patrick.net

CL says

What do you think, pro or con, on the efficacy of non-violence? Do you have any historical support for that belief?

Non-violence is a fucking joke. John Brown and the Union Army freed the Slaves, not handwringing New England tract writers.

The British Quit India not because of Ghandi - who was almost a non-entity post 1942 - but because the Indian Army and Navy went on strike and British Admins and Soldiers were getting bombed and sniped at on a daily basis. Without hundreds of thousands of willing Indian troops under full British control, it was impossible for the Raj to hold on to the subcontinent.

Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael scared people into Civil Rights by demonstrating their willingness to carry and "Stand their Ground". Reagan famously banned public displays of firearms due to guys like these. The Soviet Union used to heavily publicize how Americans treated Blacks while harping about freedom and democracy, another reason for the change.

US Strikes from the 19th Century onwards were full of raging battles between Pinkertons, Cops, the local Decency Brigade of 1%ers and their hired thugs, and striking employees. Carnegie Steel Strike is a good example.

Hitler was stopped by the Red Army, who single handedly caused 80% of Wehrmacht Casualties. ALL other forces (US, British, but also Free French, Polish Partisans, Greek Partisans, Serbian partisans) caused the other 20%. Violence, violence, violence.

Anybody really think a bunch of Jews striking in 1938 would have prevented the Holocaust? Or if Russian POWs joined a drum circle and sang "Please krauts, don't kill us, don't starve us to death." they'd be alive today?

Occasionally, large numbers of people in certain circumstances can change things without violence, but it's pretty rare.

Give violence a chance.

CL says

"Eric Garner’s gruesome choking death, which was caught on video, does not elicit calls of nonviolence, but the burning of an inanimate object spurs a landslide of Martin Luther King Jr. quotes, sanitized for white consumption. If burning buildings is an act of violence, police murdering civilians with impunity must be called violence too."

Here's what happens when you give up your arms and trust an Imperialist Conservative "To do the right thing":

Athens 1944
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/athens-1944-britains-dirty-secret

This was the day, those 70 years ago this week, when the British army, still at war with Germany, opened fire upon – and gave locals who had collaborated with the Nazis the guns to fire upon – a civilian crowd demonstrating in support of the partisans with whom Britain had been allied for three years.

The crowd carried Greek, American, British and Soviet flags, and chanted: “Viva Churchill, Viva Roosevelt, Viva Stalin’” in endorsement of the wartime alliance.

Twenty-eight civilians, mostly young boys and girls, were killed and hundreds injured. “We had all thought it would be a demonstration like any other,” Patríkios recalls. “Business as usual. Nobody expected a bloodbath.”

Britain’s logic was brutal and perfidious: Prime minister Winston Churchill considered the influence of the Communist Party within the resistance movement he had backed throughout the war – the National Liberation Front, EAM – to have grown stronger than he had calculated, sufficient to jeopardise his plan to return the Greek king to power and keep Communism at bay. So he switched allegiances to back the supporters of Hitler against his own erstwhile allies.

Yep, Churchill armed the Nazi Collaborators against the anti-Nazi Partisans.

Much of the trouble in Greece has an origin back in that year.

By extending the franchise to women, who comprise a majority in most or all countries that have majority rule, men handed over control to women. Personally, I see some real advantages, because without women voting we would have seen President McCain and then Romnesia. OTOH, the OP seems to suggest women should have orchestrated a violent campaign including at least arson and looting, plus possibly sniper fire and high explosives. (In Britain, suffragettes did burn the country house of Lloyd George, who already supported women's suffrage. Is that why women got the vote around the world?)

In Missouri, Ferguson has a black majority. The simplest and best local response is for the majority to register and vote.

In Maryland, Baltimore saw several days of peaceful protests because that was what most of the participants wanted. Then, a small subset instigated violence. I watched videos and saw white males in their 20s with masks covering most of their faces, and black kids who had to walk home from school because the school bus routes had been cancelled. The details have yet to be fully reported, but I can tell you in California, we have self-proclaimed anarchists who ride the freights up and down the coast and descend upon protests in places like Oakland; the anarchists are mostly white, and their goal is to 'smash the state' including destroying public transit. These are not representative goals, and they are not productive.

curious2 says

In Maryland, Baltimore saw several days of peaceful protests because that was what most of the participants wanted. Then, a small subset instigated violence. I watched videos and saw white males in their 20s with masks covering most of their faces, and black kids who had had to walk home from school because the school bus routes had been cancelled. The details have yet to be fully reported, but I can tell you in California, we have self-proclaimed anarchists who ride the freights up and down the coast and descend upon protests in places like Oakland; the anarchists are mostly white, and their goal is to 'smash the state' including destroying public transit. These are not representative goals, and they are not productive.

When it comes to anarchists and rioters, they should all be shot. A white man gone berserk can be just as dangerous as a black man gone berserk.

The violent protests are counterproductive in a sense that they alienate ahem "mainstream communities", but more than that eventually the people will become desensitized to them and stop paying attention. Moreover, the ones that are likely to be victimized by the violent protests for the most part had absolutely nothing to do with original "incident" which will breed further resentment from society at large.

Strategist says

A white man gone berserk can be just as dangerous as a black man gone berserk.

Can be? Do you subscribe to the superhuman negro theory?

curious2 says

In Missouri, Ferguson has a black majority. The simplest and best local response is for the majority to register and vote.

Couldn't you say though, that freed slaves were given the right to vote, only to have it nullified? And then effectively re-granted after poll taxes, literacy tests, convict-lease and so on were abolished (or simply, renamed)? The Haitians ended slavery and got an Independent nation after violent revolution.

After Kent State, the majority of the public thought the kids got what THEY deserved. Non-violence helped the violent, n'est-ce pas?

curious2 says

The details have yet to be fully reported, but I can tell you in California, we have self-proclaimed anarchists who ride the freights up and down the coast and descend upon protests in places like Oakland; the anarchists are mostly white, and their goal is to 'smash the state' including destroying public transit. These are not representative goals, and they are not productive.

Have you ever seen the Quebec protest footage? Interesting how so many anarchists, normally seen with blue hair, goatees and noserings around protests without masks, suddenly have short hair, are clean cut and wearing State Police Supply Boots when unmasked at protests.

Also, how do all these poor, unemployed anarchists fly all over the states and the world, never getting stopped, even though they are repeat protesters and it's unbelievable the worst don't make Interpol's watchlist.