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Or Kill Me / Re: We have to be ready to fight.
« Last post by Bird Daughter on Today at 08:29:18 pm »I don't know if you mean 'fight' in a physical sense so forgive me if this is off topic, but this reminds me of a video I saw addressing people who think you can use pacifism towards violent oppressors ('terrorism' in this context just means 'militancy').
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25G_YO-S38
They say we need to think about the real world consequences of our violence. I say they need to consider the consequences of inaction towards large scale violence against innocents like law and wage slavery. We should try to use as little violence as possible, but most oppressors are not going to be convinced to give up their positions by talking to them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but we need to have some real tactics prepared and with the threats of global warming, nuclear war, and day to day death and suffering, the window for conversation is rapidly closing.
The idea that set this thing off in my head was a story I heard about a relatively open, tolerant, LGBTQ+weirdoes-friendly online community that got infiltrated by alt-right douchebros, and when they finally revealed themselves the natives gave up and ceded the virtual territory. Personally, I think the distinction between punching someone and doxxing someone can't be described in terms of one being violent and the other being non-violent. I think it's wrong to have a definition of violence that begins and ends with "directly causing physical harm to the body of another human." Taking away someone's health coverage so they die is violent. Coaxing someone who is depressed and in crisis into killing themselves is violent. Refusing to convict vigilantes and police officers for killing black people is violent. Getting someone fired from their job for saying racist/sexist shit on twitter is violent.
I don't think violence in and of itself is wrong. I think there are varying degrees of violence and the most pragmatic way of dealing with the world is to be as non-violent as possible while protecting the space you take up, and defending the space of others if they are unable to protect themselves.
There's a poem I wrote a while back under the title "girl at the punk show" that I think is relevant here. I grew up in a very liberal town, with very passive (as in "non-violent") liberal parents. I grew up with the standard "violence is hitting people" definition, and I generally tried to be a good kid. So a few years back, when I went to my first punk show, it was bizarrely liberating to be in a space where shoving, hitting, and punching were not violence. At least, not an unacceptable kind of violence. If you want to hold your ground in that environment, you are going to have to fight for it, and everyone in that space by the stage knows this and accepts these rules of engagement.
Once you get your head around that, you can start looking at the world less in punching vs. not-punching and more in terms of appropriate force, escalation vs. de-escalation, and the right tool for the job.
I live in an extremely conservative town, I used to know a muslim kid at school who would get harassed everyday, being called a terrorist and that kind of thing. It might mot seem much the way I'm wording it but it was really bad, he endured a lot of psychological damage. One day he swung a punch at one of their faces and was expelled.
Perhaps we could take advantage of the fact that indirect violence is not seen as violence. Usually it flows from the powerful to the weak, but I'm sure we could find a way to target the ruling class in a violent campaign without gaining them sympathy or even notoriety. The question is how to utilize that in a useful way. Cyber attacks are one idea, but I think most people by now appreciate their impact.
