Propaganda of the Deed has long been discredited. As in no, the stereotypical bomb throwing anarchist that mass media wishes to sell DOES. NOT. WORK. At best you end up with the political figure merely replaced and business moves on with the attacker vilified, or at worst the now deceased has become a martyr and support is generated.

As that is trying to force a systemic change through one giant act on a population that won’t know what to do with the opening.

It is far better to work within local communities to educate and help build support networks of aid and reliance on eachother rather than systems that can punitively be taken away. That way if an opening presents itself through the course of events, you have a population that will know roughly how to make the best of a situation.

WITH ALL THAT SAID…

The death of the united Healthcare CEO is interesting inthat all attempts at media whitewashing and lionization have fallen on deaf ears.

Our legal justice system, checks and balances, nonviolent protests, etc… have all completely failed.

Violence is all that’s left.

Violence tends to be a double edged sword. Whether or not things get better as the result of an outbreak of violence is hit and miss. A lot of authoritarian regimes in history just get replaced with new authoritarian regimes that have a better PR team and create a leniency period before cranking back the progress once people figure everything has been fixed. Long term it’s not great prospects. Anarchist activities tends to create this sort of thing. It creates a power vacuum to which the first one to break the faith and assemble a new loyal hierarchy while murmuring a smokescreen of empty hymns of the old cause is rewarded by becoming the new tyrant. Oftentimes there is a promise of whatever state of oppression being a transitory period. You aren’t supposed to notice that the transitory period after which they say that they will surrender their stranglehold to the rightful inheritance of the people never comes to fruition and instead just becomes a new dynasty of effective monarchs living it up.

But other times it’s just another tool in the box of movements that are fighting against occupation. It usually helps if there’s a peaceful arm of the movement who will get most or all of the credit after the fact whom can hold the dialogue space. Every Civil rights fight that had a non-violent movement leader also had “unrelated” people in the field under a different banner solving some problems with violence. Black Panthers, Butterfly Brigade, bomb weilding suicide suffragettes, indigenous anti colonial movements… These are part of the landscape and the actions they took were given space to be picked over by contemporaries because provocative acts lend punch to rhetoric. If you have no legitimate means to solve the violence done to you other than violence then the problem still needs solving so violence it is. What is effective in this model is collective directed action with planned objectives to fit into existing systems or that come with fully drawn up replacements for old systems. Not as sexy as anarchy but the wins are on the whole more stable and enduring. If you want a democracy then your problem solve should at least should have a true core of people whose ultimate intention is to operate democratically. Violence has a seat at that table too but weilding it justly is a commitment.

All liberty is guarded by four boxes. The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. They are in order.

Political violence is largely a terrible idea that results in continued suffering or retribution. People online flock to it as a remedy and often aren’t fully aware of the structure of their local government. The best means of change are by convincing locals of a better alternative that is amiable to all parties. Online activism has a broader net but ultimately reaches less people in positions likely to be able to remedy local matters. Carrot beats stick.

Political violence can only create a violent new regime. If you want peace, you have to fight peacefully. Yes it’s harder, but it’s the only way. But peaceful doesn’t mean passive (or law abiding)!