Political Memes

Little known fact that the Nazis were at last turned back at Stalingrad by the wittiest picket sign made in the Soviet Union. The sign, which used a mock spelling of Hitler's name, simply read "A doof, Hitler". Many historians believe that the German military never fully recovered from this humiliation.

We don't have to like it, but it's undeniable that cops treat protestors in plated vests with rifles different than they treat protestors in tshirts with signs...

They actually are.

Non-violent resistances have historically had double the effectiveness of violent resistance movements. Violent resistances generally just get a bunch of people killed and only makes things worse.

The reason is simple. It's a numbers game. Only a few psychopaths want violence and those few are easily dealt with by police. Sometimes they can especially troublesome and need to be dealt with by the military (LA isn't one of those cases, Trump is just an idiot). It's only the very rare case that a violent resistance topples a government and in those cases it's just replacing one group of authoritarian psychos replacing another group. The French revolution ended up with a King being replaced by an Emperor after a whole lot of people died.

Meanwhile a non-violent movement can attract more numbers. You only need single digit percentages of the population to participate in things like general strikes to make an authoritarian regime collapse. But you aren't getting those numbers with a violent resistance, people have families to think about and violent resistances are easily vilified. An authoritarian regime can exercise violence against a violent resistance and kill it. If an authoritarian regime uses violence against a non-violent resistance it's clear to everyone who the villains are and an every broader number of people will participate and subtle and secretive ways.

History bears this out, a violent resistances don't work unless there's foreign backing and even then it's unlikely to succeed. Non-violent resistances have double the probability of success. Non-violent resistances are just about psychopaths that want to burn things down coming up with bullshit rationalizations for it.

And this is why I am a proud gun owning liberal.

Can people learn about dictators that aren't Adolf Hitler? Please?

Fighting back is often the only choice you're left with when Nazis gain power, but I do wish people would keep in mind there's a difference between strategizing and being smart about how and when you fight back vs encouraging individuals to run full speed at the entire U.S. military with a bullseye on their forehead.

Also, if you're bringing fascists and rule of law into this, hopefully you're not wilfully ignoring how they gain power in the first place, or the fact that the Nazis literally used a legal expert that provided them with the legal shield they needed to carry out a genocide without ever breaking the law.

Carl Schmitt

Or that one of Trump's biggest defenders against the "crooked courts" that keep getting in his way, and leaving him with no choice but to act like a dictator, is a Harvard Constitutional Law professor who also just happens to be a Carl Schmitt fanboy.

Adrian Vermeule-OUR SCHMITTIAN ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

Common-Good Constitutionalism Is an Idea as Dangerous as They Come

Well, technically, the Germans could have voted in a majority party on the left in the early 1930s and when that did fail they still could have just not voted for literal nazis.

So, Yeah. That was an option.

This reminds me of a discussion I was having with Hexbear members on Lemmy recently.

I was suggesting that perhaps it makes sense for the UK to have nukes, for self-defence against other nuclear countries like Russia, China, and potentially even the US, given their unpredictable behaviour. People from Hexbear got angry at this suggestion. One of them suggested that it's immoral to have nukes because nukes are "threatening civilians".

Maybe the OP image of this thread is right though: megalomaniacs are not deterred by words, but they are deterred by weapons (such as nukes). Ukraine was invaded because they didn't have enough deterrents. Iran is currently being bombed because I suppose they also didn't have enough deterrents.

Why We're Organizing No Kings Protests on Saturday--A king is only a king if we bow down

For the would-be dictator, success depends on projecting power and creating an aura of inevitability. They need you to believe that Trump is the new normal, that the MAGA movement will be in power for the long haul, that the only rational move is to go along, keep your head down, and protect your own interests.

In short, it requires a countless number of people in a countless number of places to do something that the Trump regime doesn’t want them to do, or to NOT do something the Trump regime wants them to do. That’s how we shake off the aura of inevitability and halt the autocratic breakthrough.

For that to happen, people need to feel like we’re part of something bigger. We need to understand that we’re part of a movement. We need to feel like we will win.

https://www.howwefightback.com/p/why-were-organizing-no-kings-protests

We will see in four years (or less depending if anything horrifically dramatic happens). But when violence has to happen, get ready to exercise your second amendment rights.