Remember when the founding fathers held a peaceful protest in Boston and the British were like, "Woah, we better Bach the fuck up"?

Here we go again,

The Peaceful LA Protests of June, 2025 worked. We're all talking about it now. If the LA protests weren't peaceful, we would have different talking points for this weekend's protests and protesters would have been killed. This administration wants this.

YSK - That there is a lot of trolling and brigading starting to happen around the LA peaceful protests to start violence. Here is a roadmap from 2015 on how they do it.: https://sh.itjust.works/post/39873361

Also, this:

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/22/protest-trump-resistance-power

This liberal will be fucking armed and on target tomorrow. Do with that information what you will.

So much energy expended on discussions of violence. Do not worry about if you should or should not do violence. Violence is merely a question of who has the power to allow or forbid it. And if you protest long enough to make political progress, violence will find you, doesn't matter one bit how you personally feel about it.

God, I can hear these guys having this conversation in that lilting Kiwi accent. This is exactly the sort of absurdity they used to lampoon.

https://youtube.com/shorts/tsJHV0mwTVE
Very interesting.

It's not an either/or situation.

In the (supposed) words of Al Capone

You get a lot more from a kind word and a gun than from a kind word alone.

Critically however, a gun without the kind word is also far less effective. They are like the tip and shaft of a spear. The shaft has the range, but lacks the punch. The tip has the punch, but lacks the range. Together they are far more than the sum of their parts.

In terms of protest. A peaceful protest is like the kind word. It's a polite but forceful delivery of a message. Radical action and violence are the gun. They work best as an implied threat. The target much know that you are willing to escalate, if required.

Too much violence, and you have a riot. These can be put down with force, and have little to no public backlash. (This is what trump currently wants to happen).

Too little violence, and the protest can be safely ignored.

The perfect balance has enough to keep the government on their toes, but not so much as to drive away supporters, and burn off the anger powering things.

Currently, Trump and co are trying to goad people into over reacting and justifying an aggressive crackdown. In light of that, a message of don't take the bait, err towards passive over violence isn't so bad.

I'm just waiting for the moment that shots are fired by one side or the other, because once that line is crossed we can finally get real change.

Guys please, whatever you do, do NOT throw water balloons filled with liquid ass at ICE, that would be a REALLY bad idea...

Non Violence only protects the state and state approved protest means nothing. The most violent people are police at protests. Dr. King's character is always stripped down to the peaceful Black leader, and look how that went for him. He was still assassinated.

If you see an oppressed people protesting against their opression, and your first instinct is to lecture them on the optics of their protest, you’re not really an ally. You’re just using “optics” as an excuse to not do anything to help out but still think of yourself as a good person. I don’t think anyone falls for it.

No one gets sympathy from protestors who fire the first killing shot on the authorities. Syrian peaceful demonstrators turned rebels have sympathy from the world because they were fired at first by Assad. Many people soured on the French Revolution at the time when The Terror occurred after the people started executing just about anyone deemed enemies of the revolution.

No one is against violence if it has to come to it, but on Lemmy it is the usual suspects (I probably don't need to mention what political ideology they tend to be) who want to pull the trigger first on the army and police without ever thinking of consequences (they wilfully ignore the existence of Insurrection act). They are like the 2nd amendment right wingers, looking for any opportunities to fire their guns and live their fantasies, but on the opposite extreme end of the political aisle.

Or, it could be anti-Western actors stoking violence on Americans to maximise political divisions because it will tremendously help if US is thrown further into chaos.