this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
166 points (98.8% liked)
Europe
8324 readers
3 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe πͺπΊ
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, π©πͺ ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
One side is gonna lose in the end. That is all that matters. The world is ruled with violence. Non-violence only is beneficial to those currently in power.
Basic self-preservation as you put it requires violence. How are you going to preserve yourself when you let people run around who want to opress or kill you?
And there are plenty of times where this is done non violently.
Yes. As a last resort. That doesn't mean never using violence. It means using it for self preservation, not just because you disagree with them.
As a last resort is too late. If you can use violence successfully, it justifies itself. Waiting for when it's time for the last resort is too late. You're not going to stop the nazis in the spring of 1933, you would have needed to kill them in the 20s, a decade before they came to power. The same applies to any political movement.
Except such thinking was how we got the Nazis in the first place. Hitler co-opted unions and parties who were extremised by such responses, and these were the basis of the Nazi party.
No the reason why we got the Nazis in the first place is because liberal institutions allowed them to exist and participate. It was mainly the fault of the German social democratic party.
Violence is how to prevent them. For anything you can criticize the Soviet Union for, any fascist movement there would have been squashed with extreme prejudice. Just like anyone even close to fascism ideologically was terrorised.
Ah yes, because violence people who think differently to you has never led to extremism and said violence being returned to you...apart from the many, many times that it has.
Seriously, if you think that initiating violence against right wingers is going to lead to anything except right wing extremists using violence on everyone else, you really need to look at your history books again.
"think differently than you" is very different to "i think you and everyone like you should die because of your skin colour and/or gender"
You're the one who needs to read some history books if you think violence isn't the solution. It's the only solution that works. Fascists using violence back isn't a counter-argument. That's only logical and part of the equation.
But better than for just on the aspect of fascism, I'd really recommend Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorrel, before you condemn violence to be a last resort and inferior to pacifism or civil debate.