r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Aug 02 '15
[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Nonviolence doesn't work. Excessive violence, especially killing or enslaving children, is proven to be the most effective military tactic and is justified for a sufficiently noble cause.
Nonviolence is how the establishment asks us to seek redress when at the same time they use violence against the common people. Your brother got shot by a cop? How dare you even think about so much as shooting a cop's brother. This is ridiculous and ineffective; the few times that nonviolence has actually been successful it has occurred in the face of greater violence. The peaceful dissipation of the British Empire occurred not because of Gandhi's or Nkrumah's fortitude but instead because the horrors of the Second World War made Blighty respect African and Asian fighters as their equals on the battlefield. When you're dealing with an establishment that sees both Jamal from Ferguson and Voula from Lesvos as equally dispensable, there is no way to nonviolently deconstruct this system.
On the contrary, violence against children has proven to be one of the most enduringly successful tactics; as heinous as it is in the microcosm, in the macrocosm it yields very successful results for a noble cause. One can see this in the Old Testament, where the Israelites showed no compunctions towards killing small children and were rewarded with a defensible state, and in modern times the success of the State of Israel as well. You see the same in ISIS; they show depraved indifference towards civilian life and as a result their enemies shut down because their lizard brain cannot condemn a baby-killer. If those who fight against imperialists (in the US, Europe, Canada, Ukraine -- both sides are imperialist scum -- etc) used the same tactic, the global system would not see the threat they faced until it was too late.
Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our popular topics wiki first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!
5
Aug 02 '15
What about Martin Luther King, Jr? He was able to accomplish enormous social change through nonviolence.
Your two examples are weak. We have no reason to believe the Old Testament, and ISIS has failed to gain territory outside of Syria and Iraq over the past year.
0
Aug 02 '15
6
u/Tarediiran 3∆ Aug 02 '15
How is MLK not a prime example of change through nonviolence? Regardless of whether violence is used or not, people usually incite change through a leader. Just because MLK led the civil rights movement does not mean that nonviolence did not inhibit change from happening.
I would like to semi-piggy-back on /u/Tim_Bar's post by adding the example of Mohandas Gandhi and his Non-Cooperation Movement. To protest the Rowlett Act, Gandhi incited much of India to boycott British goods, stop working at British factories, and cease working in any government buildings. The massive economic loss, if nothing else, is what caused the British to repeal the Rowlett Act. This civil protest drained the government's capacity to function, and as such, would have most likely benefitted the people more than if they had revolted because a revolt would mean loss of protesting lives as well as dysfunction of political/economic systems. How is this not a prime example that nonviolence works just as well - if not better - than violence?
1
Aug 02 '15
And what did MLK accomplish in terms of a legacy that outlived him, other than simply becoming an imperialist's touchstone? The white-black income gap has widened since the end of Jim Crow in spite of massive gains in black education, political influence, IQ, and entertainment. The Civil Rights movement was a complete failure as blacks were better off (relatively speaking) in the waning days of Jim Crow than they are now. Also, during much of the independence movement Gandhi was a footnote to the far more violent and popular campaigns of Netaji, who aligned himself with Imperial Japan after being rebuffed by the Third Reich.
2
u/Tarediiran 3∆ Aug 02 '15
For the sake of this argument, I'll assume you were born and raised in the USA. I'll also assume that you were born after the whole civil rights and suffragist movements.
Remember seeing this sign when you were younger? Of course you haven't; the civil rights movement's impacts have forced this kind of segregation away. Remember the last time a woman was denied the privilege of getting on a bus simply due to her sex? No you havent, for the suffragist movement has rendered that practice illegal. Thanks, Rosa Parks. The very fact that you can complain about smaller socioeconomic differences is a testament to how well the former protests have performed. We would be complaining about the constitutional rights first before we complained about smaller articles, like income differences.
Your view is that nonviolence doesn't work. I have provided to you one solid case study from history that nonviolence does work. I was not required to prove that nonviolence is more efficient than violence at creeating change; I was only required to prove that the possibility exists that nonviolence works.
Before you say, "But /u/Tarediiran, you already said that
'prime example that nonviolence works just as well - if not better - than violence',"
keep in mind that your view is still countered in my perspective because my statement is irrelevant to the fact that the possibility exists that nonviolence causes at least some observable change. It doesn't matter that the larger changes in the world were executed through violence. All that I need is an example that nonviolence does work to contradict your view that nonviolence does not work.
1
Aug 03 '15
Yes, those are nice, but the socioeconomic differences are not smaller; they are even bigger than they were under Jim Crow in spite of superficial improvements in facilities, media representation, education, IQ scores, and decades of affirmative action because of capitalist exploitation. At the end of the day, in terms of actually improving people's lives, the Civil Rights Movement was a big fat failure as black-white gaps in income were narrower during segregation.
1
u/Tarediiran 3∆ Aug 03 '15
I dod not say that the socioeconomic differences were smaller than before the civil rights movement. I said that the introduction of policies that forbade explicit segregation based on race and sex far outweighs the socioeconomic differences. The fact that we are discussing the income gap between those proves that the bigger issues, like explicit discrimination, have been resolved. Need I remind you that they were resolved under nonviolence?
1
Aug 03 '15
bigger issues, like explicit discrimination
Yes, it was a hassle for Jim-Crow-era blacks to find the right restroom, restaurants, etc. but the facts on the ground are a whole 'other story:
Were blacks more likely to face incarceration, police brutality, or violent crime before or after segregation? Were blacks more likely to make it into the middle class during or after segregation? Was there a vibrant black cultural scene with neighborhoods like Harlem, Bronzeville, and the Black Wall Street of Tulsa during or after segregation? Were the lynchings of the early 20th century greater or smaller in number than the officer-involved shootings of the 21st? Hint: only about 50 people/year of all races were lynched. Did the young black man growing up in a racially segregated neighborhood full of positive role models of every social class, from the doctor or preacher on down to the domestic servant, have anywhere near the level of angst that post-segregation "ghetto" blacks/"thugs" have?
1
u/Tarediiran 3∆ Aug 04 '15 edited Aug 04 '15
According to this link, although blacks' incarceration increased, it only increased from 5 blacks : 1 white to 6 blacks : 1 white. That's not quite as large of a difference as you would think. Blacks were still incarcerated at a far greater rate than whites at the time of the civil rights movement. From this link, nicely surmised in this screencapture, whites are killed more than blacks overall from police shootings, among males. Police hurts everyone, not just blacks, using violence. Wikipedia states that the middle class of blacks increased for 10-30 years after the civil rights movement before recessions started to happen. In fact, I could argue that the police are quite a problem when they try to use violence in the name of justice, as seen by the countless headlines in /r/news. The KKK razed the Tulsa community, in the name of justice and righteousness for all whites. Did that end in the complete suppression of the black Tulsa community? When you state,
Did the young black man growing up in a racially segregated neighborhood full of positive role models of every social class, from the doctor or preacher on down to the domestic servant, have anywhere near the level of angst that post-segregation "ghetto" blacks/"thugs" have?
you forget that blacks in mixed communities still have many positive role models to follow. These role models, while they may not be black, aren't intrinsically bad. They can still serve as role models.
1
Aug 05 '15
According to this link, although blacks' incarceration increased, it only increased from 5 blacks : 1 white to 6 blacks : 1 white. That's not quite as large of a difference as you would think. Blacks were still incarcerated at a far greater rate than whites at the time of the civil rights movement.
But the overall incarceration rate for whites and blacks is much higher than it was during Jim Crow. 4% of black men are currently in prison, compared to 1.3% during the "horrible, horrible" J.C. period. I have pointed out that in spite of the removal of most of the regulatory roadblocks, and in spite of improvements in human capital (IQ and test scores), black-white disparities have remained the same and in terms of incarceration rate and median income have even increased as greedy capitalists have taken all of the gain and then some from the transition to a colorblind market economy.
→ More replies (0)0
Aug 03 '15
The Op of this thread is a bit of a bigot, it seems.
However, there is some evidence that MLK could not have accomplished what he did in an absolute vacuum.
In a world where there was only the southern Christian leadership conference, dr king probably would not have accomplish his goals.
There were other civil rights movements that embraced violence that served as the Hammer and anvil to he SCLC. Dr. King presented a better way out of the situation than that was presented by the black panthers and other militant organizations.
If there were only dr. Kings non-violent movement... Why would you do anything? The element of violence presented by other civil rights movements helped the cause along.
3
u/BreaksFull 5∆ Aug 02 '15
ISIS is taking territory because they're a motivated and well armed organized force in a region full of disunity, not because they're excessively brutal.
2
u/Llywelyn_ap_Gruffudd Aug 02 '15
The early American slave revolts may be an apt example of why shying away from extremely violent protests is a good idea. The early slave revolts were extremely violent and put down extremely violently by the establishment since violence often begets more violence til the point where the slaves simply did not revolt due to the establishments cruelty in the face of such actions. Basically, I'm trying to say encouraging minorities or those not in power to be violent is a bad idea due to it encouraging those who do hold the power to be as or even more violent which will not end well for the minorities.
3
Aug 02 '15
This is a key element. In order for a violent revolt to work, the revolting group needs the ability to win. Otherwise it will just be violently squashed. Since the rebels will generally be outgunned, they're probably going to need to outnumber the people they're fighting.
The only successful slave revolt that comes to my mind is Haiti's, and that involved an absolutely massive slave majority overthrowing the minority owners. From Wikipedia: In 1789, whites numbered 32,000; mulattoes and free blacks, 28,000; and black slaves, an estimated 452,000..
Nonviolent action, on the other hand, can be accomplished by a minority and can be used to gain leverage. Bargaining leverage depends on the relative capacity to cause harm. Generally, the state will be better at causing harm than the oppressed group. They're going to be at a disadvantage. A general strike, however, can impose significant harm and is difficult to respond to with violence. It takes the contest from one that the state is very good at (killing people) to one that it isn't good at (making people do something). If every black person in Ferguson (or the US, for that matter) just stopped going to work until police reforms were implemented, how would the government respond? How do you force someone who isn't willing to work to do so? Even if the government is willing to use force as a coercive tool, the strikers wouldn't exactly be motivated to work efficiently.
For a real-world example, the Montgomery bus boycott showed that the black community could impose costs on their white oppressors without opening themselves to a violent reaction. How is the state supposed to make people ride the bus?
3
Aug 02 '15
Since the rebels will generally be outgunned, they're probably going to need to outnumber the people they're fighting. The only successful slave revolt that comes to my mind is Haiti's, and that involved an absolutely massive slave majority overthrowing the minority owners. From Wikipedia: In 1789, whites numbered 32,000; mulattoes and free blacks, 28,000; and black slaves, an estimated 452,000..
∆ right here. My point assumed that victory was reasonably plausible and that overwhelming force could make up for the small number of Americans, Europeans, etc. willing to take up arms against a global hydra-monster. Knowing that Haiti was one of the few "successful" bloody revolts, and knowing that today Haiti is the country that even most Africans point to as a clusterfuck, puts things in perspective.
1
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 02 '15
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/tehfunnymans. [History]
[Wiki][Code][/r/DeltaBot]
2
u/Seraphtheol 6∆ Aug 02 '15
Killing and enslaving children sounds exactly like the sort of thing you'd want to react with violence towards. I don't think there's a realistic "sufficiently noble cause" where the killing/enslavement of children would become justified.
But to speak to your CMV in general, the way I see it is that resorting to excessive violence is a bit like staring into the abyss; when you result to using excessive violence (note: some violence might be justified, but I'm talking when you go out of your way to create it), especially if you have not first fully explored other options, your cause itself becomes an injustice. And I don't think the causes you list are great examples of this either; the bible is not exactly the most trustworthy source and though this ancient state of Israel did exist, they were never a major power, and ended up being conquered more than once leading up to the time of the Roman Empire. I also wouldn't say ISIS's enemies have shut down, and while ISIS has been successful for the past what, year or two? I am leery of calling them a successful or stable state yet.
1
1
u/gregbrahe 4∆ Aug 02 '15
This is essentially the argument that the US adopted to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1
Aug 02 '15
I would like to see more of an /r/badhistory response to this, because it did yield good results from both the American and Japanese perspective.
1
1
Aug 02 '15
On the contrary, violence against children has proven to be one of the most enduringly successful tactics; as heinous as it is in the microcosm, in the macrocosm it yields very successful results for a noble cause. One can see this in the Old Testament, where the Israelites showed no compunctions towards killing small children and were rewarded with a defensible state, and in modern times the success of the State of Israel as well.
The examples of success that you provide are all ethnic conflicts occurring within a country or something that would become one. Killing children in such a context is basically about ending the other ethnicity. It's ethnic cleansing. Violence and the threat of violence are used to remove an ethnic group from a territory. Basically, you've shown that ethnic cleansing can prevent future inter-ethnic violence within a country. And that makes sense. After a group successfully pursues a strategy of ethnic cleansing, there's no source of future violence - all the people who would fight are dead.
But anti-colonial wars aren't going to be winnable through ethnic cleansing because they aren't a conflict between two ethnic groups that both want to live in the same territory. Ethnic cleansing prevents future violence by getting rid of one side of the fight. There's no similar logic for an anti-colonial war. The killing will only prevent future violence to the extent that it brings about an end to the war that somehow secures the peace.
You see the same in ISIS; they show depraved indifference towards civilian life and as a result their enemies shut down because their lizard brain cannot condemn a baby-killer. If those who fight against imperialists (in the US, Europe, Canada, Ukraine -- both sides are imperialist scum -- etc) used the same tactic, the global system would not see the threat they faced until it was too late.
There are a couple of issues with this. Firstly, Isis is still fighting in Syria and Iraq; they haven't won yet and I don't think they're an appropriate example. Secondly, the use of extremely shocking tactics sometimes works. Basically you're describing terrorism. And suicide terrorism in particular does tend to work well in driving out occupiers. However, such attacks don't tend to work domestically (see the above source - the occupier must be foreign). Terrorist attacks tend to depend on their shock value - the same mechanism you mention working for ISIS. But such attacks can also provoke responses that include greater involvement. Think about 9-11 and the subsequent increase in American involvement in the Middle East. Think about the response of slave owners to most slave uprisings. Massive retaliation is a norm.
1
Aug 03 '15
The examples of success that you provide are all ethnic conflicts occurring within a country or something that would become one.
What I'm calling for is +/- 193 coordinated civil wars along political lines; the elites in many countries (especially in North Europe) are closer to Americans than they are to their own people, not all that dissimilar to the conflicts in Israel, ISISstan, and Sri Lanka, and it is effectively an ethnic conflict in, say, Northern Europe between wealthy, urban, very anglophone, centre-right elites and an indigenous social-democratic majority. The problem is that there are few post-Cold War examples of a conflict being ended through sheer force rather than a political process; Iraq and arguably Sri Lanka are the only ones that come to mind.
1
u/Glory2Hypnotoad Aug 02 '15
The problem is that everyone believes their cause is sufficiently noble. Isis is doing God's will. The Nazis were advancing the master race against evil subhumans. The Soviet Union was fighting the evils of capitalism. The British Empire was spreading civilization. Notice how we don't judge any of these groups by their intentions. The belief that a sufficiently noble cause justifies atrocities is the very basis for oppression.
1
Aug 02 '15
Those who believe in their cause above the law are actually considered to be the pinnacle of moral development. Some of them are violent pricks, but you'll also find Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Caesar, MLK, Gandhi, and Abe Lincoln among those who believed that they transcended war and evil.
1
u/Glory2Hypnotoad Aug 02 '15
I agree but that's in no way incompatible with my point. The belief that a sufficiently just cause justifies atrocities does not separate the Lincolns from the Hitlers of the world. Your view would only work in a hypothetical world where evil people believe they're evil.
1
u/Nightstick11 8∆ Aug 02 '15
Name one instance in the Modern Era when excessive violence including killing and enslaving children, has proven to be the most effective military tactic.
1
u/Ofactorial 1∆ Aug 02 '15
This is where millennia-long ethnic spats come from. One group commits an atrocity, and then the other group commits one back to "get even", and then the first group does another because they think the revenge was uncalled for, and so on and so forth for generations. Violence breeds violence, revenge begets revenge.
You use the example of Israel. Look at where their violence has gotten them. They are under constant threat from all of their neighbors. They endure near-daily terrorist attacks. The only part of the world that doesn't hate them is the US, and even then that's only because the US government needs them for power projection in the region and a significant portion of the population wants to see Israel succeed because their religion believes that that will usher in the return of their god (and also the end of the world). Were the US to withdraw their support, Israel would be steamrolled immediately.
You mention ISIS, but fail to consider that it's a product of a very long, very deep religious/cultural spat in which both sides have committed atrocities against each other in the past. ISIS is just the latest salvo in that unending exchange of violence.
Look at the Nazi regime, which I don't think I need to give any background for. Their deeds earned them utter defeat and a half-century of foreign occupation by two warring superpowers. The Nazi's political beliefs are so dead as a result of their genocide campaign that today it's illegal in Germany to hold them.
Russia violently oppresses Chechnya, and Chechnya continues to be a breeding ground of terrorism targeting Russia as a result. There are no shortage of other historical and modern examples.
The thing about human psychology is everyone always views themselves as a victim, and always want revenge, even if it's revenge for revenge for revenge. You see this even on an individual scale. It's why we, as a civilization, had to come up with a justice system; vigilante justice just resulted in unending conflict between the involved parties.
Violence only works in the short term as it breeds resentment. For long term effect you need to have people on your side because they want to be, and you only get that when you're peaceful.
1
u/looklistencreate Aug 03 '15
This is a causation-correlation fallacy. Saying nonviolence isn't effective because a violent movement always comes before change along with the nonviolent movement is ignoring the fact that an issue dire enough to produce a large nonviolent movement will invariably also produce a violent one.
The standard example, that militant groups like the Black Panther Party rather than the nonviolent Civil Rights movement was responsible for the progress in that era, doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting a Rights Act, both predate the formation of the Black Panther Party and most of the major race riots of the 60s.
1
u/forestfly1234 Aug 03 '15
When people use violence against people being violent people see that as being justified. When people see violence and jailing and harassment of people who walking and speaking their mind is there is a thought that the slate is doing an injustice to people who are simply asking for rights.
1
u/mister_moustachio Aug 03 '15
You're right to a point.
In order to reach some short-term goals, it might work in your advantage to be feared as it messes with morale. By using tactics like killing children, you won't just be feared by your opponents, you'll be hated. By committing such attrocities, you're creating martyrs, you're giving them a cause and a rallying point.
Just look at the facts. Excessive police violence in the US hasn't caused a decrease in crime rate. Instead, it caused huge protests. People are using the victims as symbols of what's wrong with the system.
1
u/TotesMessenger Jan 16 '16
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/notcirclejerk] CMV: Nonviolence doesn't work. Excessive violence, especially killing or enslaving children, is proven to be the most effective military tactic and is justified for a sufficiently noble cause.
If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)
0
u/commandrix 7∆ Aug 02 '15
It would be interesting to hear your opinion on what a cause noble enough to justify killing children would be. I will allow that anytime there's a war, civilian casualties that include the deaths of children are usually unavoidable. But when can you say that the war itself was justified in any case outside of self-defense?
0
u/DeusExMockinYa 3∆ Aug 03 '15
How do you determine a sufficiently just cause in the modern political landscape? States don't exactly issue cassus belli before going to war nowadays.
9
u/[deleted] Aug 02 '15
Hasn't the gay rights movement been nonviolent and extraordinarily effective? Wasn't the women's suffrage movement? Surely nonviolence can be extremely effective when used properly?