I just realized that you were pronouncing German and I'm a German language student. 😳 To anyone reading this the word is "Schwarze" which is pronounced as "shvartseh" .
"There are many ways to kill. One can stick a knife in one's stomach, deprive one of bread, fail to cure one of a disease, put one in a bad apartment, work one to death, drive one to suicide, take one to war, etc. Only a few of these are forbidden in our state." -Bertolt Brecht
@@The_Reality_Filter That's literally not even what the article, for which the main source is a hard-core antisemitic whose writing is indistinguishable from fascists to begin with, actually said when you read beyond the headline. I swear, you people are dangerously gullible. Even IF everything in those ~~definitely totally legit~~ leaked documents is true, all it shows is that Abi might have taken some pay to say true things about the vaccine and anti-vax disinformation from a group that has worked with the government in some capacity completely separate from anything Abi worked with them on. Even taking antivax conspiracy theorists at their word, the most Abi is guilty of is not doing a deep investigation into the full history of a group she worked with to do a panel on which she stated completely true information. THINK for two seconds before regurgitating this crap. It's really not hard to do. (And for the record, I've been a pretty big defendet of Grayzone in the past. They've done some really good reporting before. But apparently they've fallen down the antivax gift hole now as well, and this was just unacceptably negligent, poor journalism. Their source was Caleb freaking Maupin.
@@The_Reality_Filter can you hear YOURself? You have fallen hook line and sinker for anything that screams "psyop!" Without bothering to think for two seconds if it makes any sense. You are dangerously gullible, and sound indistinguishable from any alt right fascist. Read the gd "leaked documents" for yourself. As I said, the most it ACTUALLY said, generously assuming it's actually legitimate, is that she worked with a group that's had some ties to the government completely independent of anything Abi worked with them on. But you didn't bother to actually read it, did you? You fell for the outrageous headline and all critical thinking went out the window. Like I said: dangerously gullible. It's bad enough we have to deal with all the alt right antivax conspiracy bs. I have zero patience for it on the left.
@@The_Reality_Filter Also, truly hilarious all these randos claiming I must be a shill myself for bothering to use some critical thinking skills, when I almost undoubtedly would be considered a tankie by the more progressive liberal types 😂 Like, babe, I've been *passionately* on the "hands off Venezuela" and "Russiagate was neoliberal propaganda" train for yeeeears. I have volunteered about weekly at an independent media organization that counters imperialist disinformation for nearly a full decade at this point. And one of the reasons I was drawn to Abi in particular out of the bigger online left people is that she *does* seem to be genuinely far left, and not the progressive liberal type to call anyone who questions western imperialism a tankie. And that's why I find it gross and disheartening that Grayzone, who I had a lot of respect for prior to their antivax grift, would fall so egregiously reckless and conspiratorial in their reporting. Caleb Maupin wrote an entire freaking fascist screed (I've had trouble with links in TH-cam comments before, but seriously, look up the read through of his book Satan at the Fountainhead. It's shockingly antisemitic - not just anti-Zionist, which I am too, but full on fascist antisemitism). When the content and sources become undistinguishable from alt right propaganda, you need to start thinking for yourself.
Sometimes I imagine Abigail going to the costume shop and the person running it asks her "what do you need this elaborate costume for?" and Abigail responds with "Oh, I'm going to film an in-depth video about how capitalism is to blame for Waluigi not being in Smash" or whatever her next video is going to be about.
Since I saw her wear the white lacy gloves in two different videos, I can't get it out of my head that perhaps this is just her everyday wardrobe and it makes me laugh so much 😅
I honestly LOVE the dictionary jokes, they're basically a "Don't be narrow minded as to think dictionary can provide a meaningful definition of everything even with the most subjective things like political topics, instead learn to read the subtext and focus on it's possible meanings in our time as language is not stationary" in the audiences face and it's amazing.
I've got the same problem in defining words in minority languages, since dictionaries usually would be too much oriented on the main language the area has been converted to (so for instance Ligurian dictionaries would abide to Italian even if on a deeper research it ends up being a completely different language).
And it's nice to have some ammo for when trolls (or radicalized family members) start nitpicking our words with often times wrong dictionary definitions, as well as bad faith interpretations... It's exhausting EVERY fight devolves to this tactic. I want a good fight. Not the same drivel.
Unrelated, "the early nineties, longer than I've been alive." the older I get, the more I realize that people who I imagined as adults are actually my peers, and it's been a mind opening experience.
Something I've learned as I grew up is that there's really no such thing as "adults." Everyone I know that fits the typical model of an adult has basically always been an adult. Like they were "adults" when they were 12. Also theres no such thing as "serious people" that somehow deserve more credibility than other not serious people because they had or have an important job. They still lie just like children when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. All people deserve equal skepticism. Hopefully one day evolution, technology or something we havent even imagined yet helps us to actually grow up.
@@allineedis1mike81 This is true. "Professionals" are just people. People with specialized knowledge, but people. That observation is lowkey the basis of my leftist inclinations, as that observation cuts the other way, too.
Worth noting how this intersects with indigenous rights. Various indigenous groups who are supposed to have state recognised sovereignty on their lands (or what remain of them legally anyway) and yet have oil lines and such forced on them and state enforced violence put upon them when they resist.
Absolutely. Indigenous folk are protecting *80%* of the world's remaining biodiversity, and as we've seen, EVEN when an oil company's actions are _expressly_ illegal (as with Enbridge and Line 3), the local police, military, and right wing troglodytes come out to beat on tribal elders and lick corporate boots. 🤦🏾♀️ Not to mention how many thousand people have been arrested: all for trying to keep Enbridge from polluting the wetlands and the drinking water.
This comes just a few days after the Canadian police invaded a native territory and used violence against indigenous land defenders to ensure the construction of a new gas pipeline through their land that will poison the last bit of freshwater they have .. So much for "nice" and "progressive" Canada..
okay but the idea that abigail would sit still during this video, holding props, looking like a still image while talking about direct action is GENIUS
Oh my god I didn’t even notice! She’s talking about direct action, but she’s absolutely not taking part in it/not recommending it! I love all the metaphorical Easter eggs in this show
I completely agree and I even see the choices of the specific props and outfit as part of the Message the armor and spire in gold and white In compression to the red and black with the umbrella that made from thin black fabric the symbolism of the props and the colors are significant in art and historical meaning , so I see her and not only hear about the conflicted subject but feel conflicted about my pre condition prospects that she criticized and continue
I knew. I knew immediately after finding one of her videos, and I thought "hmmm okay hmmm you know what? This is exactly what we need more of." Some people insist that Tans individuals are delusional, crazy, confused, (unintelectual) . But I think that if we showed those people these videos, then they would see just how wrong they are.
@@HillyPlays the best dictionary joke was the ongoing dictionary hostage situation in her Confucius video imo, but I love the ones in the other videos too
It hasn't gotten old yet. And, a thorough philosophical examination of the potential for the joke to get old clearly requires its continued inclusion indefinitely.
The question I have for Kant is: you say that breaking the law is wrong because it violates the social contract, but what do you do if your very existence is against the law?
If we adhered to Kant on this account, humanity would not have progressed much. I cannot think of many instances where society has progressed that were not accompanied by spilling the blood of the ruling class (and usually by the oppressed labour class usually led by the middle class).
ps ... we should really move on from these old farts ... the basis of any contract is maximising human welfare (yeah we can have a debate on that but at least "welfare" has a semblance of objectivity)
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 Yeah but your response is quite unexpected for this channel. People have said the same thing about controlling trans people.
As a German, it is so adorable to watch you struggle with our insane pronounciation. It humanizes the amazing woman I learnt so much English from. Bless your subtitles!
@@vladthelad4653 Honestly, I don't know. The shutdown was a knee-jerk reaction after the Fukushima disaster. Nuclear power is seen as dangerous, I know women who miscarried because of Chernobyl, but it's less harmful than coal in the long run. It's like 9/11 compared to Covid, singular events scare people more into action than long-term processes that are even worse.
@@Vickyeverythingelsewastaken and the irony is that coal usage in Germany is *increasing* Actually not just Germany, all around the world fossil fuels consumption is *increasing*
@@vladthelad4653 I know and I hate it. Coal is so ineffective for electricity production too. The local right-wing is on an anti-wind-energy kick recently and it's insanely effective.
Being German and having experienced the protests I was proud that young people could do something big like that and this was the first time I did not feel helpless.
No it’s not. The masses are stupid for believing that… the elites are using people with this environmental bulls hit just like they always do… All these countries in the EU have evicted Jesus Christ in favor of “atheism”(a vice so terrible even the demons don’t part take)…. All these people will cause havoc with no end in sight. All the liberal Democrat governments(ALL GLOBALIST) ; America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the EU AND ALL major corporations are on the climate change and left wing agenda…. You aren’t being a revolutionary, you have joined the big machine.
I wish you had gone into an analysis of class, race and privilege in this! "By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?"
Those who are interested in more recent examples, can take a look at: This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by, Charles E Cobb Jr.
Problem with slave example is that everybody is a slave to some degree. So everybody has a right to burn shit . My suggestion: let's not do that . Let's make up a rule "don't burn our shit and we won't burn your shit".. It's just an idea. Burn shit is fine . But other people might burn shit too. History is basically people burning shit. Until about 1800 when government and people slowly started making inadequate but 'better than the alternative ' deals not to burn shit . Like I said : it's optional. But I suggest don't enslave people and the request from the non slaves don't burn down the your big house is a good plan for everybody .
Thank you very much, Abigail, this video came out on the day of huge protests here in Serbia. The govt. went through all the motions - declaring protests as violent (they were not), and then using state run media to depict the thugs (government hired) who attacked the protesters (with bulldozers and hammers after the police suspiciously disappeared) as victims of violence, after the protesters stuck back (instead of allowing themselves to be bulldozed over). Still, protests repeated this weekend, larger than last, and perhaps there will be actual results. Protests are for clean air and clean water, as the government sells out the natural beauties for private gain. Maybe their success motivates people elsewhere to do the same - let's see!
@Paul Gauthier Is there no local proletarian newspaper you could subscribe to? Admittedly any that exist might not come out every week and in any case it is more memorable when written directly by another comrade who is there.
This really reminds me of a cartoon I read a while ago comparing fast and slow violence. Fast violence being shooting someone and killing them at age 30, as opposed to slow violence, which is creating an environment (pollution, low economic status, no access to healthy food or healthcare, etc), so that one dies at 30.
Very important topic. I find it concerning how people seem to be ok with the violence and casualties that climate change causes and call it "inevitable". Yet any violence to try and prevent this "inevitable" from happening is unfathomable to people.
In the end I think the arguments about Climate change is who dies? In the future a lot of places will be uninhabitable or we'll need new technologies to remain if things don't change presuming everything does as predicted. However currently because of various reasons our societies are very energy dependent, and one of the best ways we have to generate and store large quantities of energy on demand are fossil fuels and if we were to just get rid of almost all of it a lot of people would die. Even if we had the ability to generate enough windmills/solar panels in a short enough time to meet the energy demand that's going to disrupt a lot of ecosystems in several ways. You might save the future, but at the cost of a significant amount of the present it's a hard sell. Especially if you are using violence to accomplish it which'll create even more costs. Then there comes other questions like where the violence is being directed at. I can get that fossil fuel infrastructure isn't ideal in terms of the environment as a whole, but when I see people yelling about that sort of infrastructure it would be at new infrastructure which has a good chance of reducing overall harms that comes with fossil fuels. Like the infrastructure for oil/natural gas in the right area could reduce the need to burn coal, or make it so large tankards don't need to be shipped across the sea.
@@matthewbarry376 you need only look at Venus to know that a planets atmosphere and composition will wildly change its climate, as such it stands to reason that our own tampering with the atmosphere would have consequences.
@@mylordandsaviour4786 Yeah people think about the punch coming back at them a lot more than throwing the punch. People that don't think they'll never be hit in response or ever are weird to me
it's not unfantomable, it's that Shell and ExxonMobil (and Putin) will gladly pay politicians to send the police and thugs to beat the shit out of you and your friends on the central square, and then blame you for them drilling for more fossil fuels. Politics and economics works a lot better, imho. Since it's all about money, we can find ways to poke them where it hurts. Vote vote vote! Deinvest from fossil fuel companies. Push for legislation that emphasises renewables. This is already working -- in Europe almost 40% of all new cars sold in 2021 were EVs or plug-in hybrids. 95% of all new power generating capacity in the world was renewables in 2020 & 2021. Wind, solar and batteries are already better and cheaper than gas and coal.
So many like to keep this high-minded view, almost fetishistic, of how perfect non-violence is and how abhorrent any violence is at any time now. It strips away nuance and it doesn't so much broad brush the whole thing as dump the issue in the paint can and seal it shut. SOMETIMES you have to roar and break shit and SOMETIMES you must advocate for better policies through letters, events, and general free assembly. Anyone who wants you to be quiet and always passive wants it for likely not-so-wholesome reasons let's say.
The best answer for what kind of protest do we need I've seen given is... "ALL OF IT". Violent protests, nonviolent protests, voting, letter writing campaigns, donating to nonprofits who assist, etc. People tend to forget that without the reinforcement of violent protests, nonviolent protests just don't work. If you refuse to use violence, no one takes you seriously. It's only when they know what type of damage you can cause if your demands aren't met that they start talking to you... You cannot tell me that the George Floyd protests would not have been as successful IF there was no looting or rioting. Once the rioting stopped, so did the coverage.
@@superjlk_9538 good. Glad we agree that the system that allows police to get away with murder is in fact a bad system and that it should be destroyed.
As a strategy for political change, violence against people is extremely limited: It engages mostly healthy young men, physically excluding most people who are frail, old or minors and morally alienating even many otherwise sympathetic people, while many of those young men attracted to violence are obviously at serious risk of 'taking it too far.' Rather than encouraging understanding and agreement, up to a point violence generally incites much more widespread and visceral OPPOSITION to the campaign's goals than peaceful protest or even property damage can, and 'justifies' the brutal crackdowns and reprisal authorities use in response. Beyond that point, inasmuch as violence can ultimately be effective it's likely to be the effectiveness of fear; but a movement sufficiently numerous and organized to enact change through fear would in many cases likely be sufficiently numerous and organized to enact change by more moral and less polarizing means anyway (and from the first point above, would be even more numerous if it wasn't using violence). Alternatively inasmuch as the violent campaigners' success might be due to equipment/training rather than numbers, that implies a fringe and ultimately anti-democratic movement/terrorism which likely shouldn't be succeeding anyway! We might be able to find some examples in which violent campaigns were justifiable, but that doesn't mean that any of them have ever been as effective in the short and particularly long term as non-violent alternatives could have been. Suffragette violence, maybe(?), purely because of the gender dynamics at play.
As a German, it took me a while to understand the joke about the Alternative für Deutschland's (AfD) only problem with coal being that it's brown. In my brain, the first connection that fired was that brown is the colour of the nazis (because it was Hitler's favourite colour), which makes no sense in this context. But I guess the joke was about the AfD having a problem with brown people...
I've heard it said that no protest is truly non-violent, the protesters simply have a choice to give or to receive the violence. This hold true as far as I can see often non-violent protests result in the protesters themselves being beaten or worse.
Very true, unfortunately. A good example of a non-violent protest leading to a ton of protesters being hurt was Bloody Sunday, 1905. The date varies a bit depending on your source, but it was horrific to read about.
Well, I guess that's true if we assume that the group or the thing the protest is against will inflict violence on the protesters. Although there are several cases were no violence is exchanged from either side.
@@battlemaster4208 generally where I am disagreeing with the status quo will not only likely result in police violence in retribution but the segment of the population that thinks they benefit from the thing being protested (though they are often victims of the system as well) will also resort to violence to silence the crowd, and may even find that violence sanctioned in the end.....
I love the arson segments in general but I especially love how everytime she starts by saying "oh what a terrible terrible tragedy" and yet always ends up angrily ranting about her right to commit arson
Abigail you are an absolutely brilliant MAGNIFICENT human. I'm a clinical therapist working with queer/trans adults as well as men that perpetuate harm in relationships in very rural Nova Scotia, Canada. Being able to show your videos to my clients has been really groundbreaking for some and I just wanted to say thank you for making this content and having the courage to share
I realized while watching this that we're almost a year of you being out as trans! What an exciting anniversary! This "season" of Philosophy Tube is your best yet in my opinion and I'm so happy you get to be authentically you now.
Man, time flies. I remember being in the planetarium when her coming out vieo premiered, and having to step outside and watch it ear-bud-less and shivering. Worth it, though. So parasocially proud of you, Abi.
Right before she killed her mansona, I was like "Oh, cool (deadname) is going for a more androgynous style. I should emulate that. It looks cool." After she came out, it cracked my egg and now I wonder if I'm nonbinary or some femboy.
I'm glad you revisited this topic, Abigail! Here in Canada we have our BCNDP (our supposedly Social Democratic party!) supporting police violence against protesters and reporters outside of pipelines in Wetsuweten territory, so I've been absolutely fuming about this issue for months. Thank you Abi!
Haven’t the provincial NDP in BC shifted to the right over the years like the BC Liberals did? I thought they were now the centrist party with the provincial Greens being the left wing option at the provincial level. Mind you, maybe I misunderstood the BC political spectrum from over here on the Quebec-Ontario border.
The situation is a little more complicated. In order to keep votes and support from companies and workers unions in the gas and logging industry, the BCNDP continue to allow RCMP jurisdiction on Wet'suwet'en Territory and enforcement in Fairy Creek. These protests also raised issues on powers of traditional leadership and protection of Indigenous land. In my humble opinion, however, the BCNDP should put their mouth where they say it is and strike down the powers of company injunctions and the usage of RCMP for political means.
I started uncontrollably cackling at “Baroness Plantation Warcrimes”! Also, her brother the upstanding door to door petrol salesman is incredibly prolific! Dude’s got some hustle. I love the continuity! Thank you for all the hard work, Abigail - you are an excellent teacher and a true craftsperson.
Did you know that driving large nails into trees allows the tree to keep growing, but makes logging incredibly dangerous because the nail shatters chainsaws and huge sawmill blades? Thankfully most people who do that put big warning signs around and tell companies doing the logging that the trees are spiked, so they can avoid the area so workers doing the logging and in sawmills don't get hurt when the equipment explodes. If they keep sneaking by the laws against it, there might not be enough safe old growth forestland for them to log! What will those dastardly tree huggers think of next?
Oh I do hope that those brave lumberjacks see those nails and nothing unfortunate happens to the equipment of those industrious corporations that earn countless millions if not billions who are constantly deforesting the wilderness. (wink)
That goes on my notice board along with other completely useless trivia like "1 kilogram of sugar added to 1 ton of wet cement will render it unusable."
In Greece every 6th of December all the schools get closed by their student's in honour of Grigoropoulos, a kid that got shot in a demonstration that day on 2008. Every year I hear more and more complicated and crazy theories in defence of the officer that shot him. I can't understand why someone would go so above and beyond to make sure that the police's reputation doesn't get tainted.
My guess is that it would be people, who greatly enjoy the status quo and would like the police as preserver and symbol of that status to have a good image.
It's terrible that happened, but I'm glad to hear they take such heartbreaking violent acts so seriously (well, most people anyways from the sound of it). Here in the U.S. if we closed our schools on every day a kid was shot by the police then schools would never be opened year round. Which considering how poorly funded our schools are I don't think anyone would notice a difference.
I’m no expert in psychology but I think that the reason people want to come up with convoluted explanations that protect police’s reputation is that they find comfort in the system. In the system police are *supposed* to be upholders of justice. When an image goes against that, people tend to have some mild experience of cognitive dissonance where they are faced with information that is radically different than what they believe is supposed to be the truth. It seems though that a lot of people fall in the category or doubling down rather than processing that police are humans and are fallible to being corrupt or violent. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of social bias amongst groups that think police are infallible either. It only serves as a feedback loop to the problem.
Kwame Turé said “non-violence only works when your enemy has a conscience and America has none.” The same could be said of any current State or authority. Even Gahndi said that violence is better than inaction but non-violence functions best since it ceases the cycle of violence. A few details that I wish could have been included in this video but again, great work!
There is a short story out there that explores this concept, but I don't remember what it's called. It was an alternative history where Ghandi used non-violent protest again Hitler. It ends with Ghandi being arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Fascism arguably has no conscience, and with the US, uh, currently enjoying a fascist celebration, I definitely understand why we are the biggest threat to world peace. I watched "Prosecuting Evil" (great documentary and highly recommended) and basically the US had refused to join a "no war crimes" conglomerate. Why? "We're not committing war crimes." "Yes, but you are though." "No we're not."
@@Droemar Gandhi was also successful because he was able to mobilize such masses and the colonial regime knew that once the demands of these masses were not met, parts of the masses would turn to violence and they would have no power to tear down the protests anymore. So because he mobilzed so many he created an implicit thread of violence and that was what brought change.
I preordered How To Blow Up A Pipeline. When it arrived, I read the introduction and it resonated with me so much I got scared of what it might further evoke in me, and haven't come back to it. This video has provided a lot of interesting viewpoints that make those feelings seem a little less scary, and I look forward to revisiting the book. In the end, I'll probably never leave the divan either so there's not much to worry about.
I totally know how you feel. Abigail does have a beautiful way of helping us overcome our doxastic anxiety. Although, I would encourage you to think of the possibility of desiring to leave the divan less as a risk to be worried about, and more as an opportunity. To do something good, and maybe even to find meaning :)
Just lie in wait until the proletarian movement is ready and can make effective use of your contribution ;) There is plenty to be done in the meantime anyway. Agitate, organize, educate!
@randomusername1735 Resistance alone is nearly futile and will be crushed. We have to work together in large numbers to achieve anything much in society and the world. Most people in the Imperial Core are indoctrinated and unwilling to accept change. The only path left to follow is to carry on living, try to further your own education and help others onto the right path, and promote organization when and where people are ready for it. Going to the imperial periphery and helping directly is in theory an option, but in reality is very difficult and the material usefulness of the labour that you and I can provide over there is practically very limited, in reality... If you have technical specialist expertise or a significant amount of capital to bring with you, and no more patience left for watching the shitshow surrounding us here in the core, then maybe going to a global south country that is attempting to throw off its bourgeoise shackles and helping directly might be more of an option...
America is such a perfect case study for this topic I'm surprised we didn't get our own section in the video; the destruction of private property as a form of protest is one of our nation's primary creation myths that get taught to kids in schools, and people will celebrate that act from one side of their mouth and condemn modern-day protests for disrupting business out the other.
I scrolled to find this exact comment! LOL. I'm sure the CIA, several South American, and Middle Eastern countries would have something to say about this
@@arachnofiend2859 because it's an attack on small business and not the corporate world, 95 percent of the damage done to business was inflicted to small business, while in American history the major property you are referring to I believe is the Boston tea party, that tea was owned by the British India company, this was something vital for the people that threw the tea, the didn't want to damage the boats, since they were owned by American merchants.
Same thing going on in Canada right now. The Indigenous people especially have been up in arms about environmental damages, which makes sense, given that they've been here literally thousands of years longer than anyone else, and yet our government chooses instead to brutalise and imprison them. For telling and acting the truth.
@@vladthelad4653 It is violence and *that's okay.* The government should not have the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. If anything, the indigenous peoples have far better claim to legitimately do violence to the state than the state has to do violence to them. All ideologies are violent because all ideologies prescribe that someone be coerced with force. Even we as anarchists recognize that people will coerce each other. We just do not wish there to be a central state that can use violence for any reason on anyone without consequences, and appear justified by the fact that it alone is the state. It is one hundred percent anarchist praxis and environmentalist praxis and indigenous rights praxis for the First Nations people to do actual violence against the oppressors who threaten their land, water and lives. To deny that it's violence is to confuse the conversation by purposely using words outside their commonly understood meanings. Violence is harming people or coercing people with the threat of harm and it is a basic fact of life.
The vibes so far are that I overstayed in the museum from night at the museum till night, hiding in the classic era wing, and the Athena Chryselephantine reconstruction came to life to tell me about strategic violence
"We are the investment risk" was an interesting nod to the profit motive that drives our whole world. This video has me wondering if there is any alternative for change under capitalism, aside from direct action.
Not an alternative, but a needed compliment: extensive education. Most people don’t really get or even know the anticapitalist campaign, and we need as many people as possible sans the rich on our side. If people don’t know why they should fundamentally be opposed to our societies, and they don’t, they can’t help us. Direct action is good but a lot of the time it’s chopped up by the media and politicians into a distorted and narrow debate that doesn’t help people understand the big picture or see the way forward. Somehow we need to get a wide amount of people to grasp the true and rudimentary ideas of socialism so they can build upon them and join the cause. This as already begun, but numbers are still tiny, and it’ll be like this for a while. To be honest, I’m not sure if there’s a way to spark increased comprehension suddenly and rapidly, or if it would be just be a matter of slowly ground-out successes over numerous years. Either way it’s essential, and to me it needs to be diffused across our communities totally like dye in water, so that everybody understands the basic need, instead of being a distinct and puzzling outburst that can be neatly wiped up and tossed out or repackaged and sold like it typically is.
Using a climate protest as a framing device was a really inspired (in the practical sense) choice. It really helps highlight the contradictions and tensions of violence as a concept within an ethical and political framework. Kudos for that! Also, that greek-ish warrior costume absolutely slaps!
It's especially relevant for those of us who live in Serbia. We had huge ecological protests against Rio Tinto's investments in lithium extraction that would ruin the fertile land and nature around it. But behind the protests is a general discomfort with foreign capital exploiting our country, its nature and us becoming Europe's dirty energy mining field under an authoritarian regime that plans to sell lithium batteries for the European electric car market. All of this the regime frames as violent protesters against the country progressing and accuses everyone of being foreign agents that want to ruin Serbia's prospects for success on the world wide market, keeping Serbia underdeveloped.
My university required an English course that was basically how to write a research paper. It could be on any topic and I chose why fictional vigilante superheroes AKA Batman are so loved. Originally I was going to compare real vigilantes to fictional but I quickly discovered that real vigilantes are typically racists or bigots. My conclusion ultimately ended up being that superheroes fulfill our desire to fight injustice directly; total wish fulfillment. Also that if you research superheroes, you need to factor in time to be distracted by reading comics. It's a very human need to want to stop and fix wrongs. Direct actions conflict with legality and that makes law abiding people less likely to participate, but also criminalizes those that do, regardless of the position. It's so easy to say violence = bad, but it's really not that simple.
"It's so easy to say violence = bad, but it's really not that simple." It's only complicated when you want to say that violence is okay when you do it. Violence=Bad is an incredibly simple proposition to sustain.
@@TheRoland19111 Sounds like a pretty banal and quotidian conclusion that any child could come up with - and notice that the premise was 'how to write a *research* paper,' not 'how to quickly come to conclusions when generalizing from fictional evidence.' Seems more like a great way to *avoid* any research at all. What is it you find particularly mindblowing about the idea that 'superheroes are a manifestation of wish fulfilment,' given that virtually any possible fantasy represents some form or another of wish fulfilment? Apparently the commenter's 'research' didn't make it as far as, say, John Brown. Also, the closing sentence is simply gibberish, so I'm guessing the 'English' part of the course stuck as much as the ostensible 'how to write a research paper' portion.
"We are the investment risk" is honestly the best argument I've come across for why protest violence (in the specific case of environmentalism) is good. Though that may also be the bitter loathing I feel towards investing and wall street and all that shit.
It's the plain and simple truth. If companies like the ones who are mainly responsible for destroying our ecosphere only care about money and will not listen to reason or appeals of basic decency, hurting their bottom line is the only way to get them to change what they are doing.
There was another protest in Germany lately where activists roped down off a brodge over a highway to protest against fossil fuels and a change in (public) transport. The police closed the road to clear the protestors so that let to a traffic jam. Some kilometers back a driver could not react in time and crashed almost full speed into the end of the traffic. Now some people tried to make the protesters responsible for almost killing the people in the back of the traffic jam, some even demanding acts of physical violence against the activists. Thank you for your videos. They are always a delight to watch and think about!
So the driver drive what I assume to be 150+ km/h on the autobahn into a traffic jam? If thr assumptions I pulled out of my ass happens to be correct, that sounds more like an issue with lax speed regulations *cough cough*, and more importantly, the driver being inattentive. You don't just crash almost full speed into a traffic jam.
Similar thing happened a few days ago, when a traffic jam due to a street blockade was the reason for a delayed aid to an accident scene. Besides the typical "climate terror" arguments in the media, even some state media start condeming the blockades. But even if there'd be some truth to that, the media rarely puts it into any context and misses out on the fact, that the activists actually had an emergency corridor at their blockade, different to the cars in the traffic jam. Its just sad and really problematic that media is able to paint a picture and shift the discourse to demonize activists :P
@@Ozzianman FYI German Autobahn isnt always without Speedlimits. A lot is actually speed limited to 120, 100 or in some cases such as road construction, where there is a lot of sometimes down to 40 kmh
In Argentina we have this joke, stemming from an exchange on Twitter: "-Nothing was ever achieved with violence! -Right... As when San Martín (South American independence's hero) asked the Spanish crown to please pleaaase let us be independent, and they said yes, and they were super friends ever since"
@@blakejohnson3864 The joke illustrates the fact that, for example, in the case of Independence, violence *did* achieve something. We may not know if Independence would have been possible without violence (although the odds seem to lean towards "no") but the discussion there was whether "something is ever achieved with violence", not if it is the only possible way (although, I insist , it remains to be seen whether one country ceases to be a colony of another without bloodshed)
@@ReinaDido Well lots of countries have ended colonialism without bloodshed, though to varying degrees. You can take the example of the British settler colonies which became gradually independent through democratic structures, like Australia or Canada (though these are still colonial in the sense that they colonize the indigenous population). Or to the former British colonies that got freedom after India, like Nigeria, where independence was negotiated diplomatically without violent struggles.
I love how the arsonists' sister is so close, so very close to seeing what is actually going on and what she's really defending, but then she dismisses is and digs deeper.
This is a common bit of rhetorical flimflammery. One says things that are visibly true, then inserts one's own bullshit, suggesting (without explicitly saying*) that it should be considered similarly credible. One might even take the somewhat bolder step of ascribing the true things to one's bullshit, or vice-versa. In either case, the goal is to leave the audience with the impression* that what they see in front of them causes/is caused by one's made-up boogeyman. * this is crucial, in that it preserves deniability for when someone sees through and calls out the bullshit. "I never -said- that."
There’s a real paradox around the issue of violence and protest to enact change. If you’re non-violent, you can be safely ignored (look at climate activists). But if you use violence, they write you off as illegitimate and not part of ‘serious discourse run by serious people’. I think sabotage of machines (as opposed to violence against people) might be the resolution: No violence against people but inconveniencing the entities you want to protest (say, letting the tyres of a coal truck down). Great video as always Philosophy Tube
I encourage you to read Malms book about that. Basically he argues we need a two pronged approach: a radical, violent flank and a more moderate, civil front - similar to MLK and the Blank Panthers or Ghandi and the Mutaneers. The state cannot negotiate with the violent flank without loosing it face and ignore the moderates individually. But the violent front can push them into negotiations with the civil counterpart. We've seen this happen with Ende Gelände as well: violent opposition to lignite coal mining didn't archive anything on their own, but it paved the road for Germany shutting down all coal mines by 2030* *terms and conditions apply
@@bigjoepdx7228 you have an odd way of looking at things that doesnt seem to lead to change in my opinion. there is no "they" who is strong enough to end the world--the world is being forced to end slowly, and painfully, by laypersons who do work thats deemed necessary by a few super-wealthy people. and if there WAS a "they" who was strong enough to end the world, it would almost certainly be a different "they" than the ones who would want to stop violent protests. protests being stopped is (usually, where i live) done by the state, either the police or the army if things get really bad. and sure, maybe the police and military are stronger than your protest.. but if its for a just cause, and if people see the state acting against that just cause, the only outcome is for more people to get increasingly upset with the state. all controlling governments have this same problem where the more they act, the farther public opinion is swayed against them, and at some point that just has to boil over with the people who actually do the government's work (the police/army) are outnumbered or outperformed, assuming they dont just give up before that point already. you only need to bring a pistol with one bullet and surprise or luck to get the same physical equipment as an enemy.
@Doctor John Smith I think there it can be beneficial to distinguish *political violence* that is supposed to reinforce a point/make someone react/be hard to ignore and *direct action* that circumvents needing to make a point or convincing anyone by actually just doing things yourself. And there you could further distinguish between *negative direct action* that is disrupting something you don't want (tying yourself to trees to prevent logging, blocking coalmines, destroying SUVs, stealing animals from factory farms...) and "positive direct action" that is directly and personally implementing something that you want done. (like living illegally in unused buildings, guerilla gardening, dumpster diving, community sufficiency...)
Do you seriously think that they wouldn't writee people off as illegitimate for destroying property? That's the whole reason they get mad about violence in the first place - they don't give a shit about people getting hurt, but they don't want their investments to get damaged. The real answer is that it's dumb to care about what "they" (read: media/government) think since they're directly opposed to socialist/communist goals in the first place.
@@bigjoepdx7228 When has non-violence ever been successful? I literally can't think of a single example where positive change wasn't accompanied by violence. I can think of some where people incorrectly think this is the case, but not any where it actually is. At some point you will run into direct conflict with the owner class.
Portraying movements as violent (whether they are or not) is one of the primary tools that law enforcement use against political movements. Aside from justifying the use of more violent suppression by police forces, it allows them to focus the narrative on the method of the protest rather than the message. They could even claim to agree with the reason for the protests “if only they went about it the right way”. If they can make the demonstrators seem violent and unreasonable, they can lose popular support. They also like to blame “outside agitators” in a further attempt to discredit a movement. Of course the more effective the state is at frustrating a popular movement, the more likely it is that the movement (or at least a part of the movement) will turn violent.
@@johnlong123long Yeah that ain't good for optics because it's "damned if you do/don't" situation. Especially now since BLM made their money and pretty much vanished. Violence is something a lot of people really don't want to truly indulge in since it changes you, it legit makes it easier. Yet at very same time ease of violence also makes it easier for people to avoid and or demonized you. Like on the smaller scale is a stereotypical School Bully. Nobody likes the prick because they're hitting people and doing wrong by them. That'll undercut the BS that's going on at home and make people merciless versus them when they finally get punished. Which isn't justice people want them to hurt. Justice is a white lie people tell themselves.
The law enforcement institution does NOT and should NOT care about your politics and political message. They simply there to *enforce the law* and to protect people and properties.
@@ihl0700677525 SHOULD not care, yet many have made their right-leaning alignment quite obvious, including their aligning with attempted political kidnappers, who wanted to kidnap, and put on a mock trial for the governor of Michigan where they openly expressed that they had already decided that they were going to execute her after finding her guilty, and the police had just stood aside, due to politics.
@@jebediahrage8273 If that's the case, and you can prove their wrongdoing (i.e. they neglect their duty due to political reason), you can sue them. As simple as that.
6:57 Very well said👏 Historians almost never mention how crucial the role of Hindustan Socialist Republic Association (HSRA) played in destabilization of British Raj ( British colonial rule) in India. The members of HSRA such as Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Sachindranath Sanyal, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Chandra Shekhar Tiwari Azad, etc who were brave revolutionaries who conducted both mass revolts and secret conspiracies such as looting the entire British train in Kakori conspiracy in Robinhood style. Those revolutionaries didn't stop even though they faced brutal assassinations and death sentences by British regime. But sadly, both traditionalist as well as anglophile Indian leaders of their times either ignored them or tried to censor their personalities because in their view, those rebellious atheist young men who believed in total revolution against every symbol of social injustice couldn't/can't be the "ideal & respectable" icon for Indian youth if presented in fullness. Off topic: Historians speak a lot about idealistic women leaders of high social status but they never tell about those courtesans such as Azizun Nisa who helped, assisted and even funded their revolutionary boyfriends and sworn-brothers.
It cannot be stated enough that everything about Ms. Information is absolutely pitch-perfect. Oh, if ONLY someone would stop those DEPRAVED anti-fire activists and the VIOLENCE they are doing against that brave, handsome, oh-so-single brother of hers who is only trying to make a living as a door-to-door arso--I mean petrol salesman!
"i heard how baroness warcrimes was ruthlessly silenced when i heard saw her on bbc newsnight and heard her on radio 4 and 2 and women's hour and…" is immaculate. it seems like (uk) terfs especially like to complain about being "silenced" (via national, often taxpayer-supported platforms) "for defending the rights of women and girls" (or however they want to frame it)
tbh when Abagail said during her coming out video that those characters were still there, I thought she meant like... she archived the videos to look back on. Seeing the Ars- The Petrol Salesman Alive And Well And Expanded Upon, breathes life into me.
@@DarkRelm22 Just remember that the ars--petrol salesman was originally a Steve Bannon joke. Apparently, his sister is the only person who ever was attracted to him...
@@soupalex If I understood you correctly, TERFS are even worse than the BARFs I used to have to contend with. I am Bi. Bi as a Bonobo as we say down our way. We were the previous target of the fundamentalist female supremacist community. Maybe they are the exact same individuals, who have managed to cling on to both life and hatred, from the mid-seventies until today. They pride themselves on an 'Accident of Birth', namely being born like I was: standard issue vaginated tit creature. One of the Four Billion. How special they must feel to be so thoroughly common an biological occurrence. Pride in an Accident of Birth, rather than in the product of achievement or content of character, is the first requirement any aspiring fascist has to fulfill.
Yes!!!! The entire indian freedom revolution history has been revolving around Gandhi for so long. Savarkar didn't jump out of small boat window and had french petition for his freedom. He was a man who British were really afraid of. Tilak was so threatening that they had him in arrest. Shastriji, bankimchandra pal, chaphekar brothers, bhagat singh risked their life and limb for freedom. So many more to count. They terrorized the British. So many of our grandfather's and grandmother's rebelled.
Savarkar was a hindu nationalist that continually apologized to the British, so that he wouldn't be punished, hes also the founding father of the Hindu nationalist movement which is a fascist movement primarily spearheaded by upper class hindus to divide India on communal lines of hindu and muslim , rather then caste lines which are more indicative of class which plagued historical and modern day india . The current modi government are a continuation of his philosophies. In contrast, bhagat singh was a communist that was hung by the British and used his court trial's to further the Indian independence movement, he never broke and stood by the things he believed in until he was hung. To compare these two is a disgusting act , as it insinuates that they were equal in any way . One wanted to set up his own status quo and the other wanted emancipation for all.
Have you read any of his works or are just going off on Gandhian propoganda of besmirching his name? He was jailed in Andaman and faced the most inhumane torture. What would have you done in similar circumstances? Read, educate yourself before just going on. Read his complet, unabridged works and then get back to me.
@Krishna Jani Weird fascists, asking me to read the works of a loser who actively tried to undermine the Independence movement to create a Hindu state . Also , best buds with gandhi's assassin.
I just checked the Wikipedia entry for Django and literally cried tears of joy seen Abigail Thorn listed among the starring roles. Seriously, congrats - I am so excited!
Quick correction at 8:49, the French revolution occurred towards the end of the 18th century, not the 19th. The following part about Kant also occurs in the 18th century, for reference, he died in 1804 at the very beginning of the 19th century. That also happens to be the year that Napoleon became emperor.
For real, that part nailed it. It's amazing how so many "silenced" and "canceled" individuals keep finding themselves on television and with best selling books or sold-out events
@@hitthegoat You know its a chilling effect, there are so many people who got fired, or was disbarred from speaking in universities, or got harrassed for having a conservative view, the fact the right picks these people up and saves them from the Witch Hunt that rivals the McCarthy Erais a response to the vile actions of the left initially. Case in point, Kyle Rittenhouse, who was justified by the truth and the facts of the case, was still vilinized and people tried to remove him from his university and companies even disbarred themselves from even stating his name.
As a Ukrainian, who has Belarus and Russia as neighbors, for the last ten years I saw a lot of protests and different media coverages of said protests. All I can say is - yes. The definition of 'violence' and who has a right to do it is magical as a f*ing unicorn. PS offtopic. Abigail, you look amazing in gold ⭐
love how you can put these really clever subtleties in your character dialogues but at the same time have characters named "Baroness Plantation Warcrimes". a little something for everyone
Honestly, this video really emphasized to me how much we lose out by demonizing hypocrisy as much as we do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that hypocrisy is good actually, or even neutral. But just that we treat it like murder, when it's really more akin to speeding. No one's ideologically pure, everyone has "rules for thee not for me" in them, because philosophical purity tends to only have two states: You're either putting in utterly massive amounts of emotional and mental work in order to maintain that purity, or you're a fucking sociopath that has no moral standards at all. The intense focus we tend to place on hypocrisy just tends to give cover to those who just want to be shitty as much as possible, like it's somehow more noble for them to be an asshole because they're ideologically pure about it than it is to have those icky standards that we can't hold to all of the time because we're fucking people.
That’s true, morality to an excess just gives villains (someone obsessed with oil and gas power) a excuse to be bad as possible because at least they aren’t hypocritical, and somehow everyone else who tries to be as moral as possible are sociopaths, because they think blockading a pipeline construction project is ok, even though they also want cheap energy.
funnily, the “afd doesn‘t like the coal because it‘s brown“-joke actually doesn‘t work in germany, because we associate nazis with the colour brown, so that should actually be a plus for the afd.
I understood it as "having trouble with *burning* something brown". The AFD likes its brown ideology, so it doesn't want something in such a wonderful colour to be burned.
eh, that'd still fly imo if you go "Das einzige was die AfD nicht an der Kohle mag, ist dass sie braun ist" then the thrust of it is pretty clear. If you really want to be sure you can say that the coal is black, which is inaccurate to the coal mined in Garzweiler, but that's comparatively minor as far as setups for jokes go.
As a pacifist; having been forced to do 3 years of military service, realizing why exactly the service was such a struggle - oh, it's called being pacifist; i really appreciate this video and it's breakdowns. Definitely going to give it a few more watches to let it sink in comprehensively. Thanks for giving me a place to turn to when doubt and confusion about violence and my place in it come. (Recommend watching this with the CC turned on. A lot of worked went into it to add some more contextual tid-bits in the end of the vid)
There is not much people that want and like wars. Peace is universal value. But wanting to preserve peace is different thing than pacifism - when we talk about pacifism, we need to remember it's history, what was the influence of pacifist movement on the societies where this movement had some strength. And legacy of pacifism is not something that someone could be proud of. Its the legacy of being useful idiots for nazi war machine in construction. As Orwell said in those times "Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.".
@@prkp7248 never said i was proud of it. If anything, it's an uncomfortable ideal. Was your whole point to call me out on it? Label me an enabler of evils?
This video reminded me of a quote by Mark Twain. “THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror-that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
Great quote, this could appply to so many things. First thing that comes to mind is the environment and especially Chernobyl, and the way that one event scared people into adopting fossil fuels power plants, which are way worse in the long run. Also any other necessary violent protests in general, like the black panthers, the suffragettes, stonewall, etc.
I was there at the Ende Gelände Protest ( DOnt worry police took my personal info and I havent heard from them since) and I gotta say the frevor with which the Vattenfall spokesperson ripped the megafone from one of the policecoordinators hands to threaten us with all the charges that will be pushed against us was something to behold, kinda reminded me of the scene from the extended cut of lord of the rings where the mouth of suaron steps out to threaten the combined gondorian forces. Also 2 policemen complained about my weight when they carried me off.
How did the police act when they broke up your protest anyway? I mean I here about it and Vattenfalls reaction (although form what I gathered the protest was decribd as peaceful although there was a substatil amount of money lost due to the interrupting of work). But all I know about the police action was that they "dispersed" the protest and had to carry some people of.
@@marcelinio9988 so i was part of a group that got in which was surrounded by police pretty fast and not at the big coal harvesters. Before we got surronded and before even nearing the outer brim of the mine, we had some encounters with policeforces that created barricades and sprayed pepperspray, the long range kind into crowds of protestesters indiscrimitly even hitting journalists and red cross jacket wearing emerceny responders. That was the first really violent thing that happend the second was the police helicopter that by flying low blasted us with sand and debris. The sand ín the mine is mildly radioctive thats why we wore those paintersuits you see in the videos it was to prevent to much sand to rub on our skin or get into crevices or openings and such. So the helicopter thing was another shitty thing to do. not much happend after we were surrunded tho , we played our drums, sang songs and chants and were eventually carried out after wich they aksed us to give them our personal info and such after which they released us close to one of the roadsl leading to the mine.
the only "Gewalttaten" I witnessed from protesters myself were some maybe 20 or so individuals who damaged police vehicles , kicking against the side mirrors and such.
@@YeoldRagnaris Is this the Swedish Vattenfall? Got any video of all this. i missed it. I'm in Sweden and will be glad to change my elec supplier if they had anything to do with this.
This was a really great video, so much food for thought. I think "nonviolence" in protest is often deployed as an optics thing, where the protesters want to be morally unimpeachable in the eyes of a hostile system (government/police/press etc). But the crowd itself, the disagreement, the act of protest-even peaceful-is to naysayers already violent.
True. I was shocked how many USA "patriots" are against even the concept of protest, when it was hammered into me that our system, which they are presumably supposed to be patriotic for, involved protest as a key element many times. People get offended at the very idea of someone on the street holding a sign. I think it's simply selfishness. They don't want to be made aware of a problem, because it naturally prompts them to care about it in some way, and people in the usa are apparently violently hypersensitive to anything that asks them to care about literally anything, to the point where they are comfortable hitting ME PERSONALLY with a truck for the crime of awareness campaigning.
I think one of the reasons that nonviolent protests are both crucial to but also hated by the rest of the society is two fold: 1) The very act of protest disrupts lives. For some this is an inconvenience: a delay getting to work, a small increase in price for a luxury item, etc. For others, it can be life-threatening: closed roads that mean an ambulance can't get through or medical supplies delivered, the impoverished worker whose job is at risk by any amount of tardiness, the worker who is just trying to do a job in order to put food on the table. With large corporations or state-run media, it is very easy for those who are inconvenienced to be led that the only people responsible for their hardships are those who are protesting. 2) It is the fear of guilt. Not guilt itself, but the fear that you might be guilty, too. You see people protesting the extraction of fossil fuels, but you are someone who drives a gas-guzzling vehicle, whether for recreation or for work, and you fear that you are part of the problem. No one WANTS to be part of the problem. No one wants to be "them": "THEY are bad people, they do bad things, I can't be one of them, because if I was one of them then I would be bad, and I can't be bad, I'm me, not them." This fear makes it easy for people to be fed a narrative: the protesters are in the wrong because they've caused massive 'violence' and resisted arrest when the cops came to break up the angry mob. This narrative is palatable: it sweeps over the fact that the police might have used physical violence first, without warning or against proper procedure, but because it makes the protesters the bad guys, it means that what they were protesting against couldn't possible be wrong. And then comes the paradoxical rub: people general like the idea of individuals standing up to unjust authority, but don't like when they have to experience that. It breaks the world view that the world is orderly and perfect. This is especially true for fundamentalists, who can be described as believing that the world is the way it should be and should not be changed. Protests break that facade, causing doubt, and so a circular logic is built: the only things that should be changed are the things that I agree should be changed, and since I don't think anything needs to be changed that means nothing should be changed. Round and round that goes until something breaks the cycle, usually something directly in that person's life: didn't believe in gay rights until their child is LGBTQ+, didn't believe in unions until their job got outsourced, didn't believe in environmental protection until their water supply got ruined. They cannot approve of protesting, whether it's violent or nonviolent, until the issue is directly unavoidable. With the creation of mass-media and near-instant communication, these issues can be seen to be global issues, affecting everyone, and how badly some places have it while showing the privilege in others. Those who stand to (in their eyes) lose the most are those with massive amounts of capital, and so they use those forms of mass-media to try to control the narrative or dissuade discourse: we saw this here in America most easily with the Sinclair Group and the "station statement" they made all of the stations in their network read, verbatim. Those stations play to a captive audience, those who have no secondary source of information or ability to fact check what they're being told. We take it as granted that people in the Western world can look up and become informed on any topic, but that is far from the truth: not only can it be physically impossible, it also requires a level of scrutiny and critical analysis that is taught in education. But here in the USA the fundamentalists have gutted public education wherever they could, which has both brought around uninformed populaces, or misinformed populations, like Q-supporters who *think* they know what they've researched, but don't have the tools to critically analyze or evaluate the data or the sources for that data. All this to say: nonviolence is a tool for both the oppressed and the oppressor, depending on who is control the distribution of information. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk XD
@@ElMonoFuerte yeah pretty much all of this! being an american is to be subject to intense misinformation campaigns, and to be told to skate on the ice under which everyone is drowning, and being in turn abandoned when we fall in ourselves. I wish I understood why people are so desperately reactionary against even just the idea of being in the wrong. It's really not that scary to be wrong. I'm wrong all the time. I've hurt people, even. That doesn't make me a bad person. What's up with that stance not being normal?
@@Queer_Nerd_For_Human_Justice the trick is in christian fundamentalism it *is* bad to be wrong. To be wrong is to go against GOD and (because of incorrect interpretations of the Bible) that means you're going to HELL. If you're sick, disabled, poor, etc you must be these bad things because GOD is unhappy with you. So on and so on: take a look at the Prosperity Gospel and it's hold on Christian fundamentalism and you REALLY understand conservative America.
can we talk about the Hong Kong protests? because when they started, I was following them on Australian media. And the media - that I saw - was totally on the side of the protesters... until the protests turned violent. Then all of a sudden, the protests weren't worth covering anymore. They were all like, that's wrong. We don't approve. And it's easy to pronounce a people as morally wrong from your ivory tower, but if you were plucked from your tower and put in the same position as the protesters, I bet you'd change your tune pretty quickly. Their cause hadn't changed. it's just that they were driven to violence by circumstance, it doesn't make their cause less worthy. It just shows the cause itself was never the most important thing. I'd quite like to know the history of how nonviolence became the moral high ground in the west, how violence became such a dealbreaker that as soon as it starts, people just turn off their brain and automatically call the violent protesters the bad people. was it the system convincing people of this? was it to do with 9/11? how did we get from things like the French and American Revolutions, to where we are now?
Honk Kong protests went to shit the moment Rona first popped up and people in HK started to say protesters started to go "missing" then. E-Sports companies and even YT itself sided with China. A lot of people called them out until MONEY got in the way then people got real quiet and then supportive of China even though they were kicking the shit out of the protesters.
@@Dan_1348 The problem is HK was a British control state, So HK wanted to keep it's freedom which "The mainland" went "I want what over there ignoring their freedom"
@@Dan_1348 I thought similarly until recently. State violence is better than non-state violence because state violence is (ideally) democratically supported. Non-state violence is not representative of the will of the people, and so is bad. But, let me ask you this: would you support political violence against a state which democratically committed genocide? Like, if the state is performing a morally abhorrent act, should you resist that state, even if that state is perfectly democratically representative?
@@Dan_1348 I mean that example certainly fits neatly with a bow. But not all political scenarios are equal. I think it's naive to think we've reached some idealic point in history that is the end of major political violence exacted by non-state actors to reach a goal that is "justified" morally. History is cyclical, perhaps we are in the lull before the storm, where explicit "violence" is seen as ineffective or bad by most? Would we not be just in overthrowing a political economy that willfully imiserates billions and will kill our planet? Depends on your perspective, obviously. But I don't think we can presume that the prescription or means will be that of "peaceful" democracy. Many of history's most powerful sea changes of political economic philosophy were explicitly "violent" in the colloquial sense. Today the interconnected monied interests and their survival as this status requires the status quo. Do you think they will go peacefully? Or should we just accept our lot? The impossible often seems like it until it happens.
My thesis was on nonviolence, so I was super excited to see you did a video on this! Super interesting video :D, love how you didn't start from the traditional place of ghandian nonviolence but instead related it to some more modern times and went directly into the difficult questions of "does this work" and "can people actually act nonviolently"
It’s interesting to see that an academic can just do what they really want and finally it’s becoming ‘cool’ for younger people, gives me hope for future advocacy
The Simone Weil quote about violence turning people into things reminded me of my favorite quotes from Terry Pratchett, from his book Carpe Jugulum which is very relevant since it's largely about violent state oppression and rebellion against it. "'There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.' 'It's a lot more complicated than that -' 'No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.'"
Pratchett had an amazing knack for being able to make serious, thought provoking observations in the middle of a humorous settings and scene. I think my personal favorite was Death's speech about 'Little Lies' at the end of Hogfather.
Absolutely love the philosophical content present in all of Abigail's pieces, but I legitimately HAD to pause the video at "Baroness Plantation Warrcrimes" 😂😂😂
Abigail, I really wanted to thank you for the care you put on your subtitles. I need them and is very rare to see chanels with good subtitles (the automatic ones never até perfect and do not explain things like music and etc) so I am really glad you do this in your videos.
The unfortunate reality of our world, is that we have to fight tooth and nail to make change happen. The people who benefit from the status quo, will never allow their power to be voted or demonstrated away.
The only way to get power is to strive for it. If the ability or opportunity to do something a certain way is given to you, it is not power, but merely permission, from someone else who has the true power.
@@cambriaofthevastoceans6721 You won’t do shit. Until people are willing to take a bullet, or dish a bullet for what they believe in, then the status quo is here to stay.
29:55 "They want to silence us! I heard how Baroness Warcrimes was ruthlessly silenced when I saw her on BBC Newsnight, and heard her on Radio 4, and 2, and Women's Hour, and read her in the Guardian, Observer, Spectator, Telegraph, and her new book!"
I remember reading "Zur Kritik von Gewalt" from Walter Benjamin and our profesor saying "this will probably be the most difficult text you will read here" so I was really excited to see this one summarized and used in the video so smartly and concisely (specifically about the divine violence, which was very confusing to me). Thank you so much for the greet and thought-inspiring video, I really feel like it helped me grasp some really complicated concepts a bit better!
watching this video in atlanta where the stop cop city and defend the atlanta forest movements are simultaneously happening, protesters have been falsely accused and arrested for domestic terrorism, and some remain in prison. when i saw that quote at 3:40 it made me think of the narrative in my city where protesters are often accused of inciting violence, and one small step across that line while the movement is growing can result in an explosion of false arrests, police violence, and grief. shit, even i ended up on a news headline titled "protesters arrested for domestic terrorism" while pictured holding a candle at a vigil for a community member who was killed by a police officer. meanwhile, articles are being written defending the construction of the police training center, constantly controlling the narrative on how people like my parents understand the situation. being even somewhat associated with the movement can look bad for your individual reputation in a digital age. it's shameful that this narrative of violence is put over environmentalism here.
for more context, atlanta police training center is a $109 million dollar project, a mock city that atlanta police foundation is constructing in the south river forest. more police training as a direct response to 2020 uprisings in order to crowd control, resulting in direct environmental impacts that are already happening as this is actively being built. low income neighborhoods in dekalb county have had unprecedented floods during storms recently. it's disgusting
That Simone Weil quote (31:22) was profoundly moving. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett (via Granny Weatherwax) defining sin as "treating people as things, including yourself"; I wonder if he read and was influenced by Weil. Either way, as much as I've always loved the Pratchett quote, Weil's rumination on what that means for a person hit me harder and truly it brought it home.
Weil is herself echoing a line of thought that goes back at least as far as Augustine in the 4th/5thC. One of the most influential formulations came from Kant, who once articulated his 'categorical imperative' as: "Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means."
This hit me too, somehow the quote brought me to tears thinking about people who have to live as things everyday and for whom their souls is every day violated. The marginalized people in the countries I've been to... they are avoid looking at people in the eye... (and no, I don't mean countries like Japan, where this is cultural, I mean places like the US and Peru where there is a clear divide about who is comfortable looking at you in the eye and who is not)
That inner tension you described was very relatable for me. As someone who is acutely aware of the problems faced and feels that more could be done about it, I often ask myself why I don’t participate in more drastic actions. I volunteer my time every week for things like food banks and (hopefully one day) wildlife conservation, but as for the bigger movements, I find myself hesitant. Part of me condemns myself as a coward and a hypocrite and the other half points out that I’d be crap at the big stuff since I’ve never broken a law in my life, hate confrontation and have other life ambitions to think about. I’m also an actor and want to be a writer one day and I feel getting involved in those kinds of things would seriously damage my chances (especially if I’m injured or killed) Eventually I square the circle by realising I can put those themes and ideas into my work with the hope of inspiring people who would actually know how to do that stuff, but sometimes that just feels like a cop out and I go round and round in circles until hitting burnout. So yeah, not sure if I have anything major to add to the discussion other than just generally vibing with it, but I felt compelled to put these thoughts down. Thanks for another wonderful discussion!
If you haven’t watched Bo Burnham’s Inside, you should. Definitely touches on how yes, art is definitely a cop-out. It further touches on how whether or not that is good, bad, or otherwise, sometimes life is too fucked to do anything at all, so doing something is another option that is also fine-ish. That’s what I gathered at least. Check it out.
I have watched it and my feelings are extremely mixed, verging more on the negative. I think he’s certainly got a point in some areas and it’s very well made, but the overly bleak tone he sets is kinda the opposite of everything I think art should be doing right now and the message about art being a cop out is one I really can’t get behind. Art CAN be a cop out, but it isn’t inherently one. I know I said I sometimes criticise myself by saying similar things, but I don’t truly believe it deep down. I think art is vital and can hold revolutionary potential, just not in ways that are clearly visible. It can reflect and influence the mindsets of the people who come into contact with it, and in doing so start a chain reaction in their minds which can go on to affect the minds of others and therefore the outside world as a whole. It may not be causing direct changes in policy, but it has the power to make direct changes in policy feel more possible and desirable if you catch my drift. Stuff like Inside, while almost certainly helping some people, I personally feel is kinda doing the worst possible thing that the form could be doing. The whole thing felt to me like an invitation to and celebration of giving up. I’m not saying that everything should be sunshine and rainbows or else it’s dooming the world (my own works, such as they are, are rarely fun romps) but that kind of resigned pessimism is exactly what the ruling classes are counting on us to feel and on my good days I’m able to remind myself that, while I may not be cut out for traditional political action, it isn’t pointless to try and improve the mental landscape. After all, it’s from the personal emotional world that large scale change begins. Honestly, I was just kinda working out my feelings with the first comment. Ultimately, I think I disagree with that anxious bit of myself. 😅
@@Paul_M_Bradley Don't think of it as cop-out. Do what you can and that should be all anyone expects of you. We're at a point where swaying hearts and minds is just as important as direct action. There's a LOT of ignorance out there that can be dispelled to create allies and art is great for that. Also given the political climate rushing in unsure can put you or someone else in danger. All that said, if you're still feeling unsure one way or the other there are ways of participating without getting in the way that may also be useful for your art.
@@davidgalazin6141 it's a form of edit violence where capitalism and private property laws backed by the violence of police puts a person in such a situation where they - mostly even subconsciously - understand that there is nothing they can do that won't result in the state using violence to suppress their actions. So they, """voluntarily""", submit to it and may even die as a result of malnutrition, exposure (if homeless), untreated illness etc. And it's very convenient, because for liberals there is no problem. Since the state didn't physically murder them, it's no one's fault, certainly not the state and capitalism's. Many of them will blame the individual, even. Which is why it's extremely important to recognize the conditions that form as a result of capitalism (and its enforcer, the state) as violence, even if that violence is indirect, simply a threat of violence that forces people into conditions where they suffer or even die. People working themselves half to death, and still unable to provide reasonable sustenance and shelter because of private property laws is not direct violence, but it's violence nonetheless, because going against it *will* result in direct violence. So capitalism and private property is about as voluntary and non-violent as me pointing a gun at you and telling you to do X which then results in injury or death. Technically I never physically assaulted you, you ""voluntarily"" did X. But it was the implied "or else..!" that made you do it, and the same goes for capitalism.
It’s probably been said on this channel before, but I greatly appreciate you listing all the references under the vid! I’m a sucker for diving down the rabbit hole (several book purchase will be necessary)!
"How noviolence protects the state" by Peter Gelderloos is a good examination of this subject matter for sure, not focused on climate change but still in the same wheel house.
I no longer remember the episode or the guest, but I remember listening to an episode of the Ezra Klein Show awhile back about violence and politics and the guest said, paraphrasing: "People are looking for a tool that has no blood on it to make change, but that tool doesn't exist, everything has some blood on it" and I'm still thinking about it constantly, months after first hearing it.
i'm german, and i'm literally wheezing whenever you say massiven kriminellen gewalttaten, it's so goddamn funny ("it was massiven, and it was kriminellen, but was it gewalttaten" i cant lmao) also thanks for making fun of the alternative für deutschland, they're shit great channel, great video, lovely stuff, will continue to binge your channel like i started doing a few days ago, thanks a lot for this
Here is me, a climate pessimist in a third world country that is one of the hardest hit by climate change even though contributing nothing to cause it.. *Shivers in existential dread*
There was a book I read in high school called "A Long Way Gone: the Memoirs of a Boy Soldier." It's (you guessed it) a memoir of the author's experiences in Sierre Leone's civil war, and there's one part that always stuck out to me and probably relates to this video. At one point, the capital of Sierre Leone, Freetown, is put under siege by the rebels and the city becomes a battlefield. In the middle of it, there are civilians who are sick of all the fighting and want the war to end, or at leave the city out of it. So they organize into demonstrations, holding white banners and flags and protest against the war peacefully. And every time, the non-violent protesters are shot and killed by either the government or the rebels. It's like a political form of natural selection, where the ones who were willing to kill for what they want were the only ones left as opposed to the ones unwilling to kill who were now dead.
I lived through the Sixties. As time marches on, I see the revision credit non-violence that key driver of justice for the Afro-American community and other minorities but the role of violence cannot be ignored when the cities of the U.S. burn - especially in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
@@lakobosmerkel I hear you. I wanna argue with that but me in my white privilege I know better when to STFU and listen. I want to be an ally in the struggle for the liberation of all, always. May my grandchildren live to see the dawn.
I think in the whole Kant part it would be important to discuss the fact that most people are not given a choice about their social contract with the state. They are just born into it. Is it right to judge them essentially for not rebelling the moment they become capable of rational thought (what exact number of life years would that be?)?
I think the flaw in Kant's perspective is that he sees the state as a social contract - akin to a referee in a sports game, where all teams agree to a set of rules and trust the referee to enforce those rules evenly. Feudalism (and capitalism) are not a sports game though. They aren't classes coming together to agree on a set of rules and trusting a state to enforce those rules evenly. Rather, they are systems where one class forces it's will upon every other class - and the state (along with the monopoly on violence granted by the state) is the tool they use to do so. The rules are not agreed upon by classes, they are decided upon by the ruling class and enforced in whatever manner benefits the ruling class the most at any given time.
This video really made me realise that the "natural state" is a ridiculous idea and that every society that is too big for everyone in the group to know each other was probably brought together by force and only gradually became less violent as the people accepted their fate and the children being born simply didn't know better
@@rand0m508 The historical reality of state-formation is that people "voluntarily" surrender to the rule of their conqueror, seeing that the latter's violence makes resistance futile. When the idealistic social-contract theorists talk about free people "voluntarily coming together and agreeing to be ruled", that's a boot-munching spin on subordination.
@@lincawebot3681 You're mistaking what part I have an issue with. I agree that the state is garbage - but capitalism, in any form, is inherently exploitative. Anarcho-capitalism is worse because it eliminates the admittedly weak regulations that protects workers and makes it a lot easier for corporations to build monopolies. State-batacked capitalism is terrible, but "stateless" capitalism is far worse - under anarcho-capitalism, capitalists still have all of the power over workers. The difference is that instead of controlling a formalized state with cops and a military that maintains their monopoly on violence, they will pay private mercenaries to do so. Worse, company towns. The reason the state exists in the first place is to deal with class antagonism and conflict - the capitalist class and the working class have goals that are directly at odds with one another and a state, whether it's a formal one with cops and a military or an informal one with private mercenaries, will *always* be established by one of them in order to oppress the other. If you want a stateless society, you need a classless society first - in the modern world, that means either the capitalist class or the working class must be eliminated. And since the capitalist class only survives by exploiting the labor of the working class, it's the capitalist class that must be eliminated - and with it, capitalism as a whole.
9:18 They actually did write strong worded letters during the french revolution. In january 1789 Louis XVI seeing how people were pissed wrote a decree that every town was to congregate in the church and the clergy was to write down everyone's complains in "cahiers de doleances" (grievances notebooks). It didn't help him much but as you can guess these are precious documents for historians to understand the country's state of mind, town by town, at the time.
The initial statements quoted from Malm, particularly his assessment that peaceful protests have failed and violent ones are necessary, actually corresponds quite closely to the differently focused book called the Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel. In that book, Scheidel speaks of how peaceful measures have historically failed to have any measurable lasting impact on economic inequality, while violent means (especially massive scale violent means) are the only ones to have shown measurable impacts that levelled economic inequality. The idea that violent means are likely to be the only result to actually change a circumstance definitely has some basis, whether or not it is morally tenable.
I really enjoy seeing what new aesthetically pleasing costume choices she's made. Very much do like Abby as Athena and her......lets say "Dark Mademoiselle" outfit is really killing it.
@@Rolando_Cueva Well if we're being technical I'm pretty sure I'm bi and probably identify as female but I don't feel like that made for as good of a point.
I was quite literally writing my final research design on political violence and activism, and I was scratching my head on how I should continue. Then Abigail dropped this video and literally all my problems were solved.
As an Alsacian person who's first languages are both German and French i must say I've never hear such a hot accent in French and such a scary accent in German. Thank you so much for all your videos, they're so interesting and fun! The way you explain philosophy really helps understanding and enjoying at the same time!
One of the fascinating things about non-violent resistance is how it delegitimizes the violence of the state by making it look vulgar and ridiculous. A government putting down “rioting anarchists” looks a lot more silly and just plain evil when it’s really a bunch of ordinary Lithuanians singing in the city square, staring down a line of Soviet tanks. Sometimes it’s not about reclaiming violence, but revealing the crude absurdity of the violence in power.
Innuendo Studios made a really thought-provoking video on this topic which I recommend. It's called "The Gandhi Trap" and is pretty short. (edited because I got the title wrong, dumbass that I am)
It works, unless the news media decides to focus on those few violent fake or real protestors to portray them all as bad, tricking everyone into believing the protestors are all violent, so the police are justified to be as cruel as they want.
But it doesn't stop it from taking place. Who cares how it looks when the practical effects are that people get brutalized and die and the cause they went out to advocate for gets destroyed and villainized along with everyone involved? This neoliberal obsession with moral purity and optics is the bane of all progress and actual change and justice. It's nothing but a narcissistic, self-obsession with one's own reputation. It disgusts me.
Interesting timing for this episode. Adani recently began publishing "Activist Files" on social media depicting activists who had acted out against them as violent criminals. these included pictures and their full names. They ended one of these posts by appealing to the government for stronger action. Private internationally owned mining companies calling for a democratic government to punish their own citizens is just gross and creepy, not to mention dangerous.
If the people did similar posts about the executives responsible for the operations or the cops who arrested activists, wouldn't it be a crime? "Terroristic threats", "stalking", and a number of other crimes depending on the jurisdiction? Double-standards at work again.
The hypocrites... neoconservative Republicans constantly tout "deregulation" and "limited government..." but as soon as _they_ don't like something, they do everything they can to use that government to "defend themselves from vicious lib'ral violence," i.e., to punish anyone who disagrees. You know... the values America was built on. Free speech for everyone on My Team. (not that the USA is the only example of this; just the place I know best)
Honestly, not surprised I didn't hear about this. Just saddened. We've been fighting Adani here in Australia for about a decade, but they still ended up building a new coal mine and didn't even get approval from First Nations consultants (which is using corrupt logic, but they couldn't even do that one thing to at least make us hate them less). Fuck Adani, and fuck the former Government who don't believe in Climate Change and allowed this. Thankfully, they were voted out yesterday!
One of my first classes at uni was on activism. The professor stressed non-violent yet targeted, direct action against the people who have the power to get you what you want, and how to leverage the power available to the masses against the power held by the elites. She told us to get comfortable discussing power dynamics in society, to get creative thinking up ways to reach the specific goals of our protest, and to be prepared for the possibility that our civil disobedience may get us arrested. Fun class.
"Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all-the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder." Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, on the violence of his police beating peaceful protesters at the Democratic National Convention, 1968. Dicky was not known as a very erudite speaker.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror-that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. -Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
have y'all heard of tyre extinguishers? they deflate the tyres of SUV's in cities. its vandalism, but very legally grey and does no damage. just massively inconvenient for the owner
MASSIVEN KRIMINELLEN GEWALTTATEN
Please do freedom of speech and natural maw
Law
Deutsche Sprache, schöne Sprache ^^
@@humanbeing9024 indeed 👍🏻❤️🇩🇪
I just realized that you were pronouncing German and I'm a German language student. 😳
To anyone reading this the word is "Schwarze" which is pronounced as "shvartseh" .
"There are many ways to kill. One can stick a knife in one's stomach, deprive one of bread, fail to cure one of a disease, put one in a bad apartment, work one to death, drive one to suicide, take one to war, etc. Only a few of these are forbidden in our state."
-Bertolt Brecht
Damn, I come to like and appreciate Brecht more and more, the more quotes of his I see/hear
Class War - cos they started it
@@The_Reality_Filter That's literally not even what the article, for which the main source is a hard-core antisemitic whose writing is indistinguishable from fascists to begin with, actually said when you read beyond the headline. I swear, you people are dangerously gullible. Even IF everything in those ~~definitely totally legit~~ leaked documents is true, all it shows is that Abi might have taken some pay to say true things about the vaccine and anti-vax disinformation from a group that has worked with the government in some capacity completely separate from anything Abi worked with them on. Even taking antivax conspiracy theorists at their word, the most Abi is guilty of is not doing a deep investigation into the full history of a group she worked with to do a panel on which she stated completely true information.
THINK for two seconds before regurgitating this crap. It's really not hard to do. (And for the record, I've been a pretty big defendet of Grayzone in the past. They've done some really good reporting before. But apparently they've fallen down the antivax gift hole now as well, and this was just unacceptably negligent, poor journalism. Their source was Caleb freaking Maupin.
@@The_Reality_Filter can you hear YOURself? You have fallen hook line and sinker for anything that screams "psyop!" Without bothering to think for two seconds if it makes any sense. You are dangerously gullible, and sound indistinguishable from any alt right fascist. Read the gd "leaked documents" for yourself. As I said, the most it ACTUALLY said, generously assuming it's actually legitimate, is that she worked with a group that's had some ties to the government completely independent of anything Abi worked with them on.
But you didn't bother to actually read it, did you? You fell for the outrageous headline and all critical thinking went out the window. Like I said: dangerously gullible. It's bad enough we have to deal with all the alt right antivax conspiracy bs. I have zero patience for it on the left.
@@The_Reality_Filter Also, truly hilarious all these randos claiming I must be a shill myself for bothering to use some critical thinking skills, when I almost undoubtedly would be considered a tankie by the more progressive liberal types 😂 Like, babe, I've been *passionately* on the "hands off Venezuela" and "Russiagate was neoliberal propaganda" train for yeeeears. I have volunteered about weekly at an independent media organization that counters imperialist disinformation for nearly a full decade at this point.
And one of the reasons I was drawn to Abi in particular out of the bigger online left people is that she *does* seem to be genuinely far left, and not the progressive liberal type to call anyone who questions western imperialism a tankie. And that's why I find it gross and disheartening that Grayzone, who I had a lot of respect for prior to their antivax grift, would fall so egregiously reckless and conspiratorial in their reporting. Caleb Maupin wrote an entire freaking fascist screed (I've had trouble with links in TH-cam comments before, but seriously, look up the read through of his book Satan at the Fountainhead. It's shockingly antisemitic - not just anti-Zionist, which I am too, but full on fascist antisemitism). When the content and sources become undistinguishable from alt right propaganda, you need to start thinking for yourself.
Sometimes I imagine Abigail going to the costume shop and the person running it asks her "what do you need this elaborate costume for?" and Abigail responds with "Oh, I'm going to film an in-depth video about how capitalism is to blame for Waluigi not being in Smash" or whatever her next video is going to be about.
Since I saw her wear the white lacy gloves in two different videos, I can't get it out of my head that perhaps this is just her everyday wardrobe and it makes me laugh so much 😅
Can you even have a better reason tbh?
"Capitalism is to blame for Walugi not being in Smash" sounds like a jan Misali video.
@@qwertyTRiG it does tho
@@XaaviWillow Insofar as _anything_ can sound like a jan Misali video, that is.
I honestly LOVE the dictionary jokes, they're basically a "Don't be narrow minded as to think dictionary can provide a meaningful definition of everything even with the most subjective things like political topics, instead learn to read the subtext and focus on it's possible meanings in our time as language is not stationary" in the audiences face and it's amazing.
That’s all true, but it’s also just delightfully absurd!
I've got the same problem in defining words in minority languages, since dictionaries usually would be too much oriented on the main language the area has been converted to (so for instance Ligurian dictionaries would abide to Italian even if on a deeper research it ends up being a completely different language).
as a writer i like to look at dictionaries as kind of like a hobby.
Like, there are so many words that I know, that I don't know, you know?
And it's nice to have some ammo for when trolls (or radicalized family members) start nitpicking our words with often times wrong dictionary definitions, as well as bad faith interpretations...
It's exhausting EVERY fight devolves to this tactic. I want a good fight. Not the same drivel.
@@trashcatlinol kinda hard to have a nuanced exchange of ideas if you can't agree what the various noises you make mean
Unrelated, "the early nineties, longer than I've been alive." the older I get, the more I realize that people who I imagined as adults are actually my peers, and it's been a mind opening experience.
Same.
Me too. I grew up in the 90s and it still feels WEIRD to meet adults who weren't alive then.
Imagine _my_ surprise when I learned she's my junior lol
Something I've learned as I grew up is that there's really no such thing as "adults." Everyone I know that fits the typical model of an adult has basically always been an adult. Like they were "adults" when they were 12. Also theres no such thing as "serious people" that somehow deserve more credibility than other not serious people because they had or have an important job. They still lie just like children when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. All people deserve equal skepticism. Hopefully one day evolution, technology or something we havent even imagined yet helps us to actually grow up.
@@allineedis1mike81 This is true. "Professionals" are just people. People with specialized knowledge, but people. That observation is lowkey the basis of my leftist inclinations, as that observation cuts the other way, too.
Worth noting how this intersects with indigenous rights. Various indigenous groups who are supposed to have state recognised sovereignty on their lands (or what remain of them legally anyway) and yet have oil lines and such forced on them and state enforced violence put upon them when they resist.
+++
Absolutely. Indigenous folk are protecting *80%* of the world's remaining biodiversity, and as we've seen, EVEN when an oil company's actions are _expressly_ illegal (as with Enbridge and Line 3), the local police, military, and right wing troglodytes come out to beat on tribal elders and lick corporate boots. 🤦🏾♀️ Not to mention how many thousand people have been arrested: all for trying to keep Enbridge from polluting the wetlands and the drinking water.
This comes just a few days after the Canadian police invaded a native territory and used violence against indigenous land defenders to ensure the construction of a new gas pipeline through their land that will poison the last bit of freshwater they have ..
So much for "nice" and "progressive" Canada..
+++
Canada when they when they oppress First Nations
okay but the idea that abigail would sit still during this video, holding props, looking like a still image while talking about direct action is GENIUS
Oh my god I didn’t even notice! She’s talking about direct action, but she’s absolutely not taking part in it/not recommending it! I love all the metaphorical Easter eggs in this show
It works well for the video but I'm not so sure it's much different than what she normally does
Yes
I completely agree and I even see the choices of the specific props and outfit as part of the Message the armor and spire in gold and white In compression to the red and black with the umbrella that made from thin black fabric the symbolism of the props and the colors are significant in art and historical meaning , so I see her and not only hear about the conflicted subject but feel conflicted about my pre condition prospects that she criticized and continue
I knew. I knew immediately after finding one of her videos, and I thought "hmmm okay hmmm you know what? This is exactly what we need more of." Some people insist that Tans individuals are delusional, crazy, confused, (unintelectual) . But I think that if we showed those people these videos, then they would see just how wrong they are.
Y'know, on one hand, the dictionary joke could get old. On the other hand, I want it to be in every episode just to see how it evolves.
As SOON as she said "The Oxford dictionary says" I KNEW something silly was coming. I absolutely love it.
@@HillyPlays the best dictionary joke was the ongoing dictionary hostage situation in her Confucius video imo, but I love the ones in the other videos too
Agree
It hasn't gotten old yet. And, a thorough philosophical examination of the potential for the joke to get old clearly requires its continued inclusion indefinitely.
IMO it has gotten old. But that might be due to it being there three or four times in its debut
The question I have for Kant is: you say that breaking the law is wrong because it violates the social contract, but what do you do if your very existence is against the law?
Kant's answer to that is at 11:28-11:47
I think Kant is generally decent but he’s also got some holes in his reasoning
+
If we adhered to Kant on this account, humanity would not have progressed much. I cannot think of many instances where society has progressed that were not accompanied by spilling the blood of the ruling class (and usually by the oppressed labour class usually led by the middle class).
ps ... we should really move on from these old farts ...
the basis of any contract is maximising human welfare (yeah we can have a debate on that but at least "welfare" has a semblance of objectivity)
'The government calls its own violence "the law" and that of the individual "crime".'
--Max Stirner
Every quote I ever learn about Stirner makes him ever more and more the original Chad Meme Man.
Based
"The government holds the authority of violence." -- Ancient Proverb
@@MK_ULTRA420 that’s kinda the point, somebody has to keep other humans in line
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 Yeah but your response is quite unexpected for this channel. People have said the same thing about controlling trans people.
As a German, it is so adorable to watch you struggle with our insane pronounciation. It humanizes the amazing woman I learnt so much English from. Bless your subtitles!
Why does Germany promise a lot about green (-washing) energy yet they shut down their nuclear power plants?
@@vladthelad4653 Honestly, I don't know. The shutdown was a knee-jerk reaction after the Fukushima disaster. Nuclear power is seen as dangerous, I know women who miscarried because of Chernobyl, but it's less harmful than coal in the long run. It's like 9/11 compared to Covid, singular events scare people more into action than long-term processes that are even worse.
@@Vickyeverythingelsewastaken and the irony is that coal usage in Germany is *increasing*
Actually not just Germany, all around the world fossil fuels consumption is *increasing*
@@vladthelad4653 I know and I hate it. Coal is so ineffective for electricity production too. The local right-wing is on an anti-wind-energy kick recently and it's insanely effective.
Her french is pretty good in comparison lol.
Being German and having experienced the protests I was proud that young people could do something big like that and this was the first time I did not feel helpless.
No it’s not. The masses are stupid for believing that… the elites are using people with this environmental bulls hit just like they always do…
All these countries in the EU have evicted Jesus Christ in favor of “atheism”(a vice so terrible even the demons don’t part take)…. All these people will cause havoc with no end in sight. All the liberal Democrat governments(ALL GLOBALIST) ; America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the EU AND ALL major corporations are on the climate change and left wing agenda…. You aren’t being a revolutionary, you have joined the big machine.
@@caseydub7546 Take your pills
@@caseydub7546 ahh yes they’ve joined the left by doing absolutely nothing about the climate crisis logic101
@@caseydub7546 ??
We're proud of them too
I wish you had gone into an analysis of class, race and privilege in this! "By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?"
Those who are interested in more recent examples, can take a look at: This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by, Charles E Cobb Jr.
Problem with slave example is that everybody is a slave to some degree. So everybody has a right to burn shit .
My suggestion: let's not do that . Let's make up a rule "don't burn our shit and we won't burn your shit"..
It's just an idea.
Burn shit is fine . But other people might burn shit too. History is basically people burning shit. Until about 1800 when government and people slowly started making inadequate but 'better than the alternative ' deals not to burn shit .
Like I said : it's optional.
But I suggest don't enslave people and the request from the non slaves don't burn down the your big house is a good plan for everybody .
@@user-oo8xp2rf1kCounterpoint: You were right the first time. Everybody has the right to burn shit. The shit that oppresses them.
Thank you very much, Abigail, this video came out on the day of huge protests here in Serbia. The govt. went through all the motions - declaring protests as violent (they were not), and then using state run media to depict the thugs (government hired) who attacked the protesters (with bulldozers and hammers after the police suspiciously disappeared) as victims of violence, after the protesters stuck back (instead of allowing themselves to be bulldozed over). Still, protests repeated this weekend, larger than last, and perhaps there will be actual results. Protests are for clean air and clean water, as the government sells out the natural beauties for private gain. Maybe their success motivates people elsewhere to do the same - let's see!
Drago mi je da nas ima ovde 😁
I hope the protestors win! All deserve clean air and water!
Thank you all for your support, we'll keep up the good fight - there's no surrender when air and water are about to be taken away from you!
@Paul Gauthier Is there no local proletarian newspaper you could subscribe to? Admittedly any that exist might not come out every week and in any case it is more memorable when written directly by another comrade who is there.
Jesus, I saw the Serbian news the other day, it’s tragicomic how the protests were covered in the mainstream media. Keep fighting, you’re amazing!
This really reminds me of a cartoon I read a while ago comparing fast and slow violence. Fast violence being shooting someone and killing them at age 30, as opposed to slow violence, which is creating an environment (pollution, low economic status, no access to healthy food or healthcare, etc), so that one dies at 30.
Very important topic. I find it concerning how people seem to be ok with the violence and casualties that climate change causes and call it "inevitable". Yet any violence to try and prevent this "inevitable" from happening is unfathomable to people.
In the end I think the arguments about Climate change is who dies? In the future a lot of places will be uninhabitable or we'll need new technologies to remain if things don't change presuming everything does as predicted. However currently because of various reasons our societies are very energy dependent, and one of the best ways we have to generate and store large quantities of energy on demand are fossil fuels and if we were to just get rid of almost all of it a lot of people would die. Even if we had the ability to generate enough windmills/solar panels in a short enough time to meet the energy demand that's going to disrupt a lot of ecosystems in several ways. You might save the future, but at the cost of a significant amount of the present it's a hard sell. Especially if you are using violence to accomplish it which'll create even more costs.
Then there comes other questions like where the violence is being directed at. I can get that fossil fuel infrastructure isn't ideal in terms of the environment as a whole, but when I see people yelling about that sort of infrastructure it would be at new infrastructure which has a good chance of reducing overall harms that comes with fossil fuels. Like the infrastructure for oil/natural gas in the right area could reduce the need to burn coal, or make it so large tankards don't need to be shipped across the sea.
It is very healthy tho. Humans are built to consider causal chains and uncertainty, which is necessary to have any social system function.
@@matthewbarry376 you need only look at Venus to know that a planets atmosphere and composition will wildly change its climate, as such it stands to reason that our own tampering with the atmosphere would have consequences.
@@mylordandsaviour4786 Yeah people think about the punch coming back at them a lot more than throwing the punch. People that don't think they'll never be hit in response or ever are weird to me
it's not unfantomable, it's that Shell and ExxonMobil (and Putin) will gladly pay politicians to send the police and thugs to beat the shit out of you and your friends on the central square, and then blame you for them drilling for more fossil fuels.
Politics and economics works a lot better, imho. Since it's all about money, we can find ways to poke them where it hurts.
Vote vote vote! Deinvest from fossil fuel companies. Push for legislation that emphasises renewables.
This is already working -- in Europe almost 40% of all new cars sold in 2021 were EVs or plug-in hybrids. 95% of all new power generating capacity in the world was renewables in 2020 & 2021. Wind, solar and batteries are already better and cheaper than gas and coal.
So many like to keep this high-minded view, almost fetishistic, of how perfect non-violence is and how abhorrent any violence is at any time now. It strips away nuance and it doesn't so much broad brush the whole thing as dump the issue in the paint can and seal it shut. SOMETIMES you have to roar and break shit and SOMETIMES you must advocate for better policies through letters, events, and general free assembly. Anyone who wants you to be quiet and always passive wants it for likely not-so-wholesome reasons let's say.
The best answer for what kind of protest do we need I've seen given is... "ALL OF IT". Violent protests, nonviolent protests, voting, letter writing campaigns, donating to nonprofits who assist, etc. People tend to forget that without the reinforcement of violent protests, nonviolent protests just don't work. If you refuse to use violence, no one takes you seriously. It's only when they know what type of damage you can cause if your demands aren't met that they start talking to you...
You cannot tell me that the George Floyd protests would not have been as successful IF there was no looting or rioting. Once the rioting stopped, so did the coverage.
@@SleepingLionsProductions if you’re harming innocent people for your message, you are a bad person
@@superjlk_9538 good. Glad we agree that the system that allows police to get away with murder is in fact a bad system and that it should be destroyed.
@@SleepingLionsProductions that’s not what was destroyed. Innocent people died and business were destroyed. You didn’t help those people
As a strategy for political change, violence against people is extremely limited: It engages mostly healthy young men, physically excluding most people who are frail, old or minors and morally alienating even many otherwise sympathetic people, while many of those young men attracted to violence are obviously at serious risk of 'taking it too far.' Rather than encouraging understanding and agreement, up to a point violence generally incites much more widespread and visceral OPPOSITION to the campaign's goals than peaceful protest or even property damage can, and 'justifies' the brutal crackdowns and reprisal authorities use in response. Beyond that point, inasmuch as violence can ultimately be effective it's likely to be the effectiveness of fear; but a movement sufficiently numerous and organized to enact change through fear would in many cases likely be sufficiently numerous and organized to enact change by more moral and less polarizing means anyway (and from the first point above, would be even more numerous if it wasn't using violence). Alternatively inasmuch as the violent campaigners' success might be due to equipment/training rather than numbers, that implies a fringe and ultimately anti-democratic movement/terrorism which likely shouldn't be succeeding anyway!
We might be able to find some examples in which violent campaigns were justifiable, but that doesn't mean that any of them have ever been as effective in the short and particularly long term as non-violent alternatives could have been. Suffragette violence, maybe(?), purely because of the gender dynamics at play.
As a German, it took me a while to understand the joke about the Alternative für Deutschland's (AfD) only problem with coal being that it's brown. In my brain, the first connection that fired was that brown is the colour of the nazis (because it was Hitler's favourite colour), which makes no sense in this context. But I guess the joke was about the AfD having a problem with brown people...
Sorry to hear!
I feel like it would have landed better if she said black instead of brown
@@matta443 take your pills grandpa
@@mymaster416 Yeah, coal sucks. It's a shame renewables haven't been explored as much as they should be
@@mymaster416 Well, they're not.
I've heard it said that no protest is truly non-violent, the protesters simply have a choice to give or to receive the violence. This hold true as far as I can see often non-violent protests result in the protesters themselves being beaten or worse.
Very true, unfortunately. A good example of a non-violent protest leading to a ton of protesters being hurt was Bloody Sunday, 1905. The date varies a bit depending on your source, but it was horrific to read about.
Well, I guess that's true if we assume that the group or the thing the protest is against will inflict violence on the protesters. Although there are several cases were no violence is exchanged from either side.
@@battlemaster4208 generally where I am disagreeing with the status quo will not only likely result in police violence in retribution but the segment of the population that thinks they benefit from the thing being protested (though they are often victims of the system as well) will also resort to violence to silence the crowd, and may even find that violence sanctioned in the end.....
You’ve just transformed my way of looking at violence in protests. Thanks!
@@battlemaster4208 Could you give us one case?
I love the arson segments in general but I especially love how everytime she starts by saying "oh what a terrible terrible tragedy" and yet always ends up angrily ranting about her right to commit arson
Abigail you are an absolutely brilliant MAGNIFICENT human. I'm a clinical therapist working with queer/trans adults as well as men that perpetuate harm in relationships in very rural Nova Scotia, Canada. Being able to show your videos to my clients has been really groundbreaking for some and I just wanted to say thank you for making this content and having the courage to share
That's amazing! Thank you for doing what you do
That made me soo happy to read! 🎉❤ :) keep up the good work! I am doing my masters in clin. psychology and found your post super inspiring. ❤
I realized while watching this that we're almost a year of you being out as trans! What an exciting anniversary! This "season" of Philosophy Tube is your best yet in my opinion and I'm so happy you get to be authentically you now.
It is quite exciting. I watched the coming out video, for the third time, last night. Still cried.
Oh god. It's been that long. Fuck, I'm getting old.
Man, time flies. I remember being in the planetarium when her coming out vieo premiered, and having to step outside and watch it ear-bud-less and shivering. Worth it, though.
So parasocially proud of you, Abi.
Right before she killed her mansona, I was like "Oh, cool (deadname) is going for a more androgynous style. I should emulate that. It looks cool." After she came out, it cracked my egg and now I wonder if I'm nonbinary or some femboy.
Honestly I kinda can't remember how she looked and sounded before coming out that well unless I really try. And why would I?
I'm glad you revisited this topic, Abigail! Here in Canada we have our BCNDP (our supposedly Social Democratic party!) supporting police violence against protesters and reporters outside of pipelines in Wetsuweten territory, so I've been absolutely fuming about this issue for months.
Thank you Abi!
What does BCNDP stand for?
@@anabsolutemess8850 British Columbia New Democratic Party
I can't even vote any more -- No matter who I vote for, they always make me regret it.
Haven’t the provincial NDP in BC shifted to the right over the years like the BC Liberals did? I thought they were now the centrist party with the provincial Greens being the left wing option at the provincial level. Mind you, maybe I misunderstood the BC political spectrum from over here on the Quebec-Ontario border.
The situation is a little more complicated. In order to keep votes and support from companies and workers unions in the gas and logging industry, the BCNDP continue to allow RCMP jurisdiction on Wet'suwet'en Territory and enforcement in Fairy Creek. These protests also raised issues on powers of traditional leadership and protection of Indigenous land.
In my humble opinion, however, the BCNDP should put their mouth where they say it is and strike down the powers of company injunctions and the usage of RCMP for political means.
I’m loving the Philosophy Tube universe of recurring characters and jokes 😂
i just got Nebula & followed both you and Abigail today
The Chinese never had a secular enlightenment
Fancy seeing you here!
in the same vein, if you're not watching with subtitles, you're missing out
Now we need crossovers! Make the Breadtube Cinematic Universe.
I started uncontrollably cackling at “Baroness Plantation Warcrimes”!
Also, her brother the upstanding door to door petrol salesman is incredibly prolific! Dude’s got some hustle. I love the continuity!
Thank you for all the hard work, Abigail - you are an excellent teacher and a true craftsperson.
Absolutely love how Abigail managed to stay in character during those lines
I ALSO LOST IT AT BARONESS PLANTATION WARCRIMES!
I adore her still doing the character Ms. Adelaide Sweetly-Schmitz and all of the continuity, hahaha!
It’s somehow both more and less funny now that I know a particular baroness who might have inspired such a character
i do find it funny that there's a possibility that the arsonist's legal surname is sweetly-schmitz
Did you know that driving large nails into trees allows the tree to keep growing, but makes logging incredibly dangerous because the nail shatters chainsaws and huge sawmill blades? Thankfully most people who do that put big warning signs around and tell companies doing the logging that the trees are spiked, so they can avoid the area so workers doing the logging and in sawmills don't get hurt when the equipment explodes. If they keep sneaking by the laws against it, there might not be enough safe old growth forestland for them to log! What will those dastardly tree huggers think of next?
Love from the Northwest, misery from Wayerhauser
Ed Abbey says welcome to the Monkeywrench gang....
Oh I do hope that those brave lumberjacks see those nails and nothing unfortunate happens to the equipment of those industrious corporations that earn countless millions if not billions who are constantly deforesting the wilderness. (wink)
I did not know that. New fun fact, thanks.
That goes on my notice board along with other completely useless trivia like "1 kilogram of sugar added to 1 ton of wet cement will render it unusable."
In Greece every 6th of December all the schools get closed by their student's in honour of Grigoropoulos,
a kid that got shot in a demonstration that day on 2008.
Every year I hear more and more complicated and crazy theories in defence of the officer that shot him.
I can't understand why someone would go so above and beyond to make sure that the police's reputation doesn't get tainted.
My guess is that it would be people, who greatly enjoy the status quo and would like the police as preserver and symbol of that status to have a good image.
It's terrible that happened, but I'm glad to hear they take such heartbreaking violent acts so seriously (well, most people anyways from the sound of it).
Here in the U.S. if we closed our schools on every day a kid was shot by the police then schools would never be opened year round. Which considering how poorly funded our schools are I don't think anyone would notice a difference.
είναι πραγματικά αποκρουστικό
I’m no expert in psychology but I think that the reason people want to come up with convoluted explanations that protect police’s reputation is that they find comfort in the system. In the system police are *supposed* to be upholders of justice. When an image goes against that, people tend to have some mild experience of cognitive dissonance where they are faced with information that is radically different than what they believe is supposed to be the truth. It seems though that a lot of people fall in the category or doubling down rather than processing that police are humans and are fallible to being corrupt or violent. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of social bias amongst groups that think police are infallible either. It only serves as a feedback loop to the problem.
Well maybe because even though the actions of that one person was horrible, it doesn't mean they all are.
Kwame Turé said “non-violence only works when your enemy has a conscience and America has none.” The same could be said of any current State or authority. Even Gahndi said that violence is better than inaction but non-violence functions best since it ceases the cycle of violence. A few details that I wish could have been included in this video but again, great work!
Whoa. Upvote.
There is a short story out there that explores this concept, but I don't remember what it's called. It was an alternative history where Ghandi used non-violent protest again Hitler. It ends with Ghandi being arrested and taken to a concentration camp.
Fascism arguably has no conscience, and with the US, uh, currently enjoying a fascist celebration, I definitely understand why we are the biggest threat to world peace.
I watched "Prosecuting Evil" (great documentary and highly recommended) and basically the US had refused to join a "no war crimes" conglomerate. Why?
"We're not committing war crimes."
"Yes, but you are though."
"No we're not."
it's Gandhi btw not Gahndi or Ghandi
@@Droemar Gandhi was also successful because he was able to mobilize such masses and the colonial regime knew that once the demands of these masses were not met, parts of the masses would turn to violence and they would have no power to tear down the protests anymore. So because he mobilzed so many he created an implicit thread of violence and that was what brought change.
@@Laura-gd4ku But then the question is 'Is the threat of violence the same as the violence itself'?
I preordered How To Blow Up A Pipeline. When it arrived, I read the introduction and it resonated with me so much I got scared of what it might further evoke in me, and haven't come back to it. This video has provided a lot of interesting viewpoints that make those feelings seem a little less scary, and I look forward to revisiting the book. In the end, I'll probably never leave the divan either so there's not much to worry about.
I totally know how you feel. Abigail does have a beautiful way of helping us overcome our doxastic anxiety.
Although, I would encourage you to think of the possibility of desiring to leave the divan less as a risk to be worried about, and more as an opportunity. To do something good, and maybe even to find meaning :)
Just lie in wait until the proletarian movement is ready and can make effective use of your contribution ;)
There is plenty to be done in the meantime anyway. Agitate, organize, educate!
@randomusername1735 Resistance alone is nearly futile and will be crushed. We have to work together in large numbers to achieve anything much in society and the world. Most people in the Imperial Core are indoctrinated and unwilling to accept change. The only path left to follow is to carry on living, try to further your own education and help others onto the right path, and promote organization when and where people are ready for it.
Going to the imperial periphery and helping directly is in theory an option, but in reality is very difficult and the material usefulness of the labour that you and I can provide over there is practically very limited, in reality...
If you have technical specialist expertise or a significant amount of capital to bring with you, and no more patience left for watching the shitshow surrounding us here in the core, then maybe going to a global south country that is attempting to throw off its bourgeoise shackles and helping directly might be more of an option...
@randomusername1735 Its not coming. Prepare yourself for that reality.
"You can't want a system of sovereign nations and also tell them what to do."
America has left the chat.
America is such a perfect case study for this topic I'm surprised we didn't get our own section in the video; the destruction of private property as a form of protest is one of our nation's primary creation myths that get taught to kids in schools, and people will celebrate that act from one side of their mouth and condemn modern-day protests for disrupting business out the other.
@@arachnofiend2859 its bonkers to think my nation really did start with a 5% increase on tea tax
I scrolled to find this exact comment! LOL. I'm sure the CIA, several South American, and Middle Eastern countries would have something to say about this
@@arachnofiend2859 because it's an attack on small business and not the corporate world, 95 percent of the damage done to business was inflicted to small business, while in American history the major property you are referring to I believe is the Boston tea party, that tea was owned by the British India company,
this was something vital for the people that threw the tea, the didn't want to damage the boats, since they were owned by American merchants.
@@kaiser4883 u cant say that! These ppl for the most part cant think past the next NFL game. So they watch lame ass videos like this one.
Same thing going on in Canada right now. The Indigenous people especially have been up in arms about environmental damages, which makes sense, given that they've been here literally thousands of years longer than anyone else, and yet our government chooses instead to brutalise and imprison them. For telling and acting the truth.
It's not violence when THEY'RE LITERALLY INVADED in their own autonomous land to construct A PIPELINE that'll pollute the only water they have
@@vladthelad4653 It is violence and *that's okay.* The government should not have the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. If anything, the indigenous peoples have far better claim to legitimately do violence to the state than the state has to do violence to them.
All ideologies are violent because all ideologies prescribe that someone be coerced with force. Even we as anarchists recognize that people will coerce each other. We just do not wish there to be a central state that can use violence for any reason on anyone without consequences, and appear justified by the fact that it alone is the state.
It is one hundred percent anarchist praxis and environmentalist praxis and indigenous rights praxis for the First Nations people to do actual violence against the oppressors who threaten their land, water and lives. To deny that it's violence is to confuse the conversation by purposely using words outside their commonly understood meanings. Violence is harming people or coercing people with the threat of harm and it is a basic fact of life.
The vibes so far are that I overstayed in the museum from night at the museum till night, hiding in the classic era wing, and the Athena Chryselephantine reconstruction came to life to tell me about strategic violence
Im more a dionysian character (My given name even derives from Dioynsus) so i prefer ecstatic violence :D
@@wolfi9933 well, you know what they say: you don't leave a good bacanal with the same number of limbs you came in with:)
"We are the investment risk" was an interesting nod to the profit motive that drives our whole world. This video has me wondering if there is any alternative for change under capitalism, aside from direct action.
Not an alternative, but a needed compliment: extensive education. Most people don’t really get or even know the anticapitalist campaign, and we need as many people as possible sans the rich on our side. If people don’t know why they should fundamentally be opposed to our societies, and they don’t, they can’t help us. Direct action is good but a lot of the time it’s chopped up by the media and politicians into a distorted and narrow debate that doesn’t help people understand the big picture or see the way forward. Somehow we need to get a wide amount of people to grasp the true and rudimentary ideas of socialism so they can build upon them and join the cause. This as already begun, but numbers are still tiny, and it’ll be like this for a while. To be honest, I’m not sure if there’s a way to spark increased comprehension suddenly and rapidly, or if it would be just be a matter of slowly ground-out successes over numerous years. Either way it’s essential, and to me it needs to be diffused across our communities totally like dye in water, so that everybody understands the basic need, instead of being a distinct and puzzling outburst that can be neatly wiped up and tossed out or repackaged and sold like it typically is.
Using a climate protest as a framing device was a really inspired (in the practical sense) choice. It really helps highlight the contradictions and tensions of violence as a concept within an ethical and political framework. Kudos for that!
Also, that greek-ish warrior costume absolutely slaps!
With that helmet and shield, she's Athena, goddess of wisdom and war
It's especially relevant for those of us who live in Serbia. We had huge ecological protests against Rio Tinto's investments in lithium extraction that would ruin the fertile land and nature around it. But behind the protests is a general discomfort with foreign capital exploiting our country, its nature and us becoming Europe's dirty energy mining field under an authoritarian regime that plans to sell lithium batteries for the European electric car market. All of this the regime frames as violent protesters against the country progressing and accuses everyone of being foreign agents that want to ruin Serbia's prospects for success on the world wide market, keeping Serbia underdeveloped.
My university required an English course that was basically how to write a research paper. It could be on any topic and I chose why fictional vigilante superheroes AKA Batman are so loved. Originally I was going to compare real vigilantes to fictional but I quickly discovered that real vigilantes are typically racists or bigots. My conclusion ultimately ended up being that superheroes fulfill our desire to fight injustice directly; total wish fulfillment. Also that if you research superheroes, you need to factor in time to be distracted by reading comics.
It's a very human need to want to stop and fix wrongs. Direct actions conflict with legality and that makes law abiding people less likely to participate, but also criminalizes those that do, regardless of the position. It's so easy to say violence = bad, but it's really not that simple.
I realized that this has no comments and I just need to say that your paper sounds really really interesting, I highkey want to read it
Hey did you shared this paper online somewhere? This is a very interesting conclusion you had
"It's so easy to say violence = bad, but it's really not that simple."
It's only complicated when you want to say that violence is okay when you do it. Violence=Bad is an incredibly simple proposition to sustain.
@@TheRoland19111 Sounds like a pretty banal and quotidian conclusion that any child could come up with - and notice that the premise was 'how to write a *research* paper,' not 'how to quickly come to conclusions when generalizing from fictional evidence.' Seems more like a great way to *avoid* any research at all.
What is it you find particularly mindblowing about the idea that 'superheroes are a manifestation of wish fulfilment,' given that virtually any possible fantasy represents some form or another of wish fulfilment?
Apparently the commenter's 'research' didn't make it as far as, say, John Brown. Also, the closing sentence is simply gibberish, so I'm guessing the 'English' part of the course stuck as much as the ostensible 'how to write a research paper' portion.
@@iamjurell r/iamverysmart
"We are the investment risk" is honestly the best argument I've come across for why protest violence (in the specific case of environmentalism) is good. Though that may also be the bitter loathing I feel towards investing and wall street and all that shit.
This sounds like something Tyler Durden would say. Love it.
What?! Are you not in favor of having excess money somehow creates more excess money?!
Sounds like communism to me!
(... And that's a good thing!)
@@blakejohnson3864 And also why are capital assets like stock not taxed as property to begin with?
It's the plain and simple truth. If companies like the ones who are mainly responsible for destroying our ecosphere only care about money and will not listen to reason or appeals of basic decency, hurting their bottom line is the only way to get them to change what they are doing.
Maybe it's both in equal measure.
There was another protest in Germany lately where activists roped down off a brodge over a highway to protest against fossil fuels and a change in (public) transport. The police closed the road to clear the protestors so that let to a traffic jam. Some kilometers back a driver could not react in time and crashed almost full speed into the end of the traffic. Now some people tried to make the protesters responsible for almost killing the people in the back of the traffic jam, some even demanding acts of physical violence against the activists.
Thank you for your videos. They are always a delight to watch and think about!
So the driver drive what I assume to be 150+ km/h on the autobahn into a traffic jam? If thr assumptions I pulled out of my ass happens to be correct, that sounds more like an issue with lax speed regulations *cough cough*, and more importantly, the driver being inattentive. You don't just crash almost full speed into a traffic jam.
@@Ozzianman they never said this was on the autobahn
@@meowntown69 Autobahn is the German equivalent of a highway.
Also your about page is mood.
Similar thing happened a few days ago, when a traffic jam due to a street blockade was the reason for a delayed aid to an accident scene.
Besides the typical "climate terror" arguments in the media, even some state media start condeming the blockades.
But even if there'd be some truth to that, the media rarely puts it into any context and misses out on the fact, that the activists actually had an emergency corridor at their blockade, different to the cars in the traffic jam.
Its just sad and really problematic that media is able to paint a picture and shift the discourse to demonize activists :P
@@Ozzianman FYI German Autobahn isnt always without Speedlimits. A lot is actually speed limited to 120, 100 or in some cases such as road construction, where there is a lot of sometimes down to 40 kmh
In Argentina we have this joke, stemming from an exchange on Twitter: "-Nothing was ever achieved with violence! -Right... As when San Martín (South American independence's hero) asked the Spanish crown to please pleaaase let us be independent, and they said yes, and they were super friends ever since"
@@blakejohnson3864 they didn't say that, they only told an Argentinian joke.
@@blakejohnson3864 The joke illustrates the fact that, for example, in the case of Independence, violence *did* achieve something. We may not know if Independence would have been possible without violence (although the odds seem to lean towards "no") but the discussion there was whether "something is ever achieved with violence", not if it is the only possible way (although, I insist , it remains to be seen whether one country ceases to be a colony of another without bloodshed)
@@blakejohnson3864 This is the greatest strawman of all time
@@ReinaDido Well lots of countries have ended colonialism without bloodshed, though to varying degrees. You can take the example of the British settler colonies which became gradually independent through democratic structures, like Australia or Canada (though these are still colonial in the sense that they colonize the indigenous population). Or to the former British colonies that got freedom after India, like Nigeria, where independence was negotiated diplomatically without violent struggles.
@@blakejohnson3864 yes, that would be a good synthesis. But I like to babble and chatter and complicate things. :D
I love how the arsonists' sister is so close, so very close to seeing what is actually going on and what she's really defending, but then she dismisses is and digs deeper.
She knows what she's doing.
This is a common bit of rhetorical flimflammery. One says things that are visibly true, then inserts one's own bullshit, suggesting (without explicitly saying*) that it should be considered similarly credible. One might even take the somewhat bolder step of ascribing the true things to one's bullshit, or vice-versa. In either case, the goal is to leave the audience with the impression* that what they see in front of them causes/is caused by one's made-up boogeyman.
* this is crucial, in that it preserves deniability for when someone sees through and calls out the bullshit. "I never -said- that."
@@gdpacnw5126 it’s probably my least favorite form of rhetoric :/
@@niamhleeson3522 Not sure... I've seen religious people do this kind of thing with thought terminating clichés.
There’s a real paradox around the issue of violence and protest to enact change. If you’re non-violent, you can be safely ignored (look at climate activists). But if you use violence, they write you off as illegitimate and not part of ‘serious discourse run by serious people’. I think sabotage of machines (as opposed to violence against people) might be the resolution: No violence against people but inconveniencing the entities you want to protest (say, letting the tyres of a coal truck down). Great video as always Philosophy Tube
I encourage you to read Malms book about that. Basically he argues we need a two pronged approach: a radical, violent flank and a more moderate, civil front - similar to MLK and the Blank Panthers or Ghandi and the Mutaneers. The state cannot negotiate with the violent flank without loosing it face and ignore the moderates individually. But the violent front can push them into negotiations with the civil counterpart.
We've seen this happen with Ende Gelände as well: violent opposition to lignite coal mining didn't archive anything on their own, but it paved the road for Germany shutting down all coal mines by 2030*
*terms and conditions apply
@@bigjoepdx7228 you have an odd way of looking at things that doesnt seem to lead to change in my opinion. there is no "they" who is strong enough to end the world--the world is being forced to end slowly, and painfully, by laypersons who do work thats deemed necessary by a few super-wealthy people. and if there WAS a "they" who was strong enough to end the world, it would almost certainly be a different "they" than the ones who would want to stop violent protests.
protests being stopped is (usually, where i live) done by the state, either the police or the army if things get really bad. and sure, maybe the police and military are stronger than your protest.. but if its for a just cause, and if people see the state acting against that just cause, the only outcome is for more people to get increasingly upset with the state. all controlling governments have this same problem where the more they act, the farther public opinion is swayed against them, and at some point that just has to boil over with the people who actually do the government's work (the police/army) are outnumbered or outperformed, assuming they dont just give up before that point already. you only need to bring a pistol with one bullet and surprise or luck to get the same physical equipment as an enemy.
@Doctor John Smith I think there it can be beneficial to distinguish *political violence* that is supposed to reinforce a point/make someone react/be hard to ignore and *direct action* that circumvents needing to make a point or convincing anyone by actually just doing things yourself.
And there you could further distinguish between *negative direct action* that is disrupting something you don't want (tying yourself to trees to prevent logging, blocking coalmines, destroying SUVs, stealing animals from factory farms...) and "positive direct action" that is directly and personally implementing something that you want done. (like living illegally in unused buildings, guerilla gardening, dumpster diving, community sufficiency...)
Do you seriously think that they wouldn't writee people off as illegitimate for destroying property? That's the whole reason they get mad about violence in the first place - they don't give a shit about people getting hurt, but they don't want their investments to get damaged.
The real answer is that it's dumb to care about what "they" (read: media/government) think since they're directly opposed to socialist/communist goals in the first place.
@@bigjoepdx7228 When has non-violence ever been successful? I literally can't think of a single example where positive change wasn't accompanied by violence. I can think of some where people incorrectly think this is the case, but not any where it actually is.
At some point you will run into direct conflict with the owner class.
Paused before watching to say: I've been absolutely living for Luigi this past week. I'm glad the algorithm brought this up in my feed. Very timely.
“Baroness Plantation Warcrimes” really got me. Definitely laughed out loud.
Very british.
Still can't believe what they did to her.
🤌🏾😆😅😂🤣👏🏾
Had the same reaction. Also thought it was very clever to refer to the activists as "anti-fire".... I see what she did there! 😊
Still laughing 😂 💀
Wonder if/when we'll meet the brothers/cousins, Sir Gamergate of Misogyny Manor, or perhaps Duke School-Shootington III 🤣
Portraying movements as violent (whether they are or not) is one of the primary tools that law enforcement use against political movements. Aside from justifying the use of more violent suppression by police forces, it allows them to focus the narrative on the method of the protest rather than the message. They could even claim to agree with the reason for the protests “if only they went about it the right way”. If they can make the demonstrators seem violent and unreasonable, they can lose popular support. They also like to blame “outside agitators” in a further attempt to discredit a movement.
Of course the more effective the state is at frustrating a popular movement, the more likely it is that the movement (or at least a part of the movement) will turn violent.
sort of like when the BLM lot say silence is violence' to people who don't support them?
@@johnlong123long Yeah that ain't good for optics because it's "damned if you do/don't" situation. Especially now since BLM made their money and pretty much vanished. Violence is something a lot of people really don't want to truly indulge in since it changes you, it legit makes it easier. Yet at very same time ease of violence also makes it easier for people to avoid and or demonized you. Like on the smaller scale is a stereotypical School Bully. Nobody likes the prick because they're hitting people and doing wrong by them. That'll undercut the BS that's going on at home and make people merciless versus them when they finally get punished. Which isn't justice people want them to hurt. Justice is a white lie people tell themselves.
The law enforcement institution does NOT and should NOT care about your politics and political message. They simply there to *enforce the law* and to protect people and properties.
@@ihl0700677525 SHOULD not care, yet many have made their right-leaning alignment quite obvious, including their aligning with attempted political kidnappers, who wanted to kidnap, and put on a mock trial for the governor of Michigan where they openly expressed that they had already decided that they were going to execute her after finding her guilty, and the police had just stood aside, due to politics.
@@jebediahrage8273 If that's the case, and you can prove their wrongdoing (i.e. they neglect their duty due to political reason), you can sue them. As simple as that.
I'm so impressed at your ability to write, pass through editing, and deliver the name Baroness Plantation Warcrimes with a straight face.
6:57 Very well said👏 Historians almost never mention how crucial the role of Hindustan Socialist Republic Association (HSRA) played in destabilization of British Raj ( British colonial rule) in India.
The members of HSRA such as Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Sachindranath Sanyal, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Chandra Shekhar Tiwari Azad, etc who were brave revolutionaries who conducted both mass revolts and secret conspiracies such as looting the entire British train in Kakori conspiracy in Robinhood style.
Those revolutionaries didn't stop even though they faced brutal assassinations and death sentences by British regime. But sadly, both traditionalist as well as anglophile Indian leaders of their times either ignored them or tried to censor their personalities because in their view, those rebellious atheist young men who believed in total revolution against every symbol of social injustice couldn't/can't be the "ideal & respectable" icon for Indian youth if presented in fullness.
Off topic: Historians speak a lot about idealistic women leaders of high social status but they never tell about those courtesans such as Azizun Nisa who helped, assisted and even funded their revolutionary boyfriends and sworn-brothers.
It cannot be stated enough that everything about Ms. Information is absolutely pitch-perfect. Oh, if ONLY someone would stop those DEPRAVED anti-fire activists and the VIOLENCE they are doing against that brave, handsome, oh-so-single brother of hers who is only trying to make a living as a door-to-door arso--I mean petrol salesman!
ms. information is such a good name...!
"i heard how baroness warcrimes was ruthlessly silenced when i heard saw her on bbc newsnight and heard her on radio 4 and 2 and women's hour and…" is immaculate. it seems like (uk) terfs especially like to complain about being "silenced" (via national, often taxpayer-supported platforms) "for defending the rights of women and girls" (or however they want to frame it)
tbh when Abagail said during her coming out video that those characters were still there, I thought she meant like... she archived the videos to look back on. Seeing the Ars- The Petrol Salesman Alive And Well And Expanded Upon, breathes life into me.
@@DarkRelm22 Just remember that the ars--petrol salesman was originally a Steve Bannon joke. Apparently, his sister is the only person who ever was attracted to him...
@@soupalex If I understood you correctly, TERFS are even worse than the BARFs I used to have to contend with. I am Bi. Bi as a Bonobo as we say down our way. We were the previous target of the fundamentalist female supremacist community. Maybe they are the exact same individuals, who have managed to cling on to both life and hatred, from the mid-seventies until today.
They pride themselves on an 'Accident of Birth', namely being born like I was: standard issue vaginated tit creature. One of the Four Billion. How special they must feel to be so thoroughly common an biological occurrence.
Pride in an Accident of Birth, rather than in the product of achievement or content of character, is the first requirement any aspiring fascist has to fulfill.
Yes!!!! The entire indian freedom revolution history has been revolving around Gandhi for so long. Savarkar didn't jump out of small boat window and had french petition for his freedom. He was a man who British were really afraid of. Tilak was so threatening that they had him in arrest. Shastriji, bankimchandra pal, chaphekar brothers, bhagat singh risked their life and limb for freedom. So many more to count. They terrorized the British. So many of our grandfather's and grandmother's rebelled.
Yes and why do you think society promotes Ghandi over all the others? It is in Power’s interest that you think they won’t respond to violence.
Savarkar was a hindu nationalist that continually apologized to the British, so that he wouldn't be punished, hes also the founding father of the Hindu nationalist movement which is a fascist movement primarily spearheaded by upper class hindus to divide India on communal lines of hindu and muslim , rather then caste lines which are more indicative of class which plagued historical and modern day india . The current modi government are a continuation of his philosophies.
In contrast, bhagat singh was a communist that was hung by the British and used his court trial's to further the Indian independence movement, he never broke and stood by the things he believed in until he was hung.
To compare these two is a disgusting act , as it insinuates that they were equal in any way .
One wanted to set up his own status quo and the other wanted emancipation for all.
Have you read any of his works or are just going off on Gandhian propoganda of besmirching his name? He was jailed in Andaman and faced the most inhumane torture. What would have you done in similar circumstances? Read, educate yourself before just going on. Read his complet, unabridged works and then get back to me.
@Krishna Jani Weird fascists, asking me to read the works of a loser who actively tried to undermine the Independence movement to create a Hindu state . Also , best buds with gandhi's assassin.
@Aditya Chavarkar average liberal sees that a movement has millions of people with many influences , trys to give all the credit to two people.
I just checked the Wikipedia entry for Django and literally cried tears of joy seen Abigail Thorn listed among the starring roles. Seriously, congrats - I am so excited!
Quick correction at 8:49, the French revolution occurred towards the end of the 18th century, not the 19th. The following part about Kant also occurs in the 18th century, for reference, he died in 1804 at the very beginning of the 19th century. That also happens to be the year that Napoleon became emperor.
The line about how she's being "silenced" while on numerous shows was amazing!
For real, that part nailed it. It's amazing how so many "silenced" and "canceled" individuals keep finding themselves on television and with best selling books or sold-out events
I laughed out so hard on that part XD the best selling book at the end made me fall off my chair
Abs is Brilliant💜🥰
@@hitthegoat Survivorship bias.
@@hitthegoat You know its a chilling effect, there are so many people who got fired, or was disbarred from speaking in universities, or got harrassed for having a conservative view, the fact the right picks these people up and saves them from the Witch Hunt that rivals the McCarthy Erais a response to the vile actions of the left initially.
Case in point, Kyle Rittenhouse, who was justified by the truth and the facts of the case, was still vilinized and people tried to remove him from his university and companies even disbarred themselves from even stating his name.
As a Ukrainian, who has Belarus and Russia as neighbors, for the last ten years I saw a lot of protests and different media coverages of said protests. All I can say is - yes. The definition of 'violence' and who has a right to do it is magical as a f*ing unicorn.
PS offtopic. Abigail, you look amazing in gold ⭐
Oh, a fellow Ukrainian on Abigail's channel! Hi!
Ukrainian Philosophy Tube fans unite!!
Exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxacccctly
love how you can put these really clever subtleties in your character dialogues but at the same time have characters named "Baroness Plantation Warcrimes". a little something for everyone
Thank you for mentioning Simone Weil! I'm obsessed with her
Honestly, this video really emphasized to me how much we lose out by demonizing hypocrisy as much as we do.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that hypocrisy is good actually, or even neutral. But just that we treat it like murder, when it's really more akin to speeding. No one's ideologically pure, everyone has "rules for thee not for me" in them, because philosophical purity tends to only have two states: You're either putting in utterly massive amounts of emotional and mental work in order to maintain that purity, or you're a fucking sociopath that has no moral standards at all. The intense focus we tend to place on hypocrisy just tends to give cover to those who just want to be shitty as much as possible, like it's somehow more noble for them to be an asshole because they're ideologically pure about it than it is to have those icky standards that we can't hold to all of the time because we're fucking people.
Sometimes “being a hypocrite” just means they’re still working things out.
That’s true, morality to an excess just gives villains (someone obsessed with oil and gas power) a excuse to be bad as possible because at least they aren’t hypocritical, and somehow everyone else who tries to be as moral as possible are sociopaths, because they think blockading a pipeline construction project is ok, even though they also want cheap energy.
most people aren't morally consistent. Hypocrisy is pretty normal and I don't know anyone who hasn't done it.
You make some good points I haven't thought about before.
@@0ptimuscrime This is basically a paraphrased quote from The Stormlight Archive
funnily, the “afd doesn‘t like the coal because it‘s brown“-joke actually doesn‘t work in germany, because we associate nazis with the colour brown, so that should actually be a plus for the afd.
yup that took me a second as well 😅
I understood it as "having trouble with *burning* something brown". The AFD likes its brown ideology, so it doesn't want something in such a wonderful colour to be burned.
eh, that'd still fly imo if you go "Das einzige was die AfD nicht an der Kohle mag, ist dass sie braun ist" then the thrust of it is pretty clear. If you really want to be sure you can say that the coal is black, which is inaccurate to the coal mined in Garzweiler, but that's comparatively minor as far as setups for jokes go.
@@matthiasschauer3451 You can also approach it the other way around and say that the only thing they don't like about it is that it isn't white.
Also coal isn't whatsoever brown. It's black. There's even a phrase about how black it is. "As black as coal"
Abby: “…literally longer than I’ve been alive.”
Me: *cries in geriatric millennial*
Weeps in senior generation x
Laments in cremated boomer
Shut up. I'm 43 years old and swallow my tears like the grown up old lady I am.
Me: **sniffs** in Gen-X I'm 20!! I'm so old.. :( Or at least I feel it... My body aches and sometimes people call me "Old Man"
@@bookaholicblue2169 I know, when did we become senior? It's so WEIRD...
As a pacifist; having been forced to do 3 years of military service, realizing why exactly the service was such a struggle - oh, it's called being pacifist; i really appreciate this video and it's breakdowns. Definitely going to give it a few more watches to let it sink in comprehensively. Thanks for giving me a place to turn to when doubt and confusion about violence and my place in it come.
(Recommend watching this with the CC turned on. A lot of worked went into it to add some more contextual tid-bits in the end of the vid)
There is not much people that want and like wars. Peace is universal value. But wanting to preserve peace is different thing than pacifism - when we talk about pacifism, we need to remember it's history, what was the influence of pacifist movement on the societies where this movement had some strength.
And legacy of pacifism is not something that someone could be proud of. Its the legacy of being useful idiots for nazi war machine in construction.
As Orwell said in those times "Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.".
@@prkp7248 never said i was proud of it. If anything, it's an uncomfortable ideal.
Was your whole point to call me out on it? Label me an enabler of evils?
@@Jackie_Tikki_Tavi no, I don't want to call you that. I just wanted to add something.
Why were you forced? Compulsory service where you live?
@@HERO_DREAMER yes, it is the law that come 18 you are enlisted. Israel do be like that
Abigail: "France in the 18th Century was an absolute-"
Me: "Clusterfuck."
Abigail: "Monarchy."
Me: "Oh. Also that."
🥔🥔
French history student here, it was both. honestly it's a wonder the revolution didn't happen sooner than it did.
@@elilass8410 they chose the non violent actions or non action at all, I guess?
Renforces the core idea of the video if true.
“As we are all aware, the UK’s monarchy is kept alive by everyone’s burning desire to CLUSTERFUCK THE QUEEN!”
This video reminded me of a quote by Mark Twain.
“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror-that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
Great quote, this could appply to so many things. First thing that comes to mind is the environment and especially Chernobyl, and the way that one event scared people into adopting fossil fuels power plants, which are way worse in the long run. Also any other necessary violent protests in general, like the black panthers, the suffragettes, stonewall, etc.
I was there at the Ende Gelände Protest ( DOnt worry police took my personal info and I havent heard from them since) and I gotta say the frevor with which the Vattenfall spokesperson ripped the megafone from one of the policecoordinators hands to threaten us with all the charges that will be pushed against us was something to behold, kinda reminded me of the scene from the extended cut of lord of the rings where the mouth of suaron steps out to threaten the combined gondorian forces. Also 2 policemen complained about my weight when they carried me off.
How did the police act when they broke up your protest anyway? I mean I here about it and Vattenfalls reaction (although form what I gathered the protest was decribd as peaceful although there was a substatil amount of money lost due to the interrupting of work). But all I know about the police action was that they "dispersed" the protest and had to carry some people of.
@@marcelinio9988 so i was part of a group that got in which was surrounded by police pretty fast and not at the big coal harvesters. Before we got surronded and before even nearing the outer brim of the mine, we had some encounters with policeforces that created barricades and sprayed pepperspray, the long range kind into crowds of protestesters indiscrimitly even hitting journalists and red cross jacket wearing emerceny responders. That was the first really violent thing that happend the second was the police helicopter that by flying low blasted us with sand and debris. The sand ín the mine is mildly radioctive thats why we wore those paintersuits you see in the videos it was to prevent to much sand to rub on our skin or get into crevices or openings and such. So the helicopter thing was another shitty thing to do. not much happend after we were surrunded tho , we played our drums, sang songs and chants and were eventually carried out after wich they aksed us to give them our personal info and such after which they released us close to one of the roadsl leading to the mine.
the only "Gewalttaten" I witnessed from protesters myself were some maybe 20 or so individuals who damaged police vehicles , kicking against the side mirrors and such.
@@YeoldRagnaris thanks for the answer I was curious.
@@YeoldRagnaris Is this the Swedish Vattenfall? Got any video of all this. i missed it. I'm in Sweden and will be glad to change my elec supplier if they had anything to do with this.
Oh my God how did I not know about this channel?!?!! You are now my favorite TH-camr!!!
This was a really great video, so much food for thought. I think "nonviolence" in protest is often deployed as an optics thing, where the protesters want to be morally unimpeachable in the eyes of a hostile system (government/police/press etc). But the crowd itself, the disagreement, the act of protest-even peaceful-is to naysayers already violent.
True. I was shocked how many USA "patriots" are against even the concept of protest, when it was hammered into me that our system, which they are presumably supposed to be patriotic for, involved protest as a key element many times. People get offended at the very idea of someone on the street holding a sign. I think it's simply selfishness. They don't want to be made aware of a problem, because it naturally prompts them to care about it in some way, and people in the usa are apparently violently hypersensitive to anything that asks them to care about literally anything, to the point where they are comfortable hitting ME PERSONALLY with a truck for the crime of awareness campaigning.
I think conservative Americans hate protests for the same reason I hate getting on the scale: they don't want to be reminded of how bad it really is
I think one of the reasons that nonviolent protests are both crucial to but also hated by the rest of the society is two fold:
1) The very act of protest disrupts lives. For some this is an inconvenience: a delay getting to work, a small increase in price for a luxury item, etc. For others, it can be life-threatening: closed roads that mean an ambulance can't get through or medical supplies delivered, the impoverished worker whose job is at risk by any amount of tardiness, the worker who is just trying to do a job in order to put food on the table. With large corporations or state-run media, it is very easy for those who are inconvenienced to be led that the only people responsible for their hardships are those who are protesting.
2) It is the fear of guilt. Not guilt itself, but the fear that you might be guilty, too. You see people protesting the extraction of fossil fuels, but you are someone who drives a gas-guzzling vehicle, whether for recreation or for work, and you fear that you are part of the problem. No one WANTS to be part of the problem. No one wants to be "them": "THEY are bad people, they do bad things, I can't be one of them, because if I was one of them then I would be bad, and I can't be bad, I'm me, not them." This fear makes it easy for people to be fed a narrative: the protesters are in the wrong because they've caused massive 'violence' and resisted arrest when the cops came to break up the angry mob. This narrative is palatable: it sweeps over the fact that the police might have used physical violence first, without warning or against proper procedure, but because it makes the protesters the bad guys, it means that what they were protesting against couldn't possible be wrong.
And then comes the paradoxical rub: people general like the idea of individuals standing up to unjust authority, but don't like when they have to experience that. It breaks the world view that the world is orderly and perfect. This is especially true for fundamentalists, who can be described as believing that the world is the way it should be and should not be changed. Protests break that facade, causing doubt, and so a circular logic is built: the only things that should be changed are the things that I agree should be changed, and since I don't think anything needs to be changed that means nothing should be changed. Round and round that goes until something breaks the cycle, usually something directly in that person's life: didn't believe in gay rights until their child is LGBTQ+, didn't believe in unions until their job got outsourced, didn't believe in environmental protection until their water supply got ruined. They cannot approve of protesting, whether it's violent or nonviolent, until the issue is directly unavoidable.
With the creation of mass-media and near-instant communication, these issues can be seen to be global issues, affecting everyone, and how badly some places have it while showing the privilege in others. Those who stand to (in their eyes) lose the most are those with massive amounts of capital, and so they use those forms of mass-media to try to control the narrative or dissuade discourse: we saw this here in America most easily with the Sinclair Group and the "station statement" they made all of the stations in their network read, verbatim. Those stations play to a captive audience, those who have no secondary source of information or ability to fact check what they're being told. We take it as granted that people in the Western world can look up and become informed on any topic, but that is far from the truth: not only can it be physically impossible, it also requires a level of scrutiny and critical analysis that is taught in education. But here in the USA the fundamentalists have gutted public education wherever they could, which has both brought around uninformed populaces, or misinformed populations, like Q-supporters who *think* they know what they've researched, but don't have the tools to critically analyze or evaluate the data or the sources for that data.
All this to say: nonviolence is a tool for both the oppressed and the oppressor, depending on who is control the distribution of information.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk XD
@@ElMonoFuerte yeah pretty much all of this! being an american is to be subject to intense misinformation campaigns, and to be told to skate on the ice under which everyone is drowning, and being in turn abandoned when we fall in ourselves. I wish I understood why people are so desperately reactionary against even just the idea of being in the wrong. It's really not that scary to be wrong. I'm wrong all the time. I've hurt people, even. That doesn't make me a bad person. What's up with that stance not being normal?
@@Queer_Nerd_For_Human_Justice the trick is in christian fundamentalism it *is* bad to be wrong. To be wrong is to go against GOD and (because of incorrect interpretations of the Bible) that means you're going to HELL. If you're sick, disabled, poor, etc you must be these bad things because GOD is unhappy with you. So on and so on: take a look at the Prosperity Gospel and it's hold on Christian fundamentalism and you REALLY understand conservative America.
can we talk about the Hong Kong protests? because when they started, I was following them on Australian media. And the media - that I saw - was totally on the side of the protesters... until the protests turned violent. Then all of a sudden, the protests weren't worth covering anymore. They were all like, that's wrong. We don't approve. And it's easy to pronounce a people as morally wrong from your ivory tower, but if you were plucked from your tower and put in the same position as the protesters, I bet you'd change your tune pretty quickly.
Their cause hadn't changed. it's just that they were driven to violence by circumstance, it doesn't make their cause less worthy. It just shows the cause itself was never the most important thing.
I'd quite like to know the history of how nonviolence became the moral high ground in the west, how violence became such a dealbreaker that as soon as it starts, people just turn off their brain and automatically call the violent protesters the bad people. was it the system convincing people of this? was it to do with 9/11? how did we get from things like the French and American Revolutions, to where we are now?
Honk Kong protests went to shit the moment Rona first popped up and people in HK started to say protesters started to go "missing" then. E-Sports companies and even YT itself sided with China. A lot of people called them out until MONEY got in the way then people got real quiet and then supportive of China even though they were kicking the shit out of the protesters.
@@Dan_1348 The problem is HK was a British control state, So HK wanted to keep it's freedom which "The mainland" went "I want what over there ignoring their freedom"
@@Dan_1348 I thought similarly until recently. State violence is better than non-state violence because state violence is (ideally) democratically supported. Non-state violence is not representative of the will of the people, and so is bad. But, let me ask you this: would you support political violence against a state which democratically committed genocide? Like, if the state is performing a morally abhorrent act, should you resist that state, even if that state is perfectly democratically representative?
@@Dan_1348 I mean that example certainly fits neatly with a bow. But not all political scenarios are equal. I think it's naive to think we've reached some idealic point in history that is the end of major political violence exacted by non-state actors to reach a goal that is "justified" morally. History is cyclical, perhaps we are in the lull before the storm, where explicit "violence" is seen as ineffective or bad by most? Would we not be just in overthrowing a political economy that willfully imiserates billions and will kill our planet? Depends on your perspective, obviously. But I don't think we can presume that the prescription or means will be that of "peaceful" democracy. Many of history's most powerful sea changes of political economic philosophy were explicitly "violent" in the colloquial sense. Today the interconnected monied interests and their survival as this status requires the status quo. Do you think they will go peacefully? Or should we just accept our lot? The impossible often seems like it until it happens.
@@Dan_1348 ok, and in situations like HK where democracy is being dismantled and the state is using violence to enforce autocracy?
My thesis was on nonviolence, so I was super excited to see you did a video on this! Super interesting video :D, love how you didn't start from the traditional place of ghandian nonviolence but instead related it to some more modern times and went directly into the difficult questions of "does this work" and "can people actually act nonviolently"
It’s interesting to see that an academic can just do what they really want and finally it’s becoming ‘cool’ for younger people, gives me hope for future advocacy
The Simone Weil quote about violence turning people into things reminded me of my favorite quotes from Terry Pratchett, from his book Carpe Jugulum which is very relevant since it's largely about violent state oppression and rebellion against it.
"'There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.'
'It's a lot more complicated than that -'
'No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.'"
Terry was bloody sneaky and honest. GNU
Pratchett had an amazing knack for being able to make serious, thought provoking observations in the middle of a humorous settings and scene. I think my personal favorite was Death's speech about 'Little Lies' at the end of Hogfather.
Seen a lot of cool quotes from that guys books and now i wanna read them. What should I read first?
@@corvid8461 That's a complicated question. I recommend "Small Gods" as a good standalone story.
@@DontMockMySmock thanks!
Absolutely love the philosophical content present in all of Abigail's pieces, but I legitimately HAD to pause the video at "Baroness Plantation Warrcrimes" 😂😂😂
I loved that bit. It's so accurate when hearing some of these people talk though.
Abigail, I really wanted to thank you for the care you put on your subtitles. I need them and is very rare to see chanels with good subtitles (the automatic ones never até perfect and do not explain things like music and etc) so I am really glad you do this in your videos.
Agree. I vastly prefer having the option of subtitles, since I'm better at learning and remembering stuff i see visually rather than auditory.
The unfortunate reality of our world, is that we have to fight tooth and nail to make change happen. The people who benefit from the status quo, will never allow their power to be voted or demonstrated away.
@@Praisethesunson well said Sunbro
@@Praisethesunson \[+]/ Based and sunpilled?!
The only way to get power is to strive for it. If the ability or opportunity to do something a certain way is given to you, it is not power, but merely permission, from someone else who has the true power.
@@cambriaofthevastoceans6721 You won’t do shit. Until people are willing to take a bullet, or dish a bullet for what they believe in, then the status quo is here to stay.
@@ashtonmilkyway k. Not sure why you're agressively agreeing with my point.
29:55 "They want to silence us! I heard how Baroness Warcrimes was ruthlessly silenced when I saw her on BBC Newsnight, and heard her on Radio 4, and 2, and Women's Hour, and read her in the Guardian, Observer, Spectator, Telegraph, and her new book!"
Your profile pic jumpscared me
I remember reading "Zur Kritik von Gewalt" from Walter Benjamin and our profesor saying "this will probably be the most difficult text you will read here" so I was really excited to see this one summarized and used in the video so smartly and concisely (specifically about the divine violence, which was very confusing to me). Thank you so much for the greet and thought-inspiring video, I really feel like it helped me grasp some really complicated concepts a bit better!
watching this video in atlanta where the stop cop city and defend the atlanta forest movements are simultaneously happening, protesters have been falsely accused and arrested for domestic terrorism, and some remain in prison. when i saw that quote at 3:40 it made me think of the narrative in my city where protesters are often accused of inciting violence, and one small step across that line while the movement is growing can result in an explosion of false arrests, police violence, and grief. shit, even i ended up on a news headline titled "protesters arrested for domestic terrorism" while pictured holding a candle at a vigil for a community member who was killed by a police officer. meanwhile, articles are being written defending the construction of the police training center, constantly controlling the narrative on how people like my parents understand the situation. being even somewhat associated with the movement can look bad for your individual reputation in a digital age. it's shameful that this narrative of violence is put over environmentalism here.
for more context, atlanta police training center is a $109 million dollar project, a mock city that atlanta police foundation is constructing in the south river forest. more police training as a direct response to 2020 uprisings in order to crowd control, resulting in direct environmental impacts that are already happening as this is actively being built. low income neighborhoods in dekalb county have had unprecedented floods during storms recently. it's disgusting
That Simone Weil quote (31:22) was profoundly moving. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett (via Granny Weatherwax) defining sin as "treating people as things, including yourself"; I wonder if he read and was influenced by Weil. Either way, as much as I've always loved the Pratchett quote, Weil's rumination on what that means for a person hit me harder and truly it brought it home.
Weil is herself echoing a line of thought that goes back at least as far as Augustine in the 4th/5thC. One of the most influential formulations came from Kant, who once articulated his 'categorical imperative' as: "Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means."
This hit me too, somehow the quote brought me to tears thinking about people who have to live as things everyday and for whom their souls is every day violated. The marginalized people in the countries I've been to... they are avoid looking at people in the eye... (and no, I don't mean countries like Japan, where this is cultural, I mean places like the US and Peru where there is a clear divide about who is comfortable looking at you in the eye and who is not)
That inner tension you described was very relatable for me. As someone who is acutely aware of the problems faced and feels that more could be done about it, I often ask myself why I don’t participate in more drastic actions. I volunteer my time every week for things like food banks and (hopefully one day) wildlife conservation, but as for the bigger movements, I find myself hesitant.
Part of me condemns myself as a coward and a hypocrite and the other half points out that I’d be crap at the big stuff since I’ve never broken a law in my life, hate confrontation and have other life ambitions to think about. I’m also an actor and want to be a writer one day and I feel getting involved in those kinds of things would seriously damage my chances (especially if I’m injured or killed)
Eventually I square the circle by realising I can put those themes and ideas into my work with the hope of inspiring people who would actually know how to do that stuff, but sometimes that just feels like a cop out and I go round and round in circles until hitting burnout.
So yeah, not sure if I have anything major to add to the discussion other than just generally vibing with it, but I felt compelled to put these thoughts down.
Thanks for another wonderful discussion!
q
If you haven’t watched Bo Burnham’s Inside, you should. Definitely touches on how yes, art is definitely a cop-out. It further touches on how whether or not that is good, bad, or otherwise, sometimes life is too fucked to do anything at all, so doing something is another option that is also fine-ish.
That’s what I gathered at least. Check it out.
I have watched it and my feelings are extremely mixed, verging more on the negative.
I think he’s certainly got a point in some areas and it’s very well made, but the overly bleak tone he sets is kinda the opposite of everything I think art should be doing right now and the message about art being a cop out is one I really can’t get behind. Art CAN be a cop out, but it isn’t inherently one.
I know I said I sometimes criticise myself by saying similar things, but I don’t truly believe it deep down. I think art is vital and can hold revolutionary potential, just not in ways that are clearly visible. It can reflect and influence the mindsets of the people who come into contact with it, and in doing so start a chain reaction in their minds which can go on to affect the minds of others and therefore the outside world as a whole. It may not be causing direct changes in policy, but it has the power to make direct changes in policy feel more possible and desirable if you catch my drift.
Stuff like Inside, while almost certainly helping some people, I personally feel is kinda doing the worst possible thing that the form could be doing. The whole thing felt to me like an invitation to and celebration of giving up. I’m not saying that everything should be sunshine and rainbows or else it’s dooming the world (my own works, such as they are, are rarely fun romps) but that kind of resigned pessimism is exactly what the ruling classes are counting on us to feel and on my good days I’m able to remind myself that, while I may not be cut out for traditional political action, it isn’t pointless to try and improve the mental landscape. After all, it’s from the personal emotional world that large scale change begins.
Honestly, I was just kinda working out my feelings with the first comment. Ultimately, I think I disagree with that anxious bit of myself. 😅
@@Paul_M_Bradley Don't think of it as cop-out. Do what you can and that should be all anyone expects of you. We're at a point where swaying hearts and minds is just as important as direct action. There's a LOT of ignorance out there that can be dispelled to create allies and art is great for that. Also given the political climate rushing in unsure can put you or someone else in danger. All that said, if you're still feeling unsure one way or the other there are ways of participating without getting in the way that may also be useful for your art.
Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived
I have always said that deprivation (the hoarding of resources, for example) is the most subtle form of violence. Thanks for this. 💜
I agree. But is it subtle or do property relations mystify relations of violence?
@@davidgalazin6141 it's a form of edit violence where capitalism and private property laws backed by the violence of police puts a person in such a situation where they - mostly even subconsciously - understand that there is nothing they can do that won't result in the state using violence to suppress their actions. So they, """voluntarily""", submit to it and may even die as a result of malnutrition, exposure (if homeless), untreated illness etc. And it's very convenient, because for liberals there is no problem. Since the state didn't physically murder them, it's no one's fault, certainly not the state and capitalism's. Many of them will blame the individual, even.
Which is why it's extremely important to recognize the conditions that form as a result of capitalism (and its enforcer, the state) as violence, even if that violence is indirect, simply a threat of violence that forces people into conditions where they suffer or even die. People working themselves half to death, and still unable to provide reasonable sustenance and shelter because of private property laws is not direct violence, but it's violence nonetheless, because going against it *will* result in direct violence.
So capitalism and private property is about as voluntary and non-violent as me pointing a gun at you and telling you to do X which then results in injury or death. Technically I never physically assaulted you, you ""voluntarily"" did X. But it was the implied "or else..!" that made you do it, and the same goes for capitalism.
It’s probably been said on this channel before, but I greatly appreciate you listing all the references under the vid! I’m a sucker for diving down the rabbit hole (several book purchase will be necessary)!
This is absolutely wonderful; one of your best yet. It's a great distillation of so much complexity!
How have you watched it already?
@@Chesepeakeoutdoors patrion
How did you comment this 2 days ago?
patreon
"How noviolence protects the state" by Peter Gelderloos is a good examination of this subject matter for sure, not focused on climate change but still in the same wheel house.
Peter Gelderloos is one of the best contemporary theorists, in general
Hoping boycotting and nonviolent striking isn't considered "violence".
I no longer remember the episode or the guest, but I remember listening to an episode of the Ezra Klein Show awhile back about violence and politics and the guest said, paraphrasing: "People are looking for a tool that has no blood on it to make change, but that tool doesn't exist, everything has some blood on it" and I'm still thinking about it constantly, months after first hearing it.
i'm german, and i'm literally wheezing whenever you say massiven kriminellen gewalttaten, it's so goddamn funny
("it was massiven, and it was kriminellen, but was it gewalttaten" i cant lmao)
also thanks for making fun of the alternative für deutschland, they're shit
great channel, great video, lovely stuff, will continue to binge your channel like i started doing a few days ago, thanks a lot for this
Abigail is such a brilliant writer. I'm blown away every time.
Congratulations on 1 million subscribers. Thank you so much for what you do.
Here is me, a climate pessimist in a third world country that is one of the hardest hit by climate change even though contributing nothing to cause it..
*Shivers in existential dread*
We're fighting for you too sibling from the global south (i guess). Blocking one coal/gas power station at a time
There was a book I read in high school called "A Long Way Gone: the Memoirs of a Boy Soldier." It's (you guessed it) a memoir of the author's experiences in Sierre Leone's civil war, and there's one part that always stuck out to me and probably relates to this video.
At one point, the capital of Sierre Leone, Freetown, is put under siege by the rebels and the city becomes a battlefield. In the middle of it, there are civilians who are sick of all the fighting and want the war to end, or at leave the city out of it. So they organize into demonstrations, holding white banners and flags and protest against the war peacefully. And every time, the non-violent protesters are shot and killed by either the government or the rebels.
It's like a political form of natural selection, where the ones who were willing to kill for what they want were the only ones left as opposed to the ones unwilling to kill who were now dead.
I lived through the Sixties. As time marches on, I see the revision credit non-violence that key driver of justice for the Afro-American community and other minorities but the role of violence cannot be ignored when the cities of the U.S. burn - especially in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Literally nothing has gotten better for the black community since King appeared on the scene. Lol
@@lakobosmerkel I hear you. I wanna argue with that but me in my white privilege I know better when to STFU and listen. I want to be an ally in the struggle for the liberation of all, always. May my grandchildren live to see the dawn.
@@lakobosmerkel Bull-fucking-shit
So you’ll burn cities to the ground to support your cause, by ruining the lives of people when you destroy their homes and businesses?
@@larrybeckham6652 lmao
I think in the whole Kant part it would be important to discuss the fact that most people are not given a choice about their social contract with the state. They are just born into it. Is it right to judge them essentially for not rebelling the moment they become capable of rational thought (what exact number of life years would that be?)?
I think the flaw in Kant's perspective is that he sees the state as a social contract - akin to a referee in a sports game, where all teams agree to a set of rules and trust the referee to enforce those rules evenly.
Feudalism (and capitalism) are not a sports game though. They aren't classes coming together to agree on a set of rules and trusting a state to enforce those rules evenly. Rather, they are systems where one class forces it's will upon every other class - and the state (along with the monopoly on violence granted by the state) is the tool they use to do so. The rules are not agreed upon by classes, they are decided upon by the ruling class and enforced in whatever manner benefits the ruling class the most at any given time.
This video really made me realise that the "natural state" is a ridiculous idea and that every society that is too big for everyone in the group to know each other was probably brought together by force and only gradually became less violent as the people accepted their fate and the children being born simply didn't know better
@@rand0m508 The historical reality of state-formation is that people "voluntarily" surrender to the rule of their conqueror, seeing that the latter's violence makes resistance futile. When the idealistic social-contract theorists talk about free people "voluntarily coming together and agreeing to be ruled", that's a boot-munching spin on subordination.
@@lincawebot3681 It absolutely does not. It makes it even worse.
@@lincawebot3681 You're mistaking what part I have an issue with. I agree that the state is garbage - but capitalism, in any form, is inherently exploitative. Anarcho-capitalism is worse because it eliminates the admittedly weak regulations that protects workers and makes it a lot easier for corporations to build monopolies. State-batacked capitalism is terrible, but "stateless" capitalism is far worse - under anarcho-capitalism, capitalists still have all of the power over workers. The difference is that instead of controlling a formalized state with cops and a military that maintains their monopoly on violence, they will pay private mercenaries to do so. Worse, company towns.
The reason the state exists in the first place is to deal with class antagonism and conflict - the capitalist class and the working class have goals that are directly at odds with one another and a state, whether it's a formal one with cops and a military or an informal one with private mercenaries, will *always* be established by one of them in order to oppress the other.
If you want a stateless society, you need a classless society first - in the modern world, that means either the capitalist class or the working class must be eliminated. And since the capitalist class only survives by exploiting the labor of the working class, it's the capitalist class that must be eliminated - and with it, capitalism as a whole.
9:18 They actually did write strong worded letters during the french revolution. In january 1789 Louis XVI seeing how people were pissed wrote a decree that every town was to congregate in the church and the clergy was to write down everyone's complains in "cahiers de doleances" (grievances notebooks). It didn't help him much but as you can guess these are precious documents for historians to understand the country's state of mind, town by town, at the time.
The initial statements quoted from Malm, particularly his assessment that peaceful protests have failed and violent ones are necessary, actually corresponds quite closely to the differently focused book called the Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel. In that book, Scheidel speaks of how peaceful measures have historically failed to have any measurable lasting impact on economic inequality, while violent means (especially massive scale violent means) are the only ones to have shown measurable impacts that levelled economic inequality.
The idea that violent means are likely to be the only result to actually change a circumstance definitely has some basis, whether or not it is morally tenable.
Who gave Abby the right to look so stunning in all of her thumbnails? My gay self can't handle it
Right? She makes a wonderful Athena
I really enjoy seeing what new aesthetically pleasing costume choices she's made. Very much do like Abby as Athena and her......lets say "Dark Mademoiselle" outfit is really killing it.
@@Rolando_Cueva Well if we're being technical I'm pretty sure I'm bi and probably identify as female but I don't feel like that made for as good of a point.
I was quite literally writing my final research design on political violence and activism, and I was scratching my head on how I should continue. Then Abigail dropped this video and literally all my problems were solved.
Man, I love Massiven Kriminellen Gewalttaten. Their 4th album really spoke to me on a physical level.
As an Alsacian person who's first languages are both German and French i must say I've never hear such a hot accent in French and such a scary accent in German. Thank you so much for all your videos, they're so interesting and fun! The way you explain philosophy really helps understanding and enjoying at the same time!
Fabulous stuff! Wonderfully interesting, thought provoking and funny. The mention of "Baroness Plantation-Warcimes" had me in absolute stitches!
One of the fascinating things about non-violent resistance is how it delegitimizes the violence of the state by making it look vulgar and ridiculous. A government putting down “rioting anarchists” looks a lot more silly and just plain evil when it’s really a bunch of ordinary Lithuanians singing in the city square, staring down a line of Soviet tanks.
Sometimes it’s not about reclaiming violence, but revealing the crude absurdity of the violence in power.
Innuendo Studios made a really thought-provoking video on this topic which I recommend. It's called "The Gandhi Trap" and is pretty short.
(edited because I got the title wrong, dumbass that I am)
This only works if people don't think the police are completely justified in violence even against non-violent protesters
It works, unless the news media decides to focus on those few violent fake or real protestors to portray them all as bad, tricking everyone into believing the protestors are all violent, so the police are justified to be as cruel as they want.
But it doesn't stop it from taking place. Who cares how it looks when the practical effects are that people get brutalized and die and the cause they went out to advocate for gets destroyed and villainized along with everyone involved?
This neoliberal obsession with moral purity and optics is the bane of all progress and actual change and justice. It's nothing but a narcissistic, self-obsession with one's own reputation. It disgusts me.
I hope this comment is mentioned during post mortem
Interesting timing for this episode. Adani recently began publishing "Activist Files" on social media depicting activists who had acted out against them as violent criminals. these included pictures and their full names. They ended one of these posts by appealing to the government for stronger action. Private internationally owned mining companies calling for a democratic government to punish their own citizens is just gross and creepy, not to mention dangerous.
If the people did similar posts about the executives responsible for the operations or the cops who arrested activists, wouldn't it be a crime? "Terroristic threats", "stalking", and a number of other crimes depending on the jurisdiction? Double-standards at work again.
The hypocrites... neoconservative Republicans constantly tout "deregulation" and "limited government..." but as soon as _they_ don't like something, they do everything they can to use that government to "defend themselves from vicious lib'ral violence," i.e., to punish anyone who disagrees.
You know... the values America was built on. Free speech for everyone on My Team.
(not that the USA is the only example of this; just the place I know best)
Honestly, not surprised I didn't hear about this. Just saddened.
We've been fighting Adani here in Australia for about a decade, but they still ended up building a new coal mine and didn't even get approval from First Nations consultants (which is using corrupt logic, but they couldn't even do that one thing to at least make us hate them less). Fuck Adani, and fuck the former Government who don't believe in Climate Change and allowed this. Thankfully, they were voted out yesterday!
One of my first classes at uni was on activism. The professor stressed non-violent yet targeted, direct action against the people who have the power to get you what you want, and how to leverage the power available to the masses against the power held by the elites.
She told us to get comfortable discussing power dynamics in society, to get creative thinking up ways to reach the specific goals of our protest, and to be prepared for the possibility that our civil disobedience may get us arrested.
Fun class.
"Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all-the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder." Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, on the violence of his police beating peaceful protesters at the Democratic National Convention, 1968. Dicky was not known as a very erudite speaker.
I mean, what he said ain’t wrong though.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror-that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain was an amazing wordsmith, incisive critics, and terrible philosopher.
“If you’re gonna use brain, you gotta use ALL brain” - words to live by, thank you Abi!
Using all your brain is often what happens in seizures
based
have y'all heard of tyre extinguishers? they deflate the tyres of SUV's in cities. its vandalism, but very legally grey and does no damage. just massively inconvenient for the owner