CornBurrito
Member
So would you say that BLM would be morally in the clear to use violence? Or are the actions of the State directed towards the black community not a form of violence in your mind?
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What is violence? And is violence ever an acceptable solution?
- Thread starter CornBurrito
- Start date
So would you say that BLM would be morally in the clear to use violence? Or are the actions of the State directed towards the black community not a form of violence in your mind?
Doesn't this work against the Bernie quote you provided? He said it was never acceptable. I'm not sure what another appropriate response would be.
Lightning_Roller
Banned
And the civil war....
highrider
Banned
CornBurrito
Member
If I have a pre-existing health condition and the repeal of the ACA would mean being unable to afford medication I require to live, would I be morally clear to use violence as a solution? Or is that not imminent physical threat?
as a black person in the US, America had to have a gun pointed at its head to treat us as equals. You saw this with the Army occupation of the south during Reconstruction. You saw it with armed national guardsmen being necessary to integrate schools.
Violence should never be the first option, but it is most definitely an option. If there is one thing that has remained consistent in human history, its that threat of violence (or the act thereof) remains the tried and true way to get what you want. No amount of moral posturing will change that.
Violence should never be the first option, but it is most definitely an option. If there is one thing that has remained consistent in human history, its that threat of violence (or the act thereof) remains the tried and true way to get what you want. No amount of moral posturing will change that.
Messofanego
Banned
When you have to resort to violence, it shows all the other non-violent systems and avenues of seeking improvement have failed. It's usually a last resort. Riots are the language of the unheard, as MLK Jr would put it.
Acceptable in response to imminent or presently-occuring violence.
I don't believe many people, and certainly none here, are speaking of literal self defense against imminent violence when they say violence is not acceptable.
What it means is that the proactive use of violence to further an agenda or a set of ideals is never acceptable.
CornBurrito
Member
But not systemic violence?
I think choosing to engage in violence is not a hard and fast clear line.
If you have nothing to lose because you've lost everything, which in this case means it was taken from you, wanting to harm those who have harmed you seems understandable.
I mean, isn't similar to what we've done with terrorism? Double tap civilians and create a new generation who wants to bomb Americans?
I do not see how the loss of baseline necessities is not a physical threat, especially as it's via policy and not the world naturally running out of X...
I guess this is why I understand those who do engage in violence, even if I believe we all should pave roads where that isn't needed. Good luck on that, tho.
Against individuals while they're in the act.
Mammoth Jones
Member
This.
CornBurrito
Member
What constitutes an act?
Like if North Koreans rise up, they have to pick a time where Kim is actively signing a piece of harmful legislation or giving a harmful verbal order? The second the pen drops or the sentence ends the window of opportunity for violent revolt ends?
whew, baseball shooter can rest his guilty conscience.
Violence isn't just physical, it's rhetorical, it's structural and more. Just sitting idly by doesn't accomplish shit and neither does talking shit out. Women have bared the brunt of systemic violence, rape and forced pregnancies for thousands of years. 3 women are killed due to domestic violence a day. A black girl killed her abusive father and was punished for it. But her family and the state failed her for letting that man abuse that girl and her mother for years.
Having a bunch of people with no skin in the game telling folks on the margins of society how to respond to violence and the "proper" way to respond to structural violence is wack as fuck, especially since what passes as "discourse" and legal avenues nets marginalized people nothing more often than not. Allowing violence towards people who are so vulnerable to go unchecked is trash. That shit is tantamount to letting a frog slowly boil to death. Honestly, I'd say you're complicit in the enacting of violence or you benefit from those peoples staying on the bottom rung if you'd so easily dismiss their plight by neuturing their call to action because it becomes "physical". Fuck y'all and that fence you're riding.
Consider power dynamics and why we have such visceral responses(like riots) to systemic issue. We live in a country where people still see Ferguson rioters as unjust hoodlums and bottom feeders rather than people who are subject to structural violence who had enough. A city thats so over policed by racist cops that 16,000 out of the 21,000 residents had arrest warrants. A city that's majority black, people who are relegated to fungibility and of no real importance otherwise. That shit is by design, the state has failed them. And I can't fault them for wanting to burn that whole damn thing to the ground. They met the state's violence with their own.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2HnDONDvJVE
Angela Davis on violence
Having a bunch of people with no skin in the game telling folks on the margins of society how to respond to violence and the "proper" way to respond to structural violence is wack as fuck, especially since what passes as "discourse" and legal avenues nets marginalized people nothing more often than not. Allowing violence towards people who are so vulnerable to go unchecked is trash. That shit is tantamount to letting a frog slowly boil to death. Honestly, I'd say you're complicit in the enacting of violence or you benefit from those peoples staying on the bottom rung if you'd so easily dismiss their plight by neuturing their call to action because it becomes "physical". Fuck y'all and that fence you're riding.
Consider power dynamics and why we have such visceral responses(like riots) to systemic issue. We live in a country where people still see Ferguson rioters as unjust hoodlums and bottom feeders rather than people who are subject to structural violence who had enough. A city thats so over policed by racist cops that 16,000 out of the 21,000 residents had arrest warrants. A city that's majority black, people who are relegated to fungibility and of no real importance otherwise. That shit is by design, the state has failed them. And I can't fault them for wanting to burn that whole damn thing to the ground. They met the state's violence with their own.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2HnDONDvJVE
Angela Davis on violence
You don't think any North Koreans rising up would be immediately met with violence?
I really hope we're not appealing to the moral authority of pre-industrialized America like a bunch of conservative goofballs.
The threat of violence in both cases came as a defense.
Edit: to be clear though you are right. You keep executing unarmed civilians and creating an industrial complex on their backs and you will invite violence that will be historically justified.
I think this is a fair point. It's also important to not though that both events mentioned had long non-violent movements pushing them slowly into the mainstream.
The threat of violence in both cases came as a defense.
Edit: to be clear though you are right. You keep executing unarmed civilians and creating an industrial complex on their backs and you will invite violence that will be historically justified.
It's hard to say. In certain cases, there seems to be no way around it. Sometimes, it seems like there's a good cause for it. Though it's all too easy to demonize those that are against you, to think of them as less-than human. But the folks on the "wrong side" have lives and families as well, and are generally not a monolithic group of terrible people. At the very least, it should be a last resort. It would be ideal if it could be abolished completely, and we could solve our problems in a civilized fashion, but I realize that's not really possible. We sure waste a ton of resources on finding better ways to murder each other, though.
CornBurrito
Member
But then the North Koreans would be the instigators since their oppressors at that very moment wouldn't be committing a directly violent act.
Rekki-Maru
Banned
Bruce Lee, had to fight so he could teach.
I think I agree with this post the most. Violence is physical action taken against another or a group that can cause them harm. I cannot justify it because the circumstances around it are always different, and justifications only work under certain contexts. So it's impossible to justify violence as a solution overall.
The only hard and fast rule I can apply here is violence in defense of oneself. But even then, it's extremely grey.
CornBurrito
Member
Ignoring baseball shooter, are you saying that violence isn't acceptable in response to human rights violations committed by a government (ie. North Korea, China)?
If you don't believe violence is acceptable there is no concept of an acceptable instigation of violence. North Koreans standing their ground and refusing oppression are not being violent, so violence against them is wrong.
CornBurrito
Member
Is passing a law that harms people an act of violence then? Or no because it isn't "physical" enough?
Like when marijuana was made illegal in order to break up Black and Hispanic communities, was that not violence?
It obviously isn't as severe, but I think this would apply to BLM. Would you agree?
I think it's a bit naive of us to start casually conflating just, palatable and effective.
You're asking me to set aside the very real consequence of this kind of thinking for a hypothetical. INorth Korean peasants cannot overthrow the government unless the military is on their side or in total disarray.
In specific instances where nonviolence is met with violence, sure. Regarding severity, proportional responses are acceptable.
CornBurrito
Member
Yes. It is a philosophical question. Is violence ever acceptable in response to human rights violations?
CornBurrito
Member
Is picketing on a road an act of nonviolence or violence?
That is not the case when talking of Reconstruction, see The Memphis Riots of 1866 and, well, the whole Civil War that led to reconstruction in the first place.
And while we could characterize the Civil Rights Movement as "non violent", it was anything but. In fact, it used violence as a means of shaming. All of the major figures in the CRM knew that they were liable to get beaten, maimed, lynched, tortured, murdered...but that was the idea. Violence was still a vehicle to get what they want, they had just turned it around and used being a recipient of it as a means to shame white christians.
Martin Luther King Jr actually owned several guns in his own home until one of his advisors (and I believe it was Bayard Rustin, someone correct me if I'm wrong) told him that the optics of him having guns will not work with their strategy and he had to get rid of them. But no, read "This Non Violent Stuff'll get you killed
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/07/28/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed/?utm_term=.a27c90e85063
Violence was very much a central part of the CRM.
Your use of violence would in no way block the repeal of ACA, unless you think you'd be some kind of martyr and the GOP would suddenly see the light, so it's not even a real solution. It would not be acceptable. You'd have a better case if you were using violence to steal the medication you require. And even then you'd end up in jail.
Those Republicans don't hide their shitty beliefs and policies. It's in plain sight for everyone to see. They don't deserve to be attacked just because people are voting for them. That's the solution right there: vote them out. I know it's easier said than done with this electorate but still.
No, it wasn't.
What's your justification for the American Revolutionary war?
Most Americans weren't represented afterwards anyway, so it's a moot point. The war was mostly fought over the social status of Creole elites in America, and the concept of king-in-parliament in Britain. The war was constitutional more than anything else.
You'll have to come up with a novel hypothetical in a democracy with a legal system.
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
History shows that violence is quite often necessary to achieve progress, yes
CornBurrito
Member
Vote: Makai
Picketing in a public space is nonviolence. I think most events like this go off problem free. There are always cases where bad actors on either side complicate things, though. Then again it falls to individuals and proportional response. Which applies to the authorities as much it does the picketers.
The fact that a nation as great as yours is so consumed with that much self loathing in the 21st century is so pathetic, it's an indictment. I guess fighting yourself when there are no other enemies left to crush is the predictable outcome
History also shows that people often use violence to achieve ends they think are good, but that we would not agree with.
Yes, it was.
They were literally going to murder me :|
What violence in particular? The Boston massacre? Virtual representation?
The creole elites wanted to be treated as if they were the same social class as the aristocracy in Britain. The British didn't want to concede that the colonies were under the crown directly, because doing so would put the Crown above parliament and the entirety of the proceeding 88 years of British politics was concerned with establishing the constitutional status of king-in-parliament.
benji: taxation is force aka violence
CornBurrito
Member
If taxation is theft, then profit is stolen wages from labor.
Interesting. I'll have to check it out. I was thinking of early abolitionists pre-Fugitive Slave Laws and later peaceful marches winning enough hearts and minds to give the momentum to make them palatable issues for the mainstream to back and thus forcing the government to step in to enforce it.
That said, I didn't know about everything you've brought to my attention here so I was probably over-simplifying it.
Astral Dog
Member
Humans in general don't have much of a problem in being violent going to by the description, so yes sometimes it can be used as a nasty solution.
However, how much and in what case is going to be forever debatable, with own individual opinions and teachings of morality and such
There are (even if not a big number) people in this very forum that would be ok with the idea of using different degrees of violence to end Trump presidency to give one small example
However, how much and in what case is going to be forever debatable, with own individual opinions and teachings of morality and such
There are (even if not a big number) people in this very forum that would be ok with the idea of using different degrees of violence to end Trump presidency to give one small example