"I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." - Gandhi.

Some more from MLK: "But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?...It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity."

That part in particular: "large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity." is exactly why this defanged version of MLK is still so popular with white america regardless of con/dem/other.

Something more from Gandhi:

"Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

Yeah, Gandhi's a noted hindu mystic dick, I'm not arguing for his sainthood. I'm just heading that shit off at the pass because you know it's coming once the 'defanged white guy version of MLK' card gets played.

Sorry bawbag, I'm reasonably sure MLK Jr wouldn't advocate punching white supremacists at will, any more than he would have hated affirmative action like Republicans claim.

You nevertheless raise an interesting point, that anyone whose philosophy allows for, or anticipates an eventual need for, violence at some point needs to be punched in the face. Punched just for speaking that opinion or even holding it.

"I'm reasonably sure MLK Jr wouldn't..."

...said every white guy since he was killed by the state.
You're just as wrong on this as you were on Hillary Bort.

MLK is hailed as a black christ figure by white people because, in his own words "large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.".

You know why I'm reasonably sure MLK Jr wouldn't have punched white supremacists at will? Because he actually did the exact opposite.

Now I will agree with you that white supremacists (and their allies, "nice" white people who aren't racist but can't be bothered to do anything about racism either) love to defang MLK Jr so he was simply a really nice guy. In reality he demanded soul-searching and actual action from white people, and he was not shy about calling out dedicated racists and "moderates" alike. But you know what there is no record of him doing? Punching white supremacists in the face.

I'll agree to disagree Bort you statist stooge of the bourgeois!!!1one

I don't want to turn simon's thread into yet another gigantic shitpile and one of my fanclub has already fervently latched on to my sourest teat. It being only a matter of time before one of the others comes in squalling for me to feed them, for now I bid you adieu.

"Women are a great thing to punch" -John Lennon

world war 2: the Nazis start killing people and breaking stuff.

Response: kill them and break their stuff back


today: Nazis say stupid shit

Response: ^^^^

"I'll agree to disagree Bort you statist stooge of the bourgeois!!!1one"

No deal. You're simply wrong.

Nope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIh3qN0qwWo

So I submitted this video because I think Dr. King takes a reasonably nuanced view to the role of violence in affecting social justice. He recognizes there might be times where it is the only available tactic, but still holds nonviolent direct action as the morally superior method. This position captures my intuitions more closely than the hyperbolic positions we saw in the 'any way you want it' spencer punch thread: always punch nazis in virtue of holding such beliefs vs. never punch people for held beliefs, where "punch" is a shorthand for violence of some sort.

And there's another dimension to this that MLK Jr would likely recognize. There are those in the black community who think blacks will always be oppressed so long as whites are running the show, because frankly whites have nothing to gain by doing the hard work of undoing what they have wrought. That suggests an eventual need for force, and probably violence, if blacks are to achieve anything approaching real equality. Are whites allowed to punch blacks who think that way?

My point, of course, is that the person who advocates violence may not be entirely in the wrong, and the person doing the punching might simply be an oppressor.

As an aside, I'll add that I hope the passionate arguments here are not a microcosm of how the left will behave in response to Trump/Bannon lest it seeks hasten their reign.

The Left believes almost everyone in Washington is a Captain Planet villain, and that includes the Democrats. THAT'S what makes them useless, not their thoughts on punching Nazis.

Like this morning, two fairly progressive senators -- Brown and Warren -- announced that they intend to support Ben Carson as the new HUD director. The Left responded as they always do: cries of BETRAYAL! Well of course Brown and Warren actually have a job to do, so they looked at it thusly:

1) Trump, not the Democrats, gets to nominate the HUD director;

2) Ben Carson doesn't seem to be a monster bent on destroying HUD and in fact might be partially on board with HUD's mission;

3) there is absolutely no guarantee that Trump's second choice would be that reasonable.

So Brown and Warren, who again are adults, thought it through like adults and came to a sound decision like adults. And the Left will hate them forever for it.

I respect MLK's stance on it, and your reason for posting. I think the end of MLK's life and the only partial victory of the civil rights era show that they were only effective at enacting a partial inclusion to the status quo rather than the radical change he sought though, so ultimately I disagree with his stance and believe in the 'diversity of tactics' as regards violence/inciteful speech that presents an existential threat.

Anyway, the Peter Gelderloos interview I linked here is also quite a long, but interesting perspectives on it from some different, more activist points of view.

Sorry Bort but that is exactly why the neolib dems lost, no backbone.

It is the job of dem voters to hold their representatives feet to the fire and giving this government even the slightest appearance of legitimacy is the early-stages of quisling behaviour.

bawbag - show me someone who tosses the term "neoliberal" around and I'll show you a retard who has no idea what they're talking about.

The reality is that the Left isn't smart enough for democracy: they want the power but aren't willing to vote, which is a process so simple that even Teabaggers have figured it out.

"bawbag - show me someone who tosses the term "neoliberal" around..."

I'm not just tossing it around, Clinton is by definition a neoliberal (who doesn't sway all that far from her husbands 90's neolib policies in word or deed) and it was her at the helm of a largely neoliberal Dem party when they lost.

You'd need to be in some serious denial to think that Hillary was anything but a champion of all the same deregulation and laissez-faire economics shite as Bill.

I'm just going to loosely paraphrase P.A. Kropotkin (because the book has been buried deep in a box in my parents' basement 100 miles away since I had to move to a smaller place a few years ago and sacrificed or stored most of my books):


"I don't condone acts of violence, but I also can't universally condemn them because I understand that they are a natural and inevitable result of state oppression."

I would not punch a neonazi in the face and I would discourage others from punching a neonazi in the face, but I can't really condemn someone for punching a neonazi in the face because a natural and inevitable result of going around in pubic being a neonazi is that sooner or later someone is going to punch you in the face. That's just how people work.

You'll have to pardon me if that doesn't make sense, I just got home from working 9 hours doing sound at a single malt scotch tasting so I'm not exactly working at full capacity.

It's a lot more reasonable than most of the masturbatory kneejerk nonviolence around here recently. Kropotkin's a good read.

I still side more with the uMkhonto we Sizwe argument though.

"I'm not just tossing it around, Clinton is by definition a neoliberal"

Yep, you're a retard.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street/

And? What's your point? That she now pays lipservice to some stuff that she'll never have to enact? Dude honestly, the election has deranged you as much as the rest of the US.

She's a neoliberal every time she has had power. Judge by her actions, not her carefully-crafted, focus-group trigger words. https://www.thenation.com/article/a-voters-guide-to-hillary-clinto ns-policies-in-latin-america/

Would I still have preferred her in power than Trump, sure but that's not what we're saying here. I'm saying she's a neoliberal in practice, you're arguing -using her own marketing materials- that she isn't.

Well, ONE of my points is that you have this habit of ignoring what people believe in favor of what you wish they believed.

Beyond which, I didn't have to go past your link's rundown on Honduras to know that you get your info from bullshit sources. That article tells you NOTHING about Honduras but it goes directly to the conclusion that Hillary is a meanie who does mean things because she's a Captain Planet villain. If you can't tell me the name of the former Honduran president, what group arrested him, what group ordered the arrest, and why they ordered the arrest, then all you have done is swallow the bullshit conclusions of that article uncritically. Congratulations, you're no better than a Fox News viewer.

oh bort!

Right, I'll put you down for "don't know".

Here are some answers. Under the Honduran Constitution, presidents can serve only a single term. President Zelaya, who wanted to serve longer, planned to put a non-binding referendum on the next ballot for some proposed amendments to the Constitution, including allowing multiple presidential terms. The Honduran Supreme Court imposed an injunction against that. Zelaya went ahead and did it anyway. The Honduran Supreme Court sent soldiers to arrest Zelaya.

So what we have here is a president breaking the law for his own self-interest, and being arrested on orders of civilian authorities. This is what the Left has decided is a "military coup d'etat", even though it completely isn't.

Zelaya was no longer eligible for the Honduran presidency -- remember, term limit -- so Hillary's solution was not to reinstate him (and thus introduce another crisis of legitimacy), but rather hold a new round of elections. That is a perfectly fair, reasonable, sensible, and populist solution to the problem. Therefore, the idiot Left decided to Swiftboat Hillary over it.

If the Left is going to figuratively crucify an official over THAT, the Left is officially as broken as the Right, and do not deserve to win elections. Unfortunately, they get what they deserve, meaning the rest of us get Republicans.

That's a distraction to the main point and I could argue with it, but she's a neolib is the main point. You haven't disproven that reality.

You're the one making the charge that she's a "neolib", and in fact the very definition of one. Your word is not good enough. You don't deal in facts that lead to conclusions, you jump straight to the conclusions and don't let facts get in the way. I think MLK Jr would be pretty tempted to punch you in the head for that.

Hey bawbag ... ? I just realized that Sanders voted to confirm at least two of Trump's cabinet picks, Mattis and Kelly.

Bernie is a hypocritical shitbag like I've been saying all along, and you may suck it.

I'm not a bernie bro though, what's your point? Bernie fucking sucks same as the rest of the dems.

I'm honestly amazed you're still denying she's a neoliberal, you seem to think I'm implying that is a slur when in fact it's just descriptive of her policies going back decades.

I'm starting to think you have some half-cocked notion of what other people consider neoliberalism in mind and are arguing against that, because you need only look at her own record and words to see that she's very much a neoliberal however you paint it.

Hillary is not as anti-business as Bernie is. That does not make her a neo-liberal. Neo-liberals believe in the dismantling of regulations entirely or close to, and Hillary does not. I provided you a link to her recent platform; it's not a neoliberal platform. The stuff you're trying to hang on Hillary from the 1990s was the work of her husband Bill. You cannot make your case, hell you cannot be assed to define your terms.

Her record as secretary of state dude is solidly neoliberal. It would take a gargantuan amount of sand to stick your head in to claim otherwise.

I'm positive now that you are coming at this from some other interpretation of 'neoliberal' that bernbots have driven you nuts with.

Fuck off fatass, don't you have some more homophobic slurs to throw around?

No and no, fuckbag.

Oh was that your only homophobic slur? I see. Still speaks volumes about you.

I'm glad you're having this screechy meltdown btw, keep bravely one-starring my submissions if you're gonna be sticking around. If I might add, you could also start upvoting everything I downvote and vice versa if you really want to prove yourself to be the gigantic diaper-clad shit-eater you seem to be so far.

Stay mad fatso.

Anyway, do try not to shit up simon666's thread with your incessant idiotic pavlovian replies to me, okay chunky monkey? Try adding some submissions rather than sperging out here because you got your shit wrecked.

What's a little homophobic slur between best friends?

I'll keep doing that stuff so long as you keep posting and submitting like it's your personal trolling playpen, orcs.

Keep hilariously posting quotes that say the opposite of what you claim they do, idiot.

It's cute that you think trying to play 'sarcastic friends' or insisting that I must be orcs makes up for calling someone 'a fag' after several previous weaselly attempts at implying it.

I'm not your friend, if you died I'd consider the world lighter, one asshole and probably about 500lbs of shit.

You're a homophobic moron and if you spoke to anyone in real life like that, I hope they'd take my advice and stomp the shit out of your fat fucking neck.

Wow, you sound pretty mad, Mr. "I don't wish harm on any of you except for the two people on poetv I have done that exact just today."

Maybe I should call you gay more seeing how clearly mad you are at being called gay.

Or naybe, just maybe, there was some kind of subtext you're not quite getting.

Keep replying.

Yeah dude, I missed the super-deep subtext of you directly calling me "a fag" in this thread: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=158488

As for 'keep replying' it's you who are literally following me from thread to thread with this shit, almost like you enjoy the beating. Stay mad fat fuck and take your own advice to 'keep replying'. :^]

If bawbag was an orcs alt, i would be very impressed.

I see your typing wand hit the wrong reply button again fatty. hahaha comically inept.

Oops, you caught me.

Are we gonna play this game again? Please say yes.

That's a good phrasing of the issue and it captures well the importance maintaining one's moral legitimacy. Thanks, exy.

Your implicit premise is that subscribing to, advocating for, or practicing violence will preserve one's life. This is plainly false. If anything, advocating for some form of violence increases one's area as a target.

Counterpoint: Mandela lived a full life, having freed his nation.

Bawbag, that doesn't refute my point. At best you've shown is that we can't be sure what the role of advocating violence plays in preserving one's life. It seems to me that advocating violence or not is not what motivates an assassin, rather it is the social change that one is advocating, the content of one's beliefs, and not the necessarily the method.

The diversity of methods is the issue.

Nonviolence is a tool of the state in quelling real, effective change from the masses. Even MLK was arguably used as the 'respectable' face of the black nationalist revolution and to pacify it/pacify white moderates. (though the cointelpro papers clearly mentioned that they had to keep him nonviolent lest he become too effective).

He utilised the threat of their violence in many ways (armed deacons, speeches about how the malcolm X people would take over if he wasn't heard etc) though so the common narrative around his nonviolence is flawed when it so commonly leaves that aspect out.

I don't have the time at the moment for a very full reply, but I appreciate your position. I think, however, it gives too much weight to the optics (symbolic value/appearance/interpretive value) of nonviolence as opposed to what nonviolent direct action acts does on the ground in specific contexts. Whether or not there is an exigent rhetorical strategy to frame MLK as a the 'safer' option between he and Malcolm X is a separate issue, to my mind anyway, than the causal force of actually practicing nonviolent direct action.

I'll leave with this: unless one is going to wipe one's foes from the face of the earth, then we're going to have to learn to be neighbors after the culture war is over. I tend to think the consequent is goal and as such I think strategy should be such that those who can become our neighbors should be treated in a way that will allow for achieving that goal.

"He utilised the threat of their violence in many ways (armed deacons, speeches about how the malcolm X people would take over if he wasn't heard etc) though so the common narrative around his nonviolence is flawed when it so commonly leaves that aspect out."

Oh how you want to be able to say that MLK Jr was on your side and would approve of how you do things. Sorry, but MLK Jr's deal was NOT saying "nice country you've got here, sure would be a shame if something happened to it". That's utter horseshit, and if you think I'm white-peopling it, even blacks can tell you that MLK Jr wasn't Making Whites An Offer They Couldn't Refuse.

Bort, that's not at all what I'm implying there. I'm not the one claiming MLK is 'on my side'. I -am- pointing out that his belief was a lot more nuanced than 'nonviolence eternally, no matter what'. See his ANLCA support of the violent revolutions in Angola/Mozambique for example.

You -are- very much 'white peopling' MLK, same as every other white guy here or just about every white american IRL who brings him up to fart out a point on nonviolence so beloved of the bourgeoisie white moderate majority who benefit directly from the applecart not being upturned.

*almost every other.