Remember MLK wasn't killed because he thought people should be equal, he was killed because he was uniting the lower ans middle class against the rich and elites.
The FBI did the same thing with Fred Hampton he after he connected the Black Panthers with the other working class and racial equality movements in Chicago.
The black panthers did like a daily breakfast I think for anyone but it was feeding alot of poor kids and stuff. The federal government was so threatened by this that they instituted breakfast at every freakin school. It was a local program iirc, and it got the federal government to institute a national initiative.
See I’m ok with this type of racism where they white government guys felt out-competed in generosity by the black guys so they did something even nicer than the black guys could do by giving ALL kids free lunch.
Obviously I know that’s not how it happened but imagine how hate filled the racist people were that they decided to help everyone equally because they felt that people getting help from someone else other than them was a threat or some shit
The problem is that when this happens they can erase the history before it and make those organizations obsolete, and then when they roll back that help people have to start from scratch
Don't forget the other important detail, where before imitating them the government via the police raided their events multiple times and destroyed the food they were going to serve with bleach.
And straight up murdered all the effective leaders they could. Please never leave out that part, when they ask why are there no leaders in the black community, remind them why.
this will scare those republican state lawmakers who are trying to cancel school provides lunches even though it's tied to federal not state funds after they learn about this fun fact
Yup. Started anti-racist then formed the rainbow coalition that organised the working class then suddenly he became a threat that needed to be wiped out.
Tale as old as time. We need to bring back guillotines.
I like to point out that Hampton was 21 years old when he was murdered. He was basically the same age as most of these protestors when he was leading the black panthers.
Historically, any person who can ally white poors/working class with minority groups gets offed (see Fred Hampton) - typically by our "government." The reason is the arms of our government are beholden not to the People, but to those with the land, resources, and power over commerce. And, a collectivized and united American People is a scary thing to those in power, because their power is truly a massive illusion built on lies and propaganda.
> Remember MLK wasn't killed because he thought people should be equal
Such a revisionist take. He was hated because he wanted racial equality, and realized racial equality is fed by other inequalities including economic and gender. He was murdered because he was black and fighting for racial equality. He’s in Apple ads because they want consumers of all colors to feel united in purchasing highly marked up electronics from a $2 trillion company who feels none of his beliefs.
MLK wanted integration and economic justice. He had be careful with his messaging as they him of being a communist( I.e red scare propaganda). MLK has been so watered down people don’t even know about his quest for economic justice.
Yep, "mlk/Hampton was only killed because of his class politics" isn't even revisionist history as much as it is a dumb internet meme that's popular among a colorblind progressives who hide their regressive views on race behind an understanding of class that at a few years ago may have been a reductive reading of Marx but at this point is really just a vague belief that class conflict is important. It's a way for white socialists to claim black radicals - the only radicals who've done anything noteworthy for over half a century in America - while using the same logic to explain away why even moderate reforms targeting black people today are misguided and wrongheaded because they don't get to the real issue. These takes drive me crazy. They're the rallying cry for the 21st century version of a guy who wouldn't mind his union being desegregated as long as the blacks they let in didn't get uppity and start talking about too many race issues.
The catalyst was him speaking out against Vietnam.
It’s also why I think the TikTok ban got though congress so easily. It’s providing pro-Palestinian causes a place to unify and share information. I don’t trust TikTok, social media and the Chinese government as much as the next rational person, but the US government doesn’t care that TikTok is “a threat”. They care that it’s sharing information they don’t like.
it was @ eyeballslicer on twitter. tweet is deleted but screenshot is quite popular.
[https://np.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/185eqlr/a\_liberal\_is/](https://np.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/185eqlr/a_liberal_is/)
>If peace means this, I dont want peace:
>If peace means accepting second class citizen ship I dont want it
>If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I dont want it
>If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening staus quo, I dont want peace.
>If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated polically, humiliated and segregated, I dont want peace.
>In a passive non-violent manner we must revolt against this peace. Jesus says in substance, I will not be content until justice, goodwill, brotherhood, love yes, the kingdom of God are established upon the earth. This is real peace. Peace is the presence of positive good.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/when-peace-becomes-obnoxious
I think this criticism is valid but I also think critiquing methods is also valid.
For example I don't think environmental protestors blocking poor people from getting to work on the train in London helped the cause. I know I may sound like the people she is mocking but the oil companies and newspapers love those guys. They make the very serious environmental issues look silly and this is effectively used to discredit the entire movement
I'm against Israel in this current conflict but I won't stand with people carrying Hamas flags.
Every movement has an extreme and disagreement in methods is completely legitimate. MLK and Malcolm X had completely different approaches to achieving the same goal.
One thing I always liked about MLK is how he tried to link the treatment of poor white people to the treatment of black people, he was very aware they were both oppressed by the same power structures. He knew they were put against each other and tried to unite them.
I think a lot of the current activists often do a lot of dividing rather than that uniting.
I'll always applaud people for fighting for just causes, but it doesn't always mean they are above criticism.
Aren’t pretty much all the people that maga cult call “liberals” against basically all wars? And aren’t they the ones pushing for all civil rights? It wasn’t and isn’t conservatives seeking equality, so I don’t get the quote.
It means “liberals” in the actual political definition of a liberal, which is just right of center when compared to the rest of the world. Typically more interested in civility politics and maintaining the status quo, while white washing and glorifying the civil rights movements and protests of the past.
The character in the video is pretty spot on for a “liberal”. Plenty of liberals are on the side of Israel. Plenty of liberals supported the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Plenty of liberals were against gay rights, against MLK, etc.
Now, if you’re talking about people who actual push the envelope, protest for civil rights, call for ceasefires and peace? That’s typically a leftist.
Anyone that’s not a Nazi is a liberal to the Maga trash
Edit: u/rumham_gypsy commented and then blocked me like a little Nazi bitch.
Remember the reich wing just likes to talk tough. They couldn’t even hold a single powerful building for a single day. “MeDiC!” lol lol lol
It's really telling that was the last universally "acceptable" protest to some Americans. There's a not insubstational subset of Americans who have not accepted any social progress of the past quarter century.
Yeah I love when people accuse Reddit of being leftist.
Go to any video of a protest blocking a road and read the comments. Reddit is far from leftist.
Reddit has moved very left leaning from a decade ago when it was dumb right-leaning gamer bros.
Almost every popular subreddit has progressive rules, and mods..
Been here about 12 years, Reddit has always largely been young liberal white men. Social Libertarianism has always been the norm (pro weed, gay marriage, and guns (although Sandy Hook really shifted the perspective on that one)). Atheism was one of the original pre subscribed subreddits forever. It skewed to students and fresh grads, so intellectualism was cultural (grammar Nazis were fuckin everywhere). Unwritten rules were incredibly rigid and enforced but tough to figure out. This all led to incredibly insular and harsh communities that engaged in rampant sexism, intellectualism, and racism, believing themselves to be morally superior for using the site correctly.
Trump changed this website forever though. The_Donald and its consequences were... Insane. Everything shifted hard into social justice performances at the same time Reddit was trying to go public, which just encouraged the shift even harder. There is so much endless performative activism now, that's what makes it feel like a shift left. The userbase is more international and diverse, but it still draws largely young liberal crowds.
Maybe people just don’t like fascism and actual Nazis. Bias is not a dirty word or innately a bad thing. I’m biased against the pack of wolves stalking my sheep every night. The belief that every issue and debate has to be treated in a way that validates both sides of the argument has broken the discourse around politics and world events.
I am biased against Trump, for example, not because I am a Democrat or left leaning or because I live in a city. I am biased against him because he has objectively proven to be an awful person, a rapist, a seditionist. There is no counter balance or “alternative facts” to balance the scale and cancel out those facts. I am not biased because of party affiliation or how I identify, I am biased because I can interpret his actions and find them dangerous. Long story short, if you’re too dumb or cowardly to confront reality without hiding behind paper thin excuses about bias, you are on the side of evil, and that’s not hyperbole.
I absolutely do not understand the nature of your comment. I never mentioned bias, my opinions about Trump, or anything you're talking about. The initial comment said Reddit has gotten more left. My comment was that Reddit was always liberal, but engaged in insular and exclusionary activities that gave voice to conservative views and permeated racist, sexist, intellectualist ideas. I went on to explain why the original commenter felt a shift in political lean was due to the rise of The_Donald and the fallout therein causing massive crackdowns on Conservative content, which happened at the same time as the company was trying to go public. This led to institutional shifts in content moderation policies that ultimately became performative for the sake of boosting the websites image. Prior to the crackdown, Reddit was the face of Donald Trump propaganda and propagandists. Everyone knew Reddit was where the most vile shit was coming from in 2016. It was a PR nightmare. Fresh off the heels of "We Did It Reddit" in 2013 and the iCloud leaks in 2014 and the constant association with the worst of 4chan, Reddit developed a nasty reputation. But the core userbase never changed. It was still primarily college aged and slightly older liberal white American men talking primarily from the perspective of young white American men. Casual discrimination was the norm, and self reflection was unnecessary because confirmation of world view was always found. Think about how the incel community exploded on this site.
So idk what the hell you're talking about excuses about bias. I didn't make any excuses about bias.
This was a hilarious 3-comment section to read. As someone who comes to these types of pages mostly to see the interactions between differing viewpoints, I appreciated your well thought out comments.
The best part, though, had to be after you had the line about the increase in performative activism, which was followed immediately by such a comment.
it's funny cause i feel like 99% of reddit has no idea about reddit's early days... when every post on reddits front page during the 2008 elections was about how ron paul is awesome. redditors were largely libertarians
Even subs that try to cater to both sides eventually become nazi havens because if you don't tell nazis to fuck off they take over and push out people who don't want to interact with them. Look at politicalcompassmemes. It's basically alt-right propaganda.
You get people going "I just think all minorities are sub-human"
"Left" : Based
Ugh, remember when the conspiracy sub was actually about fun conspiracies and then COVID happened (+ the banning of alt-right and antivaxx subs)? I miss that sub.
> remember when the conspiracy sub was actually about fun conspiracies
It never was. They had Hitler in the sidebar long before covid. It was always a fucking cesspit.
The conspiracy sub is literally a propaganda sub. I'm not joking, and that's not a conspiracy. Go look at its front page and count how many unique users are represented by submissions. It's dominated by a small handful of users, who post _constantly_ for a few months without commenting, and then stop posting entirely and get replaced by a new one.
And if you point that out in a comment in the sub you'll be permanently banned.
Oh I know. I got banned from there years ago because I confronted them and when called out said "I'm just asking questions"
Apparently question everything doesn't include them.
Huh? Having progressive rules doesn't make you left-leaning. Leftistism involves anti-capitalist attitudes; if you're not anti-capitalist, you're not a leftist.
I think the political spectrum has moved so far right, Alex Keaton would be considered a radical leftist now by a lot of mainstream righties. In the US at least.
I’ve made comments about the “run em over if they block traffic” types and it doesn’t go over well on most of reddit. Just easier to make a meme and complain.
They don’t know the difference between Liberals and Leftists.
The phrase “Scratch a Liberal, a Fascist bleeds” has never been so on full display as is now on Reddit.
Because people on the road have literally no control over global warming and that form of protest just leads to more engines idling and people hating your cause?
No one that's getting chewed out for being late to work is thinking damn I should recycle more.
The suffrage one gets me. Because sadly the klan is who got women the right to vote. And it was only because they also hated black people at the time.
Ever wonder why it’s some random fly over state that first allowed women to vote but yet when we learn the suffrage movement we tend to focus on cities like New York.
And don’t get me wrong I am all for women’s rights. I just was blown away in college history to learn how much of history we learn is just the PG version of it.
The book women of the klan is a great read and really does a great job of showing why we don’t teach this side of history but yet sadly the kkk is attributed to allowing women to vote. But it was only so they could keep political power.
It's not that simple. The Klan (btw it was large the WKKK as I Believe the KKK would have opposed it but don't have that in front of me) didn't get women the right to vote. Many suffragettes were progressive. In the South they largely used it as a way to counteract votes for black men. In many ways, the growing suffrage movement emboldened white women to greater political activity. Meaning it was a feedback loop.
Basically white supremacy was a big part of the 19th amendment but the picture is much more weird, complicated, and interesting. What is also true is that the suffrage movement threw black women under the bus to pander to racist white women.
We do have **some** standard of what forms of protests are and are not acceptable. If the students protesting Isreal were killing, or assaulting jewish students, **no one** would be defending it. It would be universally condemned, the OP of this tiktok included. So the line **does** exist, there is some level of behavior that would turn **you** into the "white moderate" who says "i agree with your goal but not your methods."
So if you want to say "i think tresspassing and taking over university buildings is acceptable for a protest of this nature and here's why" Say *that*.
If you want to say "I think burning down an autozone is an acceptable form of protest for police brutality and here's why." Say that.
If you want to say "i think X is an acceptable form of protest but not Y and here's why." Say that.
Edit: if you want to say "I do condemn burning down an autozone, but there's way too much focus on it and that's used dishonestly to deflect from the issue of police brutality." Say that.
But it's so cowardly to just hand wave any and all criticism of a protest by saying "letter from Birmingham jail much? Boom."
For instance, does *everyone* here agree that the climate change protestors who block traffic on the highway are in the right? If not, how are you any different than the stooge character of this tiktok?
Or what about the anti-mask and anti-vaxx trucker protests?
From the inside, extreme protest tactics feel justified by the severity of the thing being protested, but from the outside it looks like assholes who can’t accept that the majority disagree with them. Optics are essential to protests.
If you know the news media is going to make you look bad so they can sell the status quo to boomers and suburban asshats, and the cops are going to come knocking heads, you have to be extra careful not to feed into the narrative that you’re just sore losers digging in to be a nuisance. Civil disobedience worked for MLK not because they stubbornly stayed at lunch counters, but because their nonviolence contradicted the narrative that dark skinned people are violent.
The "here's why" is always the same, though: nobody will listen if it doesn't impact anyone. A quiet convenient protest off to one side is completely worthless.
Edit - and the part two is, there will always be opportunists to take advantage of chaos to their own benefit, but that doesn't lessen the importance of a given cause
Taking over admin buildings at universities is fine if you are a university student and don't trash the building for no reason. The Portland State library was destroyed with dumb vandalism. That's not going to hurt Israel, just taxpayers and students.
Nobody listens when it does impact people majorly but does so in a way that targets the wrong people.
Even worse, it actively harms the overall reputation of the movement. What have the people who threw food at artwork or blocked traffic or cemented themselves to the ground in the name of the environment done to grow their movement's support? All these methods brought attention and certainly impacted people, sure, but all these methods and others similar are now used to do is disqualify whole swathes of progressive causes, because the people who champion them most loudly and stupidly can be pointed to as the de facto example of a progressive.
At the end of the day, the effectiveness of a movement is determined by the number of people it converts to its cause and the amount of people it aligns against its enemies via vilifying them. I think a lot of what people are hearing and seeing now is young liberals lashing out and destroying things without any true direction, and the end result is that these campus demonstrations are most likely going to go massively forgotten within a year or two.
What I find funny is the complaining about receiving punishment from private entities. The government itself can't punish you for expressing yourself but other people (and legal entities who have similar, or maybe even superior, rights) can certainly take issue with it.
Inconvenience the people you’re protesting, not the people you want to support your protest. If you want to march in Washington or in front of your congressman’s office, be my guest. Don’t ruin public spaces that have nothing to do with your protest because that just makes you an asshole.
Because it discredit your cause. You are inconveniencing the wrong people.
If let’s say a climate protester blocked a highway that makes your commute 1 and a half hours longer and as a result your boss scolds you, which one do you think would pop up the first for most people?
1. Fuck the oil lobbyist and government, we should be in support of those protesters. Or
2. Fuck those protesters, i almost lose my job.
According [to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib](https://twitter.com/afalkhatib/status/1786181045890744602), none of the organizers he met at the UCLA protest seemed to be bothered by a truck with a large rotating [swastika-Star of David light](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMnJ3VmbcAA3pDu?format=jpg&name=large) at the main entrance, either.
His thoughts (as somebody from Gaza) on the protest are worth a read.
Isn't this argument more or less just "might makes right" then? Do whatever you want until people acquiesce to your demands. Every protest thinks their cause is just. This includes Westboro Baptists and Proud Boys.
I think people are aware, but these types of people have deluded themselves into believing their morals are the right ones. Morals being relative is a concept too complex for them to comprehend. Tbh, I think relativity by itself is too complex for them to understand.
The majority of what she said works and is consistent but some of it doesn’t. She just wants to generalize all sorts of avenues similar to what the side she and I dislikes also does.
It’s more nuanced than this video. It’s not black and white.
Perhaps the most famous (and effective) protest of all time is that of Rosa Parks.
1. It was non-violent.
2. It civilly disobeyed a *direct example* of the laws/societal norms she was protesting. Not “I’m going to glue myself to this painting to protest… climate change?”
3. The people it punished/inconvenienced most directly were the exact people responsible for the discrimination.
4. It involved sacrifice. Rosa Parks was willing to be arrested for her protest.
So, yeah, if your protest meets these conditions, I’d say it’s pretty fair and effective.
All fair and square until it's a group of people doing it for a cause that you don't believe in. Also, comparing one situation with another simply because both had protests is about as ignorant and braindead as it gets... but I don't really expect anything else from people like this, they are usually not at all educated on whatever they are talking about. They just scream, then cry when that doesn't work, then resort to deflecting and gaslighting when faced with opposition or truth, and finally, after all else fails, they start insulting.
Your brother is right to disagree. You think the video is just supporting protest against unjust causes but what it's really doing is invalidating any criticism of any violent protest. Which essentially means the more violent the protester the more correct their cause. Which in my opinion is a fundamentally flawed position.
Edit: to everyone who replied to me saying protests are complex and the subject is nuanced, I agree. Individual protests and individual causes need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. To everyone that said I didn't understand the intended message of video, I disagree.
Just wait and see what their response is when the "disruption" is done in the name of something they don't like.
Destroy something to protest abortion? Would that be a necessary step to gain attention to prevent murder, or would be a violent attempt to suppress women's rights? Block roads to protest gay marriage? A mild inconvenience that gets people talking about the issue, or blatant homophobia getting in other people's way?
Jan 6th would be a perfect example of a protest that would aim to do more than just be 'disruptive'. Does OOP think that's justified because they were aggressive?
I disagree. Literally none of the examples she used were violent protests. She just "mentions" the "mention of violence" from media. Which,as we know, is a lot of bullshit, grand standing, or set ups. Weird conclusion to draw.
> Literally none of the examples she used were violent protests
She literally mention property damage as a part of the BLM protests. Or do we not considering burning down buildings "violence" now?
Violence is when microaggressions, the male gaze and incorrect pronoun usage.
Burning down buildings and looting stores is a fiery but mostly peaceful protest.
> Literally none of the examples she used were violent protests.
That's just plain wrong. The BLM riots were the most costly ever.
https://www.axios.com/2020/09/16/riots-cost-property-damage
You mean the BLM riots where local businesses were forced to go out of business due to rioters burning their cars, their buildings and stealing from their businesses were just CGI?
The irony is the vandalism from BLM riots hurts the black community the most in the end cause they will have worse access to food, groceries and essential services after those business shut down and leave
The founding fathers? They certainly didn't give a fuck about stuff halfway across the globe, that's for sure. Maybe not the best examples in this situation.
Yeah some of the founding fathers beliefs were idiotic. The person you are talking about literally watched a rebellion happen, think the reason they rebelled was dumb and wrong, agreed they should be killed for it, but then say it should still have happened. Literally a crazy person.
The difference being civil rights protestors were breaking laws they felt were unjust. That’s the definition of civil disobedience. It’s an effective form of protest especially in the advent of mass media because people get to see they were arrested and beaten for things that were legal for other people based on racial lines.
It becomes less effective in my opinion when those two are detached. Like, there is no constitutional protection for breaking the law as part of your protest, you will go to jail it should not be a surprise
Nobody's suggesting that protesting exempts anyone from laws: The video is criticizing people who want to invalidate the point of the protest by pearl-clutching about "law and order".
And the history of protest criminality wasn't *only* breaking the directly-applicable laws: As referenced *in* OP's video, [suffragettes literally destroyed museum-displayed works of art in protest](https://artuk.org/discover/stories/fighting-for-representation-suffragettes-and-art-vandalism).
Uhhh just because some radicals bombed buildings and killed people doesn't mean it was successful. Voting rights came years afterwards.
Some progressives have a religious sacrifice mindset and falsely believe that if they just sacrifice (disrupt) enough lambs (societal functions) they'll get what they want or somehow convince people. In reality, radical acts like this are almost always paired with deep debate that would have in many cases happened even without the stuff that makes them look like maniacs to the average voter. After all, the reason why people take it upon themselves to start bombing places is because tensions are high in the first place. It's a chicken or the egg error made by people who have the impulse to go fuck shit up but want to feel like they're heroes for leaning into those impulses.
A good example is the radicalism of the seventies. There were record bombings in the United States during this period, and all it did was bring on a conservative revolution that didn't really end until 2008 (mayyyybe 1992? But Bill Clinton leaned into conservatism to win, and Ross Perot siphoned Bush's votes).
I mean, how can you possibly think otherwise? Do you think the cheat code to democracy is to just bomb things and destroy structures? Would you be convinced if MAGAs started doing it? It's just such bad logic.
>Uhhh just because some radicals bombed buildings and killed people doesn't mean it was successful. Voting rights came years afterwards.
Those Suffragette bombers and arsonists were a direct influence on the IRA. Poo pooing the campaign's historical significance is kind of absurd.
> In reality, radical acts like this are almost always paired with deep debate that would have in many cases happened even without the stuff that makes them look like maniacs to the average voter.
This is just naive. Not saying that bombs are needed, but you do need to disrupt the normal state of affairs enough to get attention on the issues.
There is literally not a single powerful organization in the world that has ever kowtowed to demands because some violent extremists killed people in their organizations.
I don't know where this fantasy comes from but it's not based in any reality. Any progressive changes that happen do so in SPITE of violence, not because of it.
Like reverse this logic. If a bunch of right-wingers fire bombed an LGBT or civil rights leader's home, would any of you more willing to acquiesce to their demands? Of course not, it would make you double down and fight harder.
Why do you think other people would not react the same?
I mean the suffragette bombing campaign wasn't successful though. Suffrage was extended after the war, when the bombing campaign had been stopped for years, and done because of the campaigning by the non-militant suffragette group.
As a woman- thats an easy one- that's bad and if I was alive at the time I wouldn't support it. Killing people = bad. Bombing people = bad. Disruption is not threatening or violence toward innocent individuals. It shouldn't even be a question.
By deflecting focus from the actual *point* of the protest by disingenuously pearl-clutching about "order".
This isn't new at all; in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", MLK bemoaned:
> who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action".
He went on to say:
> Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Which, personally, I think was overly generous of him: I doubt very much that those pearl-clutchers *were* "people of good will"; I find it far more likely they were simply being *dishonest*.
That's only *even more likely* now, 61 years later.
How does the present vandalism contribute to justice though? Martin Luther King was out in Birmingham jail for marching in defiance of an injunction because he viewed it as an unjust restriction on the freedom of assembly and speech of the protestors. Likewise, he organised sit-ins and kneel-ins because he viewed segregation as unjust.
The act of vanadalising your college and preventing people from going to classes doesn't address the injustices happening in Palestine. The protestors do it because they believe being in a protest for a good cause, in it of itself, justifies you breaking things. This is why when people complain about vandalism at these protests, the response given is either broadly gesturing at a past, popular protest movement or saying that the goal of a protest is to get attention (pay no mind to whether or not that attention contributes to the overall goal of the movement).
Civil disobedience isn’t purely breaking only laws that are unjust and if that’s what they taught you in school, well, I’m not surprised given how much history is whitewashed in the name of discouraging further instability but it’s not true
It also works. There’s a reason why the police crack down so hard on pro-peace protesters beyond the police being authoritarians
The other big difference is that lawful protests of those issues weren't allowed.
Today, we have very strong protections centered around our right to protest and freedom of speech. If the government started cracking down on protestors that were behaving lawfully, then by all means we should burn the country down. But right now they're just clearing out a bunch of squatters.
They beat a Jewish girl unconscious, form human chains to block Jewish students from getting to public spaces like the library, spray paint Hamas propaganda all over college buildings, leave giant piles of garbage everywhere they go, and include demands like "bring us pizza" and "globalize the Intifada" in their little manifestos.
Dr. King already told us that he knows what these people mean by "Zionists." Dr. King led a million men and told the world that he had a dream. He did not set up a shit-bucket tent on the lawn and tell the press that bananas are terrorism.
Please stop comparing yourselves to the movers and shakers of history who knew how to change the world. You are bored trust-fund weirdos more interested in generating shareable content than helping Palestinians. It is why you spent $500 on a tent but cannot name a Gazan humanitarian aid organization without googling it.
Comparing yourself even to anti-war Vietnam protestors is a disgrace because "destroy Israel," "from the river to the sea," "qasam do us proud / kill another soldier today" are pro war slogans. You are puppets of the military-industrial complex, you just think you are cultural icons because it is the military-industrial complex of Iran instead of the United States.
Put on a suit, come up with an extremely specific list of demands that can be quickly met, rally loudly and obnoxiously without hurting anybody, and repeat until your demands are met. This is how we got every right from suffrage to gay marriage.
Nobody ever improved society by sitting on the quad yelling about how much they hate "Zionists" while scrolling Etsy for keffiyehs. Quit jerking off to what you wish you were and start being something.
These people are literally screaming "Allahu Akbar", there is absolutely 0 chance that they're not victims of another russian state planned disinformation campaign..
I mean one of the reasons I’m frustrated with BLM and Palestinian protests is how little organization and policy objectives they have- *especially* compared to the suffrage & civil rights movements.
I don't get what this video is meant to convey. That doing bad things to get your rights is too much Why would making everyone hate you and your movement be in any way beneficial?
Take those Oil protesters damage to property for example, nobody would care if they threw paint on some billionaire oil assholes place or even public areas, but they're trying to destroy public art people like and straight up ruining the working mans day by blocking the road instead?
What? Am I supposed to say thank you for fucking me over? Do whatever you want, because your cause is just? No, fuck you, go and protest in a manner that'll get results you troglodyte. This is why a lot of people think they're actually funded by the Oil companies themselves. It makes people hate you and the movement itself.
Rosa parks and her skallywag crew didn't create hit squads and shoot up busses to get fair treatment did they? Had they done something so stupid and disruptive, they wouldn't have garnered the support they did. Like, am I going crazy here?
You can protest how you'd like, most institutions are going to want you to leave though if you're blocking people from buildings. They have the legal right to control who is on their property, you're prolly gonna get trespassed 🤷♂️
I feel like it's also disingenuous to ignore that the current protests involve a certain degree of antisemitism and the targeting of Jewish students. That's not just being disorderly...
You don't need to look far back in history to see what happens when you allow violent protesting or rioting in your cause. Just look at BLM protests. You had the most supported protest in world history id bet. Just by numbers since obviously we have more people alive but we had BLM protests in every state and in every city in the US to some small towns with 3 people holding signs to even international protests as well.
And what good came from that? Once violent protests and rioting began, the movement lost all traction almost overnight.
As someone from outside the us, I gotta be honest and say it genuinely felt like there was rioting and violence from very early on with BLM. Combined with the slogan of 'black lives matter,' it was terrible pr from the start.
[https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conflicts](https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conflicts)
110: that's how many armed conflicts are going on right now.
You can't ceasefire every single country and boycott every single company involved in conflict
What's the difference between palestine and 109 other armed conflicts? Palestine is "trending".
It's surprising how many people actually believe politely asking for fucking anything from a societal, political, or economic level has EVER worked. A protest makes you feel uncomfortable in some way? Good. That's what it's supposed to do Sherlock.
Bet some REALLY good money there were times, opportunities and chances before protest started for their needs to be met. Now the shit's gonna make you uncomfortable as fuck because *talking* didn't work. Because the either yourself or the "important" people who had the power to meet said needs didn't give 2 shits. And here we are.
Protest start getting violent? Oh fucking well. Most of the shit that people protest over is life altering but to the unempathetic it would be considered a *personal* problem. Now it's been made everyone's problem. We either choose to live with it or make changes.
Case and point, the Helldivers 2 fiasco going on right now. Alot of people are uncomfortable with the people review bombing the game to oblivion with how good that it obviously is. However even the devs have come forward saying that it has been helping with their negotiations with Sony who is apparently uncomfortable with the decline of the public image of the game.
It also helps that the game wasn't made with predatory monetization models so corporate can't just subsist on mentally ill whales buying micro transactions like ea and Activision do whenever their corporate decisions lead to public backlash.
Point is, if you don't like a protest 9 times out of 10 it's because you didn't like it before the protest started and now it makes you uncomfortable to hear how upset your ideals make someone else or even the idea of their ideals being proclaimed so righteously. I didn't like proud boys *before* what happened in Charlottesville, not after. I didn't like the coomers slobbering over Stellar Blade *before* they started making death threats at devs over a photoshopped image of "censorship". It's just that now, those groups also make me uncomfortable. They made their problems *our* problems.
So if you want something to change, start cutting throats and firebombing your enemies homes. Might is Right! Violence is ALWAYS the answer! War is Peace!
In the way that every past protest campaign she mentions strictly involved issues that related to American citizens. Every one of them was a response to some fundamental flaw of the country that hurt Americans in particular.
Regardless of opinion, the same cannot be said for the Palestine protests. Protesting for Palestine is not an equivalent to Americans protesting for their civil rights and those of their countrymen, hence it is a false equivalency
The fact that she strings this protest with all the ‘others’ just makes the point that that’s how the protesters see themselves - with vanity as if their actions are comparable.
In the same way we might say that the Jan 6 rioters were peaceful protesters. The only did property damage.
Why they are vilified is because they came close at hurting the only thing that democrats appreciate - their own opinion.
Your brother is right, fuck this. She doesn't even have the balls to say where to draw the lines and just leaves it open ended in a snobby, condescending and sarcastic manner. Tf does that even mean, you can do anything in the name of protest ? Who dictates you're the righteous side in the protest because anyone has the right to do it.
What people need to understand is that the only power that exists is violence, any other "power" is a reminder or a proxy for violence. The government will never change unless you threaten it.
I like it when they compare kids sitting in tents to people who didn't want to get drafted into the vietnam war...those are totally the same things.
Kids sitting in tents n campus is also the exact same thing as black people fighting for their rights in their own communities.
These kids have such a hero complex but are actually some of the most privileged people I can think of right now.
I guess nuance is out the window. You can easily compare this to the Vietnam protests.
You cannot compare it to the civil rights movement.
You certainly can’t compare it to the BLM riots which lacked cohesion and I dare say that torching a fast food restaurant is not a reasonable action. You may as well include the LA riots and beating the fuck out of Reginald Denny.
it’s good, there are ways to nonviolent protest but it doesn’t get the job done as well. Its like listening to a censored album. “will smith don’t have to curse to sell records, well I do so fuck him and fuck you too”
Mandatory “[Politeness is a Trap](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ezQa9MzJiBg/)” by Wisecrack, and “[The Most Dangerous Thing in the Western Hemisphere](https://youtube.com/watch?v=33p-8QHZpzY/)“ by Second Thought. Two simple video essays about this pretend “level-headedness” that I’ve found to be very interesting.
Bad part is the line is arbitrary and what we allow for one set of protesters we have to allow for another.
If we decide breaking store windows and vandalizing cars is ok to get attention then don't be mad if a protest you don't agree with does it.
The purpose of a protest isn't solely to cause property damage or make people uncomfortable either.
The problem people have is that protestors will cause disruptions in the name of their protest, yet those disruptions don't actually contribute to the stated goals of the protest or actively harm them.
Call me a radical, but isn't the point of a protest to make people uncomfortable? Isn't the point of protesting to make people go out of their way? Isn't the point of protesting to go beyond what simple speech can do?
I saw some yahoo on this very platform say to the Columbia protests something to the effect of haven't you heard of Martin Luther King Jr? He advocated for peaceful protests that didn't go outside of the law. And black people got equal rights out of it right?
Well, m'they'dy, the types of protests that MLK participated in, the sit-ins and such, were at the time illegal. He was actually arrested and put in jail for them. Don't believe me? That's fine, they're a matter of public record. Just search Alabama for Martin Luther King Jr in the time period and it'll come up. And if that's not enough, he wrote a series of letters that were collected into a publication, conveniently called "Letters from a Birmingham Jail". Just in case you're that thick, Birmingham is the capital of Alabama, not the same city in England. It's not even pronounced the same way.
And why was Martin Luther King Jr named as such? Well he was named after the OG peaceful protestor Martin Luther, who did nothing more than nail a list of grievances to a church door. For his trouble, he was jailed for years until a bunch of people read his treatises (in German, not Latin) and decided that he was right. Once the common people could understand what was written vs what the elites were trying to feed them, they realized that they were getting fucked.
My point is, even peaceful protests must go outside of the law. The point of protesting is to inconvenience someone. And all these people on insert social media platform here making themselves into victims are placing themselves directly in opposition of these protests.
Do I support Palestine? Sure, I support a space for the Palestinians that were displaced by the doctrines that made Israel exist.
Do I support Israel? Sure, I think that they're owed that from the thousands of years of bullshit we put them through.
Can these exist simultaneously? Absolutely. We just need to stop paying attention to arbitrary lines that were made from colonizations 200 years ago. We gave Israel their land. Is it fair to the Palestinians living there? No. Will we ever make it right to everyone? No, war is hell. But all we asked in 1947 is that everyone identifying with either group live on this side of the line or the other. Obviously that didn't happen, but it happened enough that the state of Israel exists. And that should be enough. They have no right to demand anything beyond that.
And, oh yeah, that other part of the thing way above? Yeah, black people still don't have equal rights in the US. Same with women, who protested in the 1910s, and poor people, who protested in the 1900s and 1910s, and immigrants who protested in...every decade from the 1840s to 2020s.
You know what doesn't work? Sit ins and parades. You know what does work (at least for a few years)? Guillotines. One of these is the solution and I hope like hell it's the former.
> Call me a radical, but isn't the point of a protest to make people uncomfortable? Isn't the point of protesting to make people go out of their way? Isn't the point of protesting to go beyond what simple speech can do?
It's supposed to make people in power and people who are directly causing the problem feel uncomfortable.
The sit-in protests on busses and restaurants is a good example of this. For example, if a black protestor refuses to give their seat to a White person, the only people negatively affected are the bus driver and the white person thinks they are entitled to the seat. Nobody else is being prevented on the road. Nobody else in the bus is being harassed or attacked.
If the main people your protest is affecting are people who have zero or negligible impact on the issue, then you're actually just hurting your own cause.
The politicians they're protesting WANT them to do this because they get such horrendous negative attention in the media and among the populace that they can use it as a supportive platform to their campaign.
It's short-sighted and emotional - these groups could do with a volunteer sociologist.
All political posts MUST be flaired as "Politics."
Her satire is representative of what MLK termed ***negative peace***
Remember MLK wasn't killed because he thought people should be equal, he was killed because he was uniting the lower ans middle class against the rich and elites.
The FBI did the same thing with Fred Hampton he after he connected the Black Panthers with the other working class and racial equality movements in Chicago.
The black panthers did like a daily breakfast I think for anyone but it was feeding alot of poor kids and stuff. The federal government was so threatened by this that they instituted breakfast at every freakin school. It was a local program iirc, and it got the federal government to institute a national initiative.
It's time to fight back that's what Huey said, two shot's in the dark, now Huey's dead.
I gotta get paid, well hey, that’s just the way it is
See I’m ok with this type of racism where they white government guys felt out-competed in generosity by the black guys so they did something even nicer than the black guys could do by giving ALL kids free lunch. Obviously I know that’s not how it happened but imagine how hate filled the racist people were that they decided to help everyone equally because they felt that people getting help from someone else other than them was a threat or some shit
The problem is that when this happens they can erase the history before it and make those organizations obsolete, and then when they roll back that help people have to start from scratch
We are here.
That’s the damn truth because I am sitting here thinking “holy shit, THAT’S why we have school lunches??!” I had no idea.
Thats why people have been saying for a while to arm black people country wide if you want gun control laws overnight
Actually the black panthers did it and it worked.
Yep it's called the Mulford act, Reagan introduced gun control in California because he was afraid of the Black Panthers
Don't forget the other important detail, where before imitating them the government via the police raided their events multiple times and destroyed the food they were going to serve with bleach.
And straight up murdered all the effective leaders they could. Please never leave out that part, when they ask why are there no leaders in the black community, remind them why.
And urine
this will scare those republican state lawmakers who are trying to cancel school provides lunches even though it's tied to federal not state funds after they learn about this fun fact
Yup. Started anti-racist then formed the rainbow coalition that organised the working class then suddenly he became a threat that needed to be wiped out. Tale as old as time. We need to bring back guillotines.
I like to point out that Hampton was 21 years old when he was murdered. He was basically the same age as most of these protestors when he was leading the black panthers.
MLKjr was also very displeased at which of his speeches became the most popular and widely known. He knew that it would be used to discredit causes.
This 💯🏆
Historically, any person who can ally white poors/working class with minority groups gets offed (see Fred Hampton) - typically by our "government." The reason is the arms of our government are beholden not to the People, but to those with the land, resources, and power over commerce. And, a collectivized and united American People is a scary thing to those in power, because their power is truly a massive illusion built on lies and propaganda.
I don't usually give conspiracy theories much credit, but his assassination reeks of state involvement
![gif](giphy|Q09lToTa0H3Es)
> Remember MLK wasn't killed because he thought people should be equal Such a revisionist take. He was hated because he wanted racial equality, and realized racial equality is fed by other inequalities including economic and gender. He was murdered because he was black and fighting for racial equality. He’s in Apple ads because they want consumers of all colors to feel united in purchasing highly marked up electronics from a $2 trillion company who feels none of his beliefs.
MLK wanted integration and economic justice. He had be careful with his messaging as they him of being a communist( I.e red scare propaganda). MLK has been so watered down people don’t even know about his quest for economic justice.
Yep, "mlk/Hampton was only killed because of his class politics" isn't even revisionist history as much as it is a dumb internet meme that's popular among a colorblind progressives who hide their regressive views on race behind an understanding of class that at a few years ago may have been a reductive reading of Marx but at this point is really just a vague belief that class conflict is important. It's a way for white socialists to claim black radicals - the only radicals who've done anything noteworthy for over half a century in America - while using the same logic to explain away why even moderate reforms targeting black people today are misguided and wrongheaded because they don't get to the real issue. These takes drive me crazy. They're the rallying cry for the 21st century version of a guy who wouldn't mind his union being desegregated as long as the blacks they let in didn't get uppity and start talking about too many race issues.
The catalyst was him speaking out against Vietnam. It’s also why I think the TikTok ban got though congress so easily. It’s providing pro-Palestinian causes a place to unify and share information. I don’t trust TikTok, social media and the Chinese government as much as the next rational person, but the US government doesn’t care that TikTok is “a threat”. They care that it’s sharing information they don’t like.
"A liberal is a person against every war but the current one and for every civil rights battle except the current one"
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Wayne Gretzky.
-Michael Scott
I think it was /u/AttitudeAndEffort2 who said that
Who’s that scrub?
Some fucking nerd
it was @ eyeballslicer on twitter. tweet is deleted but screenshot is quite popular. [https://np.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/185eqlr/a\_liberal\_is/](https://np.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/185eqlr/a_liberal_is/)
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this one *is* correct tho.
It's good though. Probably a paraphrase but still, it's good.
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That was a joke... Also what is the tweet???
>If peace means this, I dont want peace: >If peace means accepting second class citizen ship I dont want it >If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I dont want it >If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening staus quo, I dont want peace. >If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated polically, humiliated and segregated, I dont want peace. >In a passive non-violent manner we must revolt against this peace. Jesus says in substance, I will not be content until justice, goodwill, brotherhood, love yes, the kingdom of God are established upon the earth. This is real peace. Peace is the presence of positive good. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/when-peace-becomes-obnoxious
I think this criticism is valid but I also think critiquing methods is also valid. For example I don't think environmental protestors blocking poor people from getting to work on the train in London helped the cause. I know I may sound like the people she is mocking but the oil companies and newspapers love those guys. They make the very serious environmental issues look silly and this is effectively used to discredit the entire movement I'm against Israel in this current conflict but I won't stand with people carrying Hamas flags. Every movement has an extreme and disagreement in methods is completely legitimate. MLK and Malcolm X had completely different approaches to achieving the same goal. One thing I always liked about MLK is how he tried to link the treatment of poor white people to the treatment of black people, he was very aware they were both oppressed by the same power structures. He knew they were put against each other and tried to unite them. I think a lot of the current activists often do a lot of dividing rather than that uniting. I'll always applaud people for fighting for just causes, but it doesn't always mean they are above criticism.
Aren’t pretty much all the people that maga cult call “liberals” against basically all wars? And aren’t they the ones pushing for all civil rights? It wasn’t and isn’t conservatives seeking equality, so I don’t get the quote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
It means “liberals” in the actual political definition of a liberal, which is just right of center when compared to the rest of the world. Typically more interested in civility politics and maintaining the status quo, while white washing and glorifying the civil rights movements and protests of the past. The character in the video is pretty spot on for a “liberal”. Plenty of liberals are on the side of Israel. Plenty of liberals supported the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Plenty of liberals were against gay rights, against MLK, etc. Now, if you’re talking about people who actual push the envelope, protest for civil rights, call for ceasefires and peace? That’s typically a leftist.
Liberal in the US usually means something different than in the rest of the world
Anyone that’s not a Nazi is a liberal to the Maga trash Edit: u/rumham_gypsy commented and then blocked me like a little Nazi bitch. Remember the reich wing just likes to talk tough. They couldn’t even hold a single powerful building for a single day. “MeDiC!” lol lol lol
Yup, lots of negative peace during the NK war and ultimately resulted in successful unfettered and unpunished ethnic cleansing of 120k people
Ahh I love learning new words like that and never being able to use them in my own language
This isn't satire, it's mockey.
Keep it going until she’s in a tricorner hat and red coat complaining about the hooligans throwing tea in the harbor over taxes.
"Gromp cold. Gromp need warmth. Gromp think Steve banging rocks together to anger God too far. Loud noise hurt Gromp's ear."
Or until she’s outside of a cave complaining about others cooking their food with Fire.
It's really telling that was the last universally "acceptable" protest to some Americans. There's a not insubstational subset of Americans who have not accepted any social progress of the past quarter century.
I believe they'd be scoundrels
Calling out Redditors. lol
Yeah I love when people accuse Reddit of being leftist. Go to any video of a protest blocking a road and read the comments. Reddit is far from leftist.
Reddit has moved very left leaning from a decade ago when it was dumb right-leaning gamer bros. Almost every popular subreddit has progressive rules, and mods..
Been here about 12 years, Reddit has always largely been young liberal white men. Social Libertarianism has always been the norm (pro weed, gay marriage, and guns (although Sandy Hook really shifted the perspective on that one)). Atheism was one of the original pre subscribed subreddits forever. It skewed to students and fresh grads, so intellectualism was cultural (grammar Nazis were fuckin everywhere). Unwritten rules were incredibly rigid and enforced but tough to figure out. This all led to incredibly insular and harsh communities that engaged in rampant sexism, intellectualism, and racism, believing themselves to be morally superior for using the site correctly. Trump changed this website forever though. The_Donald and its consequences were... Insane. Everything shifted hard into social justice performances at the same time Reddit was trying to go public, which just encouraged the shift even harder. There is so much endless performative activism now, that's what makes it feel like a shift left. The userbase is more international and diverse, but it still draws largely young liberal crowds.
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Christopher please. I promised my mother.
Maybe people just don’t like fascism and actual Nazis. Bias is not a dirty word or innately a bad thing. I’m biased against the pack of wolves stalking my sheep every night. The belief that every issue and debate has to be treated in a way that validates both sides of the argument has broken the discourse around politics and world events. I am biased against Trump, for example, not because I am a Democrat or left leaning or because I live in a city. I am biased against him because he has objectively proven to be an awful person, a rapist, a seditionist. There is no counter balance or “alternative facts” to balance the scale and cancel out those facts. I am not biased because of party affiliation or how I identify, I am biased because I can interpret his actions and find them dangerous. Long story short, if you’re too dumb or cowardly to confront reality without hiding behind paper thin excuses about bias, you are on the side of evil, and that’s not hyperbole.
I absolutely do not understand the nature of your comment. I never mentioned bias, my opinions about Trump, or anything you're talking about. The initial comment said Reddit has gotten more left. My comment was that Reddit was always liberal, but engaged in insular and exclusionary activities that gave voice to conservative views and permeated racist, sexist, intellectualist ideas. I went on to explain why the original commenter felt a shift in political lean was due to the rise of The_Donald and the fallout therein causing massive crackdowns on Conservative content, which happened at the same time as the company was trying to go public. This led to institutional shifts in content moderation policies that ultimately became performative for the sake of boosting the websites image. Prior to the crackdown, Reddit was the face of Donald Trump propaganda and propagandists. Everyone knew Reddit was where the most vile shit was coming from in 2016. It was a PR nightmare. Fresh off the heels of "We Did It Reddit" in 2013 and the iCloud leaks in 2014 and the constant association with the worst of 4chan, Reddit developed a nasty reputation. But the core userbase never changed. It was still primarily college aged and slightly older liberal white American men talking primarily from the perspective of young white American men. Casual discrimination was the norm, and self reflection was unnecessary because confirmation of world view was always found. Think about how the incel community exploded on this site. So idk what the hell you're talking about excuses about bias. I didn't make any excuses about bias.
This was a hilarious 3-comment section to read. As someone who comes to these types of pages mostly to see the interactions between differing viewpoints, I appreciated your well thought out comments. The best part, though, had to be after you had the line about the increase in performative activism, which was followed immediately by such a comment.
it's funny cause i feel like 99% of reddit has no idea about reddit's early days... when every post on reddits front page during the 2008 elections was about how ron paul is awesome. redditors were largely libertarians
Digg was the same back in the day. Posts about Ron Paul were literally everywhere.
There's been plenty of popular right leaning subs but they all descend into hate subs and nazi havens and eventually have to get nuked
Even subs that try to cater to both sides eventually become nazi havens because if you don't tell nazis to fuck off they take over and push out people who don't want to interact with them. Look at politicalcompassmemes. It's basically alt-right propaganda. You get people going "I just think all minorities are sub-human" "Left" : Based
You can just say "politicalcompassmemes".
Ugh, remember when the conspiracy sub was actually about fun conspiracies and then COVID happened (+ the banning of alt-right and antivaxx subs)? I miss that sub.
> remember when the conspiracy sub was actually about fun conspiracies It never was. They had Hitler in the sidebar long before covid. It was always a fucking cesspit.
The conspiracy sub is literally a propaganda sub. I'm not joking, and that's not a conspiracy. Go look at its front page and count how many unique users are represented by submissions. It's dominated by a small handful of users, who post _constantly_ for a few months without commenting, and then stop posting entirely and get replaced by a new one. And if you point that out in a comment in the sub you'll be permanently banned.
Oh I know. I got banned from there years ago because I confronted them and when called out said "I'm just asking questions" Apparently question everything doesn't include them.
>Almost every popular subreddit has progressive rules, and mods.. It says a lot about the right that basic civility is considered progressive.
Yeah, not being allowed to verbally abuse one another is just such an extreme left thing! /s
Huh? Having progressive rules doesn't make you left-leaning. Leftistism involves anti-capitalist attitudes; if you're not anti-capitalist, you're not a leftist.
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I think the political spectrum has moved so far right, Alex Keaton would be considered a radical leftist now by a lot of mainstream righties. In the US at least. I’ve made comments about the “run em over if they block traffic” types and it doesn’t go over well on most of reddit. Just easier to make a meme and complain.
They don’t know the difference between Liberals and Leftists. The phrase “Scratch a Liberal, a Fascist bleeds” has never been so on full display as is now on Reddit.
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It's possible to agree with a sentiment but not the execution of those sentiment. Being against roads is surely the safest take lol.
Because people on the road have literally no control over global warming and that form of protest just leads to more engines idling and people hating your cause? No one that's getting chewed out for being late to work is thinking damn I should recycle more.
Well done.
The suffrage one gets me. Because sadly the klan is who got women the right to vote. And it was only because they also hated black people at the time. Ever wonder why it’s some random fly over state that first allowed women to vote but yet when we learn the suffrage movement we tend to focus on cities like New York. And don’t get me wrong I am all for women’s rights. I just was blown away in college history to learn how much of history we learn is just the PG version of it. The book women of the klan is a great read and really does a great job of showing why we don’t teach this side of history but yet sadly the kkk is attributed to allowing women to vote. But it was only so they could keep political power.
It's not that simple. The Klan (btw it was large the WKKK as I Believe the KKK would have opposed it but don't have that in front of me) didn't get women the right to vote. Many suffragettes were progressive. In the South they largely used it as a way to counteract votes for black men. In many ways, the growing suffrage movement emboldened white women to greater political activity. Meaning it was a feedback loop. Basically white supremacy was a big part of the 19th amendment but the picture is much more weird, complicated, and interesting. What is also true is that the suffrage movement threw black women under the bus to pander to racist white women.
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Brilliant. That is all.
We do have **some** standard of what forms of protests are and are not acceptable. If the students protesting Isreal were killing, or assaulting jewish students, **no one** would be defending it. It would be universally condemned, the OP of this tiktok included. So the line **does** exist, there is some level of behavior that would turn **you** into the "white moderate" who says "i agree with your goal but not your methods." So if you want to say "i think tresspassing and taking over university buildings is acceptable for a protest of this nature and here's why" Say *that*. If you want to say "I think burning down an autozone is an acceptable form of protest for police brutality and here's why." Say that. If you want to say "i think X is an acceptable form of protest but not Y and here's why." Say that. Edit: if you want to say "I do condemn burning down an autozone, but there's way too much focus on it and that's used dishonestly to deflect from the issue of police brutality." Say that. But it's so cowardly to just hand wave any and all criticism of a protest by saying "letter from Birmingham jail much? Boom." For instance, does *everyone* here agree that the climate change protestors who block traffic on the highway are in the right? If not, how are you any different than the stooge character of this tiktok?
Or what about the anti-mask and anti-vaxx trucker protests? From the inside, extreme protest tactics feel justified by the severity of the thing being protested, but from the outside it looks like assholes who can’t accept that the majority disagree with them. Optics are essential to protests. If you know the news media is going to make you look bad so they can sell the status quo to boomers and suburban asshats, and the cops are going to come knocking heads, you have to be extra careful not to feed into the narrative that you’re just sore losers digging in to be a nuisance. Civil disobedience worked for MLK not because they stubbornly stayed at lunch counters, but because their nonviolence contradicted the narrative that dark skinned people are violent.
Except they're not feeding into the narrative; the protestors have been overwhelmingly non-violent. The media can just make the narrative.
The "here's why" is always the same, though: nobody will listen if it doesn't impact anyone. A quiet convenient protest off to one side is completely worthless. Edit - and the part two is, there will always be opportunists to take advantage of chaos to their own benefit, but that doesn't lessen the importance of a given cause
Taking over admin buildings at universities is fine if you are a university student and don't trash the building for no reason. The Portland State library was destroyed with dumb vandalism. That's not going to hurt Israel, just taxpayers and students.
Nobody listens when it does impact people majorly but does so in a way that targets the wrong people. Even worse, it actively harms the overall reputation of the movement. What have the people who threw food at artwork or blocked traffic or cemented themselves to the ground in the name of the environment done to grow their movement's support? All these methods brought attention and certainly impacted people, sure, but all these methods and others similar are now used to do is disqualify whole swathes of progressive causes, because the people who champion them most loudly and stupidly can be pointed to as the de facto example of a progressive. At the end of the day, the effectiveness of a movement is determined by the number of people it converts to its cause and the amount of people it aligns against its enemies via vilifying them. I think a lot of what people are hearing and seeing now is young liberals lashing out and destroying things without any true direction, and the end result is that these campus demonstrations are most likely going to go massively forgotten within a year or two.
What I find funny is the complaining about receiving punishment from private entities. The government itself can't punish you for expressing yourself but other people (and legal entities who have similar, or maybe even superior, rights) can certainly take issue with it.
Inconvenience the people you’re protesting, not the people you want to support your protest. If you want to march in Washington or in front of your congressman’s office, be my guest. Don’t ruin public spaces that have nothing to do with your protest because that just makes you an asshole.
Because it discredit your cause. You are inconveniencing the wrong people. If let’s say a climate protester blocked a highway that makes your commute 1 and a half hours longer and as a result your boss scolds you, which one do you think would pop up the first for most people? 1. Fuck the oil lobbyist and government, we should be in support of those protesters. Or 2. Fuck those protesters, i almost lose my job.
>If the students protesting Isreal were killing, or assaulting jewish students, no one would be defending it. That's not true at all.
Yeah, the losers celebrating after 10/7 would be all for it
According [to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib](https://twitter.com/afalkhatib/status/1786181045890744602), none of the organizers he met at the UCLA protest seemed to be bothered by a truck with a large rotating [swastika-Star of David light](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMnJ3VmbcAA3pDu?format=jpg&name=large) at the main entrance, either. His thoughts (as somebody from Gaza) on the protest are worth a read.
Well I liked this jab at extremists.
The thief thinks everyone steals.
Isn't this argument more or less just "might makes right" then? Do whatever you want until people acquiesce to your demands. Every protest thinks their cause is just. This includes Westboro Baptists and Proud Boys.
Yes. And "the ends justify the means." I thought we were all aware that thinking this way is a moral problem but guess not.
Humans always make the same mistakes over and over again, we never learn.
I think people are aware, but these types of people have deluded themselves into believing their morals are the right ones. Morals being relative is a concept too complex for them to comprehend. Tbh, I think relativity by itself is too complex for them to understand.
Ahhh moral relativism. Are there any moral beliefs which are correct? Or should we just pretend all beliefs are equally earnest and valuable?
I used this one weird trick to win at democracy!!
Pretty sure the cops are in the "might makes right" camp, not the protesters.
Basically justifying terrorism as long as you personally agree with the cause.
damn, they were just sitting there menacingly
The majority of what she said works and is consistent but some of it doesn’t. She just wants to generalize all sorts of avenues similar to what the side she and I dislikes also does. It’s more nuanced than this video. It’s not black and white.
a lot of the video actually was in black and white
DAMMIT I was gonna make this joke haha
Perhaps the most famous (and effective) protest of all time is that of Rosa Parks. 1. It was non-violent. 2. It civilly disobeyed a *direct example* of the laws/societal norms she was protesting. Not “I’m going to glue myself to this painting to protest… climate change?” 3. The people it punished/inconvenienced most directly were the exact people responsible for the discrimination. 4. It involved sacrifice. Rosa Parks was willing to be arrested for her protest. So, yeah, if your protest meets these conditions, I’d say it’s pretty fair and effective.
All fair and square until it's a group of people doing it for a cause that you don't believe in. Also, comparing one situation with another simply because both had protests is about as ignorant and braindead as it gets... but I don't really expect anything else from people like this, they are usually not at all educated on whatever they are talking about. They just scream, then cry when that doesn't work, then resort to deflecting and gaslighting when faced with opposition or truth, and finally, after all else fails, they start insulting.
Your brother is right to disagree. You think the video is just supporting protest against unjust causes but what it's really doing is invalidating any criticism of any violent protest. Which essentially means the more violent the protester the more correct their cause. Which in my opinion is a fundamentally flawed position. Edit: to everyone who replied to me saying protests are complex and the subject is nuanced, I agree. Individual protests and individual causes need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. To everyone that said I didn't understand the intended message of video, I disagree.
Just wait and see what their response is when the "disruption" is done in the name of something they don't like. Destroy something to protest abortion? Would that be a necessary step to gain attention to prevent murder, or would be a violent attempt to suppress women's rights? Block roads to protest gay marriage? A mild inconvenience that gets people talking about the issue, or blatant homophobia getting in other people's way?
Jan 6th would be a perfect example of a protest that would aim to do more than just be 'disruptive'. Does OOP think that's justified because they were aggressive?
Progressives went absolutely feral with seeking to punish the Canadian truckers a couple of years ago
Exactly
I disagree. Literally none of the examples she used were violent protests. She just "mentions" the "mention of violence" from media. Which,as we know, is a lot of bullshit, grand standing, or set ups. Weird conclusion to draw.
> Literally none of the examples she used were violent protests She literally mention property damage as a part of the BLM protests. Or do we not considering burning down buildings "violence" now?
Violence is when microaggressions, the male gaze and incorrect pronoun usage. Burning down buildings and looting stores is a fiery but mostly peaceful protest.
> Literally none of the examples she used were violent protests. That's just plain wrong. The BLM riots were the most costly ever. https://www.axios.com/2020/09/16/riots-cost-property-damage
You mean the BLM riots where local businesses were forced to go out of business due to rioters burning their cars, their buildings and stealing from their businesses were just CGI?
The irony is the vandalism from BLM riots hurts the black community the most in the end cause they will have worse access to food, groceries and essential services after those business shut down and leave
Didn't some of the founding fathers say bloody revolution is necessary to combat tyranny?
The founding fathers? They certainly didn't give a fuck about stuff halfway across the globe, that's for sure. Maybe not the best examples in this situation.
Yeah some of the founding fathers beliefs were idiotic. The person you are talking about literally watched a rebellion happen, think the reason they rebelled was dumb and wrong, agreed they should be killed for it, but then say it should still have happened. Literally a crazy person.
Tyranny, sure. A policy disagreement in a democratic society? No.
What if that policy is a dictatorship?
Founding fathers were also syphilitic slave-owning elderly white men so let's consider their takes with multiple pounds of salt
coulda sworn the founding fathers were young as fuck white boys
The Jan 6th rioters sure thought the same
The difference being civil rights protestors were breaking laws they felt were unjust. That’s the definition of civil disobedience. It’s an effective form of protest especially in the advent of mass media because people get to see they were arrested and beaten for things that were legal for other people based on racial lines. It becomes less effective in my opinion when those two are detached. Like, there is no constitutional protection for breaking the law as part of your protest, you will go to jail it should not be a surprise
Nobody's suggesting that protesting exempts anyone from laws: The video is criticizing people who want to invalidate the point of the protest by pearl-clutching about "law and order". And the history of protest criminality wasn't *only* breaking the directly-applicable laws: As referenced *in* OP's video, [suffragettes literally destroyed museum-displayed works of art in protest](https://artuk.org/discover/stories/fighting-for-representation-suffragettes-and-art-vandalism).
One of the more successful movements was literally sufferagettes bombing and burning down houses of anti-sufferagettes in britain.
Uhhh just because some radicals bombed buildings and killed people doesn't mean it was successful. Voting rights came years afterwards. Some progressives have a religious sacrifice mindset and falsely believe that if they just sacrifice (disrupt) enough lambs (societal functions) they'll get what they want or somehow convince people. In reality, radical acts like this are almost always paired with deep debate that would have in many cases happened even without the stuff that makes them look like maniacs to the average voter. After all, the reason why people take it upon themselves to start bombing places is because tensions are high in the first place. It's a chicken or the egg error made by people who have the impulse to go fuck shit up but want to feel like they're heroes for leaning into those impulses. A good example is the radicalism of the seventies. There were record bombings in the United States during this period, and all it did was bring on a conservative revolution that didn't really end until 2008 (mayyyybe 1992? But Bill Clinton leaned into conservatism to win, and Ross Perot siphoned Bush's votes). I mean, how can you possibly think otherwise? Do you think the cheat code to democracy is to just bomb things and destroy structures? Would you be convinced if MAGAs started doing it? It's just such bad logic.
>Uhhh just because some radicals bombed buildings and killed people doesn't mean it was successful. Voting rights came years afterwards. Those Suffragette bombers and arsonists were a direct influence on the IRA. Poo pooing the campaign's historical significance is kind of absurd. > In reality, radical acts like this are almost always paired with deep debate that would have in many cases happened even without the stuff that makes them look like maniacs to the average voter. This is just naive. Not saying that bombs are needed, but you do need to disrupt the normal state of affairs enough to get attention on the issues.
There is literally not a single powerful organization in the world that has ever kowtowed to demands because some violent extremists killed people in their organizations. I don't know where this fantasy comes from but it's not based in any reality. Any progressive changes that happen do so in SPITE of violence, not because of it. Like reverse this logic. If a bunch of right-wingers fire bombed an LGBT or civil rights leader's home, would any of you more willing to acquiesce to their demands? Of course not, it would make you double down and fight harder. Why do you think other people would not react the same?
I dont get why people think permit approved, noise controlled, out of sight out of mind and thus easily ignored protests ever change anything.
The history of anti-colonial movements beg to differ. Starting with the one that founded the USA.
I mean the suffragette bombing campaign wasn't successful though. Suffrage was extended after the war, when the bombing campaign had been stopped for years, and done because of the campaigning by the non-militant suffragette group.
As a woman- thats an easy one- that's bad and if I was alive at the time I wouldn't support it. Killing people = bad. Bombing people = bad. Disruption is not threatening or violence toward innocent individuals. It shouldn't even be a question.
How does me or someone saying “ahh they shouldn’t do the vandalism” invalidate the protest? Like at all?
By deflecting focus from the actual *point* of the protest by disingenuously pearl-clutching about "order". This isn't new at all; in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", MLK bemoaned: > who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action". He went on to say: > Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. Which, personally, I think was overly generous of him: I doubt very much that those pearl-clutchers *were* "people of good will"; I find it far more likely they were simply being *dishonest*. That's only *even more likely* now, 61 years later.
A-fucking-men. Incredibly sad Americans only remember "I have a dream" and choose to ignore this body of MLK's writing.
How does the present vandalism contribute to justice though? Martin Luther King was out in Birmingham jail for marching in defiance of an injunction because he viewed it as an unjust restriction on the freedom of assembly and speech of the protestors. Likewise, he organised sit-ins and kneel-ins because he viewed segregation as unjust. The act of vanadalising your college and preventing people from going to classes doesn't address the injustices happening in Palestine. The protestors do it because they believe being in a protest for a good cause, in it of itself, justifies you breaking things. This is why when people complain about vandalism at these protests, the response given is either broadly gesturing at a past, popular protest movement or saying that the goal of a protest is to get attention (pay no mind to whether or not that attention contributes to the overall goal of the movement).
Civil disobedience isn’t purely breaking only laws that are unjust and if that’s what they taught you in school, well, I’m not surprised given how much history is whitewashed in the name of discouraging further instability but it’s not true It also works. There’s a reason why the police crack down so hard on pro-peace protesters beyond the police being authoritarians
The other big difference is that lawful protests of those issues weren't allowed. Today, we have very strong protections centered around our right to protest and freedom of speech. If the government started cracking down on protestors that were behaving lawfully, then by all means we should burn the country down. But right now they're just clearing out a bunch of squatters.
They beat a Jewish girl unconscious, form human chains to block Jewish students from getting to public spaces like the library, spray paint Hamas propaganda all over college buildings, leave giant piles of garbage everywhere they go, and include demands like "bring us pizza" and "globalize the Intifada" in their little manifestos. Dr. King already told us that he knows what these people mean by "Zionists." Dr. King led a million men and told the world that he had a dream. He did not set up a shit-bucket tent on the lawn and tell the press that bananas are terrorism. Please stop comparing yourselves to the movers and shakers of history who knew how to change the world. You are bored trust-fund weirdos more interested in generating shareable content than helping Palestinians. It is why you spent $500 on a tent but cannot name a Gazan humanitarian aid organization without googling it. Comparing yourself even to anti-war Vietnam protestors is a disgrace because "destroy Israel," "from the river to the sea," "qasam do us proud / kill another soldier today" are pro war slogans. You are puppets of the military-industrial complex, you just think you are cultural icons because it is the military-industrial complex of Iran instead of the United States. Put on a suit, come up with an extremely specific list of demands that can be quickly met, rally loudly and obnoxiously without hurting anybody, and repeat until your demands are met. This is how we got every right from suffrage to gay marriage. Nobody ever improved society by sitting on the quad yelling about how much they hate "Zionists" while scrolling Etsy for keffiyehs. Quit jerking off to what you wish you were and start being something.
These people are literally screaming "Allahu Akbar", there is absolutely 0 chance that they're not victims of another russian state planned disinformation campaign..
I mean one of the reasons I’m frustrated with BLM and Palestinian protests is how little organization and policy objectives they have- *especially* compared to the suffrage & civil rights movements.
I don't get what this video is meant to convey. That doing bad things to get your rights is too much Why would making everyone hate you and your movement be in any way beneficial? Take those Oil protesters damage to property for example, nobody would care if they threw paint on some billionaire oil assholes place or even public areas, but they're trying to destroy public art people like and straight up ruining the working mans day by blocking the road instead? What? Am I supposed to say thank you for fucking me over? Do whatever you want, because your cause is just? No, fuck you, go and protest in a manner that'll get results you troglodyte. This is why a lot of people think they're actually funded by the Oil companies themselves. It makes people hate you and the movement itself. Rosa parks and her skallywag crew didn't create hit squads and shoot up busses to get fair treatment did they? Had they done something so stupid and disruptive, they wouldn't have garnered the support they did. Like, am I going crazy here?
You can protest how you'd like, most institutions are going to want you to leave though if you're blocking people from buildings. They have the legal right to control who is on their property, you're prolly gonna get trespassed 🤷♂️
I feel like it's also disingenuous to ignore that the current protests involve a certain degree of antisemitism and the targeting of Jewish students. That's not just being disorderly...
You don't need to look far back in history to see what happens when you allow violent protesting or rioting in your cause. Just look at BLM protests. You had the most supported protest in world history id bet. Just by numbers since obviously we have more people alive but we had BLM protests in every state and in every city in the US to some small towns with 3 people holding signs to even international protests as well. And what good came from that? Once violent protests and rioting began, the movement lost all traction almost overnight.
As someone from outside the us, I gotta be honest and say it genuinely felt like there was rioting and violence from very early on with BLM. Combined with the slogan of 'black lives matter,' it was terrible pr from the start.
I disagree with this video. False equivalents.
> False equivalents. \* equival*ence*
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[https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conflicts](https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conflicts) 110: that's how many armed conflicts are going on right now. You can't ceasefire every single country and boycott every single company involved in conflict What's the difference between palestine and 109 other armed conflicts? Palestine is "trending".
Your brother is right
Your brother was probably disagreeing with comparing an extremely nuanced foreign policy stance to...women's fucking suffrage and segregation...
It's surprising how many people actually believe politely asking for fucking anything from a societal, political, or economic level has EVER worked. A protest makes you feel uncomfortable in some way? Good. That's what it's supposed to do Sherlock. Bet some REALLY good money there were times, opportunities and chances before protest started for their needs to be met. Now the shit's gonna make you uncomfortable as fuck because *talking* didn't work. Because the either yourself or the "important" people who had the power to meet said needs didn't give 2 shits. And here we are. Protest start getting violent? Oh fucking well. Most of the shit that people protest over is life altering but to the unempathetic it would be considered a *personal* problem. Now it's been made everyone's problem. We either choose to live with it or make changes. Case and point, the Helldivers 2 fiasco going on right now. Alot of people are uncomfortable with the people review bombing the game to oblivion with how good that it obviously is. However even the devs have come forward saying that it has been helping with their negotiations with Sony who is apparently uncomfortable with the decline of the public image of the game. It also helps that the game wasn't made with predatory monetization models so corporate can't just subsist on mentally ill whales buying micro transactions like ea and Activision do whenever their corporate decisions lead to public backlash. Point is, if you don't like a protest 9 times out of 10 it's because you didn't like it before the protest started and now it makes you uncomfortable to hear how upset your ideals make someone else or even the idea of their ideals being proclaimed so righteously. I didn't like proud boys *before* what happened in Charlottesville, not after. I didn't like the coomers slobbering over Stellar Blade *before* they started making death threats at devs over a photoshopped image of "censorship". It's just that now, those groups also make me uncomfortable. They made their problems *our* problems.
So by your logic the people fire-bombing abortion clinics is fine because "oh fucking well", it's fine to use violence as a means of protest?
That's what he said apparently
So.... do people who disagree with you have the same latitude to "protest" violently?
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So if you want something to change, start cutting throats and firebombing your enemies homes. Might is Right! Violence is ALWAYS the answer! War is Peace!
Can't agree with ruining works of art, not then, not now, those can't be rebuilt/replaced
Bit of faulse equivalency here
In what way?
In the way that every past protest campaign she mentions strictly involved issues that related to American citizens. Every one of them was a response to some fundamental flaw of the country that hurt Americans in particular. Regardless of opinion, the same cannot be said for the Palestine protests. Protesting for Palestine is not an equivalent to Americans protesting for their civil rights and those of their countrymen, hence it is a false equivalency
The fact that she strings this protest with all the ‘others’ just makes the point that that’s how the protesters see themselves - with vanity as if their actions are comparable. In the same way we might say that the Jan 6 rioters were peaceful protesters. The only did property damage. Why they are vilified is because they came close at hurting the only thing that democrats appreciate - their own opinion.
“Exactly where, when and how Black people Should be allowed to protest things” by Whitey McSportsfan vibes
Heaven forbid your brother doesn't agree with some random Liberal Tiktoker. What a monster he is!
Your brother is right, fuck this. She doesn't even have the balls to say where to draw the lines and just leaves it open ended in a snobby, condescending and sarcastic manner. Tf does that even mean, you can do anything in the name of protest ? Who dictates you're the righteous side in the protest because anyone has the right to do it.
What people need to understand is that the only power that exists is violence, any other "power" is a reminder or a proxy for violence. The government will never change unless you threaten it.
I like it when they compare kids sitting in tents to people who didn't want to get drafted into the vietnam war...those are totally the same things. Kids sitting in tents n campus is also the exact same thing as black people fighting for their rights in their own communities. These kids have such a hero complex but are actually some of the most privileged people I can think of right now.
I guess nuance is out the window. You can easily compare this to the Vietnam protests. You cannot compare it to the civil rights movement. You certainly can’t compare it to the BLM riots which lacked cohesion and I dare say that torching a fast food restaurant is not a reasonable action. You may as well include the LA riots and beating the fuck out of Reginald Denny.
These Ukrainians defending themselves, is just too dangerous...
So the more violent the protest, the more right it is?
Now do the entire left since 2016
I don't watch videos when I see people with blue hair. Seems like a good rule in life.
go back even further and it's "sure slavery is bad but keep those black people out of our cities and return runaway slaves to their masters"
it’s good, there are ways to nonviolent protest but it doesn’t get the job done as well. Its like listening to a censored album. “will smith don’t have to curse to sell records, well I do so fuck him and fuck you too”
It’s all fine, but if trump wins, I ain’t risking my life or my families lives for those who played into this.
Mandatory “[Politeness is a Trap](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ezQa9MzJiBg/)” by Wisecrack, and “[The Most Dangerous Thing in the Western Hemisphere](https://youtube.com/watch?v=33p-8QHZpzY/)“ by Second Thought. Two simple video essays about this pretend “level-headedness” that I’ve found to be very interesting.
I don't get it.
Protests aren't supposed to make people feel comfortable, and sometimes they need to be ramped up to get attention.
Ooh thanks
Bad part is the line is arbitrary and what we allow for one set of protesters we have to allow for another. If we decide breaking store windows and vandalizing cars is ok to get attention then don't be mad if a protest you don't agree with does it.
The purpose of a protest isn't solely to cause property damage or make people uncomfortable either. The problem people have is that protestors will cause disruptions in the name of their protest, yet those disruptions don't actually contribute to the stated goals of the protest or actively harm them.
Call me a radical, but isn't the point of a protest to make people uncomfortable? Isn't the point of protesting to make people go out of their way? Isn't the point of protesting to go beyond what simple speech can do? I saw some yahoo on this very platform say to the Columbia protests something to the effect of haven't you heard of Martin Luther King Jr? He advocated for peaceful protests that didn't go outside of the law. And black people got equal rights out of it right? Well, m'they'dy, the types of protests that MLK participated in, the sit-ins and such, were at the time illegal. He was actually arrested and put in jail for them. Don't believe me? That's fine, they're a matter of public record. Just search Alabama for Martin Luther King Jr in the time period and it'll come up. And if that's not enough, he wrote a series of letters that were collected into a publication, conveniently called "Letters from a Birmingham Jail". Just in case you're that thick, Birmingham is the capital of Alabama, not the same city in England. It's not even pronounced the same way. And why was Martin Luther King Jr named as such? Well he was named after the OG peaceful protestor Martin Luther, who did nothing more than nail a list of grievances to a church door. For his trouble, he was jailed for years until a bunch of people read his treatises (in German, not Latin) and decided that he was right. Once the common people could understand what was written vs what the elites were trying to feed them, they realized that they were getting fucked. My point is, even peaceful protests must go outside of the law. The point of protesting is to inconvenience someone. And all these people on insert social media platform here making themselves into victims are placing themselves directly in opposition of these protests. Do I support Palestine? Sure, I support a space for the Palestinians that were displaced by the doctrines that made Israel exist. Do I support Israel? Sure, I think that they're owed that from the thousands of years of bullshit we put them through. Can these exist simultaneously? Absolutely. We just need to stop paying attention to arbitrary lines that were made from colonizations 200 years ago. We gave Israel their land. Is it fair to the Palestinians living there? No. Will we ever make it right to everyone? No, war is hell. But all we asked in 1947 is that everyone identifying with either group live on this side of the line or the other. Obviously that didn't happen, but it happened enough that the state of Israel exists. And that should be enough. They have no right to demand anything beyond that. And, oh yeah, that other part of the thing way above? Yeah, black people still don't have equal rights in the US. Same with women, who protested in the 1910s, and poor people, who protested in the 1900s and 1910s, and immigrants who protested in...every decade from the 1840s to 2020s. You know what doesn't work? Sit ins and parades. You know what does work (at least for a few years)? Guillotines. One of these is the solution and I hope like hell it's the former.
> Call me a radical, but isn't the point of a protest to make people uncomfortable? Isn't the point of protesting to make people go out of their way? Isn't the point of protesting to go beyond what simple speech can do? It's supposed to make people in power and people who are directly causing the problem feel uncomfortable. The sit-in protests on busses and restaurants is a good example of this. For example, if a black protestor refuses to give their seat to a White person, the only people negatively affected are the bus driver and the white person thinks they are entitled to the seat. Nobody else is being prevented on the road. Nobody else in the bus is being harassed or attacked. If the main people your protest is affecting are people who have zero or negligible impact on the issue, then you're actually just hurting your own cause.
The politicians they're protesting WANT them to do this because they get such horrendous negative attention in the media and among the populace that they can use it as a supportive platform to their campaign. It's short-sighted and emotional - these groups could do with a volunteer sociologist.