A sticker slapped in a NYC subway reads:
“One person with a pistol just shook the ruling class more than decades of peaceful organizing”
A sticker slapped in a NYC subway reads:
“One person with a pistol just shook the ruling class more than decades of peaceful organizing”
This is why peaceful protest is legal, it accomplishes nothing.
So you’re saying that Gandhi accomplished nothing but leading the most significant and largest non-violent struggle in all of history? To each their own I suppose.
He just didn’t sit with placards, he refused to co-operate with the British establishment, and when millions followed him, they couldn’t just arrest them all. He got India independence through a non-violent struggle, the basis of which lied in subjugating the British trade and administration.
They could arrest Gandhi and Congress leaders all they wanted to, but the movement they inspired couldn’t be stopped.
This might just be the American train of thought, but you’re wrong here. When millions follow you, and refuse to cooperate, the ruling class will suffer, because they’re dependent on you for power. Checkmate.
Something often missed about Gandhi’s efforts was that it was still more about what he did do than what he didn’t (violence). He still used resistance and force, including illegal actions that he believed were just, and massively hurt Great Britain’s bottom line and sense of control.
The trick is to locate efforts that aim to accomplish that in modern US politics.
That’s an american matter and I couldn’t be bothered less.
I think it’s not really fair to compare 1940s India with current American politics.
It feels somewhat like saying “the Mongolian army took over half of Eurasia with mounted archers, Ukraine should just use those against Russia!”
It’s just not comparable, different cultures, different opponents, and wildly different technology. And this isn’t just the US, it is a worldwide class war. Organized resistance on that scale, especially when the ruling elite can monitor nearly 100% of all communication, just isn’t something that’s going to happen, even with a charismatic figurehead.
Not American. Ghandi’s mission was to give “untouchables” caste some human equality. Technically, women’s/lgbtq movements were peaceful. Unlike US/Israel first oligarchy, there is complete/absolute media loyalty for it, in a way that the British Empire is harder to defend as benevolent to Indians. The support for oligarchy’s wars and supremacy is unconditional. If we don’t give them everything we have then China, Russia and Iran will win, and you all nod along.
~ M. Gandhi
Then why do peaceful protestors get arrested and brutalised by cops all the time?
Target practice. Did you see the video where they shot the teenager standing still on a hill doing nothing? The shot him in the head with a rubber bullet, causing concussion and permanent damage. The officer high fives another officer right after.
The kid was literally just standing there doing nothing. A fucking child was used as target practice by adult civil servants.
Funsies.
Easy targets.
Thats not true. As much as I see the need for violent protest sometimes, peaceful protest can change things. See the fall of the berlin wall.
Yes, but also no. The GDR and the Soviet Union who supported it and supplied it were both almost bankrupt and economically broken. Infrastructure was falling apart because the state couldn’t afford to fix it.
The potests sure helped, but the government of the GDR was also in a state where it would accept the demands as a way out. The protests probably did accelerate the downfall a bit, but it would have happened either way.
Similar protests years before were leading nowhere.
Gandhi disagrees
(Unless he’s playing Civ)
One of the funniest programing bugs ever. Gandhi’s code was meant to be the least aggressive AI in the game, but if something made Ghandi become even less aggressive it could overflow backwards and set his aggressiveness to max. This creating a Gandhi that wanted to always be at war.