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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34641538
Peace first, but make it clear that the sword is always an option should negotiations break down.
Or to Put it like Theodore Roosevelt: "Speak softly, but carry a Big Stick."
Do you want armed antivaxers? Because that's how you get armed antivaxers?
They already before lol. I remember there was an armed protest around the Richmond, VA capital during covid lockdowns.
People gotta Larp
Violence when you're outnumbered and outgunned doesn't accomplish much and is a good way to end up dead.
Violence when organized in numbers can make a big difference. But then nonviolence in organized numbers can also make a big difference, and according to some historians and revolutionaries is statistically more effective.
But I get it that it's difficult to stay idly by when our fellow civilians are gunned down by regime paramilitary agents. So think of it this way:
COIN models are pretty consistent about winning hearts and minds, and everything ICE is doing is costing them exactly that: hearts and minds. It's why they've had to shift strategies from regional raids to scattershot surprise attacks. No matter how much it's spun by the social media propaganda machine, every death, every act of brutality (and for that matter, every release of how detainees are being abused and tortured) is losing them the war, the same way the Coalition of the Willing lost the International War on Terror.
For every Alex Pretti, dozens of bystanders become sympathists. For every Renée Good, dozens of sympathists become activists. For every Lorenzo Araujo or Joan Guerrero, dozens of activists become militants.
And that is according to pre-internet COIN theory, what we might expect in the 20th century. Nowadays, phone camera footage hits the internet in minutes, and spreads across the globe in hours, a phenomenon that informed how the Ferguson Unrest was received, or the 2020 George Floyd protests, or the 2021+ crisis in Palestine.
So it may not be merely dozens anymore. It may be hundreds.
During the German occupation of Paris in 1940, Germany required France to pay for the privilege of an occupying force, featuring financial shenanigans (sound familiar?) that depleted French resources, leading to food shortages and scarcity.
And then the garrison forces could not help but indulge in brutality. It quickly became too much for the common civilian to bear.
The early Résistants started small and scattered: Independent Parisians slashing tires, defacing propaganda posters, cutting phone lines. Service staff routinely spat in the food and drink served to occupying Germans. It would only take a couple of years before La Résistance formed into a formidable fighting force, and every French household was ready and willing to hide them away.
The resistance works the way that recycling aluminum does. One person doing their tiny part doesn't do much, but there are millions of us who are active, and plenty more who sympathize, and more still who are just pissed off at the bullshit. (Affordability, inflation, blatant corruption, the fucked up pointless elective war in Iran, election meddling, etc. It adds up.)
The big demonstrations are about visibility, it lets the resistance represent and do a headcount and remind ourselves we're not alone. But the real work is in crabbing at representatives, sabotaging Flock cameras, responding to ICE attacks, calling out MAGA misinformation, making sure neighbors are cool and fed, and so on.
Wash your hands regularly. Avoid shopping at Amazon. If your household gets a case of cyclosporiasis, report it.
It adds up.
And yeah, it's okay if it takes a while to find your place in the organized resistance. The Trump regime operated quickly so we haven't yet had time to fully shift gears. (The blitz has also made it impossible to adapt to the new norms, hence for some of us the Overton window is now offensive. Stephen Miller's they’re all deformed speech is channeling Joseph Goebbels directly)
For most of us, the effort might be very quotidian. A classic WWII era move was simply to hat-tip to the Jewish neighbors, which pissed off the Nazis.
If you're lucky (or unlucky) you find yourself in a position of opportunity, to take subversive action, and risk your liberty, possibly your life. In that case, bloc up, be safe, and don't get caught.
As were some of the groups in the Civil Rights movement. There was a group armed and trained by a black WW2 veteran that protected families from retaliation by the KKK for going to desegregated schools. Armed with rifles and machine guns, they would put sandbag emplacements on people's porches to ensure that their kids were safe throughout the night
United we stand, divided we fall
The "watchers" protected MLK's peaceful protest . Armed protectors.
Needed to prevent KKK from driving a truck or attacking the protest. Not part of protest but the KKK knew about it.
MLK gave the government a choice between MLK or Malcom X.
Guess who was chosen? Guess who is forgotten?
What ?
Your shit is totally fucked already but I'm struggling to see a point at which some fediverse user having a gun would have averted the current predicament of US non-fascist citizens.
There are so many alternatives to the word "armed" in this sentence that would be a lot more effective: educated, informed, active... and so on.
People who think buying a gun will keep the menacing government from harming them have no idea how tanks work. Waco wasn't so long ago.
You should tell that to Viet Cong guerrilla fighters. Tell it to Lenin and Mao. Or the Kurds or the Black Panthers or the 100s of Indian revolutionary cells that fought the British for over 100 years that made Gandhi's "peaceful" revolution work. Tell that to the Ukrainians today.
One person with a gun isn't a threat. But 10,000s such people are. And people that think tanks can stop a revolution haven't studied much history.
And neither were the Black Panthers.
Lol you're an idiot if you think anyone is arming themselves to fight the US military. I'm worried about white Christian males. Sure the police state is a problem but I don't think anyone thinks they're going to that on a tank with a 9mm.
We get it, you've already given up and you want everyone else to give up also but don't straw man so hard
It's not always about the government. Regardless of what happens in 2028, we're likely to have the American version of the The Troubles.
All you can do if the tanks roll in is haul ass, try to avoid flock cameras, and hope no one is looking for you specifically. But, when whatever paramilitary org is upset this week starts burning your neighborhood and the police decide they aren't going to do much about it, community defense becomes a viable option.
Guns don't give much if any political power on their own, but if the hard groundwork of building up a community with strong mutual aid is done beforehand, they can be one part of protecting that community. ICE and cops are a lot less likely to mess around with visibly armed groups.
Oh, but guns do give 100% political power. It's the ability to do violence that guarantees your ability to live as you please or not. You just seldom see it in your safe little daily life. And the examples of that are all around you in this world.
It's the violence, by people willing to do violence or threaten violence, that allows you the right to vote or not. It is the violence or threat that allows you to marry who you want, live where you want, and enjoy the freedoms that you have.
You have two choices. You can either go to those people who are willing to do violence and beg for your scraps of rights, or you can be willing to do violence, and possibly die, back to those people who would take your rights away.
Which one you choose depends on just how desperate you are. Currently you are hoping that someone else will do the violence for you and then give you what you want. Your little life is still too safe and cozy to make you choose your path yet.
You may want to watch the video I linked to, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. :)
Lots of people talking about revolution and fighting the government, but this is largely irrelevant at this moment.
What is a source of oppression to which this is immediately relevant? Personal defense from white supremacist stochastic terrorists and individuals wanting to commit violent hate crimes. In the near term flare ups of right-wing paramilitary and lynch mobs are possible as well, location and circumstances dependent.
If you live in America, I would wager that you're aware of armed would-be fascists in your neighborhood. I would wager you can check social media for your local area and find a presence of right-wing paramilitary. I would wager that depending on the color of your skin or gender presentation, a call to the police could mean a roll of the dice on becoming a statistic of state violence.
Yes, it would be preferable if all of those groups did not have weapons, however this is America. Until disarmament is universal, unilateral imposition of gun access limitations means access will be affordable only to those with wealth.
Others cryptically calling for Luigi: First, I would also ask you what changed about the behavior of United Healthcare and the US for-profit health abuses as a result of his actions? If you are going to encourage others to throw away their life in the same way, what are you doing behind the keyboard? With these critiques that others don't have any guts, aren't you just externalizing your hypocrisy?
Second, I would ask you to look at the many decades history of assassinations in Russia in the pre-revolutionary period in which this became a very common and very ineffective tool. In fact it was so ineffective, it resulted in the Tsarists infiltrating Left groups and encouraging assassinations due to the public alienation and sense of helplessness it fostered.
Compare these failed actions to the successes of the Russian Revolution.
As Trotsky wrote in 1911:
If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system—that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.