The 87-year-old whose eviction sparked a domestic crisis and triggered nationwide anti-government protests has died in hospital late on Wednesday. Protesters say they will continue to demonstrate to uphold her legacy.
The 87-year-old whose eviction sparked a domestic crisis and triggered nationwide anti-government protests has died in hospital late on Wednesday. Protesters say they will continue to demonstrate to uphold her legacy.
This is why i also said preparing for violent struggle is not the same as actively pouring oil into the fire. There’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst. But advocating (NOT preparing!) for violence when so many paths are still open is begging for unneeded casualities on both sides. This has nothing to do with tying your own hands, it has to do with how humane you want to be. Do you want to be as inhumane an CEO deciding to raise rents beyond whats reasonable? If you do not care about loss of life or limb - go ahead! and fuck you all the same, just as they can get fucked, because they left they humanity behind, and you did just the same.
I ultimately think your heart is in the right place, but your focus is misguided. It’s not pouring oil on the fire to recenter the conversation around the issue that is fuelling the rage. You’re not going to find much success appealing to the better angels of the corpos. They’ve made their decision. I don’t want to see anyone hurt, but the natural consequences of their inhumanity, is retribution in kind. Protecting them from the consequences of their own actions is as good as permission to escalate. I will mourn for those who are hurt in the crossfire, but they need to know where this ends and there’s no clearer way to remind them the cost of playing with fire than to let them get burned. I will not encourage violence, and I will continue to work to fix the problem by advocating for reasonable housing accommodations. But I’m not going to restrain those who have been pushed past their limits. The rights of free men and women are paid for in blood, and they always have been. I don’t have to like it. But not liking the price, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be paid.
When I was a boy, my grandfather taught me to hunt. When I took my first buck, there were tears streaming down my face. After the buck was dead, my grandfather didn’t yell at me for crying, he knelt down with me and he said a prayer of thanksgiving over it. He didn’t tell me to “man up and get over it”, he told me to never get comfortable with taking a life, any life. It might be necessary, that buck fed our family for months, at a time when meat from the grocer would have been too much of a luxury. But you should never let yourself get numb to what it cost, either the deer, or you. I don’t believe in gods or bibles these days. I still say a prayer after every kill, and it still hurts.
I won’t tell you to numb yourself to the cost. I won’t ask you to cheer for blood. I will ask you to look away and keep your eye on doing whatever you are able to make sure no one ever feels their only path forward is violence again. Understand what brought them to that point, cure the disease and let the symptoms run their course. Symptoms aren’t directly caused by the disease. They’re the body’s natural defences. Sometimes they will get carried away and you need to rein them in, but they serve a purpose.
Recentering has nothing do with violence per se, and i do not think appealing to corpos is going to change things by itself. But we have civil institutions in Europe that can be an vent for all of this aggression without causing bodily harm. I believe that democracy can enact meaningful change without physically harming people.
I have never killed an animal larger than a fly, and i would never do that outside of a fight to the death, because i realized the sanctity of life. Nothing can give it back, and nothing can be gained by senselessly spilling blood. I am also an atheist - religion is a socially accepted delusion for me, and should be treated like any mental illness to release humanity from this cycle of insanity society has been caught in thousands of years ago.
I am sorry that you were indoctrinated to make it ok to kill random animals for your gain.
And how well are those working right now? How’s the resistance to spiralling authoritarianism going in France, in Germany, in most European countries? How are your institutional outlets holding up to Russian and American propaganda? Because I know here in Canada it sure isn’t sunshine and roses. Sometimes you have to remind the right wing that the system protects them, as much as it protects us so they quit undermining it.
Not the point, but unless you’re a vegan, I’m just more honest about it. Also, the ritual isn’t about faith, it’s a frame of mind. The point of the story was that there is a whole world of difference between not caring about life, and accepting that life is messy and sometimes ugly and choosing to do the least harm for the greatest good is the kindest choice you can make.
My general point was that standing back and letting a little selective violence leak through can be enough to remind everyone what the stakes are, and can prevent a lot more violence down the road. Demonstrating that you aren’t so lost in bureaucracy that you’ve forgotten how to hit back quells a lot of ambitions and saves lives in the long run.
They are working better than anything humanity has done before in the last thousands of years, people keep forgetting that.
And i have practically become an ovo/lacto-vegetarian - i had a stomach operation years ago resulting in a massively diminished nutrient absorption and strongly reduced portion size (Roux-en-y bariatric surgery) which prevent me from going further down that route, since according to my dietologist i should eat at least 90g of pure protein per day to make sure my needs are met while my portion size is very limited depending on food type; add that to the fact that you can’t really subsist on pure protein and cutting out milk products becomes real hard (actually my dietologist was pretty adamant about making sure i eat meat, but i simply lost the taste for it with everything surrounding it)
Edit: The real issue i have is that nearly every legitimate movement in the last decades has been publicly denigrated by the actions of elements that have used physical violence as their outlet. If you are someone who wants things to get better for people, you can’t simply accept elements who by their actions are actively hurting both the movement and people. It is important that these people, instead of acting like fucking animals with enough smarts to do real damage, try to integrate into the movement as a whole. I am aware of the media warfare that is happening under these circumstances, and that makes it EVEN MORE important to make sure that when violence happens, it is with clear intent and not some random bullshit.
I understand your position. I disagree with the framing. We remember the successful part of the movements that remained peaceful, because in the end it’s the peace we’re looking for. We downplay the fact that the peaceful resistance was only given a fair hearing because they were the reasonable alternative to branch of the movement that was far less restrained. Both factions were equally necessary to drive change. Both fail to produce productive outcomes without the other. Violence alone produces only more violence, that is true. But words without stakes have no weight.
All movements for justice are slandered by those in positions of power. They will play the victim regardless. I think the things done in the October 7th attack were horrific. And at the same time I recognize the response is even more monstrous. The public is far more willing to forgive an underdog when they lash out, regardless of how the media spins it. Americans wouldn’t be celebrating “St. Luigi”, who objectively murdered a man in cold blood if the media environment were the only factor. You can create rhetorical distance without condemning the rage that fueled the violence.