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this is a great post. i think people have trouble understanding that great acts of violence can be born out of love for humanity. there are people in society that are threats to humanity. those people cannot be saved by love. many powerful positions are only achievable by people who lack empathy.
many people also have a hard time understanding that goose and gander arguments only confuse simple truths. we are not all equal. just because you use the same tools that evil uses does not make you evil. evil will use those tools regardless of your morals. just because you choose the high road doesn’t mean that evil will do the same.
we have an obligation as wardens of this world to insure that we don’t destroy it. that might mean weeding out those of us that would do irreparable harm.
I’m a combat vet and like some others realize it was for a bunch of bullshit. I’m pretty leftist and personally am pretty anti violence because of my experiences.
That being said, some systems and people only speak one language. Trying to talk to them in “human respect” and “compromise” is like trying to talk to a Frenchman in Chinese - if the options are violence or getting steamrolled then it is what it is. 🤷
Relevant Owlturd/Shencomix comic
What a twist! Really had me on the edge of my seat!
Seems like the next logical step though
This reminds me of the story from some time back about a family calling emergency services because their disabled kid has a meltdown and was being violent. Cops showed up, kid went after one of them with a gardening tool, so the other one shot him.
I think it can be used as an example of why jumping from chapter 1 to chapter 2 isn’t all that helpful.
counterpoint: a disabled child is not a fascist
I need to upvote this like a million more times… Jfc… 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
Also counterpoint: cops are not antifascist so the OP just made a completely irrelevant comment.
Cops as a group or as individuals?
Also, that OP thing is funny considering your tag.
But how do you know if a fascist isn’t a disabled child?
No that’s an example of ACAB. The cops are the fascists
I disagree. I can only see it as an application of chapter 2. Only that they skipped chapter 1. And usually, the grunts aren’t really recruited for their ability to read books.
Provides perfect example of love not defeating fascism.
Misreads it as the exact opposite…
Wouldn’t the exact opposite be love defeating fascism? I don’t believe i said that anywhere. But I can say it now.
Love can defeat fascism. Mutual love as fellow humans. Everyone has to be willing to put it to practice though.
The example i gave has a simpler purpose. Extreme violence only has one result: death.
Some people expect it to be the death of fascism, but it’s not. It’s just death. And death isn’t picky.
Instead, some people here seem to love hating. They love to hate cops, lump them together and dehumanize them into a blob of abhorrent mass.
I know it’s hard to think about things and harder still to solve the issues that plague us, but that doesn’t make advocating violence right, no matter who it is against.
It’s fine to be wrathful. But it’s not right. Violence changes you. And as long as you have a conscience, the remorse will always be there. To escape the burden, many choose to lock away that conscience and fall deeper into violence. Until you become that which you claimed to kill.
The only real way of defeating fascism is solving the issues that caused it to surface, together.
I didn’t bother reading because three paragraphs in it was clear you failed to recognize the fascists were the one committing extreme violence leading to death…
Then that’s a you problem.
You’re a highly ineffective troll…
Nah, you need to realize your loved ones, and everything else you love is in danger by fascism, then use the power of love towards those things to gain inspiration in your fight against fascism.
If you ask: “gamergate” and similar things are just temporary things, usually just distractions from how capitalism decays art and “geek culture”, and of course a reqruitment tool. But in reality, you would be lucky, if you could play some state-sponsored games on your choice of platform, and would likely have to parttake in some “book burning type of event”.
q aint anywhere near c bro, how’d you do that
There never was a typo in Ba Sing Fe!
“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town, and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”
Start with self-love friends, and then extend that love to the people closest to you.
What the fuck does self love have to do with political violence.
Political violence comes from the desire to change the world, but caring for yourself and others close to you will bring a more effective and worthwhile change than violence.
As long as violence isn’t being actively enacted on me and my loved ones, I agree. But otherwise, I don’t see how this defends against people with a strong will for power. Violence does exist, and right now the state has a monopoly on violence to defend the interests of a select few and they are not hesitant to use it.
“When I was a young man, I decided to focus on myself. So did everyone else my age. We became known as the ‘Me’ generation. For some reason, the sum of all our individualistic self-help didn’t change the world for the better. A bunch of people who didn’t give up several times did change the world though, go figure.”
While there’s some truth to that, I want to see self-love stop a fascist pogrom.
Also this whole “love yourself first” is nothing but another divisive distraction - keep people individualised rather than coming together as a community, and also perpetuate the idea that our problems are personal rather than systemic.
I don’t love myself, don’t think I ever have, don’t think I ever will, yet I don’t see how that would or should stop me from fighting fascism.
If anything, I’m able to recognise that in large part, if not entirely, my feelings come down to the world we live in and how, as an “other” in many categories, my life is seen as both worthless and also somehow such a thereat that, in both cases, it needs to be destroyed, and the idea that I shouldn’t act until I manage to “get over” all of that (and potentially get comfortable enough, or at least accept, the status quo), is beyond ridiculous. In reality it’s the exact opposite - I must act if there is any hope for others to have a world where they don’t feel like I and so many others are made to, because not loving myself has no bearing on my wanting good for others (and no, they don’t have to be “loved ones”, I don’t even have to know them, that’s the point of wanting a better society for everyone).
Also this whole “love yourself first” is nothing but another divisive distraction - keep people individualised rather than coming together as a community, and also perpetuate the idea that our problems are personal rather than systemic.
Or it’s just a way to contract a fairly simple truth, that a person who has their shit together can organize and commit to mutual aid to a degree than someone who doesn’t cannot.
You gotta know how to swim before trying to help others from drowning.
Fighting fascism is getting my shit together (if you’d bothered reading past that first sentence you might actually hear that my “shit” being the way it is is down to systemic issues, and no amount of “self work” can “get it together”).
Also what’s the point of trying to “swim” if you’re in a toxic pond? If we’re going to drag the metaphor out - get out of the fucking pond, help those around you out, so together you can all turn off the sewage pipe, and then get to cleaning up each other, and the pond. That is self care.
Fighting fascism is getting my shit together (if you’d bothered reading past that first sentence you might actually hear that my “shit” being the way it is is down to systemic issues, and no amount of “self work” can “get it together”).
The neat thing about generalities such as “love yourself first” or “you have to learn to swim before you help others from drowning” is that they aren’t specified towards anyone’s specific circumstances…
It seems that you are taking a general statement and making them all about your specific life circumstances, which to be honest seem fairly melodramatic.
my “shit” being the way it is is down to systemic issues, and no amount of “self work” can “get it together”).
Lots of us deal with systemic issues, you’re not the only minority in the US. Plenty of us still work to overcome the systemic abuse handed down to us by an uncaring or even malevolent state.
get out of the fucking pond, help those around you out, so together you can all turn off the sewage pipe, and then get to cleaning up each other, and the pond. That is self care.
No one is saying you should be a self centered ass who doesn’t help or care about anyone else. Just that people are fragile beings that need to be able to acknowledge they aren’t a bottomless well of praxis.
Lots of people burn themselves out of the leftist movement, mainly by throwing the entirety of their effort towards a goal for a year or two and then becoming bitter or jaded that their hard work is not only unappreciated, but ineffective.
Revolution is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to learn to pace yourself.
I’ve spent my whole life focused on self growth. It’s been a wise decision, because unlike self love it cannot be passive. It forces me not only to form community, but to form a community that I can grow in. Individualism without isolation, but rather striving to be the kind of person I want around.
It could’ve stopped fascism long ago, and today it may help. But it alone won’t. I must act. We all must.
Yeah the self-love schtick does feel a little bit reductive, and kind of along the lines of “oh that person has depression, so that’s why they’re sad” levels of incuriousness about like, the potential context and origins of “mental illness”, beyond just attributing everything to better ideas identification and purely physiological causes that are completely contextually devoid.
I dunno, I really do like. Find it absolutely fascinating, the degree to which your average person can be totally placated by a meaningless platitude.
Enough masturbation could solve that
Insisting that the first step must solve all your problems at once is how you fail to take a single step towards solving your problems.
Sophistry
The first step is to embrace the fact that we’re taking a long walk.
I dunno though… The power of love is a curious thing.
I’ve heard that it can cause some men to weep and others to sing.
You know that old saying, violence is always the answer. /s
Look, man, if you’re up against someone who is, when it comes down to it, willing to use violence, and you aren’t… if the issue is serious enough that no other resolution presents itself as an acceptable compromise, the one willing to use violence is gonna win over the one who isn’t.
Violence is a hard and dangerous task to undertake, with uncertain prospects, especially in the context of societal action. But without the ability to resort to it in times of crisis, no rights are secure.
Violence might not always be the correct answer, but it is an answer.
If history is our guide, when fascism is the question, violence is always the answer. Never in history has unchecked conservatism been defeated by pacifism.
February Revolution doesn’t count?
Nonviolent protests are an appeal to humanity or a threat of violence. If your opponent refuses to have humanity and you’re unwilling to escalate to violence it will not work.
The tankiest
Based.
I was 19 when I realized my parents were raised to be authoritarians. My grandparents would’ve been considered racists even in their time and both my mom and dad were raised in a little farm town. My parents are good people and generally want to do the right thing but explaining this to them and trying to make them aware of their biases has been a full time job.
I will not show the same love and respect to your parents. Go do your jobs so we don’t need step 2.
-Luigi
Super based.
When you want to paint left-leaning people as violent, tell them they have no choice.
Vote for Biden: 15,000 dead children by his aid.
The founding fathers of this country would be disgusted with your apathy.
The founding fathers would be applauding, lol. They were slave owning Capitalists.
- Fuck those chumps, this country isn’t their problem any more
- The only way this country stops sucking so bad is if lefties get very serious in a big way
Based
