Peace is only an option when the social contract is maintained.
When power structures violate it or make sure you're excluded from it, it's time for bricks
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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“Asking nicely” vs violence is a false dilemma.
There was a point to be made here but if you’re not going to treat the material seriously and just make a straw man out of your opposing view, don’t bother.
It's high time for a riot.
You want your rights?
You have to be willing to throw bricks.
Why not both?? Brought two you by a radical flank theorist.
Imagine a group of people that is perceived as violent agitators. Lets assume they have demonstrated that they will escalate their violence if their demands aren't met. However, the people in power do not want to negotiate with terrorists, do not want to legitimize violence and their only answer to it is oppression. Now imagine a second group of people that has adjacent demands but obeys to non-violence principles and to methods generally regarded as civil disobedience. This second group will point at the violent radicals and position themselves as a reasonable alternative. The people in power will see them as a way out of the violence and will be willing to negotiate with them.
Overall, the first group might not get all it wanted, but there will be compromise and change towards their demands.
This can only work with people in power who eventually, bottom down, have a conscience and semblance of ethics. Dictators don't care about repressing their own people and will avoid the false dichotomy by lumping both groups together and send them to prison camps.
In practice it is also really hard to navigate as the opposition to the people in power is de facto divided, creating double opportunities to tank each group with various techniques like media manipulation, attacking leadership with lawsuits, blocking funding etc.
Prisoners dilemma. Turn the other cheek all but guarantees oppression. Cooperation, and tit-for-tat (swift rebuke + forgiveness) wins
You are correct in the swift rebuke + forgiveness wins. I remember reading about that when some people were war gaming during the Cold War.
Requisite link directly talking about this:
The success of nonviolent civil resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w
Erica's original hypothesis was that violence was more successful, but was convinced to do research on the topic and found that while it does work, nonviolence on a mass scale is more effective.
The two papers:
Non violent resistance is a priveledge provided to us through past violence.
Workshop: arguments for keeping the fourth panel? I feel like ending on #3 is a lot stronger.
I think you're right, much better that way.
Thanks, useful advice on writing/pacing is rare.
I don't want to say about the frequency or which way is more effective, but there have been nonviolent revolutions. Wikipedia even has a page about it. It took me only a few seconds of searching to find it.
So, the comic author is mocking people who make conclusions without actually looking at the data, and meanwhile, they seem to have written the comic making the opposite conclusion ironically without actually looking at the data, either.
It would be so nice if things were always one way or always another way, and people love to assume that their common sense and existing knowledge will be enough to make conclusions, but the comic is right in that regard. If you tell other people your conclusions but you haven't done the research, you really do open yourself up to looking foolish.... Not that it seems like most people care about that these days.
That section of the Wikipedia page is pretty weird looking right off the bat. The first two are the cedar in Lebanon and the Mirabal sisters which are circumstances that are hard to call nonviolent.
The cedar revolution can only be called nonviolent if you disregard the 01 protest wave that preceded it and established with violence that everyone was actually on the side of ending syrian occupation and not having car bomb attacks all the god damned time.
And el jefe was fucking assassinated by the military at international urging. That’s not nonviolent!
I didn’t look any further but it really seems like a bad list that’s written with incredibly rose-colored glasses.
The article states what it considers a nonviolent revolution. It doesn't mean there was zero bloodshed, but that the actual parties that were trying to take power did not use or threaten violence.
Even if you disagree with their definition or believe that they gave a bad example, I imagine that you wouldn't find the entire list objectionable.
There are only 7 examples in the whole list.
I didn’t look any further
A very useful tactic in this specific situation.
A very useful tactic in this specific situation.
when you find counter examples to the premise you stop since the premise is demonstrably incorrect.
The entire list is counter-examples, even the ones they mentioned. I am guessing that they simply disagree with the definition given by Wikipedia. They seem to be claiming that violence prior to a revolution by somebody else who wasn't part of the party that came into power, but which weakened the authority, is disqualifying as a nonviolent revolution.
If they don't like Wikipedia's definition, then they can mention that. But it's impossible to argue against a premise that they didn't even specify. They didn't give substantive anything to argue against, so what would I even be arguing? Like I said, unless they state their specific problem, in my view, the entire list, even the ones they mentioned, are what you'd call counter-examples. They haven't given a better definition of a nonviolent revolution.
If you want an example where there was no violence at all by anybody, even unrelated parties, and again, the list is only 7 entries long, just look at the June Democratic Struggle, which is the fourth in the list. Two after they stopped looking further, and I think 4 more than you looked at.
The simple fact is the there are almost no examples of non-violent revolutions. Almost every single revolution has violence as a component of it. it doesnt matter if a particular group within the wider populace (ghandi) was non-violent they were uplifted by the actions of the violent groups if only to offer an alternative group to 'negotiate' with.
the simple fact is: revolutions dont occur unless violence is necessary, after all if violence wasnt necessary the changes would have been made long before the revolution grew legs cropped up.
right but that doesn’t change the fact the results are bleak
The real reason MLK Jr is posthumously a hero.
I too would have an easier time achieving major changes through non violent means if I had my jojo stand Malcom X standing menacingly out of sight behind me at all times threatening more violence and more uprisings if my peaceful demands were not met.
Ghandi too
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For best results, you need a trifacta.
A popularist movement is core. This should be non-violent and as welcoming to new members as possible.
A political group then acts as a focus for the group. It translates the mob grievances into politically actionable demands.
A radical group acts as the teeth. It forces the government to take proper notice of the other 2 groups.
The Irish troubles would be a good example. The popular movement was ignored by the UK government. It bubbles over into riots etc at times, which actually hurt their message in many ways. The Sinn Féin party focused the discontent and gave the UK government someone to negotiate with. Finally the IRA provided the force on the UK government.
Take away any leg and the whole movement stutters. If the popularist wing gets violent, then it bleeds members fast. Without a political wing, the movement is unfocused and will achieve nothing. The violent wing can be dropped IF there is sufficient threat of its existence/creation to keep governments motivated. Unfortunately, most governments that let things escalate that far will just dig in their heels, rather than do the sensible thing.
That's a well done analysis, thanks for the insight.
"The people in charge insist that rising up physically against the people in charge is always wrong, and so they've made rules against doing that, or suggesting it online, or making any sort of plans to do it. As always, the folk with all the money and power have all of our best interests in mind."
In an examination of 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns, between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent campaigns achieve partial or full success at twice the rate of violent campaigns
Looking at their chart near the top, it appears as if violence scores higher in most categories except for "non-violence security force defections" which eclipses every other datapoint by 20x-40x which probably realllly skews the average in favor of non-violence.
As usual, nonviolence only works if enough of the opposing force is not ruthless and unscrupulous.
Here, I opened the book (research paper) for you. and look! violence was involved in the successful outcomes!
especially in light of the enduring violent insurgencies occurring in some of the same countries—begs systematic investigation.
In many cases, both nonviolent and violent campaigns exist simultaneously among different competing groups.
you can't isolate the non-violent campaigns from the violent campaigns in such an analysis, they're part of the same environment.
I'll also note that the research paper doesnt clearly identify how they generated their numbers. the underlying dataset they used is enitrely absent. so we can't make any inferences on how well they actually isolated and calculated their values.
in short: doesnt show its work.
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Sure, and where does diversity of tactics rank?
It's rarely one or the other, eg. Suffragettes demonstrations were made much more threatening by the bombing campaigns that were happening in parallel, Gandhi was made much more threatening by the HSRA campaigns, MLK wouldn't have achieved jack without urban uprisings and the black panthers turning up the pressure in the background, etc.
We’re rapidly heading towards an inflection point where no amount of town halls, lawsuits, etc will fully halt the wave of destruction. So while these resistance campaigns are needed and should continue, how long are they going to work within the part of the timeline where democracy and all of the mechanisms have been fully eroded, reversed, and proven to be placebos?
I still find the meme funny, even if this is all far more nuanced. Some examples:
- A lot of cities are rejecting and shutting down Flock cameras, but in some cases the cameras quietly returned after the uproar died down. They simply waited for people to forget. At what point does it become justifiable to either cover all of the lenses or destroy them altogether?
- Similar with data centers. The billionaires are going to keep pushing them through, and in one case I saw recently, a town’s leadership even overturned votes against data centers, which was a clear-as-day example of democratic erosion. What good is democracy if it can be arbitrarily overridden? At which point is it justifiable to try and destroy a datacenter’s functionality in order to preserve life, especially when future generations are at stake?
I think eventually we’re going to need a combination of both, but it needs to be lead with structure and intelligence. Billionaires are going to continue to erode and ignore democracy, while a bunch of city officials will continue to fold to the almighty buck, similar to how AIPAC has turned tons of politicians into useless genocidal drones. We’re going to be pushed into a corner where we can either fight back with everything we have access to, or we can keep pulling on levers they’ve systematically destroyed in order to nullify our democratic power. It could be 5, 10, 20 years from now. We don’t know when but authoritarianism—especially now in such unknown times—makes it inevitable.
The TL;DR here is that we need to clearly define what counts as violence. Destroying Flock cameras and hindering data centers is in the same bucket and it’s self-defense, but it’s not violence in the sense that we think about it. If someone automatically thinks that “violence” means “overthrowing the government,” they’re willfully (or maybe not; probably a good time to educate and share knowledge with fellow working class folks) ignorant to a whole bunch of smaller, more focused acts.
Other examples:
- Chat Control in the EU (passed the parliament after numerous failed attempts even though a majority voted against it)
- The SAVE Act in the US (passed the House after numerous failed attempts through an unrelated "must-pass" budget bill)
- Canada's Bill C-22 (hasn't passed yet, but the mass surveillance apparatus wants to push it through)
- Not putting Trump and his co-conspirators in prison after the January 6th violent coup attempt
- Not prosecuting anyone from the Panama Papers (which seems to have been almost entirely forgotten in the public view)
- Not prosecuting or arresting any of the Epstein criminals in the US
And those are just very recent examples.
I appreciate you expanding on examples. All of this paints a clear picture, and even Peter Thiel has said the quiet part out loud: the ruling class see democracy as a problem because it prevents them from owning everything and keeping us as wage slaves.
and keeping us as wage slaves
That's just an intermediary goal. The end goal is actual slavery.
Eh, I'm not so convinced. Capital didn't allow slaves to be replaced with paid laborers out of the goodness of their hearts, but because slavery became obsolete - it's simply less profitable.
If you've got a bunch of enslaved workers, not only do you have to keep them alive (i.e. provide some minimal amount of food/shelter/medicine), but you also have to keep them in line and prevent them from just running away. That means you need to employ guards (enough to stay above some minimal ratio of slaves to guards), which is an additional cost. Not to mention that people generally don't enjoy carrying out forced labor, so your slaves will likely not be as productive as possible.
Now, if you take the same group of slaves but convince them that they're "free" and are performing voluntary labor in exchange for some form of monetary compensation, the whole equation changes. You can just pay each "wage slave" the same amount that you would have been paying yourself for necessities, plus maybe a token amount on top so that they can occasionally access a little bit of luxury and keep morale up. You don't have to pay to maintain a guard force (now the guards can also be employed as ordinary laborers, increasing your labor pool!), and workers will probably be more productive on average since they get to feel like they're getting something in return for their effort. It's literally just more cost-effective than slavery - the former slaveholder has fewer costs, lower risk of their workers revolting, and better performance per-worker.
The calculus got a bit imbalanced for the better part of the last century, since the rapid and continuous economic growth throughout much of the world (the Western imperial core in particular) meant that there was enough surplus that workers could actually sustain a decent level of luxury expenditure on an ordinary salary. Now that growth is slowing down Capital is just clawing back the territory it allowed to get taken during the glut. I don't see us returning to actual slavery, but something more like how things already are for much of the working class across the imperial periphery and developing nations (or like things used to be in the imperial core; think British factory workers in the mid-late 19th century): shitty working and living conditions, and long working hours in exchange for barely enough pay to scrape by.
True, but things could change again, slavery could become profitable again.
Maybe just starting with getting paid in some cryptocurrency company scrip, maybe made profitable because they can use robots and surveillance as guards, etc. But I don't think they'll ever be truly satisfied with wage slaves. They begrudge every single penny they have to part with in wages.
How could slavery ever become cheaper though? You need some type of guards/supervisors to keep the slaves from just leaving. I guess you could get rid of that and just entice laborers by offering shelter, food and other essentials in exchange for work, but that's not really the same thing that people generally mean when using the word "slavery" - it's a 1950s-era coal mining town in West Virginia. Unless someone develops a way to get people to continue working for less than the bare minimum they need to scrape by (i.e. the workers all die of hunger, disease or exposure), there really isn't a way you can get away with lower cost per worker than by using wage slaves under capitalism.
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Repeat after me: Carrot or stick. If a group has been wronged, they are only responsible to offer one of the two, you can decide which you will take when it becomes time to talk about solving the problem
Remember the words of Martin Luther King: "When you're marching in the streets try not break anything."
I came hear to check whether someone already gave this answer. Thanks. :)
I swear half of lemmings are yellow guy
I'd say a full 100% of us are considering both guys are yellow guy.
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