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Serious question for anyone who believes political violence is never ok: at what point on the timeline do you think it was ok to respond to Hitler with violence?
1923 Beer Hall Putsch? SA violence in the early 30s? The Nazi party being sworn into power in 1933? Reischstag Fire? Night of the Long Knives?
Trump already has the support of a bought and paid for corrupt court, and we've already had Jan 6th. He's promised to be dictator on day 1.
Is political violence truly never the answer?
Calls for order over justice is the hallmark of someone who never had to fight for their rights. It's a position of privilege.
Something something letter from Birmingham Jail
Yup, exactly this. DARVO is the standard abusers’ playbook, and it also applies to oppression.
D is Deny/Downplay. “No, oppression doesn’t happen. And if it does, it’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be.”
A is Attack. When they can’t deny it anymore, they’ll go on the offensive. Try to redirect the focus back to the victim. “Well what about…”
RVO is Reverse Victim and Offender. When outright attacking the victim doesn’t work, they move on to playing the victim. Make the real victim look bad, to garner sympathy. Pretend to be the helpless one in the situation, and say that the victim is attacking you for no reason.
When the oppressed fight back, the oppressors will act offended and use it to further victimize the oppressed.
That’s the thing. Violence should never be the answer. The problem is that the worst of us count on other people not fighting. So, when it's actually time for violence, it’s too late.
I don't think I need a complete solution to be of the opinion that Hitler needed to be met with violence at some point. Of course we can't know that Trump will be the same, but is there a possibility that his election in November leads to at least decades of Christofascist laws being enacted, if not a civil war? Perhaps by the time it becomes obvious that we've reached that point it'll be too late.
Maybe Joe's win this year will only put off the inevitable. But maybe it'll lead to someone the next election with enough guts to give SCOTUS what they want and show them what a president with immunity can do, and the 6 who voted for making the president a king will end up in a black site until their more suitable replacements can be installed. At which point hopefully the corrupt ruling can be overturned by justices who aren't being bribed. I don't know shit about the law but I trust that if someone like Kagen says political assassinations are now legal, that's further into fascism territory than I want our country to be.
You ask if gambling on 4 years of peace before something worse happens is worth it. I'd ask if gambling on a Trump election in November is something the US will survive. I guess we'll see, because there's no way in hell Biden's doing anything illegal-- oh sorry, I meant any of the now legal things that Trump won't hesitate to do when he's "dictator day one".
Ever since this incident when U.S. politicians collectively argued that political violence was not okay, I have thought 'I wonder how Fred Hampton would feel about these folks denouncing political violence?' -I admit I don't know the answer to this question, but when I consider the specific people going around vocally denouncing political violence, I'm not so convinced that those same people don't protest too much.
How many rights taken away is too much?
Personally, no. But, I'm a "no-first-strikes" pacifist. Violence harms the victim, the perpetrator, and those who witness it directly or indirectly. It can also cause great harm to efforts to affect political and social change.
However, I think that history does show that it has an important role, supposing its adherents follow strict ethical constraints and do not attempt to install themselves as bosses (something that is not terribly common in history). For non-violence to be truly effective, it needs to be clear and plausible that violence is the alternative. The Labor Movement had the likes of The Molly Maguires. The suffragettes had the likes of the WSPU. And the non-violent anvil of Dr. King had the hammer of Malcom X.
Choosing to travel through time to kill a historical figure is easy because we know exactly what will happen if nothing is changed.
Killing a modern day figure is different because we don't know what's going to happen in the future. We can guess, but that's it.
For example, at what point would it have been appropriate to assassinate Smedley Butler? 92 years ago today, it might have seemed like he was poised to become a dictator.
Yeah, good point. He was actually much more aligned with the goals of his assassin, Gavrilo Princip, than Princip knew. Princip thought he was doing something that would help the Bosnian / Serb cause, but instead he killed someone who might have given the Bosnians / Serbs more autonomy.
The thing is, I'm sure that there are cases where political killing actually makes things better. Obviously, it often makes things worse. But, it must be true that sometimes it makes things better. The problem is, that there's no alternative history you can consult to prove it. You can just speculate about what might have happened if that person had not been killed.
For a random example, take Carlos Castillo Armas. He was put in power in Guatemala thanks to a CIA-backed coup. The US was involved partially because the democratically elected president was thought to be under the influence of Russia. But, more importantly, he was doing things that were hurting the bottom line of American fruit companies. When he took power, he started doing dictator things: rounding up and killing opposition, shooting protesters, revoking civil liberties, etc.
Then, 3 years after he took power, he was assassinated by a bodyguard.
What happened after that was probably not good for Guatemala. There were 36 years of civil war, and a lot of unrest. On the other hand what if Armas had been able to consolidate power? Would decades of dictatorship have been better or worse?
Also, killing an established, truly evil dictator almost never results in a happy democracy. But, that's probably because the dictator has destroyed all checks and balances, wrecked every institution that a working society needs, and eliminated anybody who might be a threat. So, if a dictator is killed, the result is often chaos, or another dictator taking over. But, if you eliminate someone who might have become a dictator, who's to say that they really would have become one?
Predicting the future is hard, predicting the past is easy.
I get a lot of downvotes whenever I ask this and very rarely responded to, but if violence is the solution, why have you not started the violence, or at least started gathering people together?
I no longer live in the US, plus I'm fat, lazy, and have no idea how to organize people or start a revolution. If it were up to me I'd lose the war to fascists. But that doesn't change the fact that someone should probably do something about fascists. And if violence isn't the answer and you're someone who's similarly worried about fascism, why haven't you gotten around to a getting started on a non-violent way to solve the problem?
I'm simply of the opinion that at some point along the way, talking nicely to Hitler wasn't going to change anything. I'm just wondering where along that point in time people think that was.
It's not really a question directed at you personally, sorry. It's one I ask all the time when people start crying about how the glorious revolution should start or the guillotines should come out.