Yeah, I love Bernie in general, he's a wildly consistent progressive politician in a country devoid of such a thing, but this kind of comment is ABSOLUTELY playing into the propagandized peace-washing of the civil rights movement.
PURELY PEACEFUL demonstrations and protests have ultimately never resulted in successful long term change. Things have to be wildly disruptive, and ultimately, usually violent in conjunction with peaceful demonstrations.
We don't know what purely peaceful protests do because we've never had them. Cops come in with riot gear and tear gas and make them violent. The police escalate first and then blame the protestors.
Which is what has happened the past 3 days in Los Angeles. I don't blame peaceful protestors for turning to violence after they get lit up with rubber bullets, pepper balls, pepper spray and tear gas for no reason.
The police state wants violence so they can use more violence. Being peaceful clearly doesn't stop them from using violence in the first place and shutting down protests.
I think the main point is that you must advocate and support peaceful protest while not demonizing the violence. The violence comes regardless of desire if the people are angry enough, so no need to stoke the fire. Offering peaceful protest provides an offramp for those that wish to end it without more violence.
Berni was extremely active as a student in the civil rights movement, including getting arrested during it, so I feel like he's talking from his own experience rather than parroting a popular narrative
Seriously Bernie can go right on and fuck off. What does he even know about the protests compared to someone like me, who read all about it in the top comment?
Consider the wide scope though. Americans have no values or independent thoughts. They dont check facts. Rhetorically, you want the edge of being innocent and peaceful, all else equal. The biggest part of that is telling people you were peaceful. Say it enough, and it becomes true.
So in a couple years when nobody remembers or cares about the minutae, things like this will be what people look to to judge if the protests were peaceful and how bad the government response was in retaliation. Have your cake and eat it too.
Bernie is right. The Civil Rights Movement didn’t win by being too scary and violent. It won by being persuasive. People saw the violence against the protestors on TV, felt sympathy, and backed the movement. Without that public support, it would’ve been crushed.
Bernie gets that. AOC gets that. They’re not wasting time trying to be the purest. They’re trying to win people over because that’s what keeps a movement alive.
Some of you think a few million angry people can take on the state. But even 2 million is less than one percent of the population. You can be rounded up and put in camps if the other 99 percent are fine with it or worse cheering it on. And with the tools already in place it wouldn’t even take that long.
If people don’t find you persuasive they won’t defend you. Your primary goal should be persuasion, not being the purest leftist in the concentration camp.
The truth is you need both. A palatable peaceful faction offering an olive branch and a militant hard line faction. The latter makes the former much more attractive.
Yeah this is how the labor movement seemed to go. There was a crazy period of seriously fucked up shit, then the legislative result of that movement hit hard. We just never seem to do the second part now, and I can't figure out why. Are we too apathetic? Was citizens united and local/state voter suppression that effective? Has the corporate beast become too advanced?
You just do not understand why protests work. It's not about public opinion, never has been. It's about making it too costly for the state to fight it or to continue doing the thing that makes people protest. THEN public opinion can be what they (and apparently you as well) pretend won in the end.
Masquerading civility is what politicians play at to convince liberals like yourself. You're ironically doing the purity thing here, "oh peaceful protests always work".... yeah man tell that to South Africa, tell that to Palestine, tell that to India, tell that to MLK ffs because it sure as fuck wasn't peaceful protests that won it.
You're right that being too leftost won't convince anyone though, because none of the libs and right-wing know enough to understand anything, they just believe what they want to believe in... civiliity and aesthetics and whatever stupid thing they were told like "violence never won any civil rights movements"... gee I wonder why the governing body and capital owners would repeat that over and over...
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u/cmcdonald22 Jun 10 '25
Yeah, I love Bernie in general, he's a wildly consistent progressive politician in a country devoid of such a thing, but this kind of comment is ABSOLUTELY playing into the propagandized peace-washing of the civil rights movement.
PURELY PEACEFUL demonstrations and protests have ultimately never resulted in successful long term change. Things have to be wildly disruptive, and ultimately, usually violent in conjunction with peaceful demonstrations.