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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

I hope you mean "Peacefully Protest" I shut my eyes and ears once protesting becomes violent.

I realize you meant well with this comment but these discussions easily veer off-topic and into unproductive places.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508050 and marked it off-topic.

The state and powerful groups rely on opinions like your. All they have to do is insert an agent provocateur[1]. They can turn any legitimately peaceful protest into something that, in your eyes, should be ignored. It reminds me of this meme: https://pics.onsizzle.com/white-people-2016-destruction-of-p...

The country you live in and the laws you abide by were founded on, and enforced by violence. Essentially your comment is saying "I will only respect the violence of the state".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

I'm not saying we're there yet, but, at the risk of waking Godwin, at what point in 1930s Germany would violent protest finally be OK? We'll start at "Never," and work back from there.

The issue with the Hitler argument is that he too lost an election. Start from there.

I don't understand the "he too". Are you referring to someone else who lost an election?

The 1930s were full of violent protest - running battles on the streets between gangs of thugs on both sides (red vs Brown shirts). It helped Hitler portray himself as the law and order candidate.

Peaceful but overwhelming mass civil disobedience and protest is better. The time for that is now.

You're right, the time for that is now.

And I'm hoping we never reach the need for more than that.

As for violent German protests, I'm pretty sure taking away those violent opposition protests would not have prevented Hitler from taking power. Perhaps they needed more violence. And indeed they eventually did get more violent opposition that did defeat them, by the West's armies.

Perhaps more violence in the thirties might have prevented WWII.

And now much of that is virtualized or amplified and concentrated in terrorist incidents - like many other things in our technological society. Why would you expect political activity to have stayed the same when everything else is changing? Just as we don't go downtown to do all our shopping any more, many conflicts are carried out in cyberspace rather than in the street. go look at the comments section on major newspapers, they are a battleground for ideological dominance. There is abundant historical evidence that such battles are only a prelude to physical conflict.

Incidentally if you think violence hasn't already erupted then you're being wilfully blind. Here's a recent example and I could point to many more and famous examples, like that of Anders Brievik and his imitators.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-neo-nazi-stabbed-20...

I'm not saying it has not errupted (it has) I'm saying violence and the glorification if it (as in people sharing the punch a Nazi video) is a dead end and will definitely strengthen trump support.

The way to defeat him is to resist, massively, peacefully and persuasively - to persuade the nation that he is wrong, irrational and damaging everyone with insane policies like retroactive withdrawal of green card status.

I hope you're right, but I have to prepare for the very strong possibility that you're wrong and that he and his major cohort of supporters are not in fact amenable to reason and shared conceptions of fairness.

But some states are trying to make that "peaceful but overwhelming mass civil disobedience and protest" even harder.

It is not possible to really invoke Godwin's law regarding Trump, he already opened this door when he accused the CIA of being like NAZIs for reporting he facts. I don't think there is very much reason to be shy with such comparisons anymore.

>I shut my eyes and ears once protesting becomes violent

A lot of the freedoms you take for granted were achieved by "violent protests", including the "Boston Tea Party".

In that context the violence was targeted. The tea was owned by a company closely aligned with the state. So violence against a Trump property would make more sense then say just busting out a Starbucks window. This is even more true now that we know that Trump will keep his properties.

I feel like in this case you should be able to give them the benefit of the doubt. Do you really believe that they were advocating for violent protests in a list of legitimate, peaceful political activities?

Congratulations on being able to enjoy such a luxury. Pacificism is an easy stand to take if you don't have to worry about being unwillingly victimized by authoritarian policies.

Once people so upset that they become violent, you stop listening? Doesn't sound like a great plan.

A little violence never hurt anyone.

The victims of violence?

What about the victims of fascism?

I think there's a definition problem. If it doesn't hurt anyone, it isn't violence. It is is violence, it hurts people.

Hurting people is the default tactic of the state, but doesn't have to be our way.

While violence is occasionally effective in making political change, many of us hope that in the internet age, it won't be.

"What harm has violence ever done?" - Ali G

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