Violently overthrowing governments leaves violent governments in charge.

reply to post by angelwrangler


Well put.

In reality, setting a car afire is dramatic enough, but does not one damned thing to improve the two-dollar a day living wage for the real life people involved.

ONLY reason and thought can cure this sickness. Not continually venting frustration by breaking things in the street. The trick is in making those in charge---and make no mistake, some one will ALWAYS be in charge---see that the populace is determined to improve things. Frankly and truly, I don't have a clue how to do that, but it's pretty clear how NOT to do it.

I can understand what you're saying, but I've never actually heard of a non-violent revolution. Non-violence is a grand way to make changes within a social construct, and this has been shown many times, but actually changing the very nature of said social construct? I mean, it's nice in theory, but can it actually be done?

Originally posted by LifeIsEnergy
reply to post by unityemissions

 

"I ask you again, how in the hell are you going to get these people to make a dent of difference to a tyrannical government which will use force, and has at least 70% totally brainwashed, without willing to use force ourselves??"

Those names mentioned previously (who you may actually enjoy reading about) all faced propaganda, bullets and force. People died, people suffered, people sacrificed... this was/is the unescapable reality... but in the end... the people won. They kept their dignity and self-worth... They remained true to themselves and the path of unity/peace/wisdom... and History has, and will continue to, show them as an example for how we are to create a better world.

Alright so this was a non-violent revolution you say...and yet people died, suffered, an some were sacrificed, which you say, "was/is the unescapable reality" . Then you say, "They kept their dignity and self-worth".


SCREW THAT. Do you realize how many are suffering each and every day because the system is allowed to continue on? Do you realize how many are forced into poverty, and how many end up dying because of this?! Do you realize how many suffer around the world because of the corruption in our own house?!

If THAT'S keeping my dignity and self-worth, I want nothing of it. You claim to be wise, but you seem to be incredibly foolish to me. Have you no clue what comes next? Can you not see how close we are to anarchy?! You will eat your words one day soon, sir or madam.

Q: Which is more likely to succeed right now in America, a non-violent or violent revolution?
A: What is your definition of success? The overthrow of this current government, or the accomplishment of changing what you want changed?

They are one in the same, fool.

reply to post by unityemissions


Study your signature, live by it, be it... then you will understand.

"A mind that has any form of fear cannot obviously have the quality of love, sympathy, tenderness. Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

reply to post by beezzer


I agree with you there Breezzer. We have seen many revolutions over the decades of supposed free peoples removing governments over their corruption, only to be replaced with alternatively corrupted governments. An example of this would be the result of the Iranian revolution or the Iraqi revolution. A movement of the people does not necessarily equate ot a change in how government works. Good OP

I do believe that revolutions are necessary, but people are quick to assume that a revolution ends once the corrupted government has been removed, it doesn't. The revolution continues years after into how government performs.

Originally posted by LifeIsEnergy
reply to post by unityemissions

 

Study your signature, live by it, be it... then you will understand.

"A mind that has any form of fear cannot obviously have the quality of love, sympathy, tenderness. Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Stop trying to act like your better than me, more educated, more intelligent or anything else.

You're a fool, and an idiot.

FEAR IS A NECESSITY FOR SURVIVAL AND LIFE.

Your QUOTE IS NONSENSE.

I see a lot of violent governments are already in charge of countries and so they are being violently overthrown...

Just an observation.....

And with Egypt, a 30 year long leader with this as the result says what an epic fail he is, and the people are just illustrating this..

reply to post by beezzer


You're right the Gandhi way is the only way to go. Peaceful civil disobediance en mass, which stops the gears of the machine, whereas violence just gives the machine something to do, even something it's often times trained to do very well.

I plainly disagree. When the government knows the people have no qualms with violent revolution, then they're not tyrannical.

reply to post by beezzer


"Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human."

And soon after,

"Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both."

These paragraphs come from "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire...

This is Marxist philosophy, by the way, so could we please get the propaganda out of our heads that Stalin's and Lenin's genocidal tendencies or China's Top-down Socialism light Police State are some how representative of Marxism as a complete doctrine?

Let's at least entertain new, enlightened ideas without reverting to historical chauvinism.

Great Post OP.

reply to post by 547000

Originally posted by 547000
I plainly disagree. When the government knows the people have no qualms with violent revolution, then they're not tyrannical.

History proves opposite.

Look at almost every single uprising against a European Colonial power by Asian, African and American states. Latin America ended up, without question, with repressive, racist regimes, from Mexico to Brazil (One could argue at this point that the US fulfilled a proxy role as regional oppressor as the European powers slowly withdrew, but that is a longer argument for another discussion - However, I point it out because one may argue that the US had a violent revolution against England and look at our society. The caveat here is that the Manifest destiny certainly took hold shortly after and certainly the Native Americans and African-American slaves were looking for less violence, wouldn't you agree?).

Cuba would be a perfect example of a continuous chain of violence: Spain over the indigenous. The native Cuban Spanish over the slaves, mestizos and mulatos. The US backs violent revolution and you have dictators with American ties until the violent revolution by Fidel against Fulgencio Bautista, ending in the rather repressive state that Cuba exists in at this time, not aided one bit by our embargo, mind you.

Look at the violence in Africa as a result of pushes against the Europeans.

Look at South Africa and Apartheid. We could say that that was relatively peaceful, considering, and they went through the whole Truth and Reconciliation process.

Poland and the Solidarity movement would be another example of peaceful transfer.

However, in both ZA and Poland, corporate interests and the IMF swooped in to assure austerity and turned burgeoning revolutions into privatization bonanzas (which means the people, in general, end up with as-bad or lower standards than before, just with more access to cooler, Western gadgets).

I don't know a lot about India, and certainly Gandhi had his own thoughts about peacefully getting rid of the oppression of England.

reply to post by unityemissions


Fear as a response to a stimulus/sign in the immediate environment is one thing. Fear of unforeseen shadows and false realities (i.e., propaganda) is manipulation of oneself and en masse. These are two different things.

The deer that hears a twig break or smells a predator needs to fear for survival.

A man who hears tales of a boogey man and cowers under the skirt of the state is delusional.

The deer can hear and smell possible danger.

The man hears and sees abstractions (soundbytes, flags, banners, posters, etc.). But these are abstractions. The concrete danger that may or may not exist is not experienced by the man's senses and he can only imagine based on the intermediate signs (and the manipulation that is inherent to them).

Originally posted by 547000
I plainly disagree. When the government knows the people have no qualms with violent revolution, then they're not tyrannical.

How would you organize the 70% you say are brainwashed (which I don't disagree with at all) into potentially violent storming of central government offices in this country?

You shouldn't argue the means (violent or peaceful) if for either outcome you cannot find a way to motivate the masses.

Rather, why assume one means will work over the other when both face the obstacle of apathy? Perhaps either violent or peaceful revolution are possible in the US once that obstacle can be overcome. But, until then, why not consider the later outcome of each scenario?

Originally posted by unityemissions
Why has this idea become so ingrained in the CT community?!
I know there's a lot of "feelers" here on this site, but this is just nonsense!
You can overthrow a tyrannical government without becoming a tyrant yourself.

You can -- or might. In reality, there are factors that make it less likely than you would like to think.
Such as, breakdown of mores previously existing in the society, breakdown of allegiance and by
definition, the presence of highly capable and ruthless wing in perpetrators of the new order.

How is it that people can honestly not see this being done?
Doesn't history show otherwise?!

It totally does not.French revolution and Russian revolution are two glaring examples.

Historically, most violent revolutions while not ideal, do bring the people a step closer to Democracy. It's usually baby steps, but steps non the less. We wouldn't be where we are now without violent revolt. Sure, it's a slow process, but you've got to stick it out.

When you look at the options without violent revolution, the outcome is far more grim.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. John F. Kennedy

Originally posted by unityemissions

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by autowrench

 

I had tried to make this a general debate, but on a personal level I must agree with you on the issues that plague America. The elections in 2008 illustrated that "change" can come from peaceful elections. I just hope that further "change" can also come from the same election process in 2012.

Wait a tic, you think the 2008 election process brought about "change?! Are you a racist?! lol. j/k.

The only change we got was a half dollar magically transformed into a few copper pennies. Yes, the copper may be useful in some things, but overall we got scammed.

We know the elections are a con. If you can't see that, you're a little behind in the CT world. Sorry bud, but that's just another "reality show" for the lemmings.

edit on 31-1-2011 by unityemissions because: (no reason given)

I think that was his point though (hence "change" in quotes). The point was that a mass of people CAN be rallied around a cause. This should not be negated even if that cause was veiling status quo. In 2012, perhaps the same momentum can be regenerated by us (those of us seeking real change) without the need for a "sponsor".

(Making sure my quotes are fully understood: Sponsor being one fo the two faces of the single corporate entity we call our two political parties in this nation).

I would add that the Tea Party could easily have been a violent movement or a peace movement. Now they are just a corporate movement. Those of you out there who say that you're in the Tea Party and Dick Armey, Palin, Bachmann and Beck don't speak for you should consider abandoning the label, it's been coopted by the Coch Brothers and the Republicans.

The OP's worries are legitimate though. Lying snakes are often replaced by lying snakes. That's politics. Without true Democratic infrastructure, that will always happen.

It happens in artificial-Democracies like Britain, France and America. And it surely happens in less stable nations like Egypt.

The problem has always been people trying to change rulers or government groups. You can't just replace the king and expect massive change. You need to work from the bottom up, root out the snakes.

reply to post by ThePeopleParty


People Power Revolution [The Philippines]

Does this count as seriously overthrow a government? Reactions?

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by unityemissions
Why has this idea become so ingrained in the CT community?!
I know there's a lot of "feelers" here on this site, but this is just nonsense!
You can overthrow a tyrannical government without becoming a tyrant yourself.

You can -- or might. In reality, there are factors that make it less likely than you would like to think.
Such as, breakdown of mores previously existing in the society, breakdown of allegiance and by
definition, the presence of highly capable and ruthless wing in perpetrators of the new order.

How is it that people can honestly not see this being done?
Doesn't history show otherwise?!

It totally does not.French revolution and Russian revolution are two glaring examples.

Since we're headed in this direction anyway, I might as well elaborate on our Revolution in the US and why it is not to be held up as an example of overthrowing tyranny by force and getting human rights in the end.

The idea is that we here in the US are an example of why bearing arms is needed and violent revolution can change the system for the better.

Once the revolution ended, slavery was still in tact. This is most certainly a reasonable point to show how things don't change after violent revolution. We cannot take the point of view of only an imaginary white "ego" at the time of the revolution, based on our history books and tales about our demagogic founding fathers. Besides the slaves, I'm pretty sure that many who were poor under the British continued to be poor under the new American aristocracy.

Manifest Destiny came shortly after the Revolution, that did not bode well for any Native American group in any American nation once the Colonial power was uprooted, because it was a violent revolution. The violence turns inwards and consumes and roots out all nay-sayers and obstacles to that glorious revolution's continuing spirit.

The Native Americans, again, must be included in the context. We cannot just look at the US's emergence out of colonial rule as some pure, sacrosanct response to tyranny in exchange for a perfect union (just "more" perfect - though that is debatable).

What really changed from 1776 to 1876? Certainly the same oppression continued (Only 1 in 7 Southerners were slave holders at the time of the Civil War) Aside from slavery, large amounts of "white" poverty existed in the South. In the North, waves of poor immigrants were ensuring cheap labor. After the civil war (more violence), things continued.

The Robber Barons era was a violent era, top-down. The strikes were met with violence, the Depression was violent. Civil Rights ear was violent.

And for my last case in point: we spend more than any other nation on this planet on our military budget.

Are we somehow fooling ourselves that violence is not in this nation's system? It's been over and over and over along our short history and it has culminated in some nasty displays of violence. There's complexities involved that would not be involved in a small country like Tunisia, but violence is nonetheless the root.

reply to post by unityemissions


I totally agree...This seems to be the most balanced post on here, The media are gonna spin this into something fiercely negative and no doubt the sheeple will buy it

reply to post by beezzer

Was your OP title true of the American Revolution?

How about 1956 when Hungary rose up against Soviet rule - encouraged by the democratic West - only to be abandoned to a brutal oppression and more Soviet ripoff and death and torture systems?

Isn't it just that Western people want freedom for themselves only?
Egyptians, Hungarians, Algerians, Poles, Tunisians, Colombians just do not deserve it.
We are second- and third-rate citizens.

Well, wait just a little. Not too long...