I believe if everyone who was against the current oligarchy started placing guillotine stickers everywhere, like you might for a favorite band, people would feel less isolated in their distaste for the current system.
And in an ideal world those who the guillotines are for might realize just how much they are in the minority.
When political violence is normalized on one side already, why shouldn’t the other fight back?
I swear the conditioning is real with all these folks :(
“This guy is literally stabbing me repeatedly and currently ripping my intestines out, but if I try to stop him or defend myself in any way shape or form then I’m stooping to their level and that’s worse than dying.”
For fucks sake…
I think because you don’t have the historical context about what the guillotine lead to you are misunderstanding what they said.
Because the cycle of violence always escalates and is ultimately self-defeating.
Just make sure you finish the fight
Does it though? Read back through history
I mean in the case of the guillotine it literally is. St Just ended up guillotined himself, having sent hundreds of people to their deaths as one of the guillotine’s most zealous proponents.
So defending yourself is self-defeating?
Interesting take…
No, that would be a most uncharitable interpretation of what I’ve been saying (and rather a loaded question.)
You’re still simply wrong about political violence never working.
Love it or hate it, through the vast majority of history, it has accomplished tons.
It has also occasionally backfired or otherwise made the situation worse.
For whatever reason, you want to focus on the latter and call it “always.”
The problem that I’m getting at is that it works both ways, not that it never works.
It’s a gamble, to be sure.
But the gamble of inaction and apathy isn’t working very well either; I’m sure you can point to just as many horrifying historic examples of when doing little to nothing didn’t work out.
All that to say, “Sometimes things don’t work out” is true but not very helpful unless you intend to feed apathy, at which point it’s a highly effective strategy.
So why not use a symbol from a successful example? Why use a symbol from an example we should avoid repeating at almost any cost? I think it’s because most people see the guillotine as a symbol for retribution against the ruling class.
lol
Luigi was successful. Temporarily.
One might argue the “temporary” could be fixed by increasing the magnitude of the solution…
There’s never been a successful revolution?
Violent revolutions have a huge risk of producing prolonged violence, authoritarianism, or other disastrous outcomes, even if they succeed in overthrowing the old regime.
On the other hand here are some successful non-violent revolutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution
Nonviolent revolutions generally produce better institutional outcomes than violent ones (it’s science).
Also watch out for selection bias - we tend to remember revolutions that became enormous historical events. Check out this table of pitiful forgotten revolutions and note how many “Suppression of the rebellion” there are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts
Holy liberal brainrot. Did you just seriously link the wikipedia article for “color revolutions”, a series of CIA-backed counterrevolutionary and deeply reactionary insurgencies, as a list for successful non-violent ‘revolutions’?
All of those color revolutions had massive detrimental effects on the population, skyrocketing inequality, destroying decades of progress in women’s liberation (the ex-Yugo regions for example still aren’t close to catching back up), and destroying education systems and economies, forcing them to sell out to international capital.
So how exactly did they produce “better institutional outcomes” than actual Socialist revolutions? Easier to exploit on the world market? Better startup culture? Lmao
Is the CIA in the room with us right now?
https://lithuania.lt/news/life-and-work-in-lithuania/the-baltic-way-how-holding-hands-changed-history/
On August 23, 1989, a momentous event unfolded that would forever leave its mark on history. Two million people joined hands, creating an unbroken human chain that spanned over 600 kilometres, linking the capital cities of Vilnius in Lithuania, Tallinn in Estonia, and Riga in Latvia. This awe-inspiring display of unity and determination became famously known as “The Baltic Way.” It was a peaceful protest against the illegal Soviet occupation and also one of the earliest and longest unbroken human chains in history.
The Baltic Way was more than just a physical connection; it was a profound political demonstration for freedom.
Remarkably, within just six months of this transformative protest, on March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared its independence, becoming the first of the Soviet Republics to do so.
You don’t even know what you’re talking about, conflating apples and oranges. The Baltic independence movements aren’t referred to as color revolutions, those happened in the 2000s in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
And of course, something cannot be the result of foreign involvement, awful racial-nationalist thought that has plagued the Baltics for ages (and still does), and malevolent capital interests if lots of people are holding hands, that much is clear.
Whatever man, they’re all examples of successful nonviolent revolutions. Successful in the sense that they overthrew the previous regimes and what came after was probably better than what would have come after if they achieved the same thing violently.
I’m just a guy trying to make sense of the world and share the fragments of what I’ve managed to piece together and you come in here throwing around insults and making aspersions. Not cool.
When you encounter someone who is starting to get nasty and bad faith in a political discussion like this (“You don’t even know what you’re talking about”), remember to check their instance.
This particular user is from lemmy.ml, which tells you a lot if you’re familiar with lemmy.ml users; it’s incredibly rare that they’re not actively pushing some form of propaganda, 99% of the time being anti-West propaganda.
That depends on how you define success. It also depends on how you define revolution. If the French Revolution can be defined as ending when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, then I think that qualifies as a failed revolution.
But there’s been successful revolutions, so the cycle of violence does not always escalate.
The cycle will escalate until it is broken. How long it runs before it gets broken might be a useful part in defining “successful revolution”: the successful ones break the cycle of violence as early as possible.
Violence is inescapable.
Do you eat food? That is an act of violence.
Not all acts of violence use physical force; not all uses of physical force are acts of violence.
Did the food consent to being harvested?
No, because no food can, other than arguably humans, but that’s usually illegal.
I would count killing and eating an animal as a non-violent, physically forceful act, all else being equal. I realize that puts me at odds with many vegetarians and vegans, but in the context of violence against other human beings I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
deleted by creator
Violence is any act which removes the rights from another being, this includes the right to live, this includes the right to autonomy.
Even vegans commit violence, plants can feel, and don’t consent to being eaten. (Gets a bit funny when it comes to stuff where it’s not actually alive though, just a vector to spread seeds)
Edit: bad internet connection made this post 3 times
If eating an apple fits the definition of violence, then it’s a poor definition.
Well yes, but that’s cause there’s no good definition of it really.
It’s either too loose as to be useless, or so narrow as to be useless