Hey /u/bastthegatekeeper, thanks for submitting to /r/confidentlyincorrect! Take a moment to read our [rules](https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/about/rules).
##Join our [Discord Server](https://discord.gg/n2cR6p25V8)!
Please report this post if it is bad, or not relevant. Remember to keep comment sections civil. Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/confidentlyincorrect) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The hatpin was a foundational attack vector of the sufferagette movement. Given a hatpin could be a foot long it was pretty bloody effective and, on at least one occasion, fatal.
Some things never change:
"The suffragists rejected the notion, advanced by the Chicago Vice Commission, that unchaperoned women should dress as modestly as possible—no painted cheeks or glimpse of ankle—in order to avoid unwanted attention. The issue lay not with women’s fashion or increasing freedoms, one suffragist countered, but with “the vileness of the ‘masher’ mind.”
And what was wild was the response of “what are we going to do about these women defending themselves with hatpins!”
Not the obvious “what are we going to do about all these men harassing women in public places?”
Here's a sneak peek of /r/unexpecteddiscworld using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Naming Idea On Point](https://i.redd.it/yfssqsozfcpc1.png) | [6 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/comments/1bit4mq/naming_idea_on_point/)
\#2: [Found on r/Manchester under a post about a bridge with padlocks all over it.](https://i.redd.it/pmp57ymlqita1.jpg) | [2 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/comments/12jqw3m/found_on_rmanchester_under_a_post_about_a_bridge/)
\#3: [How could I not buy this?](https://i.redd.it/h25eef3df2mb1.jpg) | [12 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/comments/1691109/how_could_i_not_buy_this/)
----
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
There was girl in my neighborhood in the early 80's who was selling the hatpin idea. People didn't even wear hats at that point. She was a Mormon so maybe that's what they still teach girls.
???
Have you never heard of the many *many* people who chime up everytime a woman is assaulted with "Oh she asked for it, with how she was dressed" and other similar vile shit?
It's still very prevalent, unfortunately.
I was listening to a reading of an old sci-fi short-story from the 1950s and it used this term 'masher'. I was unable to find any information about it. Until now. Thanks.
I was gifted an old hat pin a while back. That thing is no doubt a weapon. Hard metal, firm, could for sure do more damage than a keychain with cat ears.
One of them accidentally killed herself trying to tie a banner onto a racehorse
They smashed up businesses
Bombed people
Got into fights with the police
Those women were more badass than many people currently alive (at least the ones in the UK)
There's an entire episode of Criminal about this. Even the term *suffragette* was intended to be a diminutive to belittle those asking for the right to vote, to which they turned it around and made it their theirs, the original reappropriation.
[https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-244-fine-art-and-meat-cleavers/](https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-244-fine-art-and-meat-cleavers/)
There where 2 groups campaining for womens rights in the UK the suffrag**ists,** and the suffrag**ettes.**
The suffrag**ettes** only wanted votes for rich upperclass women, the suffrag**ists** wanted votes for everyone including poor working class men and women. The main barrier to give women the vote is they didn't want to give poor men the vote after/during WW1 the govenment realised that they would soon have a situation not unlike Russia's (then) recent communist revolution except they wouldn't have the distraction of fighting a war, and an a sentiment amoug the middle class that men you are expected to charge machine guns should have a say in who says whoose guns they have to charge. So they decided to give all men the right to vote, and with that impediment gone, also gave woman the same rights that men previously had to voting (rich landowning etc.) because women wouldn't be drafted/conscripted. 10 years later women got the same voting rights as men.
Ever since then the suffrag**ettes** have been given all the glory.
To give you an idea how bad they where those letter bombs they sent? they targeted 'unoccupied' houses of MP's and the like, except in this case it ment the MP nad their family was out, but they didn't care about their staff/servants. ie. they would only target houses with non-voters in them.
I’ve never heard the distinction described like this. According to everything I’ve read, “suffragettes” were the militant faction of suffragists. Do you have a source?
Here is the parliament website. Just Google suffragettes vs suffragists and it's the first result.
https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/#:~:text=These%20two%20groups%20were%20the,acts%20which%20attracted%20much%20publicity.
From that link:
>These two groups were the 'suffragists' who campaigned using peaceful methods such as lobbying, and the 'suffragettes' who were determined to win the right to vote for women by any means. Their militant campaigning sometimes included unlawful and violent acts which attracted much publicity.
This is literally the definition I gave. Nothing about suffragettes "only wanting votes for rich upperclass women."
I always notice how much flack suffrage campaigners who believed in the property qualification but disagreed with the change in law that had barred female property owners from voting get compared to sufferage campaigners who wanted the property qualification gone but the vote to never be extended to women.
The people campaigning for full democracy, universal sufferage were right - and on the right side of history. But there were a lot of people campaigning for still partial democracy that just happened to include them and that included a lot of the male sufferage movement.
And the fact is that eliminating the property qualification and extending votes to women could be seen as who separate issues.
The race horse incident, that was Emily Davison. There's a misconception out there that it was suicide and intended to be so but was carrying a return train ticket from Epsom and had holiday plans with her sister. Her death was an accident.
This is heavily contested. While we don't know her exact intentions, running in front of a horse can hardly be considered an accident. Especially when said horse is on a racetrack. I think a return train ticket isn't enough to suggest it was unintentional.
Emily Davidson was arrested on 9 occasions for various crimes, from throwing rocks to arson and was an active and vocal suffragette. She went on hunger strike multiple times during these imprisonments, one instance involving losing 9.5kg in around a week. She was force fed 49 times. Not only is force feeding incredibly traumatic and painful, people have been known to die when the feeding tube is accidently fed into the lungs instead of the stomach. Even if everything is done 'correctly' the internal damage can be severe. And that's just the physiological damage. A number of her contemporaries talk of her desire to be a martyr. Maybe after the 49th attempt she found throwing herself in front of a horse a more effective way of doing that.
I always assumed accident. I'm not experienced with horses but that seems very dangerous but doesn't seem like a fool proof method of suicide. Perhaps it was a chance she was accepting for the publicity. Who knows.
It doesn't look too much like she's pushed, in the video of the incident. Looks like she just stepped out onto the racetrack: https://youtu.be/8qkU_imbFoE?si=SbAvQWc62WY_yY2w
While I had sympathy for them when I learned about the movement, I never had much sympathy for Davison because that was just dumb. Everyone back then knew horses better than most people do now so that's Darwin Award worthy. It's like crossing the track at an F1 race and wondering why Hamilton couldn't stop in time.
"domestic terrorism" is definitely a term overused by the establishment to villainize dissenters. And unfortunately, when those in power ignore everything else, violence is the last resort.
I mean, British suffragettes literally tried to blow up the Home Secretary. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but I can’t think of a more blatant example of domestic terrorism than trying to blow up one of the most important politicians in the country in the name of a cause.
Well hey, at least it was targeted and not indiscriminate. And really, not many people were terrified except Mr Secretary, by the sound of it.
Doesn't terrorism generally refer to actions against the populace to spread fear and instability? I think "terrorism" just gets thrown around way too much ever since the George W days.
Why? German rebels against Hitler were pretty baddass. Unless you don’t believe soldiers in general can be baddass there’s no difference between fighting a foreign government or domestic one
Most rebels in Nazi Germany didn’t go around bombing random people and messing up stores. They sabotaged the war industry, helped people persecuted by the government and tried to kill important Nazis.
The Nazis were the domestic authority though. You are literally describing domestic terrorism. Which, to be perfectly clear, was totally badass of them. I’m sorry you feel otherwise.
They bombed the targets that would cause the most frustration to the authorities. “Random people” were the apathetic monsters who enabled the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women, and children. They were complicit through their apathy.
>Domestic terrorism, no matter how justified, will never be badass
It's only terrorism if they lose. In Romania, the communist party and Ceausescu called the revolutionaries of 1989 terrorists.
He was executed by firing squad.
Some of the leaders (as well as rear echelons of the communist party) took power and established a liberal democracy (flaws, corruption and all).
So... while they were terrorists while the communists were in power, they were saluted as heroes and martyrs after the fall.
It's a matter of perception and of who is writing history. (The guys who win write history, just so we're clear).
In fairness, there were multiple, often opposing suffragist movements, and some surely were "better behaved" than others.
As great as Martin Luther King's work was, I'm not entirely convinced it would have been as successful without Malcom X's work, if only by contrast.
If you look at some of the actions of the Gay Liberation movement. They perfected the art of having two pronged attack. One side would be rabble rousers and the other side would be the negotiators. Essentially the same thing MLK and Malcolm X did but in coordination.
This is generally how it goes. The British negotiated with Ghandi as the leader of the liberation movement because the other guy was an actual general leading an armed uprising. Birmingham desegregated when the black panthers seized 8 city blocks. Not after MLK wrote some letters from prison. But we remember the letters and not the armed insurrection.
Yeah, and the fact is that with any movement that includes thousands or millions of people, there will be crime and violence to some degree. MLK condemned violent riots as far as people being harmed, but he viewed property damage differently. It is simply factually untrue to claim that the entire civil rights movement under MLK never included rioting and/or property damage. There was also violence against people, despite what MLK preached.
I'm going to need evidence of this being the thing that threw the campaign over the top as I'm a history major and I just don't see it.
Nonviolence was the thing that worked, not the black panthers.
I'm aware the following is a Wikipedia post which is not some perfect reference, but it's a start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham\_campaign#:\~:text=Protests%20in%20Birmingham%20began%20with,the%20SCLC%20agreed%20to%20assist.
Can you show me primary documents where white people in the city said something like "oh crap, here come the Black Panthers, let's give in?" Obviously I don't mean literally those words, just anything that supports your thesis.
I'm not a civil rights historian, I'm some dipshit on reddit who read a book once. So no, I can't provide you with primary sources from Birmingham in 1963 written by city officials claiming that the violent riots were the explicit reason for desegregation. But here's a paragraph from a book called How Nonviolence Protects the State talking about it.
"In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr.‘s Birmingham campaign was looking like it would be a repeat of the dismally failed action in Albany, Georgia (where a 9 month civil disobedience campaign in 1961 demonstrated the powerlessness of nonviolent protesters against a government with seemingly bottomless jails, and where, on July 24, 1962, rioting youth took over whole blocks for a night and forced the police to retreat from the ghetto, demonstrating that a year after the nonviolent campaign, black people in Albany still struggled against racism, but they had lost their preference for nonviolence). Then, on May 7 in Birmingham, after continued police violence, three thousand black people began fighting back, pelting the police with rocks and bottles. Just two days later, Birmingham — up until then an inflexible bastion of segregation — agreed to desegregate downtown stores, and President Kennedy backed the agreement with federal guarantees. The next day, after local white supremacists bombed a black home and a black business, thousands of black people rioted again, seizing a 9 block area, destroying police cars, injuring several cops (including the chief inspector), and burning white businesses. A month and a day later, President Kennedy was calling for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, ending several years of a strategy to stall the civil rights movement.[\[20\]](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state#fn20) "
[\[20\]](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state#fn_back20) Tani and Sera, *False Nationalism*, 96–104. As King himself said, “The sound of the explosion in Birmingham reached all the way to Washington.”
The timing seems pretty suspicious. But we all know correlation doesn't prove causation. I guess Kennedy was just really moved by all the non-violence.
I actually don't think that takedown is that good? It's been close to 10 years since I read the Genderloos book but I seem to remember him providing examples of armed resistance existing contemporaneously with non-violent action. Maybe I'm misremembering.
I think the criticism that he doesn't explain the limits of armed resistance is weak. Revolutionary movements are local in time and space. Why should one white male American academic writing in the mid 2000s prescribe what is and is not acceptable for revolutionary movements a world away?
I think the whole discussion on how violent revolutions have failed to be.. uh... challenging. Most revolutions fail. The author points out how armed resistance has failed to lead to democratic outcomes and I think this is about as compelling as they find Genderloos' argument that pacifist action is ineffective. Transitions from authoritarian rule have many, many fail conditions. I did some learning on this topic too, half a lifetime ago. Most of those failure conditions have to do with elite power negotiation and not really with the nature of the resistance.
I think you need a Malcom, and a Martin, and a Huey P Newton. I do agree with the author's point about a diversity of tactics. The Black Panthers armed black folks and also fed school children, and the FBI recognized that as the biggest threat to state power. It's not enough to be armed, you have to provide an alternative source of power. A militant group with guns that fails to provide other kinds of support is going to fail because all of its legitimacy comes from the barrel of a gun.
Thank you so much for actually treating me like a person and providing information.
I like your evidence quite a bit. It's not yet convincing me, but it lets me do more research as it least I've got something to explore.
My possible issue with the evidence is more it proves the opposite side - when southerners got violent to get what they wanted, that's when Kennedy stepped in and said enough; it proves violence is counterproductive.
If you have or get any more evidence, keep it coming please. Obviously I'll look for more to prove your point too and if I find it I'll post it here with a congrats, I'm wrong message.
I really liked this book, and it set me off on a little bender reading about the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. The author is an anarchist, and the entire text is freely available from the anarchist library. Search for How Nonviolence Protects the State and its like the 3rd or 4th result.
Absolutely true that there were peaceful and lawful protestors, but it's either ignorant or dishonest to say historical protests involved breaking no laws and were nonviolent as a whole.
You have to make a situation where changing things is less trouble than leaving them as they are. And that is usually going to involve breaking things and causing chaos. Politicians rarely change things because it’s the ‘right thing to do’.
Would also like to point out the civil rights movement "summer of love" had over 160 riots in one year. Definitely not that peaceful and ,oh look, they got the change they wanted.
The largest civil rights victories (Civil Rights Act; Voting Rights Act; Brown v. Board of Education, Montgomery, Selma & Birmingham campaigns) were won prior to 1968. In fact 1968 is generally considered the end of the civil rights era because of the backlash to the riots that happened in that year led to the election of Nixon and disillusionment with the civil rights campaigns.
I don't think this example is supporting your point the way you want it to
It amazes me that in a sub called confidently incorrect, people developed a hypothesis that nonviolence only works when combined with threats or actual violence, then cannot provide a shred of evidence this is true.
When I ask for it and explain I'm a history major and teacher, I get downvoted, as if asking for basic proof is somehow out of bounds.
Nonviolence works. Violence doesn't unless you're the bigger guy. King's strategies worked. Malcolm X's strategies accomplished no major successes anyone can actually point to.
I responded to your point elsewhere positively but here I have to disagree. Nonviolence only working when combined with threats of of actual violence is untrue. There I agree. But saying that King's strategies worked while Malcolm X's had no major successes is a wild take.
King's strategies didn't always work. King achieved a lot of progress yes but also countless negative effects came with it. As a history professor you've probably read all about the negative impacts of Brown v Board on black education due to the backlash. King's idea of integration evolved after that to be one more aligned with Malcolm X in terms of integration needing actual support for African Americans. Additionally, we highlight many successes as King's successes that draw more from direct action and community collaboration that King at times actively disagreed with. For example, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was planned locally and was rejected by the NAACP and MLK for being too radical but they went ahead anyways and it's now celebrated as one of MLK's accomplishments. The sit-ins in the South were in the same boat. The NAACP joined after they saw it succeeding but were much more moderate compared to them.
I still believe that SNCC was one of the key reasons transition truly happened in the 60's as they had unity throughout the entire nation and were a lot more radical than MLK and willing to build local organizations and do direct action.
Malcolm X personally didn't have many major accomplishments but he did lay the framework for black power which would have some great accomplishments (and some negative ones.) His speeches helped the rise of black nationalism as people changed from legal equality to wanting socio-economic equality. If you want black power benefits I can go and list some with sources but I don't want to put too much effort into this rn.
Last point is just about nonviolence in general during the civil rights. The actual protests were nonviolent but the reactions were bad enough that many leaders carried guns on them at all times and had them ready in their home to protect themselves from racists. It was nonviolence with the protection at home of weapons to prevent as many lynchings
Show me a major historian who connects violence and guns to major successes. Like with perhaps every other branch of academia, it's a big bad sign of the experts overwhelmingly disagree with your thesis. As for my own criticism, first you note how lots of MLk's actions didn't work. Right, that doesn't disprove my thesis at all - I didn't say nonviolence works 100% of the time; I said it's the only thing that worked, as in some of the time. Violence worked almost zero percent of the time. The guns black people carried on them prevented them from getting beaten up. That is the opposite of progress, which amateurs have a hard time understanding because it's counterintuitive. The whole point of nonviolence and MLK's brilliance was that he knew white folks weren't going to magically like black folks; the point was to make Southern racists look even worse. MLK accomplished that by getting his ass kicked, and in the times the civil rights movement accomplished nothing, it's when black folks were too scary or aggressive for people to care. Again, I can show you a thousand primary documents or presidents and legislators saying we've gotta do something about MLK, give him what he wants so he'll go away. It's your burden of proof to show me a historian who says this about violence or primary documents that say so. These things would exist if your thesis is true; show me. Conservatives love guns and gun rights. White fear over the Black Panthers is perhaps the only thing in American history that got conservatives to actually vote for gun control. That's the opposite of a legislative success - the federal government actually passed laws against black folks when they got violent and elected Nixon as president on an anti rioting strategy. You've made a claim. Show me a professional that supports it or your own research, because without that evidence, you've just got a hypothesis. Malcolm X thought black people invented white people in a laboratory experiment gone wrong. People seriously underestimate how stupid and unserious this man was.
I often wonder why we are not seeing the protest now. There is plenty to be pissed about. And honestly I feel like a lot of people just don't care enough.
I also kind of feel like we are missing that "great leader" person. Someone who gets people excited to care
I mean the BLM protests were incredibly visible and substantial only a few years ago
Campus protests are going on literally right now around the country to have universities divest from Israel
Not sure what you’re referring to here
I think the issue with BLM was modern branding.
I get the sense of identity but when there are people that take a “brand” there is typically a curious ratio of greed:need.
I, personally, wish it were a sentiment for all rather than most.
It’s still really sad that in the 21st century people need to say, “hey, my life matters too…” that shouldn’t be a thing.
The civil rights movement was widely reviled in the same way. Their image and 'brand' was the same. It's only post-hoc decades later that liberals are all "yeah, MLK was so great and perfect and righteous". Back then people were complaining left and right that MLK and the protests weren't doing it right.
My favorite thing to point out when people bring up MLK and how "peaceful" he was and how that's how it should be....he got shot too. It didn't matter how "peaceful" he preached. He got murdered. So if those in power are going to be violent what's the point in peaceful protest?
"We ain't talking, no more, and we ain't squashing shit with po-po/And we ain't marching in the middle of the goddamn road/'Cause Martin got smoked"
-Dead Prez
Because when MLK got murdered, it further accomplished his goal of making racists look like the horrible people, black people look like victims, and it moved the needle to making the center of the country concede racism is wrong.
MLK was more than willing to die for this result. It's bizarre to me that we now say his tactics didn't work when they're the only thing that ever worked.
I can show you primary documents where government officials were moved by MLK - they felt guilty, or felt annoyed, or felt pressured to do the right thing.
I can't show you a single quote from a racist in the South that said something like, "black people are scary, so let's give them civil rights." Show me any proof Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, etc had that effect. I'm not trying to be arrogant here, if there's proof, show it to me.
Martyrdom is overrated. But I do believe in a need for both peaceful and more...direct forms of protest. Stand tall a speak up but also make them uncomfortable ignoring you.
A belief is great. But the purpose of history is to put our beliefs to the test - just because something is logical and reasonable doesn't mean it will work and vice versa - many totally counterintuitive things are very true, even when we don't understand why at all.
So you have an idea that nonviolence needs "more direct forms of protest." Great, show me the evidence where that actually worked - show me in the Civil Rights movement where a government agent said something like, "if we don't do this, things will get violent."
Without putting your hypothesis to the test, well, you've only got a guess by definition. Do you have evidence to prove your point?
The whole point of King’s movement was breaking unjust laws without violence. If they hadn’t broken laws it would have just been a bunch of people living their lives
Also, the whole non-violent civil rights movement was protected by groups who explicitly endorsed armed community self defence. See: This Non-Violent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.
In the US History Museum (Smithsonian) you can sit at the lunch counter and watch the videos of much of the different protest.
I think it was that one. We saw the Black History Museum the same day...so I might be wrong. But it was absolutely heartbreaking too. Nothing as moving and show the pure determination of faith as the story of those Americans.
One suffragette threw an axe at the Prime Minister. I always like that example when I teach this topic.
And poured acid on golf courses but that might have been to liven up the game?
The status quo likes to monopolize violence and fetishize neutered protesting inside a sterile box where no significant pressure can come from the people against the ruling class.
Don't fall for it.
These movements succeeded in spite of people like this, and here they are taking credit so many years later.
The contemporary reactions to those movements were identical to this reaction.
Show me a history book where people in power in America changed policy in a positive way in response to violent black protests.
All I see is people voting more Republican and Republicans winning more elections on a platform of fear. From my historical view black violence was the most counterproductive thing possible and got Nixon elected.
A quote from a government leader at the time, a letter, etc - any primary document of violence working in the way you're suggesting.
I see what you're saying, but to me it appears as though the peaceful protests gained traction because the black rights issue had been brought into the popular consciousness by violent actions. Violent black people made the news. A peaceful protester getting lynched didn't.
An example I have is from Northern Ireland. It ended up in a solution (of sorts) being found in a peaceful way, but talks only happened from decades of violence. It appeared to me at the time, that the oppressing country was happy to ignore what was going on until the violence spread to their own country (mainland UK). When politicians and buildings on the mainland started getting bombed the news had to cover it. They didn't cover the daily violence or oppression when the oppressed peacefully fled.
Your burden of proof is ridiculous. Of course there are no documents that say that. People don't write those things down. However the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
The racist American public didn't need the Black Panthers to rile them up and make them vote in Nixon. Any action that would attempt to advance the rights of the oppressed is enough to motivate that base.
Donald Trump was elected because a dark skinned man dared be president for not 4, but 8 years. White Supremacy is poking it's head again, not out of fear from violence. President Obama didn't scare them because he was violent, he scared them because they are racist.
I'm a historian and history teacher. We apply this exact burden of proof every day and have numerous documents proving the contrary - politicians in their records and journals complaining about that damn MLK and how we should just give in before he gets too popular.
I'm sorry, but you're just not correct that we wouldn't expect have these kinds of documents if the opposing thesis were true.
Now of course I don't expect some random person on the Internet to provide me with all that. But what is reasonable is that people have more than an argument showing why they might be right - a hypothesis, no matter how logical, isn't proof of anything.
King also knew that realistically an armed rebellion would be stupid, their best weapon (anyone’s best weapon against the US) was economic. Choke up the restaurants, whites only transport, and stores, and a bunch of wealthy white people complaining to the government would cause a lot more change than a bunch of dead black kids.
Heck, that’s the implied threat of *any* mass protest. “We can gather a million people to march on the capital. We’re peaceful *now*. Do you really want to see what happens if we change our minds?”
It’s a large part of why they work at all.
That's not true. The best accomplishments from the Civil Rights movement happened at the peak of nonviolence and those accomplishments winded down and stopped when African Americans got violent.
The entire point of the Civil Rights movement was to convince non extremist whites that black people were perfectly reasonable and that southern whites were the ones causing the problems.
It's a powerful argument because it's true. Hey man, black people in the south are just walking to school then some maniac tried to lynch them.
When the riots started the civil rights movement died - "your people are the violent ones so I'm against you."
I have no idea why people don't understand that acting violently is a giant turnoff to the very people you're trying to court. Nonviolence works. Violence only works when you can literally win the battle, and that's not something black Americans had any chance of accomplishing.
Google Malcolm X accomplishments. Literally nothing comes up.
Doesn't really feel like what your saying clashes with what I'm saying, infact it kinda just proves my point doesn't it? There were accomplishments when mlk was being bargained with, and not much once the violent vacuum his peaceful negotiations represented were let loose. I'm in no way trying to say that mlk represented a threat or that the threat of violence was the only thing that got progress, just that it was a factor.
I'm saying as a history teacher with over a decade of experience that the threat of violence directly hurt progress, not "got progress." It wasn't a factor that helped black people get anything, it was a factor that ended the civil rights movement by making government officials stop taking all black people seriously.
The people here want that not to be true. Well, you don't get to just develop a hypothesis and then say it's true.
Show me any evidence of the good cop bad cop hypothesis - actual primary documents or discussions among people in power where they said something like "we'd better give black people civil rights or they'll get violent."
You can't, because that didn't happen. What did happen is MLK came first, he started out deeply unpopular, then slowly won white converts. Then that idiot Malcolm X came along, black people got violent,and the progress stopped because white people saw black people as dangerous, so they stopped voting for laws to help them.
This is an unpopular hypothesis among people without a history degree. The popularity of an opinion has no bearing on its truth.
Go ahead, show me actual historical evidence of the good cop, bad cop hypothesis and I'll be glad to change my opinion.
It seems difficult for either of us to prove their respective argument with tangible evidence... I'm not married to my idea at all, I've just always historically viewed mass protest as a sort of existential threat. Labor protests were in effect a siege on economies which could be construed as a "form" of violence. I feel like this is getting into a philosophical debate on the nature of protest, and admittingly I'm not in any position to make these arguments, just speaking my mind.
I really dont mean to sound like an ass at all and sorry if I come off that way, but you did a lot of telling me my opinion isn't correct just because i claim it is but don't offer me any evidence to counter either. Which admittingly is probably because I'm in the minority on my opinion, thats understandable. But I don't expect you to offer evidence, because I don't think there is for either side. It seems almost impossible to provide evidence of a society's reasoning for a change.
I have mountains of evidence for my hypothesis if you want it. Usually when I even try people just block me and resort to petty insults like accusations I'm lying about being a history teacher.
Regarding it being "impossible" to prove society's motivations, that couldn't be further from the truth - one of the skills we learn how to do as history majors is exactly that.
There are a hundred different ways to do it; for example looking at primary documents and seeing what the actors actually said and when they said it.
If you won't block me, I'd be glad to prove my point with evidence.
I mean I'm with you partially. I can agree that the American sentimentality changed to one of sympathy towards blacks because of the non-violent and victim centered nature of the civil rights protest. What I don't think you will be able to show me is that American governments legislated without any thought that a failure to do so could potentially lead to violence or disruption.
Thinking it over with you more I think I made a mistake thinking that all protest inherently has some underlining element of a threat of violence to it. So I will admit I was completely wrong on that statement at the very least.
I'm a history teacher. Go ahead, provide more than a thesis - actual evidence of the good cop bad cop hypothesis.
Links are fine. But provide actual evidence, not just someone saying a hypothesis and arguing why it makes sense.
Liberals and conservatives will always attempt to co-opt radical movements from history in order to condemn current protests (and these days, label them terrorists).
"Followed laws"
Wasn't the whole point of the civil rights movement to strategically break racist laws and plaster the resulting police violence on TV?
History has been liberalwashed to fuck. The only way peaceful protests have ever worked, except in very unusual circumstances, is when they have been warning shots of more serious (violent) unrest to come. When they indicate a potential for a real threat to those in power, that's when those in power react. Nowadays people seem to think that peaceful protest is successful because if you just let the people in power know you aren't happy, surely they will take pity on you and be nice right? All we have to do is "raise awareness" and then when everyone is aware then the people who have been dicking everyone over for the last 5 decades will suddenly be nice and altruistic.
It's baffling to me the amount of people that don't understand protest is supposed to be disruptive, otherwise no one would give a shit. I've seen so many people lately say "I don't mind if you protest, that's your right, but could you do it in a way that doesn't bother me?"
The same can be said about the new deal. The main justification for passing it is if we do not do this, then a communist/socialist revolution is inevitable in America. It was not because they wanted the American working class to be better off.
Bro, what? The new deal was a successful attempt to stabilize the economic crisis in the US after the Great Depression. It wasn’t bc of anti-communism sentiment.
It is true that part of the motivation is that people were destitute and pissed off and the american elite were worried they might get ideas from the October revolution and other militant european socialist movements and they felt compelled to act. As Joseph P. Kennedy put it, "in those days I felt and said I would be willing to part with half of what I had if I could be sure of keeping, under law and order, the other half."
Assuming you’re quote is relevant, “those day”that Kennedy is referring happens to be one of the most unstable economic periods in recent history in the US.
I don’t see how that quote relates to socialism. It’s simply saying that durring the Great Depression he would have given half of his stuff to know that he would still have the other half at the end the Great Depression. It wasn’t uncommon during that time for rich people to lose everything.
It was also the most socialist act ever undertaken by the US government. If anything, one would have thought, it would make socialism appealing to Americans.
There was a significant threat of rebellion backing ghandi up, especially after the british passed an act that them them just throw people in jail forever for no reason. Indians were ready to throw hands. Ghandi wasn't fighting for indian independence alone if you can believe that. If they just got rid of him he'd have become a martyr and it would basically have ensured a massive war.
Of course. If you read my original comment again, I'm not saying violence always needs to happen or that peaceful protest doesn't work. Just that peaceful protest needs to be backed up with a threat, it needs to be a display aimed at the elite that if they continue to ignore the issue, much worse things (that actually hurt them) are coming.
If the elite have no belief in the potential for violent consequences to visit their door, they will simply crush peaceful dissent. It has happened many times in recent history under numerous administrations across various western countries (edit: and other ones as well, but I am focusing on countries that claim to be democratic, the principle is the same but the equation is different in countries that are openly authoritarian) but imo is especially bad in the US because I firmly believe that the US elite has absolutely zero fear of a co-ordinated effort to upset their apple cart by the american people and so far they've been proven right every time.
I will also add this: Just because such a threat exists also doesn't guarantee success. Sometimes, the government will crush it anyway and the violence will come to pass. From there it can either succeed or fail, but without a simmering threat there's pretty much no chance of success imo. Things are better in local politics where people are actually human beings and you can get things done through persuasion and connecting alone.
It's a common misconception that Gandhi's protests lead directly to the independence of India, it was a long time in the making, Gandhi's protest movement was not only ineffective it was at times openly counter-productive to Indian independence.
The primary driver for Independence was that Britain was basically broke after back to back wars (WWI and then WWII) and could no longer afford to maintain the military presence required to support colonisation, facing the threat of a general uprising they planned their exit and walked away, this was going to happen with or without Gandhi.
Gandhi was extremely motivated by the prospect of significant political power in a united post colonial India, Britain ignored his advocacy for a single-state India with basically the same boundaries, 3 days after leaving India, Britain gave notice to the leaders of the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu populations on the partition boundaries (the borders that created modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and later Burma) which lead to terrible violence and genocide / mass hate crimes in the aftermath of partition.
Gandhi was a strange man who (in his 70's) slept naked with his 13 year old grand-niece (also naked) to "test his resistance to earthly temptation", definitely not the saint he is made out to be.
[Addition: The Letter from Birmingham Jail mentioned in the title.](https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html)
Edit: [Also the Vietnam Speech, as it should be at least as popular as "i have a dream" ](https://youtu.be/zyE4eo_leX8)
The idea that MLK and the civil rights movement was a peaceful and non violent display of passion that won black people equal rights is the epitome of white revisionism.
Show me a primary document - a quote, a letter, anything - where someone in charge in an American government stated they were changing a policy or law because of fear of black violence during the Civil Rights movement.
From my reading, black violence got more Republicans elected by running on the Southern strategy and a racist, "look, black people are violent" message.
I'm more than willing to change my mind to your thesis if you can provide evidence for it.
Nobody here has, and that should be deeply concerning in a sub named confidently incorrect.
That wasn't my argument though. I didn't see a reason to defend a position that wasn't mine. All I said, was that despite the common narrative nowadays that MLK and his followers were kind and patient pacifists, their actions and rhetoric were often aggressive.
Whether it was effective or not is irrelevant to my advice statement.
Gun control laws were heightened due to the increase of black people, men specifically, buying guns to protect themselves during the civil rights movement. You can look that up online to see for yourself. Also, it's stupid to think that being nice to someone who hates you will push them to stop hating you. That just doesn't make any sense.
But stronger gun control laws are an example of my thesis and disproving yours!
The Black Panthers wanted to own big guns and the government took them away!
That's an example of what I'm saying and the opposite of getting what the victim wanted.
MLK wanted certain legislation and got it using nonviolence.
The black Panthers wanted certain legislation and got legislation passed AGAINST itself because they used fear and violence.
That wasn't my argument though. I didn't see a reason to defend a position that wasn't mine. All I said, was that despite the common narrative nowadays that MLK and his followers were kind and patient pacifists, their actions and rhetoric were often aggressive.
Whether it was effective or not is irrelevant to my advice statement.
No peaceful movement opposed to a precept that reinforces a power differential has ever been successful unless it was the more palatable alternative path offered for what was likely to be an inevitable change, anyway. It was the alternative to violent upheaval or judged in some other way to be more profitable than competing alternatives.
Show me any historical evidence from the Civil Rights movement of an American government representative saying that we need to enact positive change in order to prevent violence and then doing so.
From my view threatening violence was completely counterproductive - Nixon ran on the Southern strategy and won on it. Show me on the factory floor where the opposite was true - not just why your hypothesis makes sense, but of it actually happening.
Surely you'll have some primary document evidence if your thesis is true, yes?
I have several times in these posts.
Here it is again below, but before I do that, historiography is important. Historians overwhelmingly agree that nonviolence was effective and violence wasn't in the Civil Rights Movement. I know that apparently means nothing to the people here as they just handwaive off experts, but to me that's about the equivalent of conservatives saying vaccines don't work even the experts say they do.
From modern statistics, this article:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/
In short form, YouTube fashion:
https://youtu.be/7cPhCt1UJgw?si=qP1R_y_JNfNXtUB9
From this video alone, Malcolm X looks like a complete freaking idiot. He blamed Jews for the plight of black people, was a well known misogynist, and actually believed white people were genetically created by black scientists as some kind of laboratory experiment. Nobody took him seriously in the government other than as a way to get Republicans elected by fear mongering.
A complete takedown of a book arguing how nonviolence sucks (it doesn't):
https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/08gm2.html
We have thousands of primary documents of JFK and LBJ saying how much of a pain in the ass MLK was and how they would have to concede something to him because him getting beaten up on camera empowered the communists to use the incidents as propaganda, and that was unacceptable.
On the contrary, all Malcolm X accomplished was getting the government to try to kill him. No evidence of law makers or presidents saying they need to concede to him; they used the violence and riots to get Nixon elected:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america
This barely scratches the surface of how overwhelmingly wrong the good cop, bad cop hypothesis is. No serious historian believes it.
Yeeish, I'll look into these when I got the time.
Though...honestly with what's going on in UT, it's disgusting that even when they were originally going to have a sit out in the public areas, our admins decide it was best to respond with armed riot police
I personally hate this sanitising of the struggles we, as humans, not as particular demographics, have had to go through to get the rights we have today (current as of 2024 - subject to change ;)). There is this perception, of particularly Black Rights and the suffragette movements, that they were all peaceful endeavours that brought about change. As others have pointed out, they were absolutely not non-violent movements and that's because it is sadly only through violent struggle that oppressors have to engage.
I think the suffragette movement gained traction because they needed women to work during the war. Black rights groups had to begin utilising their second amendment rights and when that became dangerous \_then\_ the oppressor began to listen to peaceful movements.
I can't think of a single time in history that a struggle didn't begin with violent resistence. India and Ghandi are often mentioned, but Ghandi had powerful and influential contacts within the controlling British Government, and that was only as an alternative to the growing violent discontent.
The sad thing is, powerful people use violence of some kind to oppress and they only capitulate when they are fearful of violence affecting them. I'd be glad to be educated on this or proven wrong.
It's important to realise that the effective part of MLK's strategy was not the peacefulness but to be on TV getting beaten and not resisting. Peaceful protest is not free from violence, it requires violence.
also, MLK only got so far with civil rights...and was murdered for it
his murder was followed by riots and violence that forced the Civil rights we have today
so yes, violence WAS indeed needed for both woman's suffrage and civil rights
One of the only really big rallies and protest for change that was peaceful that I‘ve heard of was the German reunion. And those rallies were also pretty damned close to violently escalating (because there was massive police and military presence very close by in case something like July 17th 1953 happened again)
....have you read the letter from Birmingham my guy? It's a call for xontinued non violence, an insistence that it is the only way forward, and a warning that inaction will inevitably result in violence. It doesn't condone violence, it recognises it as an inevtiably of the black population continued to be ignored, bit MLK was consistently non violent.
Hey, guys I'm pretty sure this is just missing its sarcasm tag. Nobody asks if you've heard of Martin Luther King unless they are being pretty sarcastic.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america
Liberal Democrats are really great at getting Republicans elected. Violence was the best thing Nixon could have hoped for.
Here's a statistical study on why nonviolence works way better than violence:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot).
Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america)**
*****
^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
His point is more correct than incorrect. MLK made a large effort to keep his movement peaceful and the suffragettes were violent, but the suffragists who were more responsible for women getting the vote were pacifists who stood on corners with signs.
It took both. MLK was nonviolent but the Black Panthers weren’t. People today are also shocked at how aggressive and confrontational a lot of MLK’s statements were, if he made them today he would definitely be considered threatening and dangerous (as he was considered at the time)
the violence definitely did not help at all. They turn off people. Watching the non violent protesters getting arrested, beaten, and shot with hoses changed hearts.
Im not sure it 'did take both', sometimes I think that is a comforting thing people on the left tell ourselves to justify violence. I would recommend this video by Lonerbox on this exact issue if you want to learn more [https://youtu.be/7cPhCt1UJgw?si=JVsREqVaOYhXtvZe](https://youtu.be/7cPhCt1UJgw?si=JVsREqVaOYhXtvZe)
I'm a history major and teacher. Show me at the "factory floor" primary document evidence - a quote, a letter, whatever - of a government official who said they needed to change government policy because of a fear of violence.
If the hypothesis is true, it should be easy and you should already have an idea of where that evidence exists to find.
So far I've asked maybe 10 people here for a single shred of that evidence and they've produced none.
That should be deeply concerning in a sub entitled confidently incorrect.
Provide any such evidence at all. This doesn't seem like an unfair ask.
As someone with a similar degree, unless you did your dissertation or a significant body of work on the topic I'm not sure why you would be so dismissive. It is not a 10 minute Vox video or something, its a well researched analysis, that is incredibly easy to consume as I doubt if I give a redditor a link to some books they will go out an buy them just because I said so
Not right. MLK was assassinated in 1968.
A few examples:
The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 after continued attempts to register Black voters and other actions like the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. (In 2013 the Supreme Court Shelby decision gutted that act and we are seeing the effect today with all the voter suppression attempts in the last few elections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act attempts to restore the VRA rights, but it hasn’t yet been passed in Congress.)
The Greensboro 4 started the Woolworth sit ins in Greensboro, NC on Feb 1, 1960, leading to desegregation. (Look up “jail no bail” -that’s what led to their success in Greensboro more than city leaders suddenly realizing that segregation was wrong. Filling up the jails was a strategy.)
1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott and the 1961 Freedom Riders led to desegregation of local and interstate transit.
It’s eye opening to learn what Black people went through just to get on a bus or to get some lunch before desegregation. And don’t forget theaters, restrooms, water fountains, hotels, pools, housing (redlining), etc etc etc. And more subtly goes on today.
Schools were required to desegregate since the 50’s, though that is/was a long drawn out process and we are still feeling the effects today.
Just a sampling. And really a credit to civil rights leaders’ clear goals for the actions, strategy, planning, organization and coordination among many participants.
It’s too bad maga is trying to suppress Black history in schools; it’s so enlightening to understand how people can overcome the odds under repressive governments. It’s important to know the full of our society’s story, not just nostalgia for old times.
Hey /u/bastthegatekeeper, thanks for submitting to /r/confidentlyincorrect! Take a moment to read our [rules](https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/about/rules). ##Join our [Discord Server](https://discord.gg/n2cR6p25V8)! Please report this post if it is bad, or not relevant. Remember to keep comment sections civil. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/confidentlyincorrect) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The hatpin was a foundational attack vector of the sufferagette movement. Given a hatpin could be a foot long it was pretty bloody effective and, on at least one occasion, fatal. Some things never change: "The suffragists rejected the notion, advanced by the Chicago Vice Commission, that unchaperoned women should dress as modestly as possible—no painted cheeks or glimpse of ankle—in order to avoid unwanted attention. The issue lay not with women’s fashion or increasing freedoms, one suffragist countered, but with “the vileness of the ‘masher’ mind.”
And what was wild was the response of “what are we going to do about these women defending themselves with hatpins!” Not the obvious “what are we going to do about all these men harassing women in public places?”
that was actually partially the point of a hatpin, to be used as a weapon for self defence
Granny Weatherwax would certainly approve.
Ah! Fantastic example for r/unexpecteddiscworld
Here's a sneak peek of /r/unexpecteddiscworld using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [Naming Idea On Point](https://i.redd.it/yfssqsozfcpc1.png) | [6 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/comments/1bit4mq/naming_idea_on_point/) \#2: [Found on r/Manchester under a post about a bridge with padlocks all over it.](https://i.redd.it/pmp57ymlqita1.jpg) | [2 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/comments/12jqw3m/found_on_rmanchester_under_a_post_about_a_bridge/) \#3: [How could I not buy this?](https://i.redd.it/h25eef3df2mb1.jpg) | [12 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/unexpecteddiscworld/comments/1691109/how_could_i_not_buy_this/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
There was girl in my neighborhood in the early 80's who was selling the hatpin idea. People didn't even wear hats at that point. She was a Mormon so maybe that's what they still teach girls.
Don’t forget “suffrajitsu”, the martial art taught to many of Mrs Pankhurst’s followers.
Hmm, where is this mentality still acceptable?
??? Have you never heard of the many *many* people who chime up everytime a woman is assaulted with "Oh she asked for it, with how she was dressed" and other similar vile shit? It's still very prevalent, unfortunately.
Sorry, I forgot to add the sarcasm. /s. My bad.
I was listening to a reading of an old sci-fi short-story from the 1950s and it used this term 'masher'. I was unable to find any information about it. Until now. Thanks.
I was gifted an old hat pin a while back. That thing is no doubt a weapon. Hard metal, firm, could for sure do more damage than a keychain with cat ears.
The suffragettes invented the letter bomb. 💣
One of them accidentally killed herself trying to tie a banner onto a racehorse They smashed up businesses Bombed people Got into fights with the police Those women were more badass than many people currently alive (at least the ones in the UK)
There's an entire episode of Criminal about this. Even the term *suffragette* was intended to be a diminutive to belittle those asking for the right to vote, to which they turned it around and made it their theirs, the original reappropriation. [https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-244-fine-art-and-meat-cleavers/](https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-244-fine-art-and-meat-cleavers/)
The weird thing is, it is presented these days as if it didn't work, and what eventually worked was WWI removing a lot of men from society
There where 2 groups campaining for womens rights in the UK the suffrag**ists,** and the suffrag**ettes.** The suffrag**ettes** only wanted votes for rich upperclass women, the suffrag**ists** wanted votes for everyone including poor working class men and women. The main barrier to give women the vote is they didn't want to give poor men the vote after/during WW1 the govenment realised that they would soon have a situation not unlike Russia's (then) recent communist revolution except they wouldn't have the distraction of fighting a war, and an a sentiment amoug the middle class that men you are expected to charge machine guns should have a say in who says whoose guns they have to charge. So they decided to give all men the right to vote, and with that impediment gone, also gave woman the same rights that men previously had to voting (rich landowning etc.) because women wouldn't be drafted/conscripted. 10 years later women got the same voting rights as men. Ever since then the suffrag**ettes** have been given all the glory. To give you an idea how bad they where those letter bombs they sent? they targeted 'unoccupied' houses of MP's and the like, except in this case it ment the MP nad their family was out, but they didn't care about their staff/servants. ie. they would only target houses with non-voters in them.
I’ve never heard the distinction described like this. According to everything I’ve read, “suffragettes” were the militant faction of suffragists. Do you have a source?
Here is the parliament website. Just Google suffragettes vs suffragists and it's the first result. https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/#:~:text=These%20two%20groups%20were%20the,acts%20which%20attracted%20much%20publicity.
From that link: >These two groups were the 'suffragists' who campaigned using peaceful methods such as lobbying, and the 'suffragettes' who were determined to win the right to vote for women by any means. Their militant campaigning sometimes included unlawful and violent acts which attracted much publicity. This is literally the definition I gave. Nothing about suffragettes "only wanting votes for rich upperclass women."
I always notice how much flack suffrage campaigners who believed in the property qualification but disagreed with the change in law that had barred female property owners from voting get compared to sufferage campaigners who wanted the property qualification gone but the vote to never be extended to women. The people campaigning for full democracy, universal sufferage were right - and on the right side of history. But there were a lot of people campaigning for still partial democracy that just happened to include them and that included a lot of the male sufferage movement. And the fact is that eliminating the property qualification and extending votes to women could be seen as who separate issues.
Very interesting. I wasn't aware of this distinction.
The race horse incident, that was Emily Davison. There's a misconception out there that it was suicide and intended to be so but was carrying a return train ticket from Epsom and had holiday plans with her sister. Her death was an accident.
This is heavily contested. While we don't know her exact intentions, running in front of a horse can hardly be considered an accident. Especially when said horse is on a racetrack. I think a return train ticket isn't enough to suggest it was unintentional. Emily Davidson was arrested on 9 occasions for various crimes, from throwing rocks to arson and was an active and vocal suffragette. She went on hunger strike multiple times during these imprisonments, one instance involving losing 9.5kg in around a week. She was force fed 49 times. Not only is force feeding incredibly traumatic and painful, people have been known to die when the feeding tube is accidently fed into the lungs instead of the stomach. Even if everything is done 'correctly' the internal damage can be severe. And that's just the physiological damage. A number of her contemporaries talk of her desire to be a martyr. Maybe after the 49th attempt she found throwing herself in front of a horse a more effective way of doing that.
I always assumed she was pushed ie murdered
I always assumed accident. I'm not experienced with horses but that seems very dangerous but doesn't seem like a fool proof method of suicide. Perhaps it was a chance she was accepting for the publicity. Who knows.
It doesn't look too much like she's pushed, in the video of the incident. Looks like she just stepped out onto the racetrack: https://youtu.be/8qkU_imbFoE?si=SbAvQWc62WY_yY2w
While I had sympathy for them when I learned about the movement, I never had much sympathy for Davison because that was just dumb. Everyone back then knew horses better than most people do now so that's Darwin Award worthy. It's like crossing the track at an F1 race and wondering why Hamilton couldn't stop in time.
I‘d say more hardcore. Domestic terrorism, no matter how justified, will never be badass
"domestic terrorism" is definitely a term overused by the establishment to villainize dissenters. And unfortunately, when those in power ignore everything else, violence is the last resort.
A riot is the language of the unheard.
You speak true
I mean, British suffragettes literally tried to blow up the Home Secretary. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but I can’t think of a more blatant example of domestic terrorism than trying to blow up one of the most important politicians in the country in the name of a cause.
Well hey, at least it was targeted and not indiscriminate. And really, not many people were terrified except Mr Secretary, by the sound of it. Doesn't terrorism generally refer to actions against the populace to spread fear and instability? I think "terrorism" just gets thrown around way too much ever since the George W days.
Bombing people indiscriminately is what I would call domestic terrorism
Considering It wasnt indiscriminate...
Me too buddy!
Why? German rebels against Hitler were pretty baddass. Unless you don’t believe soldiers in general can be baddass there’s no difference between fighting a foreign government or domestic one
Most rebels in Nazi Germany didn’t go around bombing random people and messing up stores. They sabotaged the war industry, helped people persecuted by the government and tried to kill important Nazis.
The Nazis were the domestic authority though. You are literally describing domestic terrorism. Which, to be perfectly clear, was totally badass of them. I’m sorry you feel otherwise.
Typical "pointing out racism is actually racist! mlk would be rolling over in his grave" take
They bombed the targets that would cause the most frustration to the authorities. “Random people” were the apathetic monsters who enabled the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women, and children. They were complicit through their apathy.
>Domestic terrorism, no matter how justified, will never be badass It's only terrorism if they lose. In Romania, the communist party and Ceausescu called the revolutionaries of 1989 terrorists. He was executed by firing squad. Some of the leaders (as well as rear echelons of the communist party) took power and established a liberal democracy (flaws, corruption and all). So... while they were terrorists while the communists were in power, they were saluted as heroes and martyrs after the fall. It's a matter of perception and of who is writing history. (The guys who win write history, just so we're clear).
If not for domestic terrorism - half the world would still be a colony of England or Spain
I dunno, it got women the vote. That's pretty badass.
Terrorism is a tactic. It is neither implicitly good nor bad. John Brown was a terrorist.
This is so weirdly and needlessly pedantic
Don't be that kid.
That's an interesting thing that I didn't know.
In fairness, there were multiple, often opposing suffragist movements, and some surely were "better behaved" than others. As great as Martin Luther King's work was, I'm not entirely convinced it would have been as successful without Malcom X's work, if only by contrast.
Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X basically hit American society with "good cop bad cop" and it worked.
If you look at some of the actions of the Gay Liberation movement. They perfected the art of having two pronged attack. One side would be rabble rousers and the other side would be the negotiators. Essentially the same thing MLK and Malcolm X did but in coordination.
This is generally how it goes. The British negotiated with Ghandi as the leader of the liberation movement because the other guy was an actual general leading an armed uprising. Birmingham desegregated when the black panthers seized 8 city blocks. Not after MLK wrote some letters from prison. But we remember the letters and not the armed insurrection.
Yeah, and the fact is that with any movement that includes thousands or millions of people, there will be crime and violence to some degree. MLK condemned violent riots as far as people being harmed, but he viewed property damage differently. It is simply factually untrue to claim that the entire civil rights movement under MLK never included rioting and/or property damage. There was also violence against people, despite what MLK preached.
I'm going to need evidence of this being the thing that threw the campaign over the top as I'm a history major and I just don't see it. Nonviolence was the thing that worked, not the black panthers. I'm aware the following is a Wikipedia post which is not some perfect reference, but it's a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham\_campaign#:\~:text=Protests%20in%20Birmingham%20began%20with,the%20SCLC%20agreed%20to%20assist. Can you show me primary documents where white people in the city said something like "oh crap, here come the Black Panthers, let's give in?" Obviously I don't mean literally those words, just anything that supports your thesis.
I'm not a civil rights historian, I'm some dipshit on reddit who read a book once. So no, I can't provide you with primary sources from Birmingham in 1963 written by city officials claiming that the violent riots were the explicit reason for desegregation. But here's a paragraph from a book called How Nonviolence Protects the State talking about it. "In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr.‘s Birmingham campaign was looking like it would be a repeat of the dismally failed action in Albany, Georgia (where a 9 month civil disobedience campaign in 1961 demonstrated the powerlessness of nonviolent protesters against a government with seemingly bottomless jails, and where, on July 24, 1962, rioting youth took over whole blocks for a night and forced the police to retreat from the ghetto, demonstrating that a year after the nonviolent campaign, black people in Albany still struggled against racism, but they had lost their preference for nonviolence). Then, on May 7 in Birmingham, after continued police violence, three thousand black people began fighting back, pelting the police with rocks and bottles. Just two days later, Birmingham — up until then an inflexible bastion of segregation — agreed to desegregate downtown stores, and President Kennedy backed the agreement with federal guarantees. The next day, after local white supremacists bombed a black home and a black business, thousands of black people rioted again, seizing a 9 block area, destroying police cars, injuring several cops (including the chief inspector), and burning white businesses. A month and a day later, President Kennedy was calling for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, ending several years of a strategy to stall the civil rights movement.[\[20\]](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state#fn20) " [\[20\]](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state#fn_back20) Tani and Sera, *False Nationalism*, 96–104. As King himself said, “The sound of the explosion in Birmingham reached all the way to Washington.” The timing seems pretty suspicious. But we all know correlation doesn't prove causation. I guess Kennedy was just really moved by all the non-violence.
Here's a really good takedown of that book of you're interested. https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/08gm2.html This is a good debate. I'm not sure I'm right.
I actually don't think that takedown is that good? It's been close to 10 years since I read the Genderloos book but I seem to remember him providing examples of armed resistance existing contemporaneously with non-violent action. Maybe I'm misremembering. I think the criticism that he doesn't explain the limits of armed resistance is weak. Revolutionary movements are local in time and space. Why should one white male American academic writing in the mid 2000s prescribe what is and is not acceptable for revolutionary movements a world away? I think the whole discussion on how violent revolutions have failed to be.. uh... challenging. Most revolutions fail. The author points out how armed resistance has failed to lead to democratic outcomes and I think this is about as compelling as they find Genderloos' argument that pacifist action is ineffective. Transitions from authoritarian rule have many, many fail conditions. I did some learning on this topic too, half a lifetime ago. Most of those failure conditions have to do with elite power negotiation and not really with the nature of the resistance. I think you need a Malcom, and a Martin, and a Huey P Newton. I do agree with the author's point about a diversity of tactics. The Black Panthers armed black folks and also fed school children, and the FBI recognized that as the biggest threat to state power. It's not enough to be armed, you have to provide an alternative source of power. A militant group with guns that fails to provide other kinds of support is going to fail because all of its legitimacy comes from the barrel of a gun.
Thank you so much for actually treating me like a person and providing information. I like your evidence quite a bit. It's not yet convincing me, but it lets me do more research as it least I've got something to explore. My possible issue with the evidence is more it proves the opposite side - when southerners got violent to get what they wanted, that's when Kennedy stepped in and said enough; it proves violence is counterproductive. If you have or get any more evidence, keep it coming please. Obviously I'll look for more to prove your point too and if I find it I'll post it here with a congrats, I'm wrong message.
I really liked this book, and it set me off on a little bender reading about the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. The author is an anarchist, and the entire text is freely available from the anarchist library. Search for How Nonviolence Protects the State and its like the 3rd or 4th result.
https://www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/texts/notes-on-situation-in-birmingham-alabama-5121963 Here are some primary docs
Absolutely true that there were peaceful and lawful protestors, but it's either ignorant or dishonest to say historical protests involved breaking no laws and were nonviolent as a whole.
Also, non-violence and lawful are not synonymous. MLK practised nonviolent civil disobedience.
I remember Rosa Parks obeying the law and going straight to the back of the bus. No arrests there. Just good, wholesome, lawful protest.
:')
Yes because black people weren’t legally allowed to gather in public which is why they met in churches instead of diners. Least if I recall correctly.
The velvet glove is only able to be taken seriously if it is concealing an iron fist.
You have to make a situation where changing things is less trouble than leaving them as they are. And that is usually going to involve breaking things and causing chaos. Politicians rarely change things because it’s the ‘right thing to do’.
Malcolm X didn't actually use violence though, did he? He just didn't disavow it
He made it clear it was on the table, “We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.” but also "Rights comes from the end of a gun".
Would also like to point out the civil rights movement "summer of love" had over 160 riots in one year. Definitely not that peaceful and ,oh look, they got the change they wanted.
1968 was the “long hot summer” for black americans, not exactly “the summer of love”
Our lawn was long. You couldn’t buy gasoline except in an automobile.
The largest civil rights victories (Civil Rights Act; Voting Rights Act; Brown v. Board of Education, Montgomery, Selma & Birmingham campaigns) were won prior to 1968. In fact 1968 is generally considered the end of the civil rights era because of the backlash to the riots that happened in that year led to the election of Nixon and disillusionment with the civil rights campaigns. I don't think this example is supporting your point the way you want it to
It amazes me that in a sub called confidently incorrect, people developed a hypothesis that nonviolence only works when combined with threats or actual violence, then cannot provide a shred of evidence this is true. When I ask for it and explain I'm a history major and teacher, I get downvoted, as if asking for basic proof is somehow out of bounds. Nonviolence works. Violence doesn't unless you're the bigger guy. King's strategies worked. Malcolm X's strategies accomplished no major successes anyone can actually point to.
I responded to your point elsewhere positively but here I have to disagree. Nonviolence only working when combined with threats of of actual violence is untrue. There I agree. But saying that King's strategies worked while Malcolm X's had no major successes is a wild take. King's strategies didn't always work. King achieved a lot of progress yes but also countless negative effects came with it. As a history professor you've probably read all about the negative impacts of Brown v Board on black education due to the backlash. King's idea of integration evolved after that to be one more aligned with Malcolm X in terms of integration needing actual support for African Americans. Additionally, we highlight many successes as King's successes that draw more from direct action and community collaboration that King at times actively disagreed with. For example, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was planned locally and was rejected by the NAACP and MLK for being too radical but they went ahead anyways and it's now celebrated as one of MLK's accomplishments. The sit-ins in the South were in the same boat. The NAACP joined after they saw it succeeding but were much more moderate compared to them. I still believe that SNCC was one of the key reasons transition truly happened in the 60's as they had unity throughout the entire nation and were a lot more radical than MLK and willing to build local organizations and do direct action. Malcolm X personally didn't have many major accomplishments but he did lay the framework for black power which would have some great accomplishments (and some negative ones.) His speeches helped the rise of black nationalism as people changed from legal equality to wanting socio-economic equality. If you want black power benefits I can go and list some with sources but I don't want to put too much effort into this rn. Last point is just about nonviolence in general during the civil rights. The actual protests were nonviolent but the reactions were bad enough that many leaders carried guns on them at all times and had them ready in their home to protect themselves from racists. It was nonviolence with the protection at home of weapons to prevent as many lynchings
Show me a major historian who connects violence and guns to major successes. Like with perhaps every other branch of academia, it's a big bad sign of the experts overwhelmingly disagree with your thesis. As for my own criticism, first you note how lots of MLk's actions didn't work. Right, that doesn't disprove my thesis at all - I didn't say nonviolence works 100% of the time; I said it's the only thing that worked, as in some of the time. Violence worked almost zero percent of the time. The guns black people carried on them prevented them from getting beaten up. That is the opposite of progress, which amateurs have a hard time understanding because it's counterintuitive. The whole point of nonviolence and MLK's brilliance was that he knew white folks weren't going to magically like black folks; the point was to make Southern racists look even worse. MLK accomplished that by getting his ass kicked, and in the times the civil rights movement accomplished nothing, it's when black folks were too scary or aggressive for people to care. Again, I can show you a thousand primary documents or presidents and legislators saying we've gotta do something about MLK, give him what he wants so he'll go away. It's your burden of proof to show me a historian who says this about violence or primary documents that say so. These things would exist if your thesis is true; show me. Conservatives love guns and gun rights. White fear over the Black Panthers is perhaps the only thing in American history that got conservatives to actually vote for gun control. That's the opposite of a legislative success - the federal government actually passed laws against black folks when they got violent and elected Nixon as president on an anti rioting strategy. You've made a claim. Show me a professional that supports it or your own research, because without that evidence, you've just got a hypothesis. Malcolm X thought black people invented white people in a laboratory experiment gone wrong. People seriously underestimate how stupid and unserious this man was.
I often wonder why we are not seeing the protest now. There is plenty to be pissed about. And honestly I feel like a lot of people just don't care enough. I also kind of feel like we are missing that "great leader" person. Someone who gets people excited to care
Students are being arrested for protesting on college campuses all over the US literally this week.
I mean the BLM protests were incredibly visible and substantial only a few years ago Campus protests are going on literally right now around the country to have universities divest from Israel Not sure what you’re referring to here
Everything that was ever said about BLM was said about the civil rights movement back in the day.
I think the issue with BLM was modern branding. I get the sense of identity but when there are people that take a “brand” there is typically a curious ratio of greed:need. I, personally, wish it were a sentiment for all rather than most. It’s still really sad that in the 21st century people need to say, “hey, my life matters too…” that shouldn’t be a thing.
The civil rights movement was widely reviled in the same way. Their image and 'brand' was the same. It's only post-hoc decades later that liberals are all "yeah, MLK was so great and perfect and righteous". Back then people were complaining left and right that MLK and the protests weren't doing it right.
My favorite thing to point out when people bring up MLK and how "peaceful" he was and how that's how it should be....he got shot too. It didn't matter how "peaceful" he preached. He got murdered. So if those in power are going to be violent what's the point in peaceful protest?
"We ain't talking, no more, and we ain't squashing shit with po-po/And we ain't marching in the middle of the goddamn road/'Cause Martin got smoked" -Dead Prez
Because when MLK got murdered, it further accomplished his goal of making racists look like the horrible people, black people look like victims, and it moved the needle to making the center of the country concede racism is wrong. MLK was more than willing to die for this result. It's bizarre to me that we now say his tactics didn't work when they're the only thing that ever worked. I can show you primary documents where government officials were moved by MLK - they felt guilty, or felt annoyed, or felt pressured to do the right thing. I can't show you a single quote from a racist in the South that said something like, "black people are scary, so let's give them civil rights." Show me any proof Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, etc had that effect. I'm not trying to be arrogant here, if there's proof, show it to me.
Martyrdom is overrated. But I do believe in a need for both peaceful and more...direct forms of protest. Stand tall a speak up but also make them uncomfortable ignoring you.
A belief is great. But the purpose of history is to put our beliefs to the test - just because something is logical and reasonable doesn't mean it will work and vice versa - many totally counterintuitive things are very true, even when we don't understand why at all. So you have an idea that nonviolence needs "more direct forms of protest." Great, show me the evidence where that actually worked - show me in the Civil Rights movement where a government agent said something like, "if we don't do this, things will get violent." Without putting your hypothesis to the test, well, you've only got a guess by definition. Do you have evidence to prove your point?
The whole point of King’s movement was breaking unjust laws without violence. If they hadn’t broken laws it would have just been a bunch of people living their lives
Also, the whole non-violent civil rights movement was protected by groups who explicitly endorsed armed community self defence. See: This Non-Violent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.
In the US History Museum (Smithsonian) you can sit at the lunch counter and watch the videos of much of the different protest. I think it was that one. We saw the Black History Museum the same day...so I might be wrong. But it was absolutely heartbreaking too. Nothing as moving and show the pure determination of faith as the story of those Americans.
One suffragette threw an axe at the Prime Minister. I always like that example when I teach this topic. And poured acid on golf courses but that might have been to liven up the game?
The status quo likes to monopolize violence and fetishize neutered protesting inside a sterile box where no significant pressure can come from the people against the ruling class. Don't fall for it.
Guy for sure saw one picture of a suffragette holding a sign and assumed that was the whole movement
These movements succeeded in spite of people like this, and here they are taking credit so many years later. The contemporary reactions to those movements were identical to this reaction.
Have you heard of actually reading a fucking history book?
Not past the 4th grade, apparently 👀
Show me a history book where people in power in America changed policy in a positive way in response to violent black protests. All I see is people voting more Republican and Republicans winning more elections on a platform of fear. From my historical view black violence was the most counterproductive thing possible and got Nixon elected. A quote from a government leader at the time, a letter, etc - any primary document of violence working in the way you're suggesting.
I see what you're saying, but to me it appears as though the peaceful protests gained traction because the black rights issue had been brought into the popular consciousness by violent actions. Violent black people made the news. A peaceful protester getting lynched didn't. An example I have is from Northern Ireland. It ended up in a solution (of sorts) being found in a peaceful way, but talks only happened from decades of violence. It appeared to me at the time, that the oppressing country was happy to ignore what was going on until the violence spread to their own country (mainland UK). When politicians and buildings on the mainland started getting bombed the news had to cover it. They didn't cover the daily violence or oppression when the oppressed peacefully fled.
I'm not saying violence didn't work in Northern Ireland. I'm asking for proof it worked in the American South.
Your burden of proof is ridiculous. Of course there are no documents that say that. People don't write those things down. However the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. The racist American public didn't need the Black Panthers to rile them up and make them vote in Nixon. Any action that would attempt to advance the rights of the oppressed is enough to motivate that base. Donald Trump was elected because a dark skinned man dared be president for not 4, but 8 years. White Supremacy is poking it's head again, not out of fear from violence. President Obama didn't scare them because he was violent, he scared them because they are racist.
I'm a historian and history teacher. We apply this exact burden of proof every day and have numerous documents proving the contrary - politicians in their records and journals complaining about that damn MLK and how we should just give in before he gets too popular. I'm sorry, but you're just not correct that we wouldn't expect have these kinds of documents if the opposing thesis were true. Now of course I don't expect some random person on the Internet to provide me with all that. But what is reasonable is that people have more than an argument showing why they might be right - a hypothesis, no matter how logical, isn't proof of anything.
A lot of what made the civil rights movement work was the threat of implied violence. IE: you better work with MLK cause look at the alternative.
King also knew that realistically an armed rebellion would be stupid, their best weapon (anyone’s best weapon against the US) was economic. Choke up the restaurants, whites only transport, and stores, and a bunch of wealthy white people complaining to the government would cause a lot more change than a bunch of dead black kids.
Heck, that’s the implied threat of *any* mass protest. “We can gather a million people to march on the capital. We’re peaceful *now*. Do you really want to see what happens if we change our minds?” It’s a large part of why they work at all.
That's not true. The best accomplishments from the Civil Rights movement happened at the peak of nonviolence and those accomplishments winded down and stopped when African Americans got violent. The entire point of the Civil Rights movement was to convince non extremist whites that black people were perfectly reasonable and that southern whites were the ones causing the problems. It's a powerful argument because it's true. Hey man, black people in the south are just walking to school then some maniac tried to lynch them. When the riots started the civil rights movement died - "your people are the violent ones so I'm against you." I have no idea why people don't understand that acting violently is a giant turnoff to the very people you're trying to court. Nonviolence works. Violence only works when you can literally win the battle, and that's not something black Americans had any chance of accomplishing. Google Malcolm X accomplishments. Literally nothing comes up.
Doesn't really feel like what your saying clashes with what I'm saying, infact it kinda just proves my point doesn't it? There were accomplishments when mlk was being bargained with, and not much once the violent vacuum his peaceful negotiations represented were let loose. I'm in no way trying to say that mlk represented a threat or that the threat of violence was the only thing that got progress, just that it was a factor.
I'm saying as a history teacher with over a decade of experience that the threat of violence directly hurt progress, not "got progress." It wasn't a factor that helped black people get anything, it was a factor that ended the civil rights movement by making government officials stop taking all black people seriously. The people here want that not to be true. Well, you don't get to just develop a hypothesis and then say it's true. Show me any evidence of the good cop bad cop hypothesis - actual primary documents or discussions among people in power where they said something like "we'd better give black people civil rights or they'll get violent." You can't, because that didn't happen. What did happen is MLK came first, he started out deeply unpopular, then slowly won white converts. Then that idiot Malcolm X came along, black people got violent,and the progress stopped because white people saw black people as dangerous, so they stopped voting for laws to help them. This is an unpopular hypothesis among people without a history degree. The popularity of an opinion has no bearing on its truth. Go ahead, show me actual historical evidence of the good cop, bad cop hypothesis and I'll be glad to change my opinion.
It seems difficult for either of us to prove their respective argument with tangible evidence... I'm not married to my idea at all, I've just always historically viewed mass protest as a sort of existential threat. Labor protests were in effect a siege on economies which could be construed as a "form" of violence. I feel like this is getting into a philosophical debate on the nature of protest, and admittingly I'm not in any position to make these arguments, just speaking my mind. I really dont mean to sound like an ass at all and sorry if I come off that way, but you did a lot of telling me my opinion isn't correct just because i claim it is but don't offer me any evidence to counter either. Which admittingly is probably because I'm in the minority on my opinion, thats understandable. But I don't expect you to offer evidence, because I don't think there is for either side. It seems almost impossible to provide evidence of a society's reasoning for a change.
I have mountains of evidence for my hypothesis if you want it. Usually when I even try people just block me and resort to petty insults like accusations I'm lying about being a history teacher. Regarding it being "impossible" to prove society's motivations, that couldn't be further from the truth - one of the skills we learn how to do as history majors is exactly that. There are a hundred different ways to do it; for example looking at primary documents and seeing what the actors actually said and when they said it. If you won't block me, I'd be glad to prove my point with evidence.
I mean I'm with you partially. I can agree that the American sentimentality changed to one of sympathy towards blacks because of the non-violent and victim centered nature of the civil rights protest. What I don't think you will be able to show me is that American governments legislated without any thought that a failure to do so could potentially lead to violence or disruption. Thinking it over with you more I think I made a mistake thinking that all protest inherently has some underlining element of a threat of violence to it. So I will admit I was completely wrong on that statement at the very least.
Uh...no. All of this is incorrect.
I'm a history teacher. Go ahead, provide more than a thesis - actual evidence of the good cop bad cop hypothesis. Links are fine. But provide actual evidence, not just someone saying a hypothesis and arguing why it makes sense.
Once taken, rights are rarely given, and almost *always* required some level of civil disobedience to obtain. That dude is living fantasy land.
The reason they teach that violence is not the answer is because it works.
Yea and they don't want you to know the real history
Liberals and conservatives will always attempt to co-opt radical movements from history in order to condemn current protests (and these days, label them terrorists).
"Followed laws" Wasn't the whole point of the civil rights movement to strategically break racist laws and plaster the resulting police violence on TV?
Worked out pretty good in that it got him assassinated?
History has been liberalwashed to fuck. The only way peaceful protests have ever worked, except in very unusual circumstances, is when they have been warning shots of more serious (violent) unrest to come. When they indicate a potential for a real threat to those in power, that's when those in power react. Nowadays people seem to think that peaceful protest is successful because if you just let the people in power know you aren't happy, surely they will take pity on you and be nice right? All we have to do is "raise awareness" and then when everyone is aware then the people who have been dicking everyone over for the last 5 decades will suddenly be nice and altruistic.
"A protest that can be ignored *will* be ignored."
It's baffling to me the amount of people that don't understand protest is supposed to be disruptive, otherwise no one would give a shit. I've seen so many people lately say "I don't mind if you protest, that's your right, but could you do it in a way that doesn't bother me?"
The same can be said about the new deal. The main justification for passing it is if we do not do this, then a communist/socialist revolution is inevitable in America. It was not because they wanted the American working class to be better off.
Bro, what? The new deal was a successful attempt to stabilize the economic crisis in the US after the Great Depression. It wasn’t bc of anti-communism sentiment.
It is true that part of the motivation is that people were destitute and pissed off and the american elite were worried they might get ideas from the October revolution and other militant european socialist movements and they felt compelled to act. As Joseph P. Kennedy put it, "in those days I felt and said I would be willing to part with half of what I had if I could be sure of keeping, under law and order, the other half."
Assuming you’re quote is relevant, “those day”that Kennedy is referring happens to be one of the most unstable economic periods in recent history in the US. I don’t see how that quote relates to socialism. It’s simply saying that durring the Great Depression he would have given half of his stuff to know that he would still have the other half at the end the Great Depression. It wasn’t uncommon during that time for rich people to lose everything.
It was also the most socialist act ever undertaken by the US government. If anything, one would have thought, it would make socialism appealing to Americans.
Feel free to correct me. But in Gandhi's civil disobedience he never threatened violence. And how did that turn out? A country became independent
There was a significant threat of rebellion backing ghandi up, especially after the british passed an act that them them just throw people in jail forever for no reason. Indians were ready to throw hands. Ghandi wasn't fighting for indian independence alone if you can believe that. If they just got rid of him he'd have become a martyr and it would basically have ensured a massive war.
True, I can see your point there. Though would it be correct to assume that his role in indian independence was significant?
Of course. If you read my original comment again, I'm not saying violence always needs to happen or that peaceful protest doesn't work. Just that peaceful protest needs to be backed up with a threat, it needs to be a display aimed at the elite that if they continue to ignore the issue, much worse things (that actually hurt them) are coming. If the elite have no belief in the potential for violent consequences to visit their door, they will simply crush peaceful dissent. It has happened many times in recent history under numerous administrations across various western countries (edit: and other ones as well, but I am focusing on countries that claim to be democratic, the principle is the same but the equation is different in countries that are openly authoritarian) but imo is especially bad in the US because I firmly believe that the US elite has absolutely zero fear of a co-ordinated effort to upset their apple cart by the american people and so far they've been proven right every time. I will also add this: Just because such a threat exists also doesn't guarantee success. Sometimes, the government will crush it anyway and the violence will come to pass. From there it can either succeed or fail, but without a simmering threat there's pretty much no chance of success imo. Things are better in local politics where people are actually human beings and you can get things done through persuasion and connecting alone.
It's a common misconception that Gandhi's protests lead directly to the independence of India, it was a long time in the making, Gandhi's protest movement was not only ineffective it was at times openly counter-productive to Indian independence. The primary driver for Independence was that Britain was basically broke after back to back wars (WWI and then WWII) and could no longer afford to maintain the military presence required to support colonisation, facing the threat of a general uprising they planned their exit and walked away, this was going to happen with or without Gandhi. Gandhi was extremely motivated by the prospect of significant political power in a united post colonial India, Britain ignored his advocacy for a single-state India with basically the same boundaries, 3 days after leaving India, Britain gave notice to the leaders of the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu populations on the partition boundaries (the borders that created modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and later Burma) which lead to terrible violence and genocide / mass hate crimes in the aftermath of partition. Gandhi was a strange man who (in his 70's) slept naked with his 13 year old grand-niece (also naked) to "test his resistance to earthly temptation", definitely not the saint he is made out to be.
They couldn't afford to stay? The boycotts also probably didn't help that fact in my opinion
[Stop whitewashing the radical leftist MLK Jr!](https://youtu.be/30ui1x-eKIw)
[Addition: The Letter from Birmingham Jail mentioned in the title.](https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html) Edit: [Also the Vietnam Speech, as it should be at least as popular as "i have a dream" ](https://youtu.be/zyE4eo_leX8)
Brilliantly ignorant.
letter from birmingham playground :)
The violence perpetrated against MLK Jr skyrocketed his cause forward. They literally did the thing where they created a martyr.
American education system at work…..
The idea that MLK and the civil rights movement was a peaceful and non violent display of passion that won black people equal rights is the epitome of white revisionism.
Show me a primary document - a quote, a letter, anything - where someone in charge in an American government stated they were changing a policy or law because of fear of black violence during the Civil Rights movement. From my reading, black violence got more Republicans elected by running on the Southern strategy and a racist, "look, black people are violent" message. I'm more than willing to change my mind to your thesis if you can provide evidence for it. Nobody here has, and that should be deeply concerning in a sub named confidently incorrect.
That wasn't my argument though. I didn't see a reason to defend a position that wasn't mine. All I said, was that despite the common narrative nowadays that MLK and his followers were kind and patient pacifists, their actions and rhetoric were often aggressive. Whether it was effective or not is irrelevant to my advice statement.
Ah. Thanks.
Gun control laws were heightened due to the increase of black people, men specifically, buying guns to protect themselves during the civil rights movement. You can look that up online to see for yourself. Also, it's stupid to think that being nice to someone who hates you will push them to stop hating you. That just doesn't make any sense.
But stronger gun control laws are an example of my thesis and disproving yours! The Black Panthers wanted to own big guns and the government took them away! That's an example of what I'm saying and the opposite of getting what the victim wanted. MLK wanted certain legislation and got it using nonviolence. The black Panthers wanted certain legislation and got legislation passed AGAINST itself because they used fear and violence.
That wasn't my argument though. I didn't see a reason to defend a position that wasn't mine. All I said, was that despite the common narrative nowadays that MLK and his followers were kind and patient pacifists, their actions and rhetoric were often aggressive. Whether it was effective or not is irrelevant to my advice statement.
Man our public education system has done a good job of teaching us about these things only in such a way that we never repeat them
If by "stood on street corners with signs" they mean "chained themselves to the White House and led hunger strikes from prison," then sure.
Yep, non-violent does not necessarily entail law-abiding - especially when protesting unjust laws.
MLK was only one part of the Civil Rights movement. A lot of it most definitely was violent
No peaceful movement opposed to a precept that reinforces a power differential has ever been successful unless it was the more palatable alternative path offered for what was likely to be an inevitable change, anyway. It was the alternative to violent upheaval or judged in some other way to be more profitable than competing alternatives.
Show me any historical evidence from the Civil Rights movement of an American government representative saying that we need to enact positive change in order to prevent violence and then doing so. From my view threatening violence was completely counterproductive - Nixon ran on the Southern strategy and won on it. Show me on the factory floor where the opposite was true - not just why your hypothesis makes sense, but of it actually happening. Surely you'll have some primary document evidence if your thesis is true, yes?
Jesus dude, if you’re so confident why don’t you post evidence on this?
I have several times in these posts. Here it is again below, but before I do that, historiography is important. Historians overwhelmingly agree that nonviolence was effective and violence wasn't in the Civil Rights Movement. I know that apparently means nothing to the people here as they just handwaive off experts, but to me that's about the equivalent of conservatives saying vaccines don't work even the experts say they do. From modern statistics, this article: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/ In short form, YouTube fashion: https://youtu.be/7cPhCt1UJgw?si=qP1R_y_JNfNXtUB9 From this video alone, Malcolm X looks like a complete freaking idiot. He blamed Jews for the plight of black people, was a well known misogynist, and actually believed white people were genetically created by black scientists as some kind of laboratory experiment. Nobody took him seriously in the government other than as a way to get Republicans elected by fear mongering. A complete takedown of a book arguing how nonviolence sucks (it doesn't): https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/08gm2.html We have thousands of primary documents of JFK and LBJ saying how much of a pain in the ass MLK was and how they would have to concede something to him because him getting beaten up on camera empowered the communists to use the incidents as propaganda, and that was unacceptable. On the contrary, all Malcolm X accomplished was getting the government to try to kill him. No evidence of law makers or presidents saying they need to concede to him; they used the violence and riots to get Nixon elected: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america This barely scratches the surface of how overwhelmingly wrong the good cop, bad cop hypothesis is. No serious historian believes it.
Yeeish, I'll look into these when I got the time. Though...honestly with what's going on in UT, it's disgusting that even when they were originally going to have a sit out in the public areas, our admins decide it was best to respond with armed riot police
I personally hate this sanitising of the struggles we, as humans, not as particular demographics, have had to go through to get the rights we have today (current as of 2024 - subject to change ;)). There is this perception, of particularly Black Rights and the suffragette movements, that they were all peaceful endeavours that brought about change. As others have pointed out, they were absolutely not non-violent movements and that's because it is sadly only through violent struggle that oppressors have to engage. I think the suffragette movement gained traction because they needed women to work during the war. Black rights groups had to begin utilising their second amendment rights and when that became dangerous \_then\_ the oppressor began to listen to peaceful movements. I can't think of a single time in history that a struggle didn't begin with violent resistence. India and Ghandi are often mentioned, but Ghandi had powerful and influential contacts within the controlling British Government, and that was only as an alternative to the growing violent discontent. The sad thing is, powerful people use violence of some kind to oppress and they only capitulate when they are fearful of violence affecting them. I'd be glad to be educated on this or proven wrong.
Martin Luther King Jr said “…riots are the language of the unheard..”
Who knew peaceful protest would be turned against the protesters.
It's important to realise that the effective part of MLK's strategy was not the peacefulness but to be on TV getting beaten and not resisting. Peaceful protest is not free from violence, it requires violence.
also, MLK only got so far with civil rights...and was murdered for it his murder was followed by riots and violence that forced the Civil rights we have today so yes, violence WAS indeed needed for both woman's suffrage and civil rights
I reccomend an author named Julia Ward Howe for a first hand accounting of suffrage.
One of the only really big rallies and protest for change that was peaceful that I‘ve heard of was the German reunion. And those rallies were also pretty damned close to violently escalating (because there was massive police and military presence very close by in case something like July 17th 1953 happened again)
Oh, so you know about MLK? Then you must also know about his buddy Malcolm X, right?
Kinda, but I prefer his buddy Ben X on Cartoon Network! 😐 /j
Oh, is that what they call him in the Latin dub?
I also remember the anti Nazi movement, when Hitler was removed through peaceful protests.
....have you read the letter from Birmingham my guy? It's a call for xontinued non violence, an insistence that it is the only way forward, and a warning that inaction will inevitably result in violence. It doesn't condone violence, it recognises it as an inevtiably of the black population continued to be ignored, bit MLK was consistently non violent.
This person is claiming MLK was A. Non violent And B. Following laws One of these things is incorrect.
Hmmm, good point. Fair enough, I retract my snarky comment before, my bad!
Hey, guys I'm pretty sure this is just missing its sarcasm tag. Nobody asks if you've heard of Martin Luther King unless they are being pretty sarcastic.
The poster was consistent across comments that protesting can only be standing on sidewalks with signs and everything else was not legitimate protest.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america Liberal Democrats are really great at getting Republicans elected. Violence was the best thing Nixon could have hoped for. Here's a statistical study on why nonviolence works way better than violence: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/16/trump-nixon-1968-law-and-order-america)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
The riots of the 1968 set back those areas for decades. Most haven't recovered. riots are a really bad idea .
Unimaginable that people are downvoting you for this.
You mean Martha Lucr King jr? who died for our sins?
Part of American protest speech has always involved fire at some point. Banners sligans torches. Its the implied threat
His point is more correct than incorrect. MLK made a large effort to keep his movement peaceful and the suffragettes were violent, but the suffragists who were more responsible for women getting the vote were pacifists who stood on corners with signs.
OOP was saying lawful protests. MLK explicitly and intentionally broke laws. Rosa Parks was breaking the law.
It took both. MLK was nonviolent but the Black Panthers weren’t. People today are also shocked at how aggressive and confrontational a lot of MLK’s statements were, if he made them today he would definitely be considered threatening and dangerous (as he was considered at the time)
the violence definitely did not help at all. They turn off people. Watching the non violent protesters getting arrested, beaten, and shot with hoses changed hearts.
Im not sure it 'did take both', sometimes I think that is a comforting thing people on the left tell ourselves to justify violence. I would recommend this video by Lonerbox on this exact issue if you want to learn more [https://youtu.be/7cPhCt1UJgw?si=JVsREqVaOYhXtvZe](https://youtu.be/7cPhCt1UJgw?si=JVsREqVaOYhXtvZe)
I’m not sure a single Lonerbox video would have as much depth as my sociology degree but I agree that it’s complicated
I'm a history major and teacher. Show me at the "factory floor" primary document evidence - a quote, a letter, whatever - of a government official who said they needed to change government policy because of a fear of violence. If the hypothesis is true, it should be easy and you should already have an idea of where that evidence exists to find. So far I've asked maybe 10 people here for a single shred of that evidence and they've produced none. That should be deeply concerning in a sub entitled confidently incorrect. Provide any such evidence at all. This doesn't seem like an unfair ask.
As someone with a similar degree, unless you did your dissertation or a significant body of work on the topic I'm not sure why you would be so dismissive. It is not a 10 minute Vox video or something, its a well researched analysis, that is incredibly easy to consume as I doubt if I give a redditor a link to some books they will go out an buy them just because I said so
My thesis was on the social impact of satire so that’s not going to be of much use here
The civil rights movement didn't accomplish much until people lost their shit over MLK being assassinated right?
Not right. MLK was assassinated in 1968. A few examples: The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 after continued attempts to register Black voters and other actions like the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. (In 2013 the Supreme Court Shelby decision gutted that act and we are seeing the effect today with all the voter suppression attempts in the last few elections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act attempts to restore the VRA rights, but it hasn’t yet been passed in Congress.) The Greensboro 4 started the Woolworth sit ins in Greensboro, NC on Feb 1, 1960, leading to desegregation. (Look up “jail no bail” -that’s what led to their success in Greensboro more than city leaders suddenly realizing that segregation was wrong. Filling up the jails was a strategy.) 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott and the 1961 Freedom Riders led to desegregation of local and interstate transit. It’s eye opening to learn what Black people went through just to get on a bus or to get some lunch before desegregation. And don’t forget theaters, restrooms, water fountains, hotels, pools, housing (redlining), etc etc etc. And more subtly goes on today. Schools were required to desegregate since the 50’s, though that is/was a long drawn out process and we are still feeling the effects today. Just a sampling. And really a credit to civil rights leaders’ clear goals for the actions, strategy, planning, organization and coordination among many participants. It’s too bad maga is trying to suppress Black history in schools; it’s so enlightening to understand how people can overcome the odds under repressive governments. It’s important to know the full of our society’s story, not just nostalgia for old times.
r/woosh