Comment by GMoromisato
6 days ago
I don't know enough about the suffragettes, but didn't they get new laws passed to gain the right to vote? That sounds like working within democratic means.
A better example is the Civil War. The southern states refused to accept the free and fair election of Lincoln and decided to secede, which was not allowed by the Constitution.
Are you arguing that the Confederates were right to violate the law just because they believed they were right?
Ah, the classic "people excluded from the democratic process must only work within the democratic process". It might be worth looking into what the suffragettes did, because it wasn't politely begging men to please let them vote.
Have you not heard of the labor movement? Or abolitionists? Or the founding of this country? Or people fighting against Nazi control of their country?
All of those worked outside "legal" means. The law is quite often irrelevant to what's right or moral, and dying on the hill of breaking the law ensures no change can ever occur when a system or person in power inevitably wrongs people.
Protesting is within the democratic process. Labor strikes are within the democratic process. Civil disobedience is within the democratic process (they were prepared to suffer the consequences, including jail time).
But throwing Molotov cocktails is terrorism. And I don't believe (please correct me) that a terrorist has ever gotten new laws passed by using terror.
Check the history of Ireland.
Almost every peaceful protest in history only caused change if it was backed up by a more violent alternative. TPTB (TPTW?) accepted the minimum amount of the requested change that causes the violence to stop, and then claimed it was the peaceful protest that made them do so.