this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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A lot of those types of leftists fantasize about a glorious revolution, but many revolutions have happened and no utopias exist so…
I think Contrapoints made the same argument in one of her videos.
Agreed. I would add to that -- there's actually an incredibly instructive example to draw by looking at the non-violent-revolutionary movements that did achieve big social change in the past. The US labor movement in the late 1800s, Gandhi's independence movement, the US civil rights movement with its partial victory, things like that. There are a ton of examples of people who achieved big things to revise the systems that rule their daily lives, starting from a way less advantaged position than the left in the modern day US. It's not easy, no, but compared to an Indian person under the British Raj it's an absolute cakewalk.
Strangely enough, the people who are so incredibly upset with the broken system in the US as it pertains to this election (which, yeah, I get that), are somehow totally uninterested in looking at what actions big or small might produce positive change. They're solely focused on criticizing Biden and only Biden, or on saying that it's so broken that we might as well let Trump come to power because what's the difference.
It's like "The plane is having engine trouble and I don't know if we're going to make it. I'm real scared and upset about the situation we're in. I know! Let's shoot the pilot in the head."
Wasn't the us labor movement violent? I seem to remember something about troops firing on striking miners.
Mine owners utilized violence and essentially wage slavery to keep miners from unionizing and asking for more fair working conditions. Pinkertons got their reputation as being violent corporate mercenaries in this period, and they continue to be. The violence caused miners to fight back, and when they did the US army got involved usually in the interest of the mine owners. The lead up to the Battle of Blair Mountain is one of the best examples of this and maybe the most impactful.
It was nonviolent, until bosses/police starting shooting miners and their families, at which point it developed into a small-scale civil war. So yes, I shouldn't have simply said blanket non violent I guess... I was just trying to draw a distinction between "let's fight for justice for ourselves" versus "let's storm the capital and do away with the leaders" as two roads (with the first being more effective, and the second often leading to catastrophe instead of the progress that was hoped for.)
Labor rights and the labor movement throughout history in the US have been incredibly violent so I don't know what revisionist history you're talking about.
You're right, I should amend my comment to note that it wasn't non violent and basically a small-scale civil war
Oh, hang on
(Actually, I do think I should have said it was nonviolent until they started shooting railroad workers, since that one came first. I'm a little fuzzy on the exact chronology but I think that would have been more accurate yes. The person I was responding to just said miners so I said miners.)
They would engage in retaliatory violence but the first shot was never fired by the labor organizers
I love how centrists will confidently cite the civil rights movement without a hint of irony, and then completely ignore what those civil rights leaders had to say about the objections of moderates over direct action. They'll silently downvote a direct quote from MLK without engaging with how it somehow doesn't apply to them.
Lol what a fruitful day of reading: since you mentioned Gandhi...
Honestly, of all the civil rights figures you could have cited, Gandhi is the one who would tell you that non-cooperation with evil is more important than self-preservation. How on earth could you look at Gandhi and say; 'he would want me to vote for the lesser evil'?
I thought we had worked this out earlier, talking about Bull Connor. I was all on board when I thought you were saying, let's give Biden a hard time over Gaza. Now I'm a lot less sure what you're saying.
Do you think working as a collaborator of the Raj, is more or less the same as voting for the clearly less-genocide-supporting of two arguably-genocide-supporting candidates?
Would this apply also to refusing to vote for Boutwell over Connor, or refusing to vote for the SDP (with all its colonial adventures in Africa and etc) over the NSDAP in prewar Germany?
I think u accidentally replied to the wrong comment, but im starting to really love seeing ur name come up. Very well informed on a period in time most of us only know so much.
Gandhi worked with the lesser evil plenty to earn India's independence. He negotiated with Britain on pacts and agreements that didn't result in India's freedom but generally gained them more autonomy and fairness. He even supported the British in WW2 and suspended independence efforts at the time.
If Gandhi said "okay hold up, let's take care of the fascists alongside our colonizers"*, I think he would want you to vote for the lesser evil. I think we can infer from his actions that progressively achieving a goal through nonviolence is something he wholeheartedly supported.
*(Granted, he still advocated that Japan and the Nazis be defeated without significant violence)
And Douglass eventually worked with Lincoln, but not before ruthlessly criticizing him and supporting the dump-lincoln movement
Gandhi refused repeated offers from the British, he absolutely did not just accept their offer as given.
True, but the offers he did accept were not immediate independence for India. He knew when to take a good compromise and when to push for more. He continued to negotiate with the British while taking imperfect, but good deals.
I've seen some people on lemmy when I first started lurking, try to claim that some of the most dystopian nations are really close to utopia and are actually trying really hard guys. I think many of them were those types of leftists.
Just get a load of the accounts that keep replying to the comments i leave. Theyre not good faith actors. Theyre paid trolls or bots. And theyve flooded this thread. This post was at 440 upvotes with 240 comments some hrs ago and as of now sits at 489 and 360 comments. That should hopefully strike one as unusual. Im willing to bet that in that time this thread was upvoted significantly more than 50 times. American leftists are being targeted to ensure we dont turn out in november.