My beef with Gandhi

[Nubclear]

I wonder what would have happend to the US had blacks began to violently revolt in large numbers, as many suggested they do.

[Darius871]

Tass sighting!

[Nubclear]

Do I know you?

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
I wonder what would have happend to the US had blacks began to violently revolt in large numbers, as many suggested they do.

Probably mass genocide. They constitued around 10% of the population in the 1950s-1960s. If they would have staged widespread violent insurrection, I imagine that there would have been an incredibly violent reaction.

[Darius871]

No. It just seemed like you dropped off the face of the earth for a while.

(x-post)

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Wycoff


Probably mass genocide. They constitued around 10% of the population in the 1950s-1960s. If they would have staged widespread violent insurrection, I imagine that there would have been an incredibly violent reaction.

Indeed, that was my point. The benefits of armed resistence were perhaps lower than the benefits of peaceful resistence, hence disputing Pekka's claim that pacifism is always bad.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
I wonder what would have happend to the US had blacks began to violently revolt in large numbers, as many suggested they do.

There would have been an aweful lot of dead blacks.

Martin Luther King Jr got that point right when he pointed out the whites made up 90% of the population and controlled every political and economic institution. The only way to go forward for a small minority in a democracy is to shame the other people into looking at the injustice because starting a war is insane when the other guy controls all the power and out numbers you 9 to 1.

[SlowwHand]

What if the Brits would have just slaughtered everyone? Hey, thanks Gandhi for leaving us here...

I thought this was funny.

[SlowwHand]

After I looked up the word, this is funny, too.

Oh, did I mention he also was supporting the commies, plus he was also a vegan. Can you come up with any other big name, leader of big magnitude who was vegan?

Vegan. Even worse than the commies.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Pekka seems to be jealous of Gandhi it seems. To say MLK was a real man with character when Gandhi was not, especially considering MLK acknowledged the huge debt he owed to Gandhi and his methods is laughable.

And Pekka, I didn't see tanks take down the Berlin Wall or Moscow in the waning days of the USSR. I just saw numbers of people who stood in the way and said we are here peacefully. Try to stop us. The people who marched in the Solidarity movement in Poland were brothers with those who made their own salt on the beaches of India against British law.

[SlowwHand]

Lech Walesa rocked.

[Colon™]

Re: My beef with Gandhi

Originally posted by Pekka
Now, first off, his non-violent resistance was OK in this case, however he left his people in GRAVE DANGER. What if the Brits would have just slaughtered everyone? Hey, thanks Gandhi for leaving us here... #1 thing, you take care of your people. You don't take risks like that, doing hippie crap. If you want to play it like that, do it with your own little group of friends in some little community where you can get bashed by locals, but don't take risks like that with the entire people. That's just crazy.

Haven't heard of the massacre at Amritsar? The fact that it happened, exactly against non-violent protesters, was a huge blow to the legitimacy of British rule. Had they killed 1000 armed rebels instead the whole ordeal could have easily been dismissed as a rightful thing to do.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
In democratic societies, passive resistance is very powerful. It didn't just work (with stunning success) in India, but also for blacks in the US under Martin Luther King, Jr., who used Gandhi's tactics.

He didn't get 'lucky'. If it just happens once, it is luck. When it happens a second time, then perhaps it may have been a good strategy.

Protests are also non-violent strategies and look how they've worked in the former Soviet Bloc, the Orange Revolution, the Cedar Revolution, etc. The Soviet Union didn't finally collapse because of violence, but because of passive resistance and non-violent protest.

QFT

[SlowwHand]

The Soviet Union failed because of economics. Communism isn't all it's cracked up to be.

[BeBMan]

In capitalism, people destroy the economy.

In Soviet Union, economy destroys you.