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I'm fairly anti-violence but I know it's inevitable.
The world has a lot of social issues, and it's going to take a complete upheaval before people become capable of empathizing with each other again.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Incredible violence is just a kind of love, you know? Violence is predicated on a kind of love. You must become intimately familiar with your opponent, with their movements, their mind, in order to do effective violence, to cause effective destruction. Violence is an intimate act, it requires a kind of love, begets a kind of love. Sort of the idea of, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Hate and love are just two lenses through which the same core compulsion is viewed, and violence is just another kind of outlet for that compulsion.
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As everyone who's ever read 8-Bit Theater knows, love is in fact the most powerful force in the universe when focused into a coherent arcane energy beam of absolute magical destruction.
When you want to paint left-leaning people as violent, tell them they have no choice.
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
You know that old saying, violence is always the answer. /s
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.
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.
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Violence might not always be the correct answer, but it is an answer.
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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.
"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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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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.
The first step is to embrace the fact that we’re taking a long walk.
Sophistry
Enough masturbation could solve that
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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 recruitment 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!
What a twist! Really had me on the edge of my seat!
Seems like the next logical step though