"Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any"
As a result, a litany of think-pieces and condemnations from liberal media and politicians are making their rounds to make it clear how unacceptable and counterproductive any violence or rioting is, urging people to “listen to the other side,” and to use “legitimate means“ to fight Trump’s rise—ignoring the possibility of fascism in the US rising with it. Those who stray from this nonviolent narrative, like Emmet Rensin, an editor at Vox who tweeted that people should riot when Trump comes to town, face swift and punitive redress, urging them to fall back in line. Amidst the hot takes and denunciations from liberals, they all seem to miss a few key points. First, they misplace the blame. Second, they misunderstand the desired outcome from violent resistance and those protesting Trump in general. And third, they ignore the history of successful violent insurrection in the US, instead favoring the elementary school version of history in which nonviolence is the only means of struggle that’s ever achieved a thing.
Violent resistance matters. Riots can lead to major change (*note the irony of that hyperlink going to a Vox article). It’s not liberal politicians or masses that historians identify as the spark underlying the modern movement for LGBTQ equality. Nor was it a think piece from some smarmy liberal writer. It was the people who took to the streets during the Stonewall Uprising. It was the Watts Rebellion, not the Watts Battle of Ideas, that exposed the enduring systemic neglect, poverty, inequality, and racism faced by that community. Similarly, it was the LA Uprising, not the LA Protests, that led to significant changes in the Los Angeles Police Department. More recently, the Ferguson and Baltimore Uprisings both helped prompt the Justice Department to investigate their corrupt police forces. And since we’re talking about fascism, it’s worth remembering that it wasn’t the election of a moderate centrist (hello, Hillary) or a sanguine protest that stopped its ascent in Europe. It was, primarily, the Russian military, and to a lesser extent the US military; neither of which practiced nonviolence if memory serves.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-benn/sorry-liberals-a-violent-_b_10316186.html
What do you think?
= new reply since forum marked as read
I think the pearl-clutchers are upset because no guns were involved.
"Merika...woo hoo...flag burners are commies and those dam furiners and their Mexican flag!" Grrr grrr grrr... 
And yes, Godwin, blah, blah, blah. But one persistent complaint over the years has been to blame the Jews in part for not rising up violently against the incipient Nazi regime. As if anyone could have predicted in the early stages what Hitler's rule would become for the Jews and others. ("But the warning signs were all there! Hitler even wrote a book about it!"
The unspoken point has been that the Jews would have been justified in doing whatever they could - including riots, insurrection, and other violent resistance - to stop the rise of Hitler.
I'm not equating Trump with Hitler or the present-day United States with Weimar Germany. But, there may be some Muslims, some Latinos, some refugees, who take Trump at his word when he talks the way he does. (Are the warning signs there?) If you think the Jews would have been justified in taking whatever measures they could to resist Hitler, even early on, can you really condemn violence from people today who perceive themselves as having the same bead drawn on them as the Jews had 80 years ago?
There were surely some who counseled patience all those years ago: "Oh no, it may be oppressive, but we can manage. It won't be so bad. Decent people will stand with us and stop any real depredations. Keep quiet, don't stir up more trouble. Do you want things to get even worse for us?"
If people really regard the rise of Trump as an existential threat to themselves, can the culture of the United States, steeped as it in violence, really condemn meeting violence with violence?
