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Respectfully, I don’t think that’s the case.
Violence is the tool by which we realized our democracy. You get 100,000 people together with guns and legislators will actually listen. You get 100,000 people together with signs and funny pink hats, they’ll just laugh at you until you leave.
The only protest that would change things is a country-wide general strike, and Americans are too impoverished or immersed in ideology to consider it.
Protest goes wider than the US version of polite, unobtrusive, and forgettable marches. Although our establishment insists that these are the only kinds of protest which are acceptable, this is only because as you described they are completely ineffective. Shutting down infrastructure, strikes, and other such methods, while frowned upon by Republicans and Democrats alike, tend to get a lot more attention.
I’m a big believer in the Blair Mountain/Marsha P. Johnson school of brick throwing.
(The interview is about whistleblowers and McCarthyism, so this is all a bit tangential.)
If a million people vote for Law A, but someone holds a gun to the representative’s head demanding Law B, how exactly has the will of the people been respected? The whole point of democracy is that all authority is derived from the consent of the governed, not from the barrel of a gun. Violence is not the realization of democracy. It is a rejection of it. It cannot be protected by law the way free speech is. But political violence as the sole means to its own end is worse than a crime – it is a mistake. When a large group of people use violence in this manner, nations call them terrorists, responding with force instead of hearing demands. (See also: outcomes of the Malheur Refuge Standoff.)
Use of direct action must be strategic, and it cannot be the only piece of the strategy.
There are three types of protest: the carrot, the stick, and the ultimatum. The carrot is meant to evangelize and raise awareness for a cause (MLK). The stick is direct intervention, sometimes violent (Malcolm X). The ultimatum is a demonstration of solidarity and conviction, an implicit show of how many people are willing to move from carrot to stick if they aren’t heard (the March on Washington).
A successful protest movement needs all three. Leave one out, or overemphasize another, and the movement is worthless.
I also want to reiterate that this goes both ways. A blanket rejection of the legitimacy of disruptive action is every bit as counterproductive as the stance that violence is the only way to enact positive change.
Elected representatives will typically need to denounce any illegal acts to maintain plausible deniability, but that is in service of the “carrot” side of the equation, and shouldn’t be taken as a strategic stance against the movement.
I don’t mean to imply that you are inherently wrong, but when people mention violent revolution, I am always reminded of this excerpt from in the “Afterword” of Emma Goldman’s “My Disillusionment in Russia”:
Applied in practice it means that the period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.
To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the Man of To-morrow.
Don’t you think that’s kind of extreme? There’s countless examples of social change through peaceful protest.
To name a few examples: Germany people got rid of the nuclear power stations through peaceful protest. The US civil rights movement. Women’s suffrage. LGBT. XR rebellion recently made a change by blocking a road in the Netherlands. Gandhi.
I’m not saying violence never works or is never necessary. But it’s also an unstable component that’s best to be avoided if you want lasting change.
You could even argue that violence is counterproductive, at least in some cases. Take the democratization of Europe in and after the Napeolonic era. Napoleon and co did plenty of unethical stuff, and eventually he repeated the same thing all over by becoming emporer, and in the end he lost to the monarchs and so it didn’t really last. But in the long term the idea stuck and did its magic everywhere, even in places they hadn’t conquered.
