Why not? The bell riots themselves was one of the steps to class consciousness, something we desperately need now. Yeah people were hurt, but how different is that than BLM and other rights protests being mass arrested or openly fired upon these days?
That is a very machivellian attitude. I don’t believe that hurting people who aren’t a threat in the name of “progress” is justified, even if it were somehow a shortcut to utopia, which it’s not.
I didn’t say anything about pacifism, but I also disagree with your proposition equating violence and politics. Violence is a breakdown of politics. Politics, almost definitionally, is how a people settle disputes without violence.
Politics is how how decisions are made in groups. If one person or group is forcing their will upon others, then no decision or compromise between the parties can be said to have been made freely. And therefore it cannot be truthfully described as following a political process.
Nonviolence is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, many of whom are people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement’s demands or the pacifists achieve that legendary “critical mass. – How Nonviolence Serves the State
Why not? The bell riots themselves was one of the steps to class consciousness, something we desperately need now. Yeah people were hurt, but how different is that than BLM and other rights protests being mass arrested or openly fired upon these days?
That is a very machivellian attitude. I don’t believe that hurting people who aren’t a threat in the name of “progress” is justified, even if it were somehow a shortcut to utopia, which it’s not.
All of human political activity boils down to violence. If pacifism were a legitimate strategy then we wouldn’t be in our current situation.
I didn’t say anything about pacifism, but I also disagree with your proposition equating violence and politics. Violence is a breakdown of politics. Politics, almost definitionally, is how a people settle disputes without violence.
Politics is how how decisions are made in groups. If one person or group is forcing their will upon others, then no decision or compromise between the parties can be said to have been made freely. And therefore it cannot be truthfully described as following a political process.
Diplomacy is settling disputes without violence.
It is, but diplomacy refers to disputes between peoples. Politics refers to disputes within a people.
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