this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Revolution will either come, killing most of us, or the train of rampant capitalistic destruction will continue on, killing all of us. We're not close enough to immediate death for most of us to view revolution as an acceptable answer yet, but I have no doubt that in a few decades, when the young adults of that time look back on the current times and think "they had it so easy," the risk associated with an uprising will seem much less daunting when compared to the risk of simply living within whatever jumbled-together scraps of a system we'll have left by then.
Revolution isn't a solution that any sane person gets excited for; it all but guarantees a short life full of suffering for the vast majority of people, but it's a solution that is chosen when the alternative is guaranteed suffering for everyone outside of the upper class. It's the last resort used when the best hope you have for the future is to fight for the chance that a few people make it to peaceful times, because you don't see any other way for anyone to get there by working within the system.
Voting is important, yes; we get the best chance to make it to a revolution by voting blue, slowing down capitalism's destruction of the world, but so long as each election is populated by 2 candidates proudly bought out by corporations who don't give a shit about the world, there will be no viable option within the system to actually stop its destruction. That requires actually changing the system through uprising.
Historically, its not the revolution that kills you but the reaction.
From America to France to Russia to China to Spain to Vietnam to Cuba, the early years involved a lot of marching and politicking and petitioning and negotiating.
But then some of the revolutionaries win one too many concessions or elections than a current government can stand. That's when the guns come out and things fall apart.
Your Francos and Pinochets and Chiang Kai-Sheks start pouring out of the woodwork. Your Austrians start invading with support from the British. Or your French reinvade after you just finished pushing out the Japanese.
That's when the killing starts in earnest.
Or your revolutionaries get executed for not being revolutionary enough (Reign of Terror, October revolution)
The Reign of Terror was kicked off by a wave of paranoia following the Austrian invasion of France.
The October Revolution followed the Russian Republic kicking off a White Terror in the face of continued anti-war demonstrations.
Neither happened in a vacuum. They were both in response to reactionary forces brutalizing the peaceniks within the revolutionary movement. Once the peaceful leadership was neutralized, the war hawks were the only ones left.
That's a ridiculous interpretation of history and I'm a little amazed that you managed to actually say it with a straight face. Holy tankie revisionism Batman. Literally every bad thing that revolutionaries did was actually because of other people.
And you honestly believe this? That's as naive as thinking America is the greatest country on Earth, or that the natives welcomed the Pilgrims with open arms, or other comforting childhood ridiculousness.
A linear series of events? Are you going to start talking about the War of Northern Aggression, next? Denouncing the tyrant Lincoln and his bloodthirsty Radical Republicans, then dismiss Fort Sumter?
The collapse of revolutions into violence are precipitated by the caging and killing of its most peaceful members.
You can pull that info directly from Columbus's own journals. Guanahaní was full of some of the most peaceful and pleasant people to have ever existed. When the Spanish arrived, they immediately began looting, raping, and killing.
Cortez and Pizzaro were originally greated as honored guests, only to return the hospitality with wholesale hostage taking and rampant murder. This is self-reported
When the English arrived, they immediately began kidnapping and torturing natives of the Mid-Atlantic in search of their own golden city. This is also extensively well documented by the original settlers.
But for the next 500 years, the native peoples were described as vicious cannibal savages by settler colomialists whose original contact was no different than a swarm of locusts.
That's why you think they were evil monsters inhabiting North America who all needed to be Christianized to save their souls. That's why you think Evil Wicked Godless Communists were doing holocausts all across Eastern Europe right before WW2 broke out. That's why you're likely going to buy into the next Big Lie about evil Palestinians, or evil Mexicans, or evil Chinese people next.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Get back to the point: you unconditionally defend revolutionaries and believe they are all saints who can do no wrong.
Ah, you crazy kids and your violent revolutions. It’s always fun and games until they start culling the infirm.
But your myopic cynicism is well earned, fair play to you.