• Valmond@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    To make a revolution you need the people on your side, not guns specifically. The bastille was torn down by hand. Just look at the USA 6 jan. They didn’t need guns, and thats fu-king USA!

    If you needed guns to make a revolution, you’d probably need RPGs and tanks too.

    • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      They didn’t need guns on Jan 6 because there were traitors in major government offices - namely the White House and the Pentagon - who withheld the National Guard from mobilizing and reduced the number of police in the area that day.

      There were soldiers ready and waiting, guns in hand, who were told to standby.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Well guns wouldn’t have changed that.

        Also, if the whole population is in on it, the national guard will probably stand down too.

        • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          3 days ago

          If they had had guns, they probably would’ve succeeded. What kept them from executing Senators was basically a single locked door in a hallway and one or two police officers holding it while the politicians were evacuated through the tunnels.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

          I don’t think you understand how a military police state works. The government’s monopoly on violence keeps the population in line. It wasn’t until after MLK was killed and over 2 billion dollars worth of damage was done by rioters burning down entire sections of cities that civil rights laws were passed. Years of protests led to nothing. A week of riots had the laws written, drafted, and signed into law. Look at what’s happening right now over the death of a certain CEO of a major health insurance company.

          • Valmond@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            I don’t think that was a revolution, neither that the USA is a dictatorship or a “military police state”.

            And yes, dictatorships use violence to stay in place, and revolutions doesn’t bring that down, it’s more the other way around, the dictatorship starts to become weak and actors move in to take power (can be the population, another country, …).

            Like Syria. Hopefully Russia in 2025.

            • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              2 days ago

              Which wasn’t a revolution, Jan 6th or the Civil Rights Movement? The Jan 6th was definitely an attempted coup (unless you ask the MAGA cultists), but the Civil Rights was definitely a revolution of some form. And the Kent State Massacre is just an example of the violent suppression often used by the US government (though we usually prefer it to be in other countries).

              The US isn’t a dictatorship (yet, who knows where we’ll be in 2 years time), but you look at how militarized our police force is and how many US citizens are gunned down by them every year and tell me we that we aren’t a militarized police state. Our cops are buying surplus IFVs from the army to drive around in. Palestinian protesters at colleges were having their belongings seized and thrown out by police and administration both - including things like medications. During Bush Jr’s administration, you could only legally protest against the Iraq war in areas cordoned off with concrete barriers and fences (sometimes with barbed wire on them). Several studies were done years back by some Ivy League schools looking at laws that were passed or not and their popularity with the 1% vs the majority of Americans, and their conclusion was that the US cannot be considered a democracy and is in fact an oligarchy.

              Dictatorships are usually brought down by their own incompetence, but resistance groups speed that up and help keep people from dying. The point isn’t open warfare against guys with tanks and beyond visual range missiles, but asymmetric warfare meant to cripple the government’s operational capacity for oppression and community support for the population. Like in Myanmar, where resistance groups are fighting against the ethnic cleansing being done by the military using 3d printed guns because not a single nation in the world cares enough to send them aid. They can’t get guns, but they can get hobby 3d printers and bullets, and that’s good enough to kill a soldier and take his gun.

              Like George Washington said when he opposed the Second Amendment, “Farmers with guns will never win against a professional army.” But you don’t need to, you just need to be annoying enough that the government falls on their own knife trying to catch you. Rambo getting gunned down in a blaze of glory will be remembered as an idiot. The black militia put together and trained by a black WW2 veteran who put down sandbags and machine gun emplacements on people’s porches to protect them from retaliation by the KKK are remembered as heroes. Just like the people who showed up for MLK’s show of force in D.C. that we call The Million Man March today. That wasn’t just a protest. It was a threat that terrified every white suburbanite across the country. If he could mobilize a million people to the capital just to march, what else could he do?

    • Comrade Spood@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 days ago

      A revolution is not one event, the French Revolution didn’t end with the storming of the bastile. The french people were armed for the revolution

        • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Yep, you can have your own personal armory. You’ll be limited by what you can hold, and more importantly wield. Worse what was won by a small group of armed insurgents. Can be lost just as easily.

          If you have the people on your side, you may never have to fire a shot. And it will be generations before what was gained is forgotten and becomes vulnerable again. If they’re constantly having to look over their shoulders. Wondering if that janitor will come for them. If they can trust the people that cook and bring their food. It simply will not be worth it to them.

          They’re sociopaths. They’ll take advantage of anything society allows them to. It’s also why they want AI and robots so badly. Then they won’t need societies permission anymore.

        • Tinidril@midwest.social
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          2 days ago

          Tell that to the United Healthcare CEO.

          I’ve been fighting for a political solution to income inequality for decades now and, at the moment, we are further than ever from any kind of success. Even so, I am still hopeful that we might get a backlash to the second Trump presidency that moves things in the right direction. However, I’m more convinced than ever that were we to start making serious gains that the economic establishment would abandon politics in favor of kinetic solutions. An armed populis is the only deterrence we have.