Peaceful protests FTW

[nvm]

I believe that the best way to take action against the capitalists is to make massive peaceful protests.
First of all what the capitalists fear is a massive opposition to their plans not 10 or 100 hotheads throwing molotov coctails at the cops or vandalizing stuff. And by using violent tactics the people were going to be scared away and the number of the protesters will decrease in time , because not all people want to get tear gas thrown at them and nobody wants to be beated or arrested because some idiot threw a petrol bomb.
Second of all the Media will use these violent events in order to turn public opinion against the protesters and their cause and they will portray them as a minority of vandals.
Thirdly we know from our experience(at least those of us who participate in protests and that kind of stuff) that cops are using the provocateur technique ,where they dress cops as protesters and they make them cause a riot in order to dissolve the protest and portray the people as vandals(example anti SPP protest on montebello , search montebello on youtube!) .So its obvious that the State wants vandalism and violence.
In short I believe that the social -economic etc conditions dont permit us to use violence in protests and we have to create a more massive movement in order to be able to overthrow the state with a violent revolution just like in Russia! We need to mobilize the people and this mobilization will only come through peaceful protests. And we should try through thee protests for different causes(war,environment etc) to attract people to socialism! :)

[Everyday Anarchy]

I believe that peaceful and militarist actions are both very important to the movement. They both have their own time and place in which they are appropriate. Peaceful protests work best to gain mass support and, if done correctly, can make quite a statement both for the movement and against the police that usually attack.

Militarist actions are necessary to show force against the government and to demonstrate the fact that we ARE a threat to their sanctity. Also, I believe militarist actions can catalyze the revolution and bring it about quicker. However, the time and place has to be perfect for militarism so as to avoid losing support from the people.


I mostly feel that peaceful actions must come before militarist ones.

[mykittyhasaboner]

I believe that peaceful and militarist actions are both very important to the movement. They both have their own time and place in which they are appropriate. Peaceful protests work best to gain mass support and, if done correctly, can make quite a statement both for the movement and against the police that usually attack.

Militarist actions are necessary to show force against the government and to demonstrate the fact that we ARE a threat to their sanctity. Also, I believe militarist actions can catalyze the revolution and bring it about quicker. However, the time and place has to be perfect for militarism so as to avoid losing support from the people.


I mostly feel that peaceful actions must come before militarist ones.
i completely agree both peaceful and violent are important to our movement. its always good to have some antifa guarding peaceful protests as well, just in case the fascist fucks try something dumb

[RNK]

I believe that the best way to take action against the capitalists is to make massive peaceful protests.

CPQ much?


In short I believe that the social -economic etc conditions dont permit us to use violence in protests and we have to create a more massive movement in order to be able to overthrow the state with a violent revolution just like in Russia!

Omg really!


And we should try through thee protests for different causes(war,environment etc) to attract people to socialism!

Omg r u being serial!?!?

[nvm]

I believe that peaceful and militarist actions are both very important to the movement. They both have their own time and place in which they are appropriate. Peaceful protests work best to gain mass support and, if done correctly, can make quite a statement both for the movement and against the police that usually attack.

Militarist actions are necessary to show force against the government and to demonstrate the fact that we ARE a threat to their sanctity. Also, I believe militarist actions can catalyze the revolution and bring it about quicker. However, the time and place has to be perfect for militarism so as to avoid losing support from the people.


I mostly feel that peaceful actions must come before militarist ones.

Militarist action would be suitabe in a pre-revolutionary period or during a revolution (of course:)). But now the period that we live in is neither so militarist action is unsuitable(at least in North america) on the topici am refering to this period of time and not some other period ...

As about the Maoist guy who believes that a gun should be given to members of a group and then starting a revolution,.....i cant say anything. His beliefs speak for me!

[RNK]

Results speak for you. Russia 1917, China 1949, Cuba 1959, Vietnam 1975, Nepal 2006. All instances where violence kicked your reformist ass. Though Nepal maybe doesn't count, yet -- they're not done over there.

Parti Communiste, parti accomplice!

[nvm]

Results speak for you. Russia 1917, China 1949, Cuba 1959, Vietnam 1975, Nepal 2006. All instances where violence kicked your reformist ass. Though Nepal maybe doesn't count, yet -- they're not done over there.

Parti Communiste, parti accomplice!

lmao you dont get my point or you re too lazy to read what i say. In this period of time which is not pre-revolutionary or revolutionary here in Canada or the US and also in Europe , we cannot use violence for the reasons i stated above because it only harms the movement and drives people away from protests etc. Of course i believe that a violent revolution will overthrow capitalism but the time has not come yet. I support the revolutions in Russia ,China , Cuba and ?Nepal?:confused: i dont know about a revolution oh maybe you mean the maoists who lived in the mountains and took some seats in the parliament ...? (I said i support the revolutions not what happened after...)....
But i ll repeat that now it's not time for violence. It better stick in your heads .Some people should stop acting as provocateurs.

[chegitz guevara]

The tactics we use are strategic and tactical, not based on a priori principles. Whether one uses non-violence or violence depends on the concrete situation. In general, we want to avoid violence if we can, but sometimes it will be necessary.

[coda]

Well, that's assuming that the protesters start the violence. a good majority of the time it's the cops provoking & escalating the violence and the protesters just reacting offensively or defensively to that. The whole purpose of the cops being there is to ensure that it will not be a peaceful protest!!

[bezdomni]

What is your position then, on say...the L.A. riots (after the Rodney King beating)?

It was a mass action where people were using violence against the state in a really radical way. Obviously, it wasn't a revolution...but the fact that such a large segment of people in a major U.S. city were politicized enough to take violent action against the state gives us a good idea as to where to grow from there to actually get to a revolutionary situation.

What we need right now is actual bold resistance to capitalism and imperialism. Attacking a cop in the street or throwing a molotov at the white house isn't going to accomplish that. Revolutionaries have to have an actual basis among the masses before any serious revolutionary action occurs.

We shouldn't condemn the use of violence against the state in non-revolutionary situations...however, we should critically analyze what said use of violence is objectively doing. Is it brining us closer to revolution? Or is it an isolated group that insists on escalating to violent resistance before the masses of people are ready for that?


If we tried to go on the offensive when the masses are not yet awakened, that would be adventurism. If we insisted on leading the masses to do anything against their will, we would certainly fail. If we did not advance when the masses demand advance, that would be Right opportunism.
-Mao

[chegitz guevara]

Well, that's assuming that the protesters start the violence. a good majority of the time it's the cops provoking & escalating the violence and the protesters just reacting offensively or defensively to that. The whole purpose of the cops being there is to ensure that it will not be a peaceful protest!!

While that may be true, it's not really addressing the point as to whether or not demonstrators or the movement should always be non-violent. Whether or not we engage in offensive violence is up to us and the concrete situation we are in. Self-defense is defensive violence, and only committed pacifists would argue that people should not defend themselves.

Most of the time, we should be non-violent, simply because the forces arrayed against us are far more powerful than we are. To engage in revolutionary posturing and adventurism just gets people hurt and does little more than make the adventurists full of themselves. It rarely advances the movement.

Even engaging in the right to self defense isn't always the best tactic. When the anti-segregation movement refused to fight back, powerful images of defenseless people being attacked by the police helped galvanize Northern White sympathies for the freedom movement. Here in South Florida, when I and three comrades from the Bolivarian Youth had a counter-demonstration against Luis Posada Cariles in Little Havana, the cameras caught an unprovoked attack on us by a mob. We didn't fight back. Though print versions of the event said there were thirty of us and it was unclear who started the fight, CBS tv showed it was clearly an unprovoked attack on four people who didn't fight back. While it didn't start a movement, it did cause the right-wing Cubans to start denouncing one another. We caused a rift in the right-wing Cubans. (It was still stupid for us to have gone, we could have been killed.)

The question is always, what serves us best at this moment and going forward. At this stage in history in the belly of the beast, the answer is usually non-violence.

[RNK]

In this period of time which is not pre-revolutionary or revolutionary

Its not pre-revolutionary or revolutionary? What, then, we're living in post-revolutionary Canada? Yeah, and I'm too lazy.


Of course i believe that a violent revolution will overthrow capitalism

Then what are you blathering about?


but the time has not come yet

Obviously not.


i dont know about a revolution oh maybe you mean the maoists who lived in the mountains and took some seats in the parliament ...?

I mean the Maoists who staged a protracted people's war for ten years, caused the overthrow of the deeply entrenched fuedal system in Nepal and paved the way for democratic renewel. Like I said they're not "done" yet. They've taken this oppurtunity to test the feasibility of elections (they certainly have a massive amount of support across Nepal). They may yet pick up arms.


But i ll repeat that now it's not time for violence. It better stick in your heads .Some people should stop acting as provocateurs.

Should tell that to the folks over in Paris, y'know, the ones involved with the Commune. And while you're at it, tell it to the tens of thousands of workers over the years who've stood up against police brutality and fought for their rights.

This ridiculous fear of "provocateurs" is stupid liberal masturbation. People like you have turned communism in Quebec into nothing more than pussy-fart childsplay. Fuck off, tear up your CPQ membership card, go home and get the fuck out of the way.

[chegitz guevara]

You make as much of a fetish of violence as the pacifists do of non-violence.

[BIG BROTHER]

I'll just say that an armed revoution will be necesary.

But I do support a peacefull protest, as long as they don't give the protesters a motive to be violent. i.e. police brutality, provocations, etc.

[RNK]

You make as much of a fetish of violence as the pacifists do of non-violence.

Why, because I believe the people have the right to rise up the manner necessary for them to defend themselves?

It's pathetic that I can go to a protest where the police launch unprovoked and brutal attacks, and then assholes like Dimitri come along and claim i'm a provocateur! What kind of fucking "revolutionary" are you when you talk down on people fighting back against the state's own violence, and start and prop up smear campaigns generated by liberal social democrats aimed at disarming the people?

Fetishism implies choice; there is no choice. If a pig dressed in full body armour with a 1/4 inch thick polyglass shield, wielding a nightstick and a tear gas gun attacks me, I'm not going to play Gandhi, and get my chubbies on by refusing to defend myself and then claiming "moral" victory. A "moral" victory never did anyone any good; India's exploitation didn't stop and people like Dimitri are sell-outs to the revolutionary cause.

Yes, that's right, when you call for workers to be disarmed, you're a fucking traitor to them.

[INDK]

I believe that the best way to take action against the capitalists is to make massive peaceful protests.

I disagree.



First of all what the capitalists fear is a massive opposition to their plans not 10 or 100 hotheads throwing molotov coctails at the cops or vandalizing stuff.

Almost exactly what armed revolt is not.


And by using violent tactics the people were going to be scared away and the number of the protesters will decrease in time , because not all people want to get tear gas thrown at them and nobody wants to be beated or arrested because some idiot threw a petrol bomb.

It's funny you think revolution and riots are the same thing; I'll add more than just a line this time because you strike me as terribly confused. First of all, you say "the people were going to be scared away and the number of the protesters will decrease in time", ignoring one thing: it is the people who rise in arms to defeat bourgeois oppression. The people, as a whole - it won't be like a 100 Anarchist teens throwing makeshift bombs at riot police - this is not the definition of a revolutionary armed revolt at all. The most successful revolutions were those of armed resistance; for instance, actually, the American Revolution is a shining example of a minority of oppressed peoples overtaking an elite by force - and these 'revolutionaries' are revered! Armed resistance is always, always, always, self defense.


Second of all the Media will use these violent events in order to turn public opinion against the protesters and their cause and they will portray them as a minority of vandals.

Once there's any form of resistance to the State whatsoever, the Media and it's Capitalist message will already be commonly believed as false by the proletariat. By this I mean there will be only an enlightened people in the face of the bourgeois gun.



Thirdly we know from our experience(at least those of us who participate in protests and that kind of stuff) that cops are using the provocateur technique ,where they dress cops as protesters and they make them cause a riot in order to dissolve the protest and portray the people as vandals(example anti SPP protest on montebello , search montebello on youtube!) .

You really, really need to distinguish revolution and direct action.


So its obvious that the State wants vandalism and violence.

No, they want to quell it - where do you get your crazy ideas from?



In short I believe that the social -economic etc conditions dont permit us to use violence in protests and we have to create a more massive movement in order to be able to overthrow the state with a violent revolution just like in Russia!

Protest and direct action will require force as no matter how many peace signs you show with your hand, that hand will be cut off by the State, dismissed as dissent and terrorism. The people should be ready, because the government will never, ever come out with its hands up.Police will almost always arrest, injure, and take violent action against radical, even peaceful, protest, and to let workers run into guns with nothing but banners will only bring them death.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Create a club and attract all member and teach them how to recruit with honest communication & honest propaganda is a great way, all revlefter here should move to one spot in Earth and create a club to support the proletariat revolution.

[RNK]

What the f...

Anyway, Dimitri, I want to apologize for my offensive rhetoric earlier. It was unwarrented.

You have to understand that we're not talking about a bunch of hooligans that want to go and smash the windows of the nearest Couche Tard or McDonalds. What we're talking about is justified self-defense against the repression dealt upon us revolutionaries by the state. This repression is very real; from beating protesters to arbitrarily incarcerating and harassing activists. Revolutionary violence is a legitimate tool in the grand strategic aspect of revolutionary activism; a show of force against the repressive tendencies of the state has the potential (and has proven that potential countless times, even in modern imperialist countries) to incite further revolutionary development in the masses.

Take, for instance, the brutality being thrown upon the Natives, who have in the past twenty years seen multiple invasions of their land by corporate interests backed by imperialist police and military. Do they not have the right to stand up and defend themselves against these attacks? And do we not have the right?

[Mara_Suomessa]

Seems to be an awful lot of posturing on your part RNK. Up in Montebello this summer I didn't see any of the RCP crowd stick around when the tear gas and rubber bullets started flying.

[F9]

I think that peace dont make nothing to them.They dont understand nothing and they like it.But if you beat them the hell out of them they learning something.That they will always run when ANTIFA comes!Fascists dont undertand with words the only solution for them fucking minds is violence in my oppinion!

Fuserg9:star:

[RaiseYourVoice]

The thing is, you can force your way of protest on other people. Some people might feel the need for more militant ideas, some might be too scared to face cops, some might love creative ideas. What we have to understand is, that as long as the point of the protest is progressive, every form it might take is legitimate.

To list some Pros and Cons of generell forms:

Militant Protest:
Might seem more effective, since it actually damages the capabilities of this system. For example the attacks on U.S. Military during the Vietnam war etc.
Of course it can be a problem that a) people who arent there for a progressive cause use this to just destroy and b) many people dont want direct confrontation.

Peacefull Protest:
Is just about the other way around, of course easy for many people to join since the confrontation level usually isnt too high. A problem is that it often turns into useless marching, without feeling imidiate "succes".

Creative Protest: (clowns army etc.)
Usually alot of fun for the people involved and decent media attention. Problem is a lack of mass mobilisation and sometimes hardship of getting the message across.


What we need to do is to combine the forms of protest, that is real strengh. Best example in my experience was the G8 summit in heiligendamm. The protests gained alot of media attention through mass and creative actions, the protests where defended by a good a mount of militant people who were able to face of nazis, cops etc. and just in the right moment there were many normal looking, peacefull people who under media attention made it hard for the cops to strike hard. Best example was in my opinion hippies dancing around cop units to immobilise them on saturday.
And of course the blockades were a form of action the united all groups, with the result of blocking all land roads to the g8 summit with over 10.000 people.

The worst thing we, as radical leftist can do is work together with the state and capital in splitting our movement. we should not try to tell people who to show their anger, their pain and their protest, we should try to unite them into one, which is definetly possible

[bcbm]

Good ol' peaceful protest... remember back in 2003 when the biggest peaceful protests in history went down and the government was so moved by the sheer numbers they called off their war plans?

[nvm]

ok in this post i would like to respond to everyone here starting with the RCP guy . I never talked against self defence i talked about creating massive peaceful protests and through them to radicalize people by spreading radical ideas and attracting them to our communist/anarchist groups/organizations. Through the massive protests the public opinion will be positive to us not through violent protests . I am of course talking about the present not the future and about protests not REVOLUTIONS because some people that posted here tend to confuse the two i dont know why...
anyways RNK ill probably talk to you in person at May first where the IMT and the RCP will do a common protest and we can discuss the matter there.
I think that protests should be peaceful in the present and i will repeat it again and again cause we need to radicalize more people through them cuz many social - democrats and liberals (yes i ve met some in protests) participate in those protests and we need to keep them there and radicalize them nt scare them away....
At least the situation in Canada doesn't permit us to do anything different than that in my opinion

[INDK]

I'll offer a response in the place of RNK, though I'm sure he can still add on:


I never talked against self defence i talked about creating massive peaceful protests and through them to radicalize people by spreading radical ideas and attracting them to our communist/anarchist groups/organizations. Through the massive protests the public opinion will be positive to us not through violent protests .

You don't understand the main point both I and RNK make: Militant Protest is self-defense. Peaceful Protest is inevitably surrender to suppression. I will distinguish between revolution and protest, since you think I am 'confused' on the matter, and say here: Militant conditions in both revolution and protest are only utilized because they are the only choice.

[chegitz guevara]

Fetishism implies choice; there is no choice. If a pig dressed in full body armour with a 1/4 inch thick polyglass shield, wielding a nightstick and a tear gas gun attacks me, I'm not going to play Gandhi, and get my chubbies on by refusing to defend myself and then claiming "moral" victory. A "moral" victory never did anyone any good; India's exploitation didn't stop and people like Dimitri are sell-outs to the revolutionary cause.

Yes, that's right, when you call for workers to be disarmed, you're a fucking traitor to them.

There is always a choice. I could have chosen to smack the crap outta the old gusanos who attacked me. They certainly deserved it, and I had every right to defend myself. Guess how that would have played on tv? Who would the police have been looking for? Who would have lost his job? Instead we chose to not strike back, and flee. So on tv, it looked like four students (I look very young for my age) were assaulted by a mob. There was no other way they could play it on tv. We never raised a hand in our defense, and so the mob looked like the bad guys. Instead of the right-wing gusanos rallying together to "defend the old men brutally attacked by young thugs" they ended up attacking each other and falling out with each other. We scored a major victory by not raising our hands and running away. If the cameras hadn't have been there, maybe things might have been different.

The question of whether or not to fight back is always a tactical and strategic one, not a principled one. The question is what is in the best interests of the movement. When Southern cops attacked peaceful Black protesters who did not fight back, it set in motion a national movement which eventually led to the Voting and Civil Rights Acts.

Clearly, in a life or death situation or even where one risks serious injury or maiming, you ought to engage in self-defense, regardless of the overall picture. I'm not asking anyone to be a martyr for the cause. I completely supported the right of my comrade to bite a cop who was smothering her. She lost a handful of her long hair for the trouble when the cop retaliated, but at least she was alive to complain about it.

Engaging in violence when it is not in the tactical or strategic best interests of the working class usually ends in disaster. We may celebrate the West Virginia Coal War, but the truth is, it was a major defeat for the coal miners. It was a bad decision, even though they had every right to engage in armed self-defense. The Communist Workers Party certainly had every right to dare the Klan to come to their rally and face them. The result, however, was the collapse of the CWP in North Carolina almost immediately, and the whole party not soon after.

In other words, think with your brains, not your balls, before you engage your fists.

[RNK]

Some people might feel the need for more militant ideas, some might be too scared to face cops, some might love creative ideas.

This is the reason modern protests are split up into different zones usually occupying different areas. At the G8 Summit in Quebec a few years back there were Green, Yellow and Red zones that protest organizers planned based on the level of activism protesters wanted to enact. This is to allow protesters to protest according to their "beliefs" (haha)


I never talked against self defence i talked about creating massive peaceful protests and through them to radicalize people by spreading radical ideas and attracting them to our communist/anarchist groups/organizations.

I understand. My point was that peaceful protests usually do not amount to much, and I brought up the case of the entire peace movement in the 60s and 70s which had very, very little bearing on the Vietnam war and ended up detracting from the main goal of revolutionary change by having people conform to the idea that sitting down and singing kumbaya can actually do anything.

I'm not discounting peaceful protest, either. I mean, all the protests I've been at were "peaceful". However, most of the protests I've been at were also met with aggressive hostility and physical force by the police. I've almost been run over by a police car, I've been harassed, photographed, nearly arrested simply for demonstrating, friends of mine have been shot with exploding tear gas guns, I've had mace sprayed in my face, I've seen people beaten until they bled for having one of these "sit-ins", I've seen police make mass arrests on peaceful protesters, I've seen them steal and destroy sound equipment, steal property...

And what's worse, I've seen so-called "comrades", so called "revolutionaries" attack other comrades for not being peaceful enough. This above all else is why I abhor "peaceniks". The fact that they would be more willing to attack their fellow comrades than to lift a finger against the police and the state has left a lasting impact on me.


I am of course talking about the present not the future and about protests not REVOLUTIONS because some people that posted here tend to confuse the two i dont know why...

Beats me. Some people probably red a couple of lines and jumped to conclusions. I however have recognized you believe violent revolution is necessary, just not violent protest.


anyways RNK ill probably talk to you in person at May first where the IMT and the RCP will do a common protest and we can discuss the matter there.

Look forward to it, I'm glad we've had a chance to calm down, and again, I'm sorry for my asshole attitude towards you earlier.


I think that protests should be peaceful in the present and i will repeat it again and again cause we need to radicalize more people through them cuz many social - democrats and liberals (yes i ve met some in protests) participate in those protests and we need to keep them there and radicalize them nt scare them away....

I understand this, however I am not all that keen on keeping liberals and social-democrats "there". Lenin knew when to part with the Mensheviks and the Social-Democrats, when the realization came that they are as much a detriment to the movement as a helping hand.

Both peace and violence have their place. Those that close their mind to one or the other are just that -- closed-minded.


When Southern cops attacked peaceful Black protesters who did not fight back, it set in motion a national movement which eventually led to the Voting and Civil Rights Acts.

We're not talking about trying to incite some Civil Rights movement, buddy. We're not trying to fight for the rights for minorities to vote. In those circumstances, sure, it was right to protest peacefully, and in doing so resist and eventually triumph. But our goal is not to force the bourgeoisie to make minor concessions and then go home when the job is done. Our goal, our aim, our objective, our "mission" is the destruction of the bourgeois state, not an appeal to it to "be nicer to us". you are confusing revolutionary politics with forcing concessions. If you want to have a sit-in against the Iraq war, go ahead, I'll probably join you. If you want to destroy the state, however, you're going to have to commit to a bit more than that.

[chegitz guevara]

We're not talking about trying to incite some Civil Rights movement, buddy. We're not trying to fight for the rights for minorities to vote. In those circumstances, sure, it was right to protest peacefully, and in doing so resist and eventually triumph. But our goal is not to force the bourgeoisie to make minor concessions and then go home when the job is done. Our goal, our aim, our objective, our "mission" is the destruction of the bourgeois state, not an appeal to it to "be nicer to us". you are confusing revolutionary politics with forcing concessions. If you want to have a sit-in against the Iraq war, go ahead, I'll probably join you. If you want to destroy the state, however, you're going to have to commit to a bit more than that.

We're talking about demonstrations, not the revolution, comrade. The revolution will be violent.