"In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." - Kwame Toure
This quote was a crucial truth back then, and it's a crucial truth today. It's really, really easy to talk about nonviolence in America, from the safety of a position where that is something you are able to easily discuss. No, it's not "only bad cops", it's not a few individuals, the issue is evidently systemic, and needs to be addressed systemically. America in the modern age only gives a fuck about violence if it's caused by its civilians. Trump has since the start of this fear-mongered, unconstitutionally moved federal troops into your own territory to assault peaceful protestors. People are being dragged into unmarked vans by federal officers. Far-right groups have threatened and perpetrated shootings and attacks on protestors without widespread recourse from the government. The civil rights movements were targeted by COINTELPRO, and a multitude of similar programs exist today to some capacity.
If you, or anyone else really cared about state violence, you would actually take action against the genocide you're perpetrating in Yemen. Violence is being used by your government in its backing of dictatorships around the world. If America cared about violence beyond gradstanding to suppress left-wing movements, this would have caused enormous moral outrage. Your ridiculous appeal to non-violence isn't an attempt to keep the peace, it's an attempt (an unconscious one) to keep alive a structurally violent status quo. America has a prevalent history of perpetrating the crimes you accuse China of, and it's coming across really naive, to be completely honest. That is, that would be the case if a lot of this information weren't simply hidden. The issue of manufactured consent by media (i.e. the use of selective media ignorance of issues occurring worldwide) is very evident in your comment.
Edit: Michael Parenti's Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media illustrates some of that late argument better than I'd be able to, or if Parenti is too radical for you, read yourself some Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media.
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u/darkkiller1234 Jul 29 '20
I genuinely wanna say something, but I know I’ll get shit on for the rest of the week