this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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Have there ever been any big moves or changes in the world without violence involved?
No. There is always violence. Ghandi, Martin Luther King, the suffragettes, and Rosa Parks just received it instead of delivering it.
Over what time scale? Incremental change is also change, and don't require violence. You might not have noticed the beneficial change because it's happened over so long and society has been managed through the change.
The other side to that question is - how frequently does violence achieve beneficial change? As opposed to violence which doesn't effect change at all, or changes things for the worse?
Terrorism, for instance?
Ok. Small and incremental changes. Our government has slowly gotten more corrupt and become more of an oligarchy over the past 60 years. Our government stopped doing what was best for most Americans a long time ago. The blackwater scandal during the Nixon Era would barely be a blip today. Insurance companies have gotten Healthcare to sky rocket. No one can afford a house because corporations have been allowed to buy them all up. Minimum wage has fallen way behind, there's no ceiling for how many hundreds of millions the wealthy can make each year and still pay a lower tax rate than someone making $70k. People are in more debt than ever and fewer people are starting families because you can't afford it. Our two party system bullies out any third party so political shifts never change. Gerrymandering is outrageous in many states in order to suppress voters. Anything that is generally passed that would benefit most Americans has its legs cut out from underneath it with stipulations or other earmarked junk. Corporations breaking laws get a slap on the wrist. I mean hell, Bayer knowingly infected hundreds of people with HIV back when it was a death sentence because they didn't want to take the loss on discarding their tainted product. We have at least one Supreme Court Justice who has been caught dead to rights accepting gifts, and not a thing happens to him.
So yeah. There's have been small changes.
Oh right so you're talking about change just in America then?
The Velvet Divorce.
Gandhi and India's independence from the British through nonviolent resistance comes to mind.
There were many assassinations and atrocities (including gunning down over 800 unarmed indians) that happened for 50 years leading up to that. Also, after ww2 the British feared that the ton of Indian National Army POWs released from Japan were gearing up to violently resist the British on a large scale. The British didn't just give up because Ghandi was nice and all the non violent protests. They gave up after years of violence, then a break from the violence, and then the threat of going back to violence against the former POWs and the support they were getting.
Ghandi and his followers were very influential and peaceful, but thats far from the only thing that forced out the brits.
I mean sure, if we include violent reactions to non-violence and place the goalposts just so, then yes, absolutely everything includes violence...
But as far as "any big moves or changes" you mention, Gandhi's movement for non-violent resistance is the posterchild for doing exactly that without violence. It exposes violent state power as ultimately impotent when faced with massive, collective and coordinated non-violent resistance.
And Gandhi was not "nice" just because he advocated for non-violence... He and his followers used coordinated, active efforts to cripple the mechanisms upholding British rule. The British hated him for it.
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make.
I feel like you didn't listen to anything I said. Let me summarize it for you. Ghandi was one piece of the puzzle to making the brits leave. The other piece was violence, and without the violence part, it wasn't going to work.
You can’t have a successful MLK without a Malcolm X behind him reminding the oppressors of the other option if they don’t compromise with the former.
Exactly.
A good point. However, if violence was all there was, a devastating war would be the end result. The non-violence led the British public to disagree with the military actions.
A destabilized nation cannot war afar.
Apologies for butchering The Art of War, I believe the correct quotation includes "disruption at home" though it's a very fuzzy memory.
Conveniently people never talk about Bhagat Singh when they talk about Gandhi.
Gotta love the downvotes.
Q. Has change ever happened without violence
A. Yes look at Gandhi
Lemmy downwotes, no explanation given but obviously doesn't fit the narrative