thing as a successful non-violent movement, and anyone who demands non-violence is carrying water for the oppressors.
I agree on that! But i refuse the way of thinking that the threat of violence has to be the first line of defense or offense.
Yeah sure, violence should not be the first thing you try. But it’s more effective if you are perceived as being capable of violence when you are standing up to oppressors who are doing violence to you.
It’s also effective if i am capable of unleashing a biological agent on my adversaries. Should that be the standard? Because that is very easily achieved these days with everything you can buy from a supermarket, see bacillus cereus as an easy example - cook some rice, let it stand at 27°C for a few days and distribute it to your enemies. That’s one of the nice examples that (probably) wont kill your enemies.
The threat of violence - which is fucking easy even for single individuals nowadays if they want to - should NOT be the primary reason to engage in diplomacy.
I think you’re misconstruing what I’m trying to say. This article says it much better: https://www.grassrootsthinking.com/nonviolence-is-violence-too-somebodys-gotta-die/
I have to disagree with that article on multiple things. For starters, I have to (again) put here that I always agreed with the initial premise that violence is a valid way if nonviolent ways are not working.
This is the thing i really want to put up here as an inhumane fallacy, making human lives something to be played with. This is simply not true - the first is a preparation step for the worst case, the other one is an active, violent transgression against human life. Lord Farquaad would be proud.
And the whole article disenfranchises every step humanity has made towards progress through negotiation without bashing in skulls. I can’t even…
As I said, I fully support violent uprising against conditions that are not fixable in other ways or that are causing comparable harm in the populace. But this agitation piece is fucking propaganda for violence outside of what is reasonable in a functioning democracy.
You are missing the point that violence is already being done to the oppressed. When the author says digging a grave is no more violent than filling one, he is talking about your body filling that grave, not your oppressors. “Inflicting harm is no more violent than receiving it.” When you are already being harmed, there is no moral high ground to refusing to harm the oppressor.
As i said, i am down with @[email protected] 's solution if a peaceful way is not found. Don’t paint me as disparaging because i prefer talking before shooting. Any movement that prefers shooting over talking has to be shunned from the start, because it will only beget more violence even when the opposition might be ok with talks to come to a solution. All of your examples were on the side of “talking first”.
Edit: Anyone downvoting this is advocating for hurting people before discussing things. I am astounded that we have people thinking like this here.
No, it doesn’t. Without them, your talk is just noise, easily dismissed. It’s absolutely necessary for some to follow their conscience and keep their hands clean, but if no one is getting their hands dirty then it doesn’t achieve anything.
They were. But they always made sure to qualify their denouncements of violence with an understanding of the righteous rage of the more aggressive activities of the less restrained wing. Centre the motivations, not the actions.
You represent one part of a bigger whole. Both parts are necessary. Neither by itself is sufficient.
Anyone starting to shoot before talking is just a fucking terrorist and not someone you can negotiate with. Another Edit: this is true regardless of which side we are talking about.
You are sullying the sacrifices of the people who were deeply committed to put talks before violence with your utterances. There are many things you can achieve before killing your opposition, even when you do not have to means to do that at all.
I agree that resisting violently is needed in some cases. But preferring the violent case over the diplomatic one is the way you get long-term guerilla warfare and countless civilian victims that do not deserve to be wound up in your “righteous crusade”.
Diplomatic measures should ALWAYS be the first line of defense and offense. If everything else fails, go ahead and set the barricades on fire. But if you advocate towards violence before the civil way of doing things is exhausted, you are no better than any of those bastards people are fighting against.
Edit: I also want to emphasize that getting ready for a violent confrontation is not something i want to discourage. But the important discriminating factor is which of your cards you keep playing the most, and when you play them. Just playing the “violence” card is not better than anything the nazis have done.
2nd Edit: Really? The violent cowards downvoting me better give me some good reason why shooting first is the way to go.
In general, almost no one starts shooting without trying to talk first. The difference between you and the guy who is “rushing” to more extreme measures, is usually that their experience has left them far more cynical about the chances of talk achieving anything without actions to back it up. Every cynic is ultimately a disillusioned idealist who has seen too many failures of discourse to produce results. There’s a difference between a psychopath who engages in violence for the thrill of it, and someone who has reached the end of their patience while people die around them. There is no matter in which you are either the first or the last word on, and you are disrespecting everyone who has been in the fight for these causes before you could string two coherent words together. Today’s battles are just the latest front of a war that is older than living memory.
Throwing the “T” word around is just a rhetorical, thought terminating cliche at this point. When states are charging people with “Terrorism” for possessing reading material, that word has lost all meaning. Using the phrase “Department of War” is a terrorist act. The existence of a military and the implicit threat of force is a terrorist act. My breakfast preferences are almost certainly terrorism for some people. When everyone is a terrorist, no one is.
I agree that the difference is mainly one of how much hope someone has. I still believe in the capability of most humans to come to a favorable solution when stakes are high.
I also insist on exactly this view being the most important thing to prevent atrocities, unneeded violence, and long-term conflicts with a bunch of civilian victims caught in the crossfire.
A Terrorist in my view is someone who resorts to violence when other venues of reaching goals are realistically open. For example, i would not consider Hamas an terrorist organization - Palestinians do not have any recourse left outside of violently resisting.
But for renting Spaniards, there are a lot of political and diplomatic pathways still available that have not been used for now! The legislation that did not go through because of the (fucking) separatists and conservatives will be simply pushed through in the temporary administration before the next votes, and these parties will get their receipt for shitting on the needs of the common people.
Someone advocating for violence in this situation is a fucking r* (my foreign language mind does currently not provide me with a similarily powerful word that would fit the bill, you are welcome to supply me some, thanks in advance), because it will turn the public opinion against the interests of the common people, and on top of that people that do not deserve that will get hurt (and yes, that even includes cops, even if i despise them)
Using the term Terrorist is only a though terminating cliche if you use US standards.
Most of the French would certainly beg to differ on the matter of where to draw the line in the sand. If you’re waiting until you’re standing in rubble on the inside of a cage with guard towers to decide it’s time to act, you are not going to get very far. You may be willing to be a martyr, but lecturing everyone who isn’t is not productive. You want to prevent unnecessary loss of life, focus on curing the disease, not clutching your pearls about the symptoms. Spaniards do in fact have many political and diplomatic pathways to move forward. So use them and don’t worry about policing those who break ranks. You want to tell people you think violence is premature when the question is asked? That’s fine, but always bring your attention and others’ back to what brought someone to chose it in the first place, because no sane person chooses violence lightly and there’s only so many psychopaths on Earth (and we all know which side of this they tend to fall on).
While the system functions, those who act on their own will be dealt with according to the law, as they should be. Policing the tone of those who you otherwise stand with is a distraction that only serves to divide you. You can be on the team that that chooses peace, but it is absolutely not necessary to waste your time on respectability politics. The opposition certainly
diddon’t, and tying your own hands when they have already dropped the gloves serves no purpose.This is why i also said preparing for violent struggle is not the same as actively pouring oil into the fire. There’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst. But advocating (NOT preparing!) for violence when so many paths are still open is begging for unneeded casualities on both sides. This has nothing to do with tying your own hands, it has to do with how humane you want to be. Do you want to be as inhumane an CEO deciding to raise rents beyond whats reasonable? If you do not care about loss of life or limb - go ahead! and fuck you all the same, just as they can get fucked, because they left they humanity behind, and you did just the same.
you think the talking hasn’t been started yet? you think we don’t see all this talk and know it changed nothing? there has not been a “starting to shoot before talking”. time is running out, and now it’s time to make listening much more appealing then it obviously is now.
The talking has started, and the first vote did not get the needed result. Now they are heading into a re-election, and the administration during this period will push that legislation through without even needing the votes of the right/conservative parties if you followed the news enough. Just because the first round of negotiations does not give you the result you want, there is no need for starting violence against your political adversaries.
In fact, your thinking would be well placed in the Kremlin or similarily undemocratic institutions. Go fuck yourself. I do not converse with authoritarian fucks.
this is not the first nor the second not the third time around this this little game. and this will fail just like all the rest. we are at the ‘show results, not progress’ levels of fucking around
Can you guarantee that? are you willing to bet the lives of innocent people on that?
If you can do the first (hint: you can’t), fine by me. If you are willing to do the second, you are no better than the people you are fighting against.