Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

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I'll reply to you and pavel_lishin and nl in one place here, so we keep the subthread tidy.

To dispatch the examples of Gandhi and MLK--please ask yourselves how their civil disobedience would be handled in modern America. Ask yourselves how their messages would be mocked, subverted, and distorted with modern social media, even without state intervention. These are different times, my friends.

(Also, mentioning MLK while glossing over the credible threat of armed domestic terrorism posed by Malcom X, the Black Panthers, and many other factions at that time in American history is inaccurate--you miss a lot of the background political pressure brought to bear by people "standing up to bullies".)

The reason I asked the parent question was not to be ghoulish or edgy, and I mean that sincerely.

The fact of the matter is that the quaint notion of "standing up to the bullies" is completely out of date. You probably imagine telling some guard to fuck off, and when they return with a cop, what then?

You'd give the officer (who is probably of less-than-amazing intelligence, because of a court case years ago allowing PDs to discriminate on that) a lecture on the freedom of panorama, and they'd let you be? If not, then what?

If you don't resist, you hardly have "stood up to the bullies".

If you resist and lose--and remember, resisting can be anything as simple as bleeding on the officer's uniform when they decide to truncheon you--you will then be rewarded with the slow grinding gears of American "justice". At the very least, even if found innocent, you'll be out major court costs and time, while the bullies go about their business unimpeded.

If you resist and win--say, by beating the shit out of the bullies--then they'll summon additional forces until you are subdued. Subdued repeatedly. There may be an investigation later, but that'll be of academic interest to you while you're handcuffed to a hospital bed recuperating to be in good shape for your prison sentence.

So, again, bearing that escalation in mind, think about my earlier question--because that's the inevitable chain of actions that start with "standing up to the bullies".

And that's why when a poster points out that maybe standing up is just not a good idea, we shouldn't downvote them.

Yeah, its clear a few vocal HN'ers have a Hollywood idea of "sticking it to the man."

In reality all those court cases you hear about and investigations happen because a patron (opposing political party, deep pocketed advocacy group, millionaire/billionaire activist) has decided to help you for their own ends. There is no "police justice" hotline you call and if you think resisting arrest or arguing with the cops in public is going to make you some kind of HN/Reddit hero, then you'll be in a surprise when you end up on the local police blotter and later with an open/shut case conviction and unable to get anything but a mcJob.

Life isn't Judge Judy or Hollywood SJW movies. Unless you have significant backing from wealth and the media, you don't become successful against the justice system, regardless of how wronged you were.

> If you resist and lose--and remember, resisting can be anything as simple as bleeding on the officer's uniform when they decide to truncheon you--you will then be rewarded with the slow grinding gears of American "justice".

> you resist and win--say, by beating the shit out of the bullies

These are not the only two outcomes of resisting, and that is not the only way to win.

I reject your false binary of "submit to anyone who might summon authority | murder policemen" as the only possible choices when faced with this scenario.

You're just stammering "but but but that's not how it works" while still clinging to this "we can stand up to the bullies" narrative.

I've sketched out my logic and reasoning, please do the same.

Also, the false binary you presented is indeed false--because that's not what I wrote. My thesis is exactly that "standing up to the bullies" will lead to escalation of force in the short term which leads to violence and loss, and that failure to "stand up to the bullies" is achieved by doing anything other than continuing what you were doing when they told you to stop.

Please stop the bluster and explain this magical thinking that somehow lets us both "stand up to the bullies" without consequences of escalation.

I don't understand your logic and reasoning.

In my other comments, I've acknowledged that standing up to bullies isn't free, and that some people may suffer more than others as a result due to how our society works.

Killing police officers is still murder, and it not being state-sponsored violence doesn't make it any less of a bullying tactic - if bullying is the right word to use for a horrific crime.

I don't think I can really make my case any clearer.

I sense shades of implication that the effectiveness of MLK's non-violent resistance movement is a convenient docile mythology for the ruling class that ignores the other simultaneous aggressive challenges to the power structure, e.g. BPP, Malcolm X.

That may be so... history is written by the victors.

I do know this: the path to success for any minority movement is the path to becoming accepted by the majority.

A growing violent movement gives a virtually infinitely powerful state legal and moral justification for wiping you out.

A peaceful movement gives the state no justification for stamping it out with force. It must be challenged at an intellectual level.

Sure the current media environment is manipulative... but it's nowhere near as bad as it was in the past. Watch national news from the 60s, you'll see what I'm talking about. Also we have the internet now, every falsehood the media spreads is immediate debunked and it seems they know that.

The truth can't be suppressed forever. As MLK said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

This is why I think non-violent resistance as a tactic is the best chance any movement has for success when normal legislative channels have failed.

I will politely disagree with your conclusion about modern versus historical media, because I think we could reasonably make an argument that the mechanisms are merely different in their manipulation and not in their scope.

Otherwise, though, I agree that for progress to be made a non-violent movement must be present. Being a violent movement doesn't really work unless you've got outside support against your state.

That said, and to speak to the implications you mention, it is my firm belief that while a violent movement is doomed to fail it still must exist for the non-violent movement to make progress.

If the choice is between listening to the vocal but peaceful minorities and ignoring them, the choice historically is to ignore them. Once the minority's voice is seen as a less-costly alternative to dealing with violence, the state tends to listen.

MLK had Malcolm X. The LGBTQ folks had the Stonewall Riots.

It's a bloody and inefficient way of making policy, but it seems to be the course of things.

I think there is an assumption underlying your belief that non-violent movements need complementary violent ones for state recognition: that non-violent movements can't gain majority acceptance by the population (without needing a complement).

I believe they can, furthermore I believe that the state is unable to ignore a majority non-violent movement. One example is the gay rights movement. Once critical mass is reached and culture is changed, politicians change their tune, and laws practically unwrite themselves.

In the case where a minority non-violent movement necessarily stays just that, then yes I think there is a valid tactical argument to be made in having a complementary movement.

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