Nearly a third of Americans – 30% – say people may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
It’s a sharp rise from 18 months ago, when 19% of Americans said the same.
It’s a horrific moment to see that people honestly believe that there’s no other alternative at this point than to resort to political violence.
I mean… is it? I think it’s pretty obvious in the context of the regime essentially giving itself carte blanch to perpetrate political violence on its desired scapegoats and opponents.
I’m frankly getting pretty fucking tired of people complaining about how this is a startling development and being shocked by what’s happening. They wrote a playbook back in 2019. They published it on the open internet. They said they would follow it. They are now following it. You are not allowed to be surprised by any of this.
This country is BUILT on political violence. The revolutionary war. The civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people died in those conflicts. Only more recently have non-violent protests accomplished anything and that was only possible because of the more free atmosphere those wars established in this country. That freedom is now almost entirely gone. What choice do people have left?
Don’t forget the riots and strikes between 1900 and 1920 (or 30?).
Successful application of violence today is complicated by the sophistication of surveillance and the electronic, centralized distribution of money.
It’s difficult to pull together a large enough coalition to be able to fight effectively because the process of finding those people is short circuited by early discovery.
Nonviolence is the only way until a large enough segment of the population is desperate enough to trigger action.
Before that happens, effective leaders must be found and a support network must be readied to go into action quickly to professionalize and unify it when it happens, but before that is used to manage nonviolent action…
Incredibly recently. The Civil Rights movement included advocacy for political violence, and arguably one of the only reasons it worked was Malcolm X and the Black Panthers saying “hey here’s our alternative if our nonviolent fight doesn’t work, we’re all strapped and willing to hand out more guns if shit requires it”.
But Trump (lied and) said he didn’t know anything about Project 2025.
You’re not allowed to say the part in brackets without summoning the Gestapo.
This reflects a feeling of being backed into a corner. What else are we going to do when our political views and goals and ffs human beings are being criminalized? Every decent thing getting rolled back and every horrible thing dialed up to 11. Fuck republicans. One way or another they will regret this. Whether people vote them out or get violent with them remains to be seen but this will not last, obviously.
I can’t wait until the day that these filth learn that we outnumber them 10 to 1.
It’s up to them how they learn this fact.
Sounds delusional to me… if we outnumber them 10 to 1 why the fuck is a republican sitting on the highest seat in the country? Everyone just sat out the vote??? Okay. Then what the fuck do you expect them to do to republicans if they can’t even vote?
Imma just leave this here
Okay but without any sort of investigation or evidence this is just a tweet of a crazy rich person… which by the way if we start taking every one of this cunts tweets as fact then I guess that cave diver that saved all those people was actually a pedophile and I also suppose you believe we will colonize mars by 2030? Or that Neuralink can cure all diseases?
Because they stole the source code to the election machines in 2020 and modified the software to cheat the 2024 election, subverting the will of the people.
If you can’t prove it or enforce it, it doesn’t really matter. Otherwise you sound just like them the first time Trump lost.
They aren’t afraid. They have the Department of War, and ICE to protect them and their property.
There are about 1.3 million active duty military, 137,000 federal law enforcement officers, and 800,000 total law enforcement in the country. There are about 350 million people in the United States. They are not even 1% of the population.
And remeber they could win a war agaisnt goat herders in Afghanistan. This is our soil, and americans are crazy armed.
Historically, it has always taken violence to remove fascists from power.
The problem with all of this is that the right is literally saying this exact same thing.
We dismiss it because it’s ludicrous, because they HAVE all the power, their guy IS the deep state that controls everything, but our media world has fashioned a narrative for our stupidest segment that they’re the oppressed underdogs.
Meaning, no matter what happens, even if we get our best outcome and drag this administration onto the White House lawn, we still have to live next to millions and millions of people who think we’ve been planning to do that to them for decades now.
There is no good solution that doesn’t involve some kind of new leadership that needs to be built from the ground up and will likely take generations to nurture and develop.
Not always. The Portuguese carnation revolution happened without violence. Spain democratised right after Franco’s death.
So violence, military coup or heart failure?
Heart failure sounds both easier and more likely.
You can’t vote your way out of fascism. Trump already launched an insurrection to hold on to power. He won’t let it go now that he’s better entrenched.
This is just people waking up to reality. Trump has the White House, the senate, the House of Representatives, and the courts. He controls the military and has already begun deployment to “democratic” cities. His buddy in Texas is redistricting to help him consolidate power, and I am sure Abbot is not the only one. Every move Trump makes is designed to cripple opposition to his regime. Republican states are purging voter rolls and enacting bullshit laws designed to disenfranchise people of colour.
Milquetoast democrats have made only the most pathetic gestures of opposition to Trump. The first genuine thing Trump ever said was when he expressed surprise yesterday at how little resistance he has faced from the left. Republicans were right about one thing: the American left is a bunch of pussies.
If more Americans think political violence is the only way out of the mess Americans made, it’s probably because they are starting to develop a vague but accurate understanding of what is happening in their country.
Perhaps the Democratic Socialists (DS) can become the unifying source of resistance. They are the ones fighting, but there are too few to have political impact.
It’s up to the citizens to back them, and the DS must drum up the leaders and present them so citizens can choose them.
I think the DS values are the closest to the new deal approach that made America a wildly successful nation and beacon for just treatment of humans.
Heck, Europe and Japan took their governing cues from America during the Marshall plan. They are examples of following the ideals our leaders used to value. This is the real “make america great again”.
This is my fondest wish. I think many Americans are ready to rally around someone mounting a serious opposition to Trump, but no one has stepped up so far. I love Bernie and i believe he is important to the movement, but they need a young, charismatic, inspiring leader to start getting very loud about the real situation in the US. It will be an uphill battle because the media have been captured by people either cowed by or sympathetic to Trump. Maybe Lemmy can be the platform for DS in the states. Legacy media has failed (with maybe 1-2 exceptions).
Well, I think AOC is leading the fight, but she needs support to become a major player politically. Mamdavi is evidence of her rising power, and he can now be one of those leaders.
Jasmine Crockett is another. Sure, not DS, but easily a coalition member. I hope there is strong effort foran revolution of leadership in the Democratic Party.
I had a lib tell me the other day that democratic socialists are actually a secret SpecOp branch of the Tea Party tasked with infiltrating the dem party and undermining the efforts of patriots like Jeffries and Schumer, and that it is a blatant lie and MAGA propaganda that countries left of US dems exist and are functional. Europe has apparently been a warzone since WWII because they’re taken over by socialist terror organizations. I was then blocked for linking to the Wikipedia article for Democratic Socialism.
I think breaking the blue tribe propaganda is going to be one hell of an uphill battle, unfortunately. A lot of dems align on policies with leftists, at least socially, but once you use the trigger words, their programming activates and freak the fuck out and call you a MAGA plant despite all evidence to the contrary.
Alright, (s)he might identify as a liberal, but he’s actually exactly the same as the most radicalized MAGA cultists. He just chose a different set of crazy.
That person does not represent even 1% of liberal or progressive adherents. Crazycis crazy, regardless of that lunatic’s flavor of belief.
As for reactions to “democratic socialist” by Democrats, I suspect what you are seeing is from people who are chest deep in the Democratic Party core activist zone. They likely are afraid of change, even if it would better meet their ideals. Their cozy insulated blanket is just soooo warm. :)
As much as I wish it were the case, this is not even close to the only dem I’ve spoken to who is brainwashed into thinking that anything truly left, like much of the world outside of the US, could never work in reality. Suggesting it means you voted 100% for Trump or Stein, and if you say you didn’t you are lying. You can agree with them on damn near every social policy under the sun and provide metrics from progressive nations on their successes, and they’ll refuse to accept that anyone could possibly be more progressive than them, despite literal mountains of easily verifiable evidence.
I think unfortunately many people are just very politically ignorant and have no desire to even begin to question the US process or try anything different. The US is simply the best at everything. Europe and their crazy whacko ideas may as well be an alien planet and not worth thinking about.
Of course this isn’t all people, some shift is happening (as long as its not called socialism, generally), but in my personal experience leftist ideas pretty much get you locked out of any discussion. I typically get smug “Oh its so cute you’re in your socialist phase, you’ll grow out of it and understand politics like me” treatment.
Maybe after 350 years here in America, I need to seriously consider returning this family to Europe 😞
Well it’s true. You can’t be diplomatic with fascists. You can’t “get on the same level” with billionaires.
They have no reason to listen or care, unless we give them a reason to listen or care.
violence is already happening, it’s just that people are too scared to fight back against it
Violence is how we beat the Nazis the first time. If there’s a cleaner option that’s actually feasible, then yes please… but failing that, cutting the head off the snake is a pretty tried and true method. And if it grows back, cut that one off too - they’ll get the message eventually.
Exactly. Ultimately these people don’t actually believe in anything other than power. Their arguments are in bad faith. Any compromise is just a temporary weigh station as they prepare to push even harder.
How did compromising with the right work for abortion? Parental consent laws became onerous clinical regulations became bans on performing procedures became making getting an abortion legally murder. How did compromising on trans rights go? A few “reasonable concerns” about girl’s sports became blanket bans on sports became bans on life-saving care for minors became restrictions on basic ID documents became attempts to criminalize the very existence of trans people. This isn’t slippery slope conjecture; it’s directly observed history.
The simple awful truth is that we have fundamentally incompatible visions of the world. They see The Handmaid’s Tail as an ideal to aim for. They think the literal God of the universe wants them to create this nightmare. And with God at their backs, they can justify any evil to create their warped utopia. Any action can be justified. Any lie can be excused. Any suffering by any number of people now can be balanced against the perfect lives they imagine we’ll all live once they force us all into their dream world. The worst thing about them, is that they actually think they’re the good guys.
This is the fundamental problem. Their vision of an Earthly paradise is our vision of Hell on Earth. We have fundamentally different visions for the future. They cannot convince the majority of the population to willingly create their vision. So they have to resort to violence, disenfranchisement, propaganda, and fraud. (All justified for the greater good.) And ultimately we’re going to have to use every tactic they use and more if we want to keep these monsters from turning our nation into Gilead.
Fundamentally, elections were designed to be a peaceful alternative to the peasantry revolting against the government and beheading their king. As Americans come to grip with the reality that their elections are meaningless, their politicians are bought and their only alternative to fascism is fascism-lite with a pride pin (no trans ppl allowed though) this attitude will continue to fester.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
I hate that I agree with this.
Humans can be so much more than violent cavemen, but we aren’t there quite yet.
1775: Breaking News, there’s a growing number of colonists who think violence is necessary…
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
- Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States, c. 1787
Not that I think political violence (or violence of any sort, for that matter) should be our first, second, or even thirty-fifth resort, but at a certain point I think one must come to grips with the fact that - whether it fits in with their delicate sensibilities or not - when confronted with an existential peril it does sometimes become necessary to defend oneself. (Fun fact: This is why self-defense can be presented as a valid defense against murder charges!)
Sure, we should absolutely make any and all attempts to be inclusive (Republicans HATE this!) and tolerant (GOP: hiss IT BURNS!) and attempt to reach solutions through education, research, negotiation, compromise and all that lovely (woke?) stuff, but… For some reason, it seems like there’s consistently only one side that ever shows up to the table willing to actually do any of that. And that’s just how it’s been for fucking DECADES now. There’s probably a lot of you (just generally speaking, not necessarily meaning Lemmy’s demographic per se) who aren’t even old enough to remember a time before the GOP began using “government shutdowns” and “debt ceilings” and “literal fucking coup attempts” as part of their standard, day-to-day politicking. Believe it or not (and I know this will probably be the hardest one to buy, but I swear it to be true) there was a time when the Republicans would - even if they WERE NOT in power at the time - STILL SHOW UP AND DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS. I know, what a concept, eh? Imagine going to work every day and just… doing your job, like a fucking idiot, instead of throwing absolute meltdown tantrums over your lack of control over other people’s genitals.
Does any of this strike you as the behavior of (an) entity(ies) engaging in anything even remotely resembling something that could be construed as “good-faith negotiation” - let alone even approaching something as audacious as “compromise?” This isn’t a willing, eager party to an arbitration, quite, is it? No… Something more akin to an assailant with a knife at our throat(s) demanding to inspect our genitals to make sure we’re where they think we should be at the moment certainly sounds more apt to me…
I don’t want there to be violence. Any. At all, really. But at what point does the moral imperative toward nonviolence get outweighed by the moral obligation to the people being kidnapped by masked (supposed) government agents and disappeared to very real, literal concentration camps? How many genocides at once do we need to hit the tipping point where it’s finally acceptable to stand up and say, “That’s enough. This far. No farther.” But actually back that up, for a change.
If that means by force, then unfortunately, so be it. Might doesn’t make right, but that certainly doesn’t preclude it from enforcing it, does it?
He who saves his country violates no laws.
-Donald J Trump
He defined the ROE in January of 2021.
Well, editorially, I suggest you break up those paragraphs into smaller ones, and maybe add some headings for a “wall of text” like that, but you make well thought out arguments and I totally agree.
When it becomes clear that the citizens no longer have a controlling voice in choosing who leads us, that is when revolution is a valid choice.
BTW, I’m one who is old enough to remember (like Pepperidge Farm - there, proof I’m old enough)
Ugh, I know it’s a mess as far as the nuts and bolts go at a minimum (and we’ll not get into any inherent flaws in my reasoning, thank you very much lol) but in my defense I had just recently woken up and was in dire need of chemical assistance, and I honestly didn’t even think I’d gone on like I did but I was fired up! lol
I have become worried I’ll need to defend myself against violent republicans because they are always talking about and actively hurting others.
John Brown was right.
There is no historical precedent for an electoral solution to a descent into fascism.
There is no historical precedent for an electoral solution to massive wealth inequality.
