CNN reporting on some interesting survey results from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. Seven hundred and fifty adults were interviewed face to face in the West Bank, and 481 were interviewed in Gaza, also in person. The Gaza data collection was done during the recent truce, when it was safer for researchers to move about.
Indeed, when someone says “violence begets violence”, that usually means there has already been violence, hence the whole “violence begets” part. You’re literally agreeing with me.
I also agree with you that handwringing does nothing either. My whole point is that violence accomplishes the same thing as handwringing – nothing. Violence is just bread and circus to distract from anything productive.
By the way, do you actually have a definition of liberal you can refer to here? Or is it just a catch-all term for anyone you dislike and disagree with? Because it certainly seems like the latter, which makes it a very empty insult.
No, we’re not, because…
Riiiiight… if we just sacrifice a million more to the mass-murderers they’ll grow tired off it and leave peacefully, is that it, Clyde? Is that your plan?
Why don’t you lead by example and put yourself up for the chop?
The guiding principle of moderate, centrist and liberal politics is acquiescence to the status quo.
It is, by default, the most cowardly, self-serving and privileged form of politics one could ascribe to.
As MLK himself wrote:
So no, Clyde - I will not be providing you with a description of the politics you should have no problem recognizing yourself.
Let me get this straight. Nonviolent solutions – once bombing the shit out of each other for the 50th time doesn’t work – is just liberal bullshit and trying to preserve the status quo, prioritizing order over justice…
… And you use a quote by one of the most famous nonviolent protest advocates in history to try and prove that?
I think very clearly, MLK is not referring to using and promoting nonviolent methods as the problematic behavior of the white moderate. Considering, you know, how he promoted nonviolent methods.
Allow me to quote MLK in kind:
I believe this is the “liberal handwringing” you were referring to earlier?
So kindly explain this contradiction – is MLK a “white moderate liberal who is devoted to order over justice”? Did MLK follow the “most cowardly, self-serving, and privileged form of politics” and acquiesce to the status quo?
Or, is it possible that you’re letting your anger get the best of you? It’s completely sensible to be enraged about this, but you’re letting your anger turn you into a warhawk.
So that’s a definitive “no” on sacrificing yourself, huh?
It’s easy to expect others to sacrifice themselves “peacefully” if you know the blood won’t be soiling your porch isn’t it, liberal?
Do tell… why do you think MLK (who was no less hated by the powers that be than Malcolm X) was packaged and sold to you after his death as some paragon of “nonviolence?” Does it perhaps have something to do with the fact that liberals love the idea of “nonviolence” because it poses no threat to the status quo?
Here.
Do tell… how could the colonialist slaughter perpetrated by the Nazis and their European helpers in the Soviet Union have ended “nonviolently?”
How could the indiscriminate mass-murder that the US rained down on SE Asia have ended “nonviolently?”
We both know the answer to that - the difference between us is that you appease the mass-murderers with your “nonviolence” because you are perfectly fine with sacrificing people to the colonialist death machine as long as it doesn’t affect you.
I, on the other hand, don’t.
The article on MLK is genuinely interesting and informative, but the author fails to actually prove their point. MLK saw riots as an inevitability, and he explained why they happen, but he never went beyond that. MLK says that if you sum up all the wrongs committed, the white colonizer is still the more guilty. That’s the last direct quote however. The next claim by the author is completely unsubstantiated:
“If it is violent to take that which does not belong to you for the thrill of, even briefly, imagining yourself on even ground with your oppressor, then King was concluding there was to be no hope for nonviolence. Perhaps not then, perhaps not ever. Martin Luther King, at the end of his life, was coming to understand the restrictions of nonviolence as a weapon against a violent oppressor who shows no moral compass.”
In none of MLK’s words does he say there is no hope for nonviolence. The author is making a massive extrapolation. I’m happy be proven wrong if you have any direct quotes from MLK where he recants nonviolence and promotes violence.
I must say though, it is quite interesting for someone so opposed to colonialism to harshly lecture a descendant of the colonized. My grandparents were born as British colonists. My heritage is of a proud culture who has their valuables stolen by the British – and that are currently still displayed in British museums.
So no, I’m not going to sacrifice myself. Colonizers have taken more than enough from my family line. I will not deign to pretend to know your background, so this may or may not apply to you – but I find it rich when white “leftists” who are so deadset against imperialism have no qualms about lecturing and whitesplaining to nonwhite people. A bit ironic, don’t you think, for a supposedly anti imperialist to insist they know better than a nonwhite descendent of the colonized?
I don’t know which side of this equation you’re on, but it’s apparent that the white leftist in a situation like this is more similar to their colonizing ancestors than they’d like to admit. Either you’re like me and you’re already well aware of this from so called liberals… or you have some soul searching to do.