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“If you kill a killer the number of killers in the world is unchanged”
“So I should kill multiple killers”
“Hol’ up”
“Tonight’s the night….”
-Needlessly creepy breakfast montage plays-
Hol’ up
Wait a minute
Kill that fash
Put a brick in it
Okay here’s an opinion that’ll get me down voted to oblivion but here goes:
Violence is like symptom management. If you’re hurting, seriously injured etc. get that morphine. But keep using it and it becomes dependency. It’s a short term solution to one specific problem and rarely solves the underlying causes. Unless you can do that, you’ll be back to using violence as symptom management. Only the next time you’ll need more of it, just like heroin.
Famously, the human rights gained by movements using violent tactics, such as the abolitionists, suffragettes, the civil rights movement, the ANC, were all very short-lived. Hollow victories, all.
Are you being sarcastic? Because we’re still reaping the benefits of all of those. Violently gained interracial marriage got legalized at 25% public support while peacefully gained gay marriage only got legalized at 65% popular support. Peacefully won trans right are more fragile than violently won labor rights.
Yes I was being sarcastic, and I should’ve made that clearer. I know of no other way of dealing with the smug sanctimonious attitude of those in rich peaceful countries demanding that the oppressed turn the other cheek because “violence bad”. It’s this bizarre combination of smugness, ignorance of history, and effective advocacy in favor of the oppressor that I really, really, cannot stand.
Haiti should have just patiently waited to gain their independence.
No wonder states rarely solve problems! Their heroin usage is symptom management! /s
I get what you’re saying, where you need more solutions to a problem than just violence if you want long term change, but the metaphor you used implies that violence should not be considered.
Violence isn’t the answer, it’s an answer, one of many.
That’s an apt metaphor.
sips tea Ah … come, sit with me for a moment. The tea is hot, and such questions are best answered slowly, with a warm belly.
It is natural to feel anger when one has been wronged. Even the gentlest river becomes violent when dammed for too long. But we must be careful, my friend, not to mistake the force of our feelings for the wisdom of our actions.
You ask why one should not kill their oppressors. The answer is not because they are strong, nor because they deserve mercy, nor because the world would punish you. It is because when you choose to do evil in the name of justice, you quietly invite that evil to live inside you. And once it is settled there, it does not leave easily.
You may believe you are striking only your enemy, but violence has a poor sense of direction. It spills into the soul, changing the person who wields it. The moment you decide that a “good reason” excuses a cruel act, you teach your heart that cruelty can be justified. Soon, it will begin to justify itself.
Oppression is a heavy chain, but hatred forges a second one, but this time around your own spirit. If you destroy another to feel free, you may discover that freedom never arrived, and only the destruction remained. True victory is not standing over your enemy’s body. True victory is refusing to become what hurt you. It is choosing a path that allows you to look at yourself in the mirror without turning away. The right reasons lose their meaning when they are carried by wrong actions. Like tea made with poisoned water, no matter how fine the leaves, the cup will only bring sickness.
So no - do not kill your oppressors. Not for their sake, but for yours. Because the most important battle is not against them, but against the part of yourself that believes goodness can be built from blood.
Nah, fuck that. What are they supposed to do? Roll over and continue being oppressed? End your oppression not just for your sake but for the sake of everyone else whom they may oppress too.
Yeah, those in power always preach peace to preserve the status quo. But what about the suffragettes? The black Panthers? What about the Italian resistance? What about the Warsaw ghetto uprising?
Sometimes it’s not about our souls, not about our own psychical wellbeing. It’s about the liberation of all. About justice. About making the bastards pay. About showing the world that there’s a limit to what people can be made to do and suffer.
Violence is the last resort of the desperate, no doubt. It’s not fun. It does taint. It’s fucking tragic.
But we are living in increasingly desperate times. Who can deny that? And its just not about us as individuals anymore. That’s the message here.
Yeah, those in power always preach peace to preserve the status quo.
Those in power are interested in provoking violence to delegitimize a cause. Violence is their playbook: they know to how to retaliate against violence with violence. Repressing nonviolent resistance, however, backfires: when the government’s illegitimate violence is harder to contest, more people condemn the government’s use of force and shift their support away from the regime. Nonviolence is harder to deal with, attracts people, and leads to “defections” within institutions sustaining authoritarian regimes.
Such movements are statistically more effective at combatting authoritarianism than violent resistance. Where violence fails, nonviolence has succeeded in overcoming oppression & authoritarian rule. This documentary covers multiple instances of that happening in the 20th century in India, USA, South Africa, Denmark, Poland, Chile.
Moreover, nonviolence isn’t passive: it can range from quiet acts of disruption to consumer boycotts to walkouts to large-scale protests. When large numbers of people engage in acts of defiance and non-cooperation, they can take power back from a repressive regime.
It takes greater courage to resist injustice nonviolently. Plus, you may have seen the post months ago on research that shows nonviolent protest is more successful than the alternative.
The message is that intuition is fallible, and we should follow the historical evidence & research.
Iroh is not a pacifist. He is just very selective about the use of deadly force.
Iroh tries to teach zuko how to kill his enemies unflinchingly with “cold-blooded” lightning, and when that fails, teaches zuko to redirect lightning, which he knows is — and makes clear to be —explicitly deadly force, “to turn your enemy’s energy against them”. He acknowledges that, if he were to defeat Ozai, it would be “brother killing a brother”, because there was no realistic world in which Ozai could be contained without leading to his death. He accepts that his granddaughter “is crazy and needs to go down”.
When he chooses to take back Ba Sing Se, does he go in covertly and retake the puppet state from the occupying troops by forcing a surrender or a diplomatic solution? No, his opening move is to generate the largest ball of fire possible, then hurl it at the titanic wall, which not only does the camera show us has many people behind it, but which Iroh is ready to obliterate, soldiers and all, sight unseen. He does what must be done. Violence is his last resort, but he clearly has no moral compunction against using violence against the violent. Deadly force is met with a redirecting blow, carrying that same energy or more. In the first season, when he believes the fate of the world hangs in the balance, he threatens and uses deadly force “tenfold” that which is exacted upon the moon spirit. There is nowhere in the show that Iroh says that death is never the solution. The only reason we don’t see the deaths of the many soldiers occupying Ba Sing Se at Iroh’s hands (as well as all of the other times he has caused soldiers to be buried under their own boulders, breathed fire into their faces, or otherwise used violent infernos to defeat enemies) is that it was depicted in a kids’ show. The only person in the series who maintains that deadly force is never the answer is Aang. Aang only manages it in the finale by Deus Ex Machina because he’s the chosen one (and the protagonist of a kids’ show).
This is a fantasy land take that has no basis in reality or human history. At some point, it becomes a matter of physical well being for yourself and those around you. Telling people to just suck it up and take a beating/killing for the benefit of their “soul”…my god. Rejoin the real world buddy. It can be a scary place, but at least it’s real, not whatever bizarro world you are speaking from.
You let bullies walk on you, and they will keep doing it. The only thing that will stop them is letting them know that they will pay a real price if they keep at it. Trying to spin this “peace at all costs” worldview is intellectually dishonest and counterproductive.
This is beautiful and I want to agree with you.
Mostly I disagree that violence taints your soul permanently. I believe it is this line of thinking that has led the repetition of violence throughout history. Those who wish to do harm are never treated with strongly enough and so they persist. They are readily allowed access to others to harm as they please. Perhaps we can stave off states doing it with the right government types but there will be those in the general populace that desire harm for others and they will strive to upend that government at all times.
My opinion is: oppression deserves reciprocal violence an order of magnitude above and immediately.
I disagree that violence taints your soul permanently.
This depends upon your own morals, personal justifications, and probably a ton of other factors.
I think the idea is that it’s something you are going to have to live with, one way or another. You might hurt an innocent by accident, do more damage than intended (most people would struggle to live with having killed someone, for example), or even harm yourself irreparably. You might cause people to look at you differently, you might have the wrong information, you might change the course of your life permanently.
Violence is a very complicated subject, but perpetrators of it are, indeed, always marked in some way by it, just like every other experience you have.
Our whole system is based on the systematic oppression and violence on marginalized groups and countries. Taking direct violence on perpetuators of the system of exploitation and death is just directly addressing it, instead of allowing ourselves to continue to benefit from unseen pain and suffering. It seems allowing yourself to continue benefiting from evil would be more soul tainting than using violence to help others.
Cor, it’s a good job Hitler killed himself instead of somebody having to live with that evil, init?
Thanks Uncle. I’ll meditate on your wisdom.
Can’t kill your oppressors if they kill you first! You won’t have to worry about ectoplasm-based chains when you’re dead!
Also the video does make a good point that “winning by being good” is inherently tied to Western thoughts/culture and Iroh may have a different perspective being Eastern coded. And also being like, an ex general, and using violence at the end of the show…
Oh man, just take this ❤️
This is silly. Everyone knows, historically, you stop opressors by asking nicely. Maybe go into the street in a funny costume or something, organize a singalong. Violence is what the baddies do.
Violence is what the baddies do. Follow Albert’s Path:
Nonviolent resistance exists, been explained before, & has been done before. It also takes more courage.
Couldn’t read it, was stuck in an endless loop of age verification.
Naw write then a STRONGLY worded letter. That would have fixed Hitler and Mussolini.
Write a strongly worded letter, and then tell your nonspeaking autistic manservant that you want to become a superhero. You can pretend to be a cowardly dandy and your assistant can pretend to be deaf with an intellectual disability.
“But I can’t just KILL Ozai! wHaT aBoUt wHaT tHe mOnKs tAuGhT mE?” -The “hero” of the story lmfao
(yes I get it, it’s supposed to be a kids show, but still…)
Korra is also like extremely lib pilled (THe entire message is like “Extremism is bad folks”)
They painted Anarchists as bad. But I say KILL THE EARTH MONARCH LMFAO. (Didn’t even watch the whole thing, got too boring, so I just read the wikis)
The anarchists were trying to kill Korra and break the avatar cycle later on because reasons. Pretty sure they didn’t want to risk another Kyoshi, which in all honesty valid. Also they kidnapped the new air nomads but I think that was so they could kidnap Korra so… Yeah.
Legit I think Korra would’ve joined them had they not started fucking with her, especially since outside of Zuko, Tenzin, and her own father damned near every person in power she encountered was a damned fine example of why they were right.
Legend of Korra fucked up by making every one of the bad guys except season 2s somewhat reasonable. Amon was a hypocrite but not necessarily wrong from a historical point of view (Dai lee, fire nation), the Red Lotus were just anarchists who went a bit far, and I got bored with season 4 so I can’t remember anything about Earth Nation female Bismarck.
Yeah instead he did the moral thing… permenantly disabling him?
the thing is- Aang himself understands that his strict adherence to his values is not always a positive thing, i remember in one of the comics (or a later season) he outright calls it his own flaw
if not for the lion turtle giving him an alternative moments before, he’d have to either kill, or watch the world be destroyed
he later has to face that flaw again (actually this time) in the big graphic novels that came out, they’re really good btw. give them a read if you have the time to spare
I think it’d be funny if the energy bending thing was given like a final “oh you actually don’t have to kill” but then this power actual fails when the final battle comes… then Aang is like wtf and hesitates but then goes through a bit of internal mental battle and then finally finds the will to kill Ozai anyways and I feel like this would be better character development than a weak-ass oh I didn’t kill anyone, just crippled him for life
Like you know those movie plot where a character is like “oh I’ll be the bait and lure the enemy and you’ll kill them” and promises they won’t be in danger, then like when the plan goes through, it’s revealed that that character’s sacrifice was always necessary but they lied so its easier for that one empathetic character to go along with the plan. Like imagine the lion turtle actually did that instead, it’d be so much better as a plot.
if Aang had to kill Ozai he wouldn’t be smiling and waving after Zuko’s coronation, he most likely wouldn’t even decide to try again with Katara, the story would be forced to turn very dark, very fast, and would need to be given time and space to breathe
final minutes of the last episode are not the time to have a character break their core values, not without a season’s worth of set up to get you to that point
That’s about the least Iroh thing to say. Congrats for the quality shitpost I guess.
It’s not the least Iron thing to say. Even he said “Azula is crazy, and she needs to go down.”
Maybe not kill, but definitely take down and away from wider society to live in a dark, small place.
He wouldn’t word it that way, and he wouldn’t suggest that killing is universally the best way to go about it, but this is not the least likely thing that could come out of his mouth, as another commenter pointed out “Azula is crazy, and needs to go down”. Even as he turned down the team’s request to defeat Ozai, he made it clear that it could only end in death, “brother killing brother”. He was under no illusion that capturing Ozai was ever an option.
Do you think that the white lotus took back Ba Sing Se without killing anyone with those 100-foot-tall walls of fire? No, you don’t expel an occupying force by just cutting the tips off of some spears. Avatar shows us the least-bloody parts of the recapture, but do not mistake Iroh’s depiction in a kids’ series for pacifism. Iroh is very clear, vocally, that violence is necessary in some cases. He teaches zuko to redirect lightning to send it back at the person who launched it, as he says “to use your opponent’s energy against them”. He prefers nonlethal methods, but that doesn’t mean he refuses to employ deadly force. He and his friends use heavy fire against enemy metal tanks, which would boil alive the soldiers inside. They use rocks to stop up the holes through which benders were actively shooting fire, which would rebound and fill the tank with that same conflagration. Those tanks get shot up hundreds of feet in the air and have hard landings on top of one another, which would not only concuss anyone inside to death, but would crush all of the tanks on the bottom. Iroh literally starts the liberation of Ba Sing Se with a fire blast large enough to completely obliterate the titanic wall, as well as everyone previously depicted positioned directly behind it, in an instant. He doesn’t know how many soldiers lie behind that wall. He just destroys it, sight-unseen.
Iroh is not a pacifist, he is just very selective in his use of deadly force.
It’s Iroh-nic, don’t you think?
Bruh, you dont even have to use violence, if everyone stopped working, paying taxes and consuming anything that the bare minimum for survival, the country would collapse in less than a month.
How many times exactly has that happened in history? Revolutions are famously not peaceful. Not that they shouldn’t happen, they absolutely should, but the people in power don’t just go “oh shucks, guess I’ll give it all up!”
Almost once a year in France, global strikes that forces the government to roll back any time it tries to do something slightly too conservative.
Its called balance between power of the state and power of the peoples. In the US, peoples are just dumb sheeps.
Lmfao. Macron literally used constitutional powers to skip the congress and raise retirement age like two years ago, and protests achieved nothing. French people also elected a center-left government opposed to neoliberal austerity and the president is not allowing for a prime minister of LFI to be chosen, literally blocking the left while the far right threatens to take rule.
Bruh… It has been suspended…
And LFI is the third party in the congress, it would make no sense to choose the prime minister from them.
Protests almost always achieved smthg, paid leaves, CPE, retirement age, fuel taxes, etc… are a few exmaples. Dont speak of smthg you dont know…
If by “suspended” you mean pushed back until next elections, then yes, it has been “suspended”. This also happened 2 years after the initial law was antidemocratically imposed, so not as a result of the protests.
I mean, stripping oppressor of his power and letting him live “normally” is the cruelest thing you can do for such pitty people.
but i want a jar of their teeth :c
why not both?
It’s the fair thing to do. They get a choice. Best case they learn to live like everyone else, and maybe do something good. In which case, great! Worst case they show they can’t be let out in society, and are sent to prison. In which case, hey at least they got a second chance, which is more than what their victims got.
Napoleon time
Like we never tried this shit before… So who is the one deciding who gets taged as oppressor? Designate a “benevolent” dictator, or you vote on it, or just give everybody guns and make it a free for all?
Do you murder the oppressor’s children as well because they benifited from their perents behavior?
Where do you draw the line, who is an oppressor? Your boss, the cop doing her job, the train ticket expecting dude, someone stoping desperet people from shoplifting from her store?
What is wrong with you people? This is how some of the worst atrocities start.
This is how some of the worst atrocities start
Start? Really? People are being murdered in plain sight without consequences. The governments of the west are collaborating In genocide against Gaza. One in four black men go through jail in the US over their lifetimes. Homelessness is rampant, people are left to die without healthcare, drug abuse skyrockets, people are left unemployed and depressed.
You don’t care about “the worst atrocities”, the worst atrocities are happening TODAY and you simply don’t care because YOU have not been affected so far.
So who is the one deciding who gets taged as oppressor?
The people, democratically, organized in worker councils. Nowadays it’s usually old men with wigs deciding who’s a criminal, and that’s clearly working like shit, we can do better easily.
Do you murder the oppressor’s children as well because they benifited from their perents behavior?
No, literally no revolution ever has done this except in politically dangerous situations where keeping royal family members alive means danger of reestablishment of monarchy (e.g. Romanov). You’re just doing fake atrocity propaganda for something that literally doesn’t happen, and ignoring the millions murdered every single year.
“I’m the captain now”
Because I can’t afford to even travelbfar enough to give them a visit, for starters.
Because I’ll end up getting arrested. I’m not lucky enough for a quick death.
Because they can’t suffer if they’re dead.
motherfuck turning the other cheek
If we’re fine with resorting to violence to get what we want, we’re no better than them. If you kill a murderer, the number of murderers in the world remains the same…
BUT, this doesn’t mean we should never, ever resort to force as a final, last, desperate act, but only when there’s no other option.
As with Batman, the number only remains the same if you only kill one murderer. Kill two, and that’s a net positive!
What Gotham really needs is safety bars around acid pools and more than one licensed therapist, preferably one that doesn’t turn into a manic pixie dream clown
It’s hard to argue with that!
I dunno man, killing a genocidal maniac makes someone a hero in my book.
I’d say we throw that hypothetical person a parade. During which, they are presented with various awards, and accolades. Definitely an honorary doctorate somewhere too. We would then of course need to nominate that person for a Nobel peace prize—and I’d bet they’d win.
we’re no better than them.
The slave doesn’t want to be better than the slaver, they want to be free.
If we’re fine with resorting to violence to get what we want, we’re no better than them
This person doesn’t know how Nazism was defeated, and how tens of millions of people in Eastern Europe were saved from genocide by military might.
It was defeated by rebuilding the country afterwards. A lesson we learned from the aftermath of WWI that seems to have been forgotten.
Rebuilding the country after what exactly? Lmfao
After the same thing that happened to them in WWI. The rebuild kept WWIII from happening another couple decades later and rehabilitated several despotic countries drunk on their own brand of patriotism. It was the real winner of WWII.
The real winner of WW2 is the Soviet Union, which saved tens of millions of lives from Nazi extermination and destroyed Nazism all the way to Berlin.
If you kill a murderer, the number of murderers in the world remains the same…
Lmfao, you really cannot be serious with this kind of reasoning, right?
If you are serious, here’s an equally as ingenuous counter argument:
- If you kill two murderers or more you will have effectively reduced the number of murderers in the world…
There’s an argument that murder is unlawful killing of another human. If ending the life of a murderer is done lawfully, the number is m-1.
I am not claiming that I support this theory, just putting it into the discourse as a thing that some folks could easily believe.
Also, it’s semantics as the argument you’re making still perfectly holds if the word murderer is swapped for ‘killer’
Damn! States seem to have no options all the time! Did Israel had no option than to Genocide Gaza‽
