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If you read this as me giving up you might want to skim it again.
You've given up on peaceful protest and are embracing radicalized, violent protest, which is self-defeating. Again, your enemies love you - you're doing exactly what they hope.
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I think this greatly depends on rhe type of protest, specifically whether it threatens the ruling class's ability to make a profit or to govern. In recent centuries liberal governments have gotten better at channeling discontent into forms of protest that are less consequential and more performative.
The world would be better off if all the defeatists followed their own advice and did something else with their lives, and left the political activities to a new generation with fight and committment and passion in them, people with leadership and agency. If people are going to quit, then quit! Stop coming to the meeting and talking about you've quit!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've given up on peaceful protest and are embracing radicalized, violent protest, which is self-defeating. Again, your enemies love you - you're doing exactly what they hope.
No I'm pointing out that some peaceful protest movements are missing a key component of successful protest movements. You calling this self defeating doesn't make it so. hth
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Nelson Mandela was on the US terrorist watch list until 2008. Also the fact that so many in the US claim they remember he died in prison should say something about the media landscape. From the European perspective I recall the concerts that were held to free him and then also the concert that was held after he was free. Simple Minds even made a famous song for it [1]. I don't know if those concets were a big show in…
While Euro countries tend to be a tiny bit better than the US on the issues, they are generally much more restrictive in terms of protected speech.
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I mean bombing government buildings (which is what landed Mandela in prison) is definitely what most people would consider terrorism, or treason, or similar things. Now you can argue that Mandela's actions were justified because Apartheid was evil (and I agree that it was evil) but that's entirely different than arguing that he was just a poor victim of the racist SA government who was imprisoned because he wanted to end Apartheid.
The problem is that people feel morally uncomfortable arguing that it's ok to bomb government buildings (and similar actions) when your cause is just, because that raises all sorts of other moral quandaries that most people don't want to (or refuse to) face. So they pretend like Mandela and his party were perfect angels practicing non-violent resistance like MLK so they can avoid the moral quandaries raised by suggesting that terrorism is ok for a just cause.
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You need to understand as long as Citizens United stand it's practically impossible to make a change like this in the United States. People don't care enough and political issues are bought.
Why do you think it should be illegal to make documentaries critical of Hillary Clinton?
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As I said, I don't want this to become a flame war, and to that end would have preferred not to name the apartheid state in question. But since you insist, nobody is just 'making it so by saying it' - indeed, saying it's not happening, in spite of the abundance of evidence, does not mean it's not! I've Norwegian friends who have seen it first hand and we're aghast, but of course that's just a personal anecdote that j…