> The demonstration turned violent when some protesters entered the Parliament complex, prompting police to resort to baton charges, tear gas shells and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, eyewitnesses said.
14 people dead from so-called "non-lethal" means. How do 14 people end up dead without the police coming with intent to do harm?
Rubber bullets have been shown time and time again to be lethal. Just because they don't kill you every time doesn't mean they aren't lethal. You can survive a gun shot too. Immense shame should be poured on every media outlet that licks the boot of authoritarians when they repeat this lie.
Also note the phrasing. The content is "the police killed 14 people". But the form is "the situation turned violent as a result of the protester's actions".
It’s also irrefutable fact that pro-state or pro-cop agitators throughout history will pretend to be a demonstrator and throw a single brick to give the cops an excuse to break some skulls
In primitive societies where people are expected to resolve their own problems because everyone is roughly equal, violence is the principal currency, for better or worse.
But in "civilized" societies with multiple layers of power structures, you are not supposed to solve your own problem, you are supposed to show somebody in a position of power that you are the victim so they solve the problem for you. This means victimhood is the principal currency of power.
Don't believe me? Every governments which allows protests says they must always be peaceful and "violence doesn't belong in politics". Yet how many of those governments were created by violent armed revolt against a previous authoritarian government? How many by "peaceful" protests?
"violence doesn't belong in politics" is a hilarious one. Off the top of my head, the USA is kidnapping people and sending them to countries they are not from, and telling me as a trans woman that maybe I should not own guns
I'm sure there will be no violence once the thugs have guns and I don't
Sorry to see you getting downvoted or flagged but that's HN for you.
Issue is many people believe that peace is more important than justice.
Or that fighting and losing is worse than not being able to fight at all. And there's a bit of concern trolling too - basically they say if you fought you'd lose so they'll take away your ability to fight to protect you.
This is happening in Europe too with plenty of people trying to stop weapon deliveries to Ukraine because that'll stop the war. It's "stop struggling, it'll be over sooner" with slightly more sophisticated words.
> Yet how many of those governments were created by violent armed revolt against a previous authoritarian government? How many by "peaceful" protests?
This is actually an interesting question.
Many post-colonial governments, notably India, were create through what might be called non-violent means. Would be interesting to have someone properly research that.
Yes, I won't pretend it's clear cut or that the numbers without context mean much.
How I see it:
- Victimhood works when there is somebody to appeal to or other people to gain support from.
- Violence works when there's no higher power or when you already have the most popular support you ever will.
Getting more people to join you and openly protest is a lot of implied/potential violence. Meaning you can use victimhood (see how the police are beating us) to gain more potential violence for use later. Either the people in power see this and back down (e.g. Velvet revolution) before the violence materializes, or not. They can also see how successful materialized violence can become and flee (e.g. Syria) or they can try to win a civil war (e.g. Myanmar).
I haven't read much about India yet but my guess is victimhood worked in the case of India because essentially they were getting the support of citizens in the UK (a higher power) to pressure their government into giving it independence. It was costly for the politicians to be oppressors and also get reelected.
Victimhood failed in China and recently Belarus because 1) there was nobody to appeal to 2) the oppressors didn't back down 3) the protesters failed to materialize the violence and were defeated by the government's violence.
> you are supposed to show somebody in a position of power that you are the victim so they solve the problem for you. This means victimhood is the principal currency of power
This doesn't describe how legal systems evolved at all.
They evolved to protect the powerful from each other. You went through the legal system because if you didn't you escalated your problem from a dispute with one powerful person to a dispute with the system of power.
The only way this victimhood notion works is if we describe all claims of damages as claims to victimhood. Which, I guess, they sort of are. But those pleas are made by the powerful, too. If you aren't the victim of something, if you haven't been harmed, what the fuck is the case you're bringing?
> how many of those governments were created by violent armed revolt against a previous authoritarian government? How many by "peaceful" protests?
Since mechanised warfare, I think there have been more peaceful revolutions than (non-state backed) violent ones. The latter tend to just result in failed states.
Is how they evolved relevant? When somebody protests against the government itself, the legal system doesn't even matter, unless it has a mechanism how people can secede legally. Do any have that?
When I meant is that victimhood works when you need to gain support from somebody with more power than you. Either from the legal system or from masses of people. The latter can by foreign (putting political pressure on the government) or domestic (gathering more people to show how many are willing to stand against it). Violence is the only thing that can work when there is nobody to appeal to (again, not just legally but through empathy or intimidation) - see below - a large crowd is a lot of implied potential violence and you need victimhood to achieve that mass.
> Since mechanised warfare, I think there have been more peaceful revolutions than (non-state backed) violent ones.
I purposefully didn't mention examples like the "Velvet" revolution because they too use violence, they just don't materialize it.
Violence is most powerful when it's implied, before it's used physically. Imagine oppressing a nation >10 million and now 1 million are standing on the square in front of your government building, shouting slogans. Anybody would give up power "peacefully" because if they didn't, there's a high chance that implied violence would materialize and they'd end up killed instead of having made a nice deal for peaceful retirement.
> The latter tend to just result in failed states.
Because the latter tend to happen in states which never had functioning institutions to begin with so they have no experience with running a functioning let alone democratic state. Sarah Paine had a lecture about how restoring democracy to Germany or bringing it to Japan after WW2 was possible because they already has the organizational knowledge. But the US failed to bring democracy to Afghanistan or other places it invaded because those were always a mess full or corruption and you'd need several generations to ingrain the principles.
Yes. You described a “primitive” legal system that in truth didn’t exist.
Early legal systems didn’t have anything to do with victimhood beyond demonstrating harm. They didn’t have systems for the powerless because they didn’t concern themselves with them, they were a means by which elites peacefully resolved disputes.
> unless it has a mechanism how people can secede legally
What?
> When I meant is that victimhood works when you need to gain support from somebody with more power than you
How would you differentiate that from demonstrating harm?
I didn't describe a legal system at all. But it is certainly a modern way of thinking that one always needs some higher "authority" to resolve disputes or to defend against injustice.
> What?
secede /sĭ-sēd′/
To withdraw formally from membership in a state, union, or other political entity.
Note, this is a low effort reply to a low effort reply from you.
If you wish to discuss this politely, we can discuss which states have a legal mechanism by which a land-owning individual, a town or region can legally vote to gain independence. I don't know of any.
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Victimhood is perceived harm (by yourself or others). But I don't understand why you focus on separating victimhood from demonstrating harm so much. See my other replies on this article, I explained my views in more depth there.
Say you're a parent or teacher and see kids fighting. Do you investigate who started it every single time or do you just get fed up and tell them to stop fighting or you'll punish both?
Incentivizing victims to behave in certain ways such as not fighting back makes it easier to determine victim and aggressor.
I never said victims have power. Just that victimhood is encouraged from a young age.
It used to be normal for kids to fight and for parents to teach them to always fight back, stand up for others, do not let injustice stand, etc. Oh and do not tell on others, nobody likes a rat. Now the message is to not fight or you might get hurt, tell an adult to resolve conflicts, everything you do might have consequences later so be careful about what you do or say. There are schools where if two kids fight, both get suspended. You're literally not allowed to defend yourself. I've seen a video of a girl getting beaten in the head while she was lying on her desk, waiting for it to be over.
And you're right, victims have no power to influence those in positions of power. But victimhood is used as a weapon against those on the same level of power by making the "authorities" punish them for victimizing you.
It works on multiple levels of severity.
Online, if you're in a place which forbids swearing, you provoke others into swearing at you and they get punished - you used mods against them. At school, you make yourself cry and go tell the teacher what supposedly happened - you used the teachers against them. At work, you do pretty much the same thing, minus crying if you're a man. Using the legal system in this way is harder because unlike the previous places, it requires a certain level of proof which is harder to fabricate but false accusations do happen, not with the intent to be prosecuted but as a method of slander through a third party. Look how many men are afraid to make the first move because of the low-probability high-severity event that the woman sees it as harassment.
I dont disagree that people are incentivized to express or misrepresent victimhood for advantage. What I disagree with is that "This means victimhood is the principal currency of power."
It might be one of many local currencies on a playground, but it isn't why the teacher has more power than the student. It isn't a generalizable theory of power.
As long as the student doesn't record him saying something that could be understood as a sexual remark out of context and/or claim he patted her on the buttocks and a friend who never likes the teacher because of bad grades backs it up.
You might think it's fat fetched but I recall a case where several teenagers conspired to accuse a youtuber of grooming them.
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Now, you're right about one thing. I overstated the effectiveness of victimhood in the original post. The principal currency of power is always violence because it overrides all other currencies if you have enough of it available to you.
But for more pedestrian use-cases, other currencies are better. And victimhood is a very effective way to use other people's violence for your goals. It never gives true top-level power but it allows directing the levels of power above you against people on the same level as you.
EDIT: And TBH, it works well to direct those on your level against those on your level too. For example, on the nation-state level, every action Ukraine takes in its fight against Russia has to be weighted against the possibility of being seen as too aggressive and not just purely defending itself.
As someone who has lived in Portland for many years and watched it's decline it's very frustrating to watch the current politicians lack any understanding of the problem. Portland is a shithole for other reasons than he believes and it needs other solutions.
Of course the answer is that people cheer for protests they like and punish riots they don’t. This is politics and that’s why there is so much fighting about how news and history chooses to frame them. The headline we have received today is telling me it’s a good protest.
Also, it’s literally a war crime to use tear gas on the battlefield, yet it’s somehow OK to use it on civilians. (I understand part of the reason is to prevent a slippery slope from tear gas to chlorine, but it’s still telling.)
Tear gas is routinely used at scale on people for training purposes. One of the things you learn (and a major point of the training) is that it is largely a psychological deterrent, you become acclimated to the unpleasant effects pretty quickly upon repeated exposure.
> If something doesn't work then there's no need to ban it
Did you read the article?
Chemical weapons provide no benefit to a modern army. They do, however, to simpler armies. So the world's militaries, who command modern armies, came together and banned them.
Put another way, the U.S. military gains nothing from chemical weapons over high explosives. The Taliban, on the other hand, might.
14 people dead from so-called "non-lethal" means. How do 14 people end up dead without the police coming with intent to do harm?