Like, when I see someone physically attacking someone on the street and calls for them to desist don't work, the next stage is to circulate a petition amongst the people passing by, imploring the assailant to stop. Or, I drop to my knees and begin to pray that the attack ends. Finally, if all else fails I do some research about how violence harms both the victims and the perpetrators. (My friend, the post-structuralist, sometimes opens up a can of food and pours the contents on the sidewalk next to the melee, or gets on the nearest bus and folds his arms and pouts.)
The LAST thing you want to do is physically restrain the attacker and do what's necessary to let the victim flee to safety.
I don't know. I suppose that I'm not making much sense.
I only think that to equate physically lashing out at politicians and other militarists, whose cynical, deluded policies are causing widespread suffering and death to MILLIONS of people, with those very same policies of suffering and death, is ludicrous.
Do you get what I mean?
I think the Left has to get comfortable with the idea of justified violence. And, I've said it before; advocating violence can get murky. It can backfire on us. If it wasn't for the fact that the Canadian peace movement has been totally fucking useless at restraining Canadian participation in mayhem and death in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Haiti, Israel, the Ukraine and elsewhere, I might accept that violent protest causes more harm than good.
2 comments:
What any given situation calls for is always going to be subjective by nature.
You just do whatever you think is best going to work in behalf of the situation at hand and hope you've made the best choice and that your level of judgement is sound enough.
Tal Hartsfeld,
Amen. I don't dogmatically reject non-violence. In the long run, any genuine revolution has to be based on non-violence and consensus.
But dealing with scum like the harpercons, we're far removed from that state of affairs.
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