Sunday, January 22, 2017

Violence, the sure fire way to bring about defeat.

On the day Donald Trump was inaugurated a racist, white supremacist, leader of the alt-right movement was in an on camera interview on the streets of Washington DC. As he was speaking someone ran up and punched him in the face. The video of this has been widely spread on Facebook and I have seen many people who oppose Trump celebrating this act of violence. They are saying that the man deserved it and a few are suggesting that this type of act should happen more often. They are saying that the people who are speaking out against this stupidity are somehow in a conspiracy to support Trump. The people who are saying this are not only wrong, they are brazen hypocrites.

These individuals claim they want to fight fascism and yet they are praising the use of violence to silence someone they disagree with. That is the very definition of fascism. They, and luckily they are a small minority, are asking us to use a tactic that will make our fight dramatically more difficult and will probably lead to our defeat. Violence from our side will not frighten the other side into submission, it will embolden them and give them justification for what they are doing.

Dr. Martin Luther King led a non-violent campaign seeking justice for African Americans. But this call for non-violence was not a call for a violence free campaign, Dr. King was too smart to think that was possible. It was a call for a non-violent response to violence. When the marchers arrived at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama and saw all of the people on the other end they knew what was about to happen. They could have stopped and turned around if they were trying to avoid violence. Instead they continued forward and were met with an incredibly violent beating. But they didn't fight back.

If the Civil Rights marchers had fought back it people across America would have said "See, they got what they deserved." By not meeting violence with more violence they gained empathy, their attackers were seen as monsters, and the Civil Rights movement was advanced.

The cowardly sucker punch we saw in the video mentioned above did not help us, in fact it may have created more white supremacists and emboldened the alt-right. Now a blatant racist has become the empathetic figure and a young person in a hoodie who punched and ran could be cast as the face of all of those of us who oppose Donald Trump. Violence from our side is exactly what Trump wants. It will allow him to do whatever he wants to do. He will use it as justification for taking rights away from people. It will gain him even stronger and more fervent support from the people who voted for him. It is the biggest gift we could give an authoritarian narcissist like him.

We have to stand up against any violent act from anyone on our side. Yes, even things like breaking windows and setting trash on fire in the streets, even though it is an understandable response from those of us who are fearful and frustrated by what Trump wants to do, will give them further justification. This is not a revolution. We are not looking to overthrow the US government. We, at least the enormously vast majority of us, just want our government to work for all of us, equally. We should march and scream and use civil disobedience to get our point across. We should gather in huge numbers and call out every lie Trump tells. But violence will only make Trump and the most deplorable of his followers victorious. We don't need a violent revolution, if that is what we start we will almost certainly lose.

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