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.

CL says

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.

Unarmed Peaceful Protester recuperates after a beating.

White rioters burn a bus, beat protesters.

These folks did not get beaten, and struck far, far, far more fear into the Man than a bunch of dogoodnik beatniks:

"I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom, and the first cracker even looks like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won't write his mama again." - Fannie Lou Hamer, voter drive activist and organizer.

This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E Cobb, Jr
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/25632128-this-nonviolent-stuff-ll-get-you-killed-how-guns-made-the-civil-rights

“And out in the rural, when Mrs. Laura McGhee--who if she thought it necessary, sat on the porch with her Winchester rifle--permitted movement workers to use her farm outside Greenwood for a rally, the sheriff came to warn her against holding it. She told him that *he* was on *her* property, that *he* was trespassing and hadn't ever offered any protection from the terrorists who kept threatening to shoot up her farms, and that he therefore had nothing to offer her now and had better leave, get off her land. And the sheriff left.”

Reviews:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/07/28/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/this_nonviolent_stuffll_get_you_killed_20150206

Yet the world is becoming less violent.

CL says

n'est-ce pas?

Definitely pas. In 1968, Democrat Lyndon Johnson's escalated war in Viet Nam (including conscription) was already controversial, and Republican Richard Nixon campaigned successfully against it, supposedly with "a secret plan" to end it. In 1970, Ohio National Guard killed four non-violent protestors at Kent State. That did not directly affect the course of the war, but it became a rallying cry for the anti-war movement. In 1972, President Nixon won re-election, and in 1973 he ended the draft, in order to reduce the anti-war movement. (In 1980, the next Democrat to hold the Presidency reinstated registration.) Anyway, sorry to rain on your tribal parade, but on that topic the history of the last 100 years does not match your usual suspects: it was Democrats who initiated the draft, a Republican ended it, then a Democrat brought back the all-male registration that continues today.

You might like this bit of history better: white people rioting over sporting events. To my knowledge, no scores were changed in response to the riots.

A little "Violence to Property" goes a long way:

Cops to be Charged
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-baltimore-legal-strategy-20150502-story.html#page=1

Baltimore protesters celebrate, defy curfew after officers charged
http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-hold-street-party-baltimore-officers-charged-021024806.html

Direct Action Gets Satisfaction.

Bargaining only works if you have a big stick in case the debate goes against you.

If anybody thinks that if a few Community Leaders went to City Hall after sending a Certified Letter of Complaint, that these officers would be charged and more attention paid to Police Unaccountability and their Thug Union, I gotta Bridge to sell you - real cheap, take it off my hands for $10,000, I want to retire from toll collecting.

There is a huge difference between exercising the right to bear arms vs. random violence against innocent 3rd party property owners in the neighborhood. The latter would only lead to even less opportunities in the neighborhood.

You are very wrong on peaceful demonstration not producing results. The civil rights movement in the 60 ' s was by and large a peaceful movement. The opposition's use of violence initially severely hurt their cause.

BTW, Georgi Zhukov the mass murderer during the suppresson of Tambov Uprising should know what kind of result violent uprising against a militarized regime leads to: giving excuse to use chemical warfare and extermination against civilians.

CL says

What do you think, pro or con, on the efficacy of non-violence?

My GOP friends are the FIRST to protest the inadequacy of nonviolent means
when it comes to affairs international.

"I guess the UN will send another strongly worded letter!"
"Sanctions? When has that EVER worked!!!"

My GOP friends like to bring up Boston Tea Party and similar references
to violent overthrow when it comes to US Gubmint "oppression" they fear.

"We came unarmed. THIS time!"

My GOP friends suddenly turn Gandhi when it comes to brown people rioting.

The message seems quite clear.

As Clausewitz said, war is just politics by other means. In any political movement, there are always fringe elements hell bent on violence thinking that would bring expedient solution.

The key to what results from a political movement is often how quickly the winning side can sideline the violent elements afterwards and bring forth a peaceful society after the dust settles. Those who choose to be at the violent fringe of a political movement usually end up either getting killed during the "struggles" or sidelined after success or plunge the society into prolonged internecine mutual slaughter if they become the leading element of a winning political movement.

Preventing the violent fringe from becoming the leadership of a political movement is one of the major reasons for those in power not to take too violent a stand against occasional civil discontent. Chronic civil discontent needs economic solutions that incentivize people to productive lives.

Reality says

Chronic civil discontent needs economic solutions that incentivize people to productive lives.

Not that they have tried everything else, they might give this a try?

Reality says

BTW, Georgi Zhukov the mass murderer during the suppresson of Tambov Uprising should know what kind of result violent uprising against a militarized regime leads to: giving excuse to use chemical warfare and extermination against civilians.

I'll keep in mind that crushing peasant revolts makes you a Mass Murderer like King Richard II and most of the Monarchs of Europe 1000-1850 AD, along with George Washington who also crushed a peasant revolt, the Whiskey Rebellion, as well as President Jackson and Davy Crockett's Indian Removal Act that launched the Trail of Tears.

As for chemical warfare, the Saudis used that the last time they interfered again Yemeni "Peasants". Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds with material and research provided to him by the UK, Germany, France, AND the USA in the 80s. At the time (mid-late 80s when he was our best friend), we didn't complain about him or go to the UN asking for a condemnation against him. Hell, we also let Saddam's Air Force fire an Exocet Missile against the USS Stark without punishment or Retribution.

Not many people were killed during the Shay ' s Rebellion and Whiskey Rebellion. Besides, the brief fighting was already done by the time George Washington got involved. Btw, Washington's position on the rebellion was wrong, because he was misinformed by his friends with close ties to the banksters.

Sadam Hussein was obviously a mass murderer. Just because the US supplied weapons to Stalin during WWII to fight Nazis did not make Stalin less of a mass murderer. Likewise, Sadam having dealings with the west doesn't make him less of a mass murderer.

Zhukov had personal front - line involvement in the "liquidation" of peasants trying to defend their own harvest against Red mobs trying to confiscate the food. The suppression of Tambov Uprising involved in the use of poison gas for several months, and resulted in over 200,000 deaths. The high death toll made those involved in the killing mass murderers.

Reality says

Not many people were killed during the Shay ' s Rebellion and Whiskey Rebellion. Besides, the brief fighting was already done by the time George Washington got involved.

The Whiskey Rebellion simmered in 1791, and really took off in 1794. Washington was President 1789-1797: It happened in his second term. He rode in at the head of army over 10,000 strong, personally.