How much activism will it take to challenge Trump?

[Elixir]

So, what's going to be your tune if he declares a "national emergency" and tries to cancel the election?

Biden/Sanders. I don't think it will be necessary to cancel the election.

You didn't answer the question.

*Edit: I guess you did, in that your answer including a clause about whether it would be "necessary" means that it could be considered a "necessity". Which seems to indicate that your talk about elections and voting him out is bad faith.

Of course, you do have an opportunity to contest that interpretation....

Guess you were right about the bad faith thing... Necessity is in the mind of the beholder - or in the case of Trump saying cancelling the election, it would be the mouth of the beholder.
And no, it won't be necessary to cancel the election because he can let it happen and declare it null and void if he doesn't like the result.

 

[Derec]

Business Insider quoting "activism experts" (political scientists from Harvard and philosophers from Yale!) about how to properly resist aUtHoRiTaRiAnIsM. Why not ask organizers, union members, actual protesters? These people wouldn't know activism if it hit them in their face.

It can actually be argued that large-scale and disrpuptive (and often violent) protests such as those organized by #BLM contributed to Trump being elected in the first place. Especially when Democrats were seen as siding with the rioters (Obama sent a WH representative to the funeral of a convenience store robber and his mother was invited to the Democratic Convention where Hillary was coronated).

 

[Derec]

A general strike of subway workers or truck drivers would get us Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, free college tuition, and whatever else we demand, in a matter of days.

Do you really think that? And this thread is supposed to be about protesting against Trump if he refuses to accept the result of elections or cancels the elections in the first place. It is not about trying to force adoption of extreme policies positions that would have snowball's chance in the middle of Castle Bravo's chance to getting passed by Congress even if Bernie Sanders were president.

 

[Elixir]

It can actually be argued that large-scale and disrpuptive (and often violent) protests such as those organized by #BLM contributed to Trump being elected in the first place.

No question. Fear of The Others was a primary driver of Republican turnout. The challenge for Republicans now is to simultaneously claim to be successfully eliminating the Threat of The Others, while keeping Fear of The Others up at a level that will still drive turnout.

 

[Derec]

No question. Fear of The Others was a primary driver of Republican turnout. The challenge for Republicans now is to simultaneously claim to be successfully eliminating the Threat of The Others, while keeping Fear of The Others up at a level that will still drive turnout.

I do not think that's right. It's not some amorphous "fear of the other", but fear of social unrest (riots, arson, looting, blocking highways) and the not unsubstantiated feeling that parts of the Democratic party are on the side of rioters.

 

[Angry Floof]

No question. Fear of The Others was a primary driver of Republican turnout. The challenge for Republicans now is to simultaneously claim to be successfully eliminating the Threat of The Others, while keeping Fear of The Others up at a level that will still drive turnout.

I do not think that's right. It's not some amorphous "fear of the other", but fear of social unrest (riots, arson, looting, blocking highways) and the not unsubstantiated feeling that parts of the Democratic party are on the side of rioters.

Translation: fear of pretend threats from The Other.

 

[Elixir]

No question. Fear of The Others was a primary driver of Republican turnout. The challenge for Republicans now is to simultaneously claim to be successfully eliminating the Threat of The Others, while keeping Fear of The Others up at a level that will still drive turnout.

I do not think that's right. It's not some amorphous "fear of the other", but fear of social unrest (riots, arson, looting, blocking highways) and the not unsubstantiated feeling that parts of the Democratic party are on the side of rioters.

Huh? The people threatening civil fucking war and violent armed insurrection if their orange cheeseburger disposal is deposed, are afraid of social unrest?

 

[Derec]

Huh? The people threatening civil fucking war and violent armed insurrection if their orange cheeseburger disposal is deposed, are afraid of social unrest?

Those people are the mirror image of the extremists on the Left. They are a tiny minority of the almost 63 million people voted that voted for Trump.

 

[Derec]

Translation: fear of pretend threats from The Other.

Not pretend. Left wing radicals have torched and looted several US cities in the heyday of the #BLM movement (2014-2016).

But even if it were pretend, it still could have caused the electoral shift I was talking about.

 

[Angry Floof]

Translation: fear of pretend threats from The Other.

Not pretend. Left wing radicals have torched and looted several US cities in the heyday of the #BLM movement (2014-2016).

But even if it were pretend, it still could have caused the electoral shift I was talking about.

Yeah, YUUUUGE threat there. Meanwhile, white supremacists and their greedy, fear mongering overlords are feeding the poor and standing up for democracy. That's the ticket!

 

[Elixir]

Huh? The people threatening civil fucking war and violent armed insurrection if their orange cheeseburger disposal is deposed, are afraid of social unrest?

Those people are the mirror image of the extremists on the Left. They are a tiny minority of the almost 63 million people voted that voted for Trump.

Hyuk! Da peeps that are doing riots, arson, looting, blocking highways are a tiny minority of the more than 187,000,000 eligible voters who didn't vote for Trump.
Lock your doors, Derec!

 

[Rhea]

Huh? The people threatening civil fucking war and violent armed insurrection if their orange cheeseburger disposal is deposed, are afraid of social unrest?

Those people are the mirror image of the extremists on the Left. They are a tiny minority of the almost 63 million people voted that voted for Trump.

Are you admitting that it's a tiny minority on both extremes and the concern about them is irrational - or are you sticking a Capital Haitch on some Hypocrisy?

 

[repoman]

Cesar Chavez was right about [insulting language removed - replace with strike-breakers] hurting unions.

 

[repoman]

Or you could harass a government worker as a congress person for carrying out what you voted for

https://mobile.twitter.com/whatisleftpod/status/1239047988112003072

 

[lpetrich]

How the world is proving Martin Luther King right about nonviolence - The Washington Post

“I left India more convinced than ever before that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.” – “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.,” edited by Clayborne Carson

...
Gandhi’s and King’s emphases on nonviolent resistance — in which unarmed people use a coordinated set of strikes, protests, boycotts or other actions to confront an opponent — are not without critics. Some critiques are based on a misunderstanding about what civil resistance is, while others doubt the ability of unarmed and suppressed people to organize and challenge a powerful opponent.

...
To many people, this conclusion may seem naive, but when we drilled into the data, we found that nonviolent resistance campaigns don’t succeed by melting the hearts of their opponents.

Instead, they get on average 11 times more participants than violent ones, and their greater ability to recruit includes support for reformers in existing regimes, and less retribution against former regime supporters like security forces, government bureaucrats, and economic elites.

Some data collections:
Major Episodes of Contention | University of Denver
NAVCO Data Project | University of Denver

Whereas the frequency of violent insurgencies — defined with a 1,000-battle death threshold — has declined since the 1970s, campaigns relying primarily on nonviolent resistance have skyrocketed. Note that these figures refer specifically to maximalist campaigns, meaning their goals are to remove the incumbent national leadership from power or to create territorial independence through secession or expulsion of a foreign military occupation or colonial power.

Nonviolent campaigns were rare until the 1940's, when they started to increase and eventually become dominant. Violent campaigns stayed roughly constant at around 35% until the 1970's, when they declined to around 10% in the present. Nonviolent campaigns started at around 3% in the 1940's, increased to 70% in the 1990's, then declined to around 30% most recently.

There may be a few reasons for this. First, state opponents may be learning and adapting to challenges from below. Although several decades ago, they may have underestimated the potential of people power to pose significant threats to their rule, they may now see mass nonviolent campaigns as truly threatening, devoting more resources to preventing them — perhaps following the implications of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s “Dictator’s Handbook” — or deploying “smart repression” to subvert them when they arise.

...
Second, activists employing methods of nonviolent action may be learning the wrong lessons from their contemporaries around the globe. For instance, one may be tempted to think, based on the news coverage of the mass demonstrations and strikes in Tunisia in 2010 and 2011, that three weeks’ worth of demonstrations could unseat a dictator.

But Tunisia had a lot of organized labor activity, and general strikes threatened to cripple the nation's economy.

"It is natural for activists to draw inspiration from others in similar situations, but this can often result in failure." - like in 1848, where many of the activists tried to imitate the rebellion against the French monarchy, with less success. Their opponents were more powerful, and they knew what was coming.

 

[lpetrich]

"Violent flank" tactics often do poorly, meaning that it is best to be 100% nonviolent.

Leveraging data on urban protests by black Americans during the 1960s, Wasow convincingly shows that a higher frequency of nonviolent protests led to higher support for “civil rights” as the primary issue of public concern in the United States, whereas a higher frequency of violent protests led to greater support for “law and order” as the primary issue. After 1965, as violent protests became more common, public opinion shifted away from support for civil rights and toward support for the police response, showing how the movement had ceased to expand its appeal among crucial pillars of support.

Supporting "law and order" was strongly correlated with support for the Republican Party, and Richard Nixon got very far with his "Southern strategy". Rioters were much easier to run against than nonviolent activists, and the mid-1960's race riots hurt the civil-rights movement badly.

It is very difficult to predict when nonviolent campaigns will emerge.

Unlike armed campaigns, coups or state collapse — all of which scholars are fairly good at predicting — nonviolent mass campaigns can happen almost anywhere for any reason. They often happen in places where scholars would expect it to be very difficult to mobilize dissent, much less to mobilize dissent effectively. And it’s not at all clear what might trigger them or make them stick.

How do nonviolent movements cope with repression?

They use quantitative data to argue that when the state uses one-sided violence or mass killings against unarmed demonstrations, the demonstrators can go on to succeed in the long run only when they are part of a larger, coordinated campaign.

Of course, some research casts doubt on the ability of nonviolent opposition to contend with highly sophisticated repressive regimes — particularly those with genocidal or politicidal ambitions.

...
But again, it is difficult to predict when such repressive bureaucracies will be able to compel the full loyalty of their subordinates in the face of a mass uprising — even in a seemingly impossible case such as in Syria. Moreover, In forthcoming work, Lee Smithey, Lester Kurtz, and collaborators find that regime repression against unarmed demonstrators can often backfire, by creating moral outrage, drawing in more participation, creating third-party support for the movement and accelerating security force defections.

Then this quote from MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

He also criticized "white moderates" for preferring "order" to justice.

 

[ZiprHead]

This virus will certainly put a damper on activism.

 

[repoman]

This virus will certainly put a damper on activism.

Especially if it comes back out in the fall.