Activism and Violence

Paleocon wrote:
Tyops wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

I don't see how him being utterly crushed will somehow magically make all the bigotry his campaign has shone the light on disappear or change. It was always there, and all of the sh*tty transphobic bills getting proposed and passed in recent months are evidence of that.

The popular vote doesn't end racism, that's ludicrous, but there is an enormous difference between a scenario where Trump loses the popular vote with a 47% vote share and the one where he loses with a vote share under 30% or dare we hope, even lower.

I think the biggest difference, at least for me, is that a 30% drubbing would repudiate his general strategy, whereas a 47% loss would ensure that the GOP floats it again.

Seems Sam Bee agrees with this. Maybe one of her writers is a closet GWJer, then again it's a pretty obvious position.

Sam Bee wrote:

"If you dream of a world free of political correctness and want to see what that really looks like, check out #PostRefRacism," Bee said. "Not now. I don't want you crying through my show. That is really the worst outcome of Brexit — not the breakup of the E.U. or the fact that you can now use the British pound as loo paper. It's that the vote made these hateful morons think that over half the country agreed with them. This is why it's not enough for Trump to lose. It has to be a [expletive] landslide, 50-state repudiation of this."

The general consensus in this thread seemed to coalesce around "Our schooling/media narrative vastly overstates the importance/strength of pure non-violent protest. Violent protest is often far more effective at drawing attention and changing behavior. Given that, for really bad scenarios that should be stopped (typically politically weak minorities experiencing significant violence) it is morally correct to protest violently."

I was wondering whether this consensus had been affected by the shooting in Dallas last night.

My angle on violent protest was to stop violent suppression after it began, not to initiate it.

Yeah, a sniper isn't a violent protester.

If the BLM protest had met a fascist counter protest and turned violent, I'd respect that. Dallas is not that.

I'd agree with:

"Our schooling/media narrative vastly misrepresents pure non-violent protest and tries to anesthetize us into nonresistance. Violent protest is very effective at drawing attention, but often in counterproductive ways. For really bad scenarios that should be stopped (typically politically weak minorities experiencing significant violence) it is morally correct to protect yourself in whatever way is necessary and remove yourself from violence as quickly as possible."

The moment you take up arms against the government of our nation you become an enemy of the state. That is very different from yelling in the streets and breaking storefronts with bricks or stopping traffic on a highway. Taking up arms is a serious thing. That type of political violence is territory hostile to a democracy and civil society and has no place in either.

Whether it is these asshats in Dallas or the "free land for fundy Mormon" folks who took over an Oregon bird sanctuary, the government owes it to all of us to treat folks like that harshly.

There's a huge difference between being obstreperous, blocking traffic and doing property damage, and outright killing people deliberately. I'm tempted to say 'especially police', but, you know, I don't think that's actually any worse than killing civilians.

Annoy people? Sure, that's in-bounds. Property damage? Ehhh...... I can't firmly say one way or the other. It's so dependent on the various circumstances. Deliberately hurting or killing specific people is not acceptable, and deliberately hurting or killing people because they're anonymous members of any group whatsoever (be that police, or some race, or some religion) is ABSOLUTELY out of bounds, and should be policed and prosecuted vehemently.

That's a weak form of collective punishment, exacting vengeance on people because they remind you of people you consider to be criminals, and that's behavior that cannot be tolerated.

Paleocon wrote:

I think the biggest difference, at least for me, is that a 30% drubbing would repudiate his general strategy, whereas a 47% loss would ensure that the GOP floats it again.

I think what I'd really like to see would be Trump getting a 30% drubbing, but Hillary coming in well below 50% as well. These two are the worst candidates put forward by their parties in recent memory - a racist, proto-fascist populist who's almost certain to be a disaster, and a corporate-owned career politician who represents a continuation of the existing status quo of rights violations, cronyism, the failed war on drugs, disastrous foreign adventurism, and incompetent economic policy.

Neither of them deserves anything like a "landslide" victory.

Paleocon wrote:

That type of political violence is territory hostile to a democracy and civil society and has no place in either.

That assumes that a democracy (republic) and a civil society is what we have. People on both sides are already attacking that assumption - Trump with his comments on fixed elections, and Clinton with her open accusations of racism. And there's plenty of valid ammunition, because the current American election system is most definitely rigged, and Trump is pretty clearly a racist.

Consider, for example, armed resistance against the mass deportations Trump has been talking about. If Trump gets elected, American society will no longer be democratic (republican) or civil when it comes to people with brown skin. If people fought back in that scenario, would they be wrong to do so?

Whether it is these asshats in Dallas or the "free land for fundy Mormon" folks who took over an Oregon bird sanctuary, the government owes it to all of us to treat folks like that harshly.

Actually, that's exactly what you don't want to do. We have plenty of evidence from events like Ruby Ridge and the Oregon standoff that treating people like that "harshly" just encourages more people to be like them. They become martyrs and symbols. The most important thing you can do with people like is treat them exactly by the book, and don't provoke a conflict or do something stupid like shooting at them unless there's no other choice. If you do that, you are giving them what they want.

Aetius wrote:
Whether it is these asshats in Dallas or the "free land for fundy Mormon" folks who took over an Oregon bird sanctuary, the government owes it to all of us to treat folks like that harshly.

Actually, that's exactly what you [i]don't[i] want to do. We have plenty of evidence from events like Ruby Ridge and the Oregon standoff that treating people like that "harshly" just encourages more people to be like them. They become martyrs and symbols. The most important thing you can do with people like is treat them exactly by the book, and don't provoke a conflict or do something stupid like shooting at them unless there's no other choice. If you do that, you are giving them what they want.

That's true, but the way I read "harshly" is that it's asking that they not be shown the "leniency" white people typically to get when determining what the book proscribes for treatment.
The initial Bundy situation in Nevada was basically ignored until the Oregon standoff made it impossible for the government to not do something. I'm not saying they should have stormed the ranch and shot anyone that resisted, but the standoff should have happened the first time the Bundy bunch threatened to shoot any government agent they find in their "territory," not when the sons decided to take that act on the road.

Stengah wrote:
Aetius wrote:
Whether it is these asshats in Dallas or the "free land for fundy Mormon" folks who took over an Oregon bird sanctuary, the government owes it to all of us to treat folks like that harshly.

Actually, that's exactly what you [i]don't[i] want to do. We have plenty of evidence from events like Ruby Ridge and the Oregon standoff that treating people like that "harshly" just encourages more people to be like them. They become martyrs and symbols. The most important thing you can do with people like is treat them exactly by the book, and don't provoke a conflict or do something stupid like shooting at them unless there's no other choice. If you do that, you are giving them what they want.

That's true, but the way I read "harshly" is that it's asking that they not be shown the "leniency" white people typically to get when determining what the book proscribes for treatment.
The initial Bundy situation in Nevada was basically ignored until the Oregon standoff made it impossible for the government to not do something. I'm not saying they should have stormed the ranch and shot anyone that resisted, but the standoff should have happened the first time the Bundy bunch threatened to shoot any government agent they find in their "territory," not when the sons decided to take that act on the road.

Not cracking down on Bundy in 2014 is what led to Oregon in 2016.

The government followed all the rules with Bundy in Nevada and played an exceptionally slow hand. We're talking literally eleven years from when Bundy was denied grazing rights to when a federal court finally ruled that the government could move in and remove Bundy's illegally grazing cattle. And that's after multiple lawsuits and court battles.

Once Bundy's band of idiots realized that carrying AR-15s and threatening to harm government workers made the government back off yet again, they decided to up the ante and take over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

There's always going to be militia morons who are angry at the government for some reason or another. It doesn't even take the government doing anything to swell their numbers. Hell, as soon as Obama took office the number of militia groups exploded even though he didn't actually do anything.

What history tells us is that treating militia groups with kid gloves isn't the answer. The answer is to use force to get them to comply with the law. Anything less simply encourages more groups to challenge the government's legitimacy.

OG_slinger wrote:
Stengah wrote:
Aetius wrote:
Whether it is these asshats in Dallas or the "free land for fundy Mormon" folks who took over an Oregon bird sanctuary, the government owes it to all of us to treat folks like that harshly.

Actually, that's exactly what you [i]don't[i] want to do. We have plenty of evidence from events like Ruby Ridge and the Oregon standoff that treating people like that "harshly" just encourages more people to be like them. They become martyrs and symbols. The most important thing you can do with people like is treat them exactly by the book, and don't provoke a conflict or do something stupid like shooting at them unless there's no other choice. If you do that, you are giving them what they want.

That's true, but the way I read "harshly" is that it's asking that they not be shown the "leniency" white people typically to get when determining what the book proscribes for treatment.
The initial Bundy situation in Nevada was basically ignored until the Oregon standoff made it impossible for the government to not do something. I'm not saying they should have stormed the ranch and shot anyone that resisted, but the standoff should have happened the first time the Bundy bunch threatened to shoot any government agent they find in their "territory," not when the sons decided to take that act on the road.

Not cracking down on Bundy in 2014 is what led to Oregon in 2016.

The government followed all the rules with Bundy in Nevada and played an exceptionally slow hand. We're talking literally eleven years from when Bundy was denied grazing rights to when a federal court finally ruled that the government could move in and remove Bundy's illegally grazing cattle. And that's after multiple lawsuits and court battles.

Once Bundy's band of idiots realized that carrying AR-15s and threatening to harm government workers made the government back off yet again, they decided to up the ante and take over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

I know, that was my point.

OG_slinger wrote:

What history tells us is that treating militia groups with kid gloves isn't the answer. The answer is to use force to get them to comply with the law. Anything less simply encourages more groups to challenge the government's legitimacy.

And this is precisely how you end up in a shooting civil war instead of just having a bunch of barely-organized militia groups who don't actually hurt anyone or accomplish anything. What history tells us is that using force is exactly what these groups want. It boosts their own legitimacy, and damages the government's. They stop being "a bunch of deluded weirdos" and start being a "major threat". This is also precisely how the United States has kept international terrorism alive and flourishing, and a major reason why our stock internationally has reached new lows.

So... If we just left ISIS and Al Quaeda and Aryan Nations and all the other armed revolutionary and terror types alone, international and domestic terrorism would just wither away?

Robear wrote:

So... If we just left ISIS and Al Quaeda and Aryan Nations and all the other armed revolutionary and terror types alone, international and domestic terrorism would just wither away?

All they really need is love.

Aetius wrote:

And this is precisely how you end up in a shooting civil war instead of just having a bunch of barely-organized militia groups who don't actually hurt anyone or accomplish anything. What history tells us is that using force is exactly what these groups want. It boosts their own legitimacy, and damages the government's. They stop being "a bunch of deluded weirdos" and start being a "major threat". This is also precisely how the United States has kept international terrorism alive and flourishing, and a major reason why our stock internationally has reached new lows.

The problem is that you can't have the rule of law (or a functioning government) without the use of force. Laws and court orders are absolutely worthless scraps of paper unless the government is willing to back them up with force.

Does that mean that the government should ruthlessly gun down every militia member? No. But it does mean that it can't allow those AR-15 wielding yahoos to have their way even if that means some of them (and some government agents) might be killed.

And you have your history wrong. There's been multiple examples of the American government using force to put down barely-organized militia groups. Shay's Rebellion, Fries's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion. Each one was a situation where the government had to use force to assert its authority. None of those lead to civil war and all of them were situations where the government would have become ineffective if the insurgents hadn't been put down.

The latest Malcolm Gladwell podcast Generous Orthodoxy talks at length about how protest needs to respect the body it is attempting to reform to be effective. Definitely worth a listen (as is the entire series).

As a fellow Mennonite, the nonviolent reconciliation-focused religion that has informed my posting in this thread, it struck a very personal chord. It is my hope that other people find the thesis of the podcast relevant, and also hope that I'm not overreaching by posting this here. Please let me know if you feel otherwise.

Kronen wrote:

The latest Malcolm Gladwell podcast Generous Orthodoxy talks at length about how protest needs to respect the body it is attempting to reform to be effective. Definitely worth a listen (as is the entire series).

As a fellow Mennonite, the nonviolent reconciliation-focused religion that has informed my posting in this thread, it struck a very personal chord. It is my hope that other people find the thesis of the podcast relevant, and also hope that I'm not overreaching by posting this here. Please let me know if you feel otherwise.

I personally really enjoyed it. Probably helps that I'm also a fairly politically left person in my (evangelical-ish) church.

Caveats to the idea of respecting the body you seek to heal:

1) Not all protest is aimed at reform. Some structures can be repaired, others might need to be torn down.

2) I could see that episode and idea used to police the tone of aggrieved parties. It's important to note that the subject of the Gladwell interview is in a position between the church "body" and his own son, whom the community has hurt. That's a different thing than being the son in that situation, and I wouldn't call on the son to act in the same manner.

Yeah, like so many things in American history, it was all about being angry about taxes.

Demosthenes wrote:

Yeah, like so many things in American history, it was all about rich people being angry about taxes.

FTFY.

Robear wrote:

So... If we just left ISIS and Al Quaeda and Aryan Nations and all the other armed revolutionary and terror types alone, international and domestic terrorism would just wither away?

It's my belief that the invasions and drone strikes created ISIS.

The situation in the Middle East, after fifteen years of violence, is not better.

You don't leave terrorism alone, you treat it like what it is: a crime. If you actually want to win, as opposed to pad the pocketbooks of military contractors, you have to fight terrorism with police, not armies.

Basically, the tl;dr of that is pretty simple: you cannot beat a population into submission. You have to convince them that your way is better, and the only way to do this is by actually being better than the alternatives.

You can break a government. You can't break a tactic.

Note that I didn't say the situation in the Middle East was better than 15 years ago, nor did I say we should "beat a population into submission", nor did I say that we need to deploy armies.

I just asked for clarification on your stance, which you provided.

And I didn't claim you did.

My claim is that those things are what the United States is actually trying to do -- beat populations into submission. We're trying to terrorize them into not being terrorists.

You don't beat terrorism with armies and drone strikes. You beat it with police work. You have to go, capture the terrorists, and put them on trial for everyone to see. You have to treat even terrorists with a reasonable standard of law, order, and decency, because their friends and neighbors probably don't think they're guilty. You have to prove it, beyond a reasonable doubt, and you have to do it again and again. It's painful and slow, and it's the only way to tamp it down.

Use armies,, just killing anyone you think is a bad guy, and you just get more terrorists, an endless supply. You make the problem worse, not better. Take a terrorist to court and prove they're guilty, and things get a little better. Assassinate him or her, and things get worse.

Well, okay, armies can work.... if you're willing to kill everyone. If you exterminate the entire population, there are no more terrorists.

However, we've had some fairly substantial conflicts about such 'final solutions'......

edit: in other words, from a 50K-foot overview, there are both good and evil ways to solve the problem. The evil way can work, but you have to be balls-to-the-wall evil. You can't be half-assed about it, which is what we're doing. In that area of the world, not only are we a strong force for evil and chaos, we're incompetent at it.

And to link it back to Bundy et al; the conflict isn't about convincing them of anything. They're lost causes. There is no way you're going to get that man to believe that he shouldn't be allowed to graze his cattle on public land; he would probably refuse to believe that public land exists in the first place.

Rather, the conflict is about showing that their way sucks, that what they're offering is dismal. Having them take over Malheur was perfect, because it showed everyone the world that Bundy wants to make, one where people just destroy random sh*t because it's fun and they're pissed off.

All that ended up damaged was property. These guys were armed to the teeth, but that, in and of itself, wasn't the problem. It doesn't matter how many firearms they have. What matters is how many firearms they use. And the slow, gradual approach that the administration took made sure that nobody's weapons were fired. Nobody got hurt, these guys will end up in jail, and everyone with a clue has now seen just how awful a world they want to make.

Now, the fact that they were well-armed white militia probably had a lot to do with the extreme respect with which they were treated. That's unfortunate, but not because they were treated too well... rather, it's because they had to be that well armed to get it.

The Black Lives Matter and Occupy protesters should have gotten (and should be getting) the same thing. Let them show the world they want to make. We've seen Bundy's world now. Those guys are completely discredited; they've done more harm to their movement than anyone in decades.

Seeing Occupy up close, I suspect, would probably not have hurt their cause much at all. And BLM seems pretty okay to me, when they're not getting so savagely suppressed by the police.

edit: and, I gotta say, had I been in charge of whatever branch of law enforcement was handling Bundy, I would have probably screwed it up and gotten people killed. I'd have raised the stakes hard as soon as they started threatening people on the roads. In retrospect, while it would have been rewarding to do so, people might have ended up hurt or dead.

Oh, you know, there was one guy who did end up dead, but to all accounts, that was because he forced it to happen. It really didn't sound like that was an avoidable casualty.

This is quite interesting if a little tangential. From nearly three years ago and might be a repost. Erica Chenoweth argues that violent activism is far less successful than we think. Even when succeeding it generally results in worse outcomes.

In the context of the Island of Ireland, I believe her thesis hold a lot of weight.

Malor wrote:

And to link it back to Bundy et al; the conflict isn't about convincing them of anything. They're lost causes. There is no way you're going to get that man to believe that he shouldn't be allowed to graze his cattle on public land; he would probably refuse to believe that public land exists in the first place.

Rather, the conflict is about showing that their way sucks, that what they're offering is dismal. Having them take over Malheur was perfect, because it showed everyone with an interest the world that Ted Bundy wants to make, one where people just destroy random sh*t because it's fun and they're pissed off.

All that ended up damaged was property. These guys were armed to the teeth, but that, in and of itself, wasn't the problem. It doesn't matter how many firearms they have. What matters is how many firearms they use. And the slow, gradual approach that the administration took made sure that nobody's weapons were fired. Nobody got hurt, these guys will end up in jail, and everyone with a clue has now seen just how awful a world they want to make.

Bundy and gang taking over the Malheur refuge wasn't about them destroying random sh*t because it's fun and they're pissed off.

It was about them believing that the federal government had unconstitutionally claimed ownership of land in states and, by doing so, hurt local communities because the federal government didn't allow locals to exploit said land anyway they wanted (which made their targeting of Malheur even more ironic, considering its creation).

There are legitimate underlying economic issues behind the Malheur takeover that are being addressed. But Bundy and gang made the decision that every existing political means for change should be ignored (means that were working in Malheur) in favor of unslinging their AR-15s and acting like they were warlords.

It was that idea--that violence or the threat of violence--should be used to accomplish things instead of the political process (which is much, much harder, takes longer, and often involves compromise) that made the Bundy's and people like them so dangerous.

And there was far more damage than just property. The community around Malheur was terrorized for weeks because the feds allowed armed idiots to freely come and go. The Bundy Gang were allowed to inject themselves into local politics and, judging by media accounts at the time, legitimized the feeling a not-insignificant portion of the local population had that federal authorities were bad and that locals should be allowed to do whatever they wanted with federal land.

legitimized the feeling a not-insignificant portion of the local population had that federal authorities were bad and that locals should be allowed to do whatever they wanted with federal land.

Oh, dear Lord, they're spreading opinions I don't agree with!

You can dislike how they spread them all you like, but the fact that they are spreading them is no crime. Maybe we should be allowed to do whatever we like with Federal land. Maybe not, too, but that's up to us to decide, no?

By doing what they did, they discredited that opinion extremely thoroughly. If you think those ideas are bad, you should be cheering about Malheur, because they didn't exactly sell them to anyone. And the Feds, by not stomping in with jack boots, made them look even more ridiculous.

edit: at the time, I was a little horrified and impatient with them to shut those wackos down. But, in retrospect, their handling was brilliant. Situation defused, only one person dead, whole movement looks like idiots.

Malor wrote:
legitimized the feeling a not-insignificant portion of the local population had that federal authorities were bad and that locals should be allowed to do whatever they wanted with federal land.

Oh, dear Lord, they're spreading opinions I don't agree with!

You can dislike how they spread them all you like, but the fact that they are spreading them is no crime. Maybe we should be allowed to do whatever we like with Federal land. Maybe not, too, but that's up to us to decide, no?

By doing what they did, they discredited that opinion extremely thoroughly. If you think those ideas are bad, you should be cheering about Malheur, because they didn't exactly sell them to anyone. And the Feds, by not stomping in with jack boots, made them look even more ridiculous.

edit: at the time, I was a little horrified and impatient with them to shut those wackos down. But, in retrospect, their handling was brilliant. Situation defused, only one person dead, whole movement looks like idiots.

The decision not to storm the refuge to free it was definitely good, but letting them freely drive into town to stalk and harass the locals is what I suspect OG was talking about.

Federal employees of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the site occupied by the protestors, also reported "a number of uncomfortable instances" of "unknown" outsiders idling outside their homes, watching them and initiating debates about their employment.

"Many of these confrontations are taking place as their employees are grocery shopping, running errands with their families and trying to lead their day-to day lives," Ward said.