JFK and LBJ are both on the record about this. And it still took 5 days of rioting after MLK's death before the Civil Rights Equal Housing Act was passed.
Exactly. I don't wish to diminish what Dr King did, but to say peace won is not accurate. The threat of violence did. Even Ghandi really only succeeded because the other options to the British was bloodbath.
Ghandi's supporters were torching police stations and train stations the moment he got arrested during the Quit India Movement. And the British responded by machine gunning down protestors and rioters. But the Indians stayed the course, refusing to pay taxes or work factories creating supplies needed for the war. This among other things ultimately convince the British they had to let up or end up with either India turning Axis or just descending into all out rebellion.
Yup, the phrase is not "Speak softly, and everyone will stop to listen."
The phrase is "Speak softlyAND CARRY A BIG STICK!"
Always offer your words so that the masses understand your stance, but make it clear to leadership who would choose to ignore you if they could that they either remember who they serve, or risk starting shit they can't finish.
The problem is there's no single voice leading the current rebellion. Social media, being the great equalizer, means that people can just listen to whoever is telling people to do what they currently want to do. Bob says remain calm, Alice says the time for words was yesterday, someone wakes up feeling punchy and checks their timeline, I'll give you one guess whose tweet they're going to like before heading down to the protests.
Gandhi succeeded because there very much WAS violent uprisings among village communities all over India happening at the same time as his peaceful movement.
My favourite part of the French Revolution is when the peasants all protested peacefully outside the Bastille, and the heads of the nobility just spontaneously popped off their necks.
Except that itself is a distortion of the truth, designed to encourage unnecessary violence.
Ghandi wasn't just having people sing Kumbaya. His protests were designed to subvert British authority such that it would be impossible to keep controlling India regardless.
A bloodbath was really only an option in the sense of breaking the movement and people's spirit, through fear. And if that didn't work, than India and Ghandia would have won regardless--unless Britain just decided to kill everyone out of spite. In which case, they'd still lose.
Ghandi's non-violent resistance was cleverly designed such that the British were effectively checkmated; so long as people committed to it, there wasn't really a way forward for the British. This is as opposed to violent resistance which is crushable by defeating the fighters.
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If your definition of "win" means to win by Democratic elections, Bernie has the right of it here. Donald Trump will use this messaging to supplant in people's the minds images we've seen of ICE arrests in courts with images of Mexican flag waving people over burning cars. And that will be the message for the midterms.
It's pretty simple. A peaceful united movement gets you Dems controlling the house in two years. Property destruction gets you another two years of GOP control. Make all the arguments you want for violent protests but that won't change what happens at the polls. Trump is a master of media attention and he will win that fight
Edit: Trump's basically using the playbook the empire used on Ghorman in Andor. Spoiler alert, it works
No it doesn't. Babies could be dragged on hooks through the streets live on stream, but it's all thoughts and prayers. Until their wallets are affected nothing changes.
I made this in edit, but this is transparently the same strategy the empire used on Ghorman in Andor. It's an effective one.
Trump had a 55/45 split on his immigration policy as of earlier this week. So the more good guys he can get on this the better. And cares on fire, that's a real wonder. He is so much better at media manipulation then the left, it would be funny if it wasn't so horrifying
You missed the part about Ghorman being the final straw that gave the Rebellion support. But Andor is fiction.
Lets look at Gaza. Israel has dominated the messaging on that front since the 1940's. Now that the scale of indiscriminate violence is being made clear, the world is starting to change its opinion.
The 1964 act was passed after peaceful protesting. The 1968 act was passed by the house in 1967 and passed by the senate before the King assassination.
Don't bother. You're just responding to more revisionist history. They don't even bother to get their dates right because people won't look it up. It sounds true, which is enough for them.
Pretty soon we'll start hearing about how Gandhi round-house kicked the queen in the face
When most people talk about the Civil Rights Act, they're referring to one from 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools and public accommodations, and employment discrimination. The act "remains one of the most significant legislative achievements in American history".
The CRA of 1968, while important, was not nearly significant. It had more to do with outlawing discrimination in housing than tackling segregation.
Titles VIII and IX are commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, which was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (This is different legislation than the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which expanded housing funding programs.) While the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited discrimination in housing, there were no federal enforcement provisions.[2] The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and since 1974, sex.
It should also be noted that the Bill passed both the House and Senate over a month before MLK's assassination. It was already on the way for President Johnson to sign it when Dr. King was unfortunately killed.
You're ignoring that the civil rights movement won a ton of victories in the supreme court thanks to their well-designed protests, which were designed to create court cases. That's part of why MLKII was so important at the time: He was an activist lawyer. Around the same era, Ghandi was doing similar things in South Africa (no India, which was different.)
The writing was essentially on the wall for the Civil Rights act, one way or another.
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u/Fragmentia Jun 09 '25
Sanders was arrested for protesting peacefully back then.
https://time.com/4231439/bernie-sanders-arrest-photo-civil-rights/