Metal Reviews

Name a violent revolution that didn't leave a vanguard that made its so intellectual objective a complete and utter bloodbath?

Removal of a violent regime without violence? Heck, name a nonviolent revolution! There were nonviolent elements in India, the US, the USSR... nonviolence works, but gets ignored due to all the violence around it, because people don't trust it enough.

Um, yes, the BNP repackaged itself and got elected, just like Nu Labour, just like both your parties over there which twist and turn depending on who they're appealing too. Repackaging is part and parcel of politics.

The left is the answer, of course, if it isn't too busy arguing amongst itself.

wait, what? My argument was that vanguard-party revolutions have historically led to a bunch of intellectuals taking power and taking measures necessary to hold that power; and that such revolutions are just the creation of a new ruling class. That means I don't like them. I think they're preferable to our system capitalism, but I still don't like them. To be honest I'm not sure what it is you're asking in that first paragraph.

So what you're saying is that you can't cite specific examples of nonviolent revolutions, yes?

I have no idea what you're saying here. I already said who is to blame (or more specifically, what), I know that repackaging is part of politics.

Heck, name a Communist government (true Commie, mind you, proper garden-of-Eden stuff) and I'll name you a nonviolent revolution. My side's easier, I'll tell you that; nonviolence has much more morality to it than replacing one ruling class with another.

Current states run by Communist governments:Nepal, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba. There might be more, these are the ones I know. The DPRK doesn't count; neither does China, seeing as neither are run by communist parties.

Let's see: Vietnam has a nominally communist government with more skews towards modern CCP-style authoritarian capitalism.

Nepal's Maoist party held a violent insurgency that was largely successful and have since established themselves in the republic as a force for meaningful reform and great leaps forward (no pun intended) in social policy, including gay marriage.

Laos's ruling Communist Party is moving towards the China model.

Castro betrayed the revolution ages ago; whether he'd always planned it or it was purely a result of the pressure brought to bear by years and years of economic embargo is beyond anyone's knowledge.

Lookee there, the best example of a proper Communist government was in the state of a violent revolution for years. Go figure.

EDIT- if you mean 'true commie' as in 'true classless state,' then there are no such states in existence currently.

Listen, this "violent vs nonviolent" stuff is missing the point.

Goat, we talked a while back about the US civil rights movement. You pointed to MLK and LBJ as examples of non-violent movements leading to great progress. But then, why did LBJ have to listen to MLK? Is it because he was moved by the arguments of the movement? Or was his hand forced because there were so many millions of black people in the US at the time that were clearly unwilling to go along with segregation and were very obviously prepared to use force? MLK becomes a figurehead, of course, and he is no doubt an inspirational figure. But there was a lot more going on at the time than just those speeches.

Ultimately, we can never really know for sure what role violence (or more likely the threat of it) plays in social change.

Re: vanguardism, not all revolutions have a vanguard. The French, for an example.

Wheee, that's what I mean. Until then, they're just violent thugs holding onto power and propelling their ideologies onto the populace.

Rio, whether LBJ was moved after his stony heart was melted or due to pragmatism (Eisenhower desegregated the armed forces, after all) like you said, there was more going on, I'm not arguing with that. It's a combination, but arguing (as I am) that nonviolence played a good part in it (what if the Black Panthers had been a bit more Hamas-y, what then? They'd have been more akin to the IRA circa 1900).

Regarding the black panthers, given how they were systematically targeted and murdered by J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO, I don't think it's really good to point to them when trying to make a point about nonviolent resistance being successful or whatever.

as for saying 'all communist states are illegitimate until they're classless utopias,' then that's classic 'liberal' twaddle that people use to dismiss communism; for one, it is entirely impossible to, in one stroke, completely dismantle the class system and create the community where 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' is hung over the entrance. Ergo; any such action that could be reasonably interpreted as leading towards this is, to the minds of these 'liberals,' illegitimate! Especially if violence is employed.

for that matter, what makes a government of a country 'legitimate?' America was created by violent revolution; does that mean its government is illegitimate, that the current government is made up of jackbooted thugs oppressing the public? How was Britain created? How about any of the countries in South America? They were colonized; they fought violent revolutions and now they are independent. Are they illegitimate? If not, why?

What, then, justifies violence? Is any state-sponsored violence justifiable? Is all non-state-sponsored violence unjustifiable? Is all violence that is in response to violence unjustifiable? Is violence that is approved of by the majority of people in a state justified? Is there no circumstance you see, none on this planet, that would justify violent revolt?

Is Evo Morales a legitimate socialist leader because he was elected, or is he not a legitimate socialist leader because his state isn't a classless communist utopia? How about Hugo Chavez? If the U.S. employed regime change in Venezuela, would Hugo Chavez be justified in creating a resistance movement that violently fought against the U.S. sponsored government? If the answer is yes, then why are communist revolutions against imperialism and the horrors perpetrated by the IMF illegitimate, given that they amount to a form of government enforced by the promise of sweet, sweet money?

Ideally, nonviolence means Just That.



Heh, something I never said, mark you; you're bringing legitimacy into it.

And all very well throwing examples at me, each is its own case, and bringing 'liberal twaddle' into it doesn't help support a violent revolutionary government, either. Bringing America into it - a place started by revolution, true, but not a place that made criminals out of its own populace and created thought crimes like most commie regimes do - doesn't help, either. You know damn well what I'm objecting to when I speak of 'violence'.

As for Chavez, there are plenty that consider him a dictator... no free press? No legitimacy, as far as I'm concerned.

Wow I want to just call bullshit on this. America has a representative democracy so it isn't a true democracy. Oh geeze. Just like there isn't a truly free market economy, there isn't a wholly communist political economy. As for the propelling ideologies onto the populace, wouldn't they need the people's support to some degree to be established in the first place?

no free reign for press owned by corporations which he screwed over in order to help the people would be a better way of phrasing it.

Yes, that's some dictator! What with how he was re-elected. 63%. That's a lot of percent, isn't it? Sure is a lot of percent. Some fucking 'dictator.'

And yeah, no free press, my ass. What do you think the government of Britain would do to a network that actively participated in a coup to seize power from the Parliament? Do you think they would do what Chavez did, which is not renew their broadcasting license and then not prosecute anyone, or would they all be fucking thrown in jail forever? Did you really even look into that incident or are you just touting it out of nowhere because you heard it and vaguely remember it as a Western criticism of Chavez?

To be honest, no, I'm not really sure what you're objecting to. Are you objecting to Pol Pot-style lunacy? Nobody supports that. Are you objecting to Soviet-style purges? The Soviet Union was an imperialist, nationalist power just as much as the U.S. is. What are you objecting to?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2yGzHfy7s

Obama talks about a Civillian security force (hints at it) to be as well funded as American Armed services. What do you all think of this considering America spends more on "civil defense" then all the free world combined? I smell a dictator.

What? With what's happening in Iran at the moment, you're honestly throwing an election result at me? FFS.

Zad, that was a fundamentally intellectually dishonest thing to say, an incredibly weak equivocation to make, and really just proves that you're completely committed to the Western mode of thought and as co-opted by its message as any devout New Labour voter.

Well, either that, or you just can't admit that you didn't look into the situation before judging it based on what snippets of news your pro-business media puts out.

I'd personally rather it was the latter, really.

Oh god what's happening in Iran happened nine years ago here! Oh shit their country is going to be fucked if they continue down that road.

Dead Machine:

Human Rights Watch good enough for you? Reporters Without Borders? As for the network 'actively participating' in a coup, running coverage of riots, refusing to broadcast pro-government propaganda and being thanked by the revolutionaries does not mean you have to curtail the freedom of the press like Chavez has done.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Hugo_Chávez

As for your nonsense about our "pro-business" press, ffs is all I have to say, you're sounding sillier than ever.

As long as we're talking about Human Rights Watch and using Wikipedia articles instead of actual knowledge, read the article about 'Criticism of Human Rights Watch.'

As for Reporters Without Borders, think about their bias for like... five minutes, and it will become obvious.

As for the press... I think an example would best illustrate the issue, don't you? Say, for example, a private security corporation that heavily funds CNN seized control of the U.S. government somehow for like... three days. In those three days, they dissolved Congress and the Constitution. While this is going on, CNN is portraying this as 'a victory for the people of the U.S,' giving friendly interviews to the C.E.O, and refusing to acknowledge it when the government is taken back by the Army and everything is made back to normal for multiple days.

What do you think would happen to CNN?

EDIT- Are you going to argue that news organizations don't have, for the most part, a very real and pronounced bias in favor of those who fund them and the places they get their money? Are you going to argue that there isn't a pervasive bias in the entire western world against everything the colonized nations do that doesn't precisely mimic what the western world wants them to do? Quite frankly I find it odd that you'd be so obtuse.

I'm not arguing that media outlets can be biased (a bit of Euro smugness here at the BBC being >>>> than anything your side of the Atlantic can come up with) or that HRW do criticise Israel and piss people off, but at my first point, which you've twisted, that Chavez is a dictatorial twat. An El Presidento with his own TV show, for god's sake... just because he doesn't regularly have people shot (that we know of) doesn't mean he has to be praised to the skies.

Goat, I'm certainly not a big Chavez admirer but your criticism of him is way unbalanced. The idea that there isn't a very healthy anti-Chavez media, and opposition presence in Venezuela is total nonsense.

Fine, HRW have issues with Venezuela, of course. But try comparing the list of allegations against Venezuela with those against their neighbours in the region (er, Colombia?) that are typically seen as good West-friendly democracies, or even HRW's report on the US itself, for example.

Now, I don't subscribe to the logic that we can't criticise one place because others might be worse. But don't you question the agendas of the people relentlessly finding flaws in Venezuelan democracy?? Hypocrisy.

Oh, I'd be perfectly happy to criticise the Columbian situation, and I'm sure some of the critics have ulterior motives. It just seems sometimes that Socialists are a bit too happy with Chavez, s'all.