Im not necessarily a full anarchist, but I felt like by posting it here, it might reach eyes with similar beliefs. Now when I usually tell people this, they react like I just beat down a helpless animal, but after I explain it to them they usually understand my point of view. They may not agree with me but they will understand my point of view. That is the point of my article now.
When we are growing up we are always given examples of how taking the higher road and participating in peaceful protests is how to get things done. We celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day and learn how to power of peaceful protest was able to defeat segregation and discriminatory regulation within the US. However in reality politics didn’t end up working like that and the reason peaceful protesting worked was because they feared that the protest would turn violent and America would have a race war on its hands. Let me explain. Many people at the time were split between two groups, Martin Luther King Jr.’s peaceful protest group and the radical Black Panther party which advocated action and sometimes violence to get their point across. At the height of the two groups rivaling each other, many believed that Martin Luther King Jr.’s inaction would cause them to be crushed by the government. On top of that within Hoover’s FBI, King was seen as an enemy of the state and there is proof he was actively blackmailing him.
Eventually when the entire civil rights movement got past the point of no return, politicians realized that change was either going to come or things would turn violent. Rather than supporting the Black Panther Party, politicians supported King’s peaceful movement and endorsed him which essentially killed the Black Panther Party. Many who were on the fence moved to King’s movement and from there history was made.
Beyond the civil rights story, there are many others, but what most of them have in common is that the government feared that if they didn’t make peace there would soon be in a violent struggle. I believe there needs to be some fear for compromises to be made. If the government is feeling pressured they are either going to lash out or they are going to back down. If they chose the first option they end up looking , like a backwards country in the eyes of the world and lose international face. A good example of this was the crackdown on the protests at Tiananmen Square in China. Nearly a million peaceful Chinese staged a protest in Tiananmen Square and ended up getting mowed down for it.China decided that the protest was becoming too big so they cracked down and the world shamed them for it. I think had those 1 million used violence instead of peace they might have been able to topple the leadership in China.
All throughout history the amount of successful violent protests and Coup’s have outnumbered peaceful protest 100 to 1. I believe that if we want real change there needs to be some threat of violence to a government body. By violence im also talking about ways that aren’t exactly violent but don’t play by the rules, such as hacking whistle-blowing and revealing documents that can potentially get people hurt, for the greater good. I don’t want violent protests to happen, but I think that they are just a way of how things get done effectively. Solutions to problems just tend to get solved more quickly when people are in the streets throwing Molotov Cocktails.
If you agree with me or don’t agree with me leave a comment, im interested to see what the reactions will be.
-Calaber24p