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Russian and Chinese Bots Fueling Online ‘Violence’ After Charlie Kirk Shooting
(www.thedailybeast.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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The people I "disagree with" already want to send people like me to camps? They are already sending some citizens to countries they have literally never been to. We are past the point where simple words will do.
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I meant listen to people like this. I definitely didn't mean listen to the MAGA people, no.
Ohhh. Yeah I still disagree with Sanders but I wish I belived the world he thinks could exist could. Unfortunately it seems like political violence has been the only way things have changed throughout history and it seems like it will continue to be that way.
The fuck?
I literally cannot think of a single one of those (or any other issue) where the resolution would have come sooner or better, if the side supporting it had been shooting random leaders on the other side. Sometimes violence is involved, sure, but literally every time I can think of assassination coming into the picture, it was being done by the bad guys, and it made things worse.
Edit: Actually, I thought of two: In reconstruction in the US, and in postwar Germany, I think in hindsight it would have been better if they'd killed more of the political leaders. The difference there is that it was settled on a mass scale first, and then, we're just implementing the will of the majority faction in an already deadly-mass-violence situation. If you're in the minority faction (unable to get your will enacted through the democratic process because 40% of the country supports fascism for example), and you start randomly killing leaders to try to make it your way even so, you're gonna have a bad time. Win or lose, you're not going to get to a destination I want to go to.
None of those happen at all. They never happen without the "threat of force"
Whether implied or actually used. All power flows forth from the threat of force. If the threat of force doesn't exist then there is no reason for bad actors to negotiate at all. They can just roll over anyone they want.
The absence of the Threat of Force is why protest in this country doesn't work. Because those in power know that its toothless. Look to Europe and Asia. To South America. When people protest there the politicians perk up because they know that the protest isn't the end. It's the prelude to God only knows what. Riots. Fires. Farmers dumping tens of thousands of pounds of manure on parliament. Etcetera. Their protest isn't toothless. They have not been taught since birth that "violence is always wrong". They will burn shit. They won't start with burning shit. But that is invariably a potential outcome if protest is ignored.
Completely agree with more or less all of that. In particular:
Yes, we should definitely be doing more of that. And, I think it is particularly interesting that most of the suspicious accounts I observed on Lemmy during the beginning of the "No Kings" protests were super against the idea of getting organized and going out in the streets as a prelude and preparation for things like that. They were saying things like that particular protests were a "false flag," extensively nail biting about the unsafe nature of getting out to protest, that they were going to sit this one out, stuff of that nature.
I wonder why they were so against organized vigorous disobedience, and now they're so in favor of random sudden violence against leaders. Almost as if one leads to much different outcomes than the other, and they're trying to mold things specifically towards one of the outcomes and not the other.
Well, if you assume any action wherein someone loses and someone wins is violence... sure. Economic sanctions? Violence. Political action? Violence. Organized non-violent protest? Better believe that's violence.
There are some people who only respond to violence because they act with violence... but by no means is that the only thing any bad actor ever does.
And yet they have to keep doing it. Over and over and over. Almost like it doesn't actually fix things, just look at France. They've been through six republics and they still haven't had lasting positive momentum. They've had violent protests almost non-stop about just about every issue there's been in the last decade or more... and yet things haven't really been fixed. The people in power still do what they think is best, often to the benefit of themselves and the detriment of the rest of the populace.
Even if violence can promote change... it doesn't promote solutions.
You have to be at the negotiating table to form a solution. And you can't get there without violence. Implicit or exercised. You need it to reqch the negotiating table and you need it to back your play.
If you aren't at the table. You're on the menu.
I mean... the abolition of slavery may be a bad choice on your part. Here in America there was a ton of violence on that aspect, and I argue we'd have had a lot less heartache if the confederate officers were treated like the traitors they were.
Violence was the response from the people who decided they didn't want to abolish slavery. It was already well on its way by the time the south seceded.
There was quite a bit of violence before the Civil War committed by the abolition movement, too.
I was talking about a specific thing which didn't exactly include the civil war: Specifically the idea of randomly assassinating leaders who represent the "evil" faction (from whoever's point of view), anonymously from out of the crowd. Mass violence as a way of implementing the will of the majority, once the other outlets for implementing it have failed, is a whole other story.
I also agree with you about violence against confederates after the war was over. Read my edit, I realized it and added that as a specific category where we could have used more of that, yes.
How do you define the term political violence? Genuinely asking because I think we might be speaking past eachother if you don't consider the civil war, and a lot of the civil rights movements to be examples without political violence.
I was very specific about what I was talking about. Search in these comments for "assassination" and "shooting" to see when I discussed it precisely.
I'm not trying to talk about "political violence" in the abstract, specifically because it can mean different things to different people, and I don't see the point in getting tangled up in definitions. So in that sense maybe we're talking past each other. You said "political violence," but instead of dealing with that topic in the abstract, I narrowed it down to the specific Charlie Kirk incident, and then talked in specifics about what types of things I do and don't support. You can search for "will of the majority" to see me talking positively about some things that it sounds like you might define as political violence.
Protests are the threat of violence. People complain about them being ineffective but they are just too small then.
Most of the important social change throughout history has been done by slow constant effort of people being organized and persistent, not violent.
The change didn't come from violence, it came from the actions of people in the wake of violence.
That's why you use complex words :)