BECAUSE NO ONE IS BOYCOTTING. They're all just screaming only to go and buy things that LITERALLY fund what they're protesting against.... No one is using logic. Real protest is fueled by condensed research followed by a disruption is profit margins like the farmers in France are doing. American protest IS an act. None of them are having any real effect they are just getting high off the feeling of false unity.
Sheep are loud when they're together and still run away with the same fear. Elites move in silence and their force of power is felt by their presence alone.
can't place that much expectation on people, we try as much as far we are ready to try. Imposing as such will just lead us to disappointment. Gratitude to everyone who at least spoke up
I mean you can only do so much physically, march, have a peaceful sit down with local law enforcement about ways to improve policing and civilian to police relationships. Schedule a discussion with city leaders. ( We haven't done that last one yet here)
YES! couldn't agree more - every time the workers seize the means of production, things ALWAYS get better - we should be ALL protesting the government and how OUR money is being spent.
The problem isn't that protests have gone "too far", the problem is that protests are completely ineffective when it comes to economic change. Sure, a non-violent march in the streets might be useful once in a while when you're trying to effect social change like civil rights or whatever, but that only works because at the end of the day, letting gay people get married or women vote or black people use the same restrooms doesn't affect the bottom line of the 1%. Once the change you want starts translating into lost revenue for big corporations, then people see just how impotent protesting actually is. The truth is, and people are still too squeamish to admit this because of how cozy the modern developed world has made life for them, but if you want real economic change in a system designed to resist it at all costs, your only option in the end will have to be violence. Trying to stop climate change by blocking traffic is one of the most naive and powerless solutions you could think of to solve these issues. When the rich and powerful see people protesting, they laugh at them, because it's a show of how impotent they really are to actually force change. At the end of the day, all politics is about power, and the only power that normal people have that the rich don't is the power of numbers and the threat of violence that comes with it. That's the whole basis of the social contract. Protests might raise awareness of a problem, but unless you're willing to put violence on the table as a solution to get people in positions of power to change the rules by force, then you're just screaming into the void at that point. The people who control the levers of society don't care about your signs or your marches. In order to create change, the people with the power to directly change things must be threatened either with force or they must have their money and wealth forcibly stripped away from them. There is no other option, especially not when the problems we're facing have a ticking countdown on them.
Agreed. In America people like to reference the Boston Tea Party but forget that it wasn't just a bunch of people standing around complaining about the price of tea. When they dumped the tea in the harbor that cost people (and the government) money. So much of the protests today is just angry people standing around being angry, you're right, no one cares about those people being angry. Another issue, no leadership or goal. At the Boston Tea Party there were leaders who had goal. Occupy Wall Street failed because there were no leaders and no goals. I remember a protest from the Tea Party (republicans) like 10 years ago where they threw tea bags in the river (and fished them back out) as a protest against something Obama was doing. I'd be surprised if he even knew about it, because it had no effect because there were no leaders or goals beyond "be angry".
@@firebat36 that is sadly true as well. Unless a socialist mass revolution is successful, you will probably be arrested for any direct action that would matter.
I am starkly reminded of Wynn Bruce, the climate activist that self-immolated in front of the SCotUS building on Earth Day 2022, not even two years ago. It was a blip across the country's several dozen News tickers, and then it was promptly ignored. "What if you held a protest, and everyone came?"
The dude was so concerned about carbon emissions that he became carbon emissions. It's like anti-oil weirdos destroying a pipeline when it's more efficient and less polluting than tanker trucks.
@@dwarvenjesus4266 your statement here kinda reeks of "do you perchance Own Things??" if you would like to understand the motivations behind pipeline sabotage, read a book or two by Andreas Malm
Calling typical contemporary climate, nature, economic, animal or anti-war activists "extremists" or "militant" seem to be a misuse and misunderstand these words. Their actions are far less damaging than they would be if they were actually proportional to the damage they are protesting against. We need more actions and more policy, not less
Yeah it drives me nuts when some dipshits throw tomato soup on the Mona Lisa to... I don't know... bring awareness to something the entire planet is already well aware of? Like, fucking go after the oil companies! Disrupt their shit! They aren't even damaging the Mona Lisa, it's protected! So pointless.
Most climate protestors will block roads and go on marches within reason. Then there's extremists who will continue blocking the road even if an ambulance needs to get through. They're extremists because they they're extreme compared to the majority of their own group. It's not people misusing the word at all.
@@TheSundayShooterbecause a riot isn't a protest by definition? Of course they would be excluded from a conversation about protest. That being said, rioting is a completely legitimate form of political action. When people reduse to listen to protests, riots are inevitable.
@@pennyforyourthots Attacking some random kid isn't a legitimate form of political action 10:37 and Michael doesn't distinguish race rioters committing assault
@@poopenfarten800 How patronizing and typical of the ruling class and defenders of the status quo to pacify the agitated by using hand wavy references of magical data and fantastical history to justify the brutality and inhumanity of our contemporary social structure, Mr Poopen Farten 800 sir. Please do not speak on behalf of the bourgeois who would not speak on behalf of you.
if you think humanity as it is, is about to fail and crash down, then get your self in a position to not be effected by it. Learn a trade that will always be usefull to others (like a plummer, a baker, a farmer,..) and start creating a space for yourself.
Not far enough. Been watching the Apple TV+ documentary '1971'... You can see how much more people fought for what they believed was right. Now, our music, our protest, everything is neatly packaged for a Capitalist aesthetic. Even the fact that I'm inspired by an Apple documentary is telling. We've lost our way imho
See "The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis - the truly subversive elements were curb stomped to submission, the rest were sold the myth of the neoliberal individual. The posioned carrot and the stick.
I think the issue with this is how untouchable people like that are. We can’t really disrupt their private jet or 180 million dollar mansion, we need to make waves in the world that get coverage and disrupt the norm. Staying at home, not bothering anyone, and making a post saying “CEOs please have some humanity” realistically accomplishes nothing
That defeats the point of the protest. The CEO already knows they're a piece of shit doing evil on purpose. The point of a protest is to force people who don't normally even think about the thing you're protesting to pick a side.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 Not at all. The point is to change legislation and sway our rule makers. The best way is to make the CEOs who back these bad choices lose money for backing unpopular choices while convincing others to join your cause. Not stopping someone from being able to pick up their child.
18:48 [Brennan Lee mulligan voice] Laws are threats made by the dominant socio economical ethic group in a given nation. It’s just a promise of violence that’s enacted and police are basically just an occupying army, you know what I mean??
So what? Are laws bad? Any laws? No matter what kind of rules you make, there will be those who disagree and will disregard the rule unless threatened with consequences. The idea that you could ever get 100% consensus on anything and therefore remove the need for law enforcement is a fantasy.
@@Raziel312you don’t need 100%. Democracy is the rule of the majority. The majority of people support free healthcare and cannabis legalization, but we still don’t get it (cannabis is still illegal in some states). Which shows we’re in an oligarchy. If we want an actual democracy, we gotta fight for iy
@@Raziel312 no it was a reality for most of human existence, inequality started when the powerful forced their rules on others, many society are centred on the idea of negating inequality that you call it a fantasy show your lack of imagination and your ineducation in history and anthropology “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” ― David Graeber this quote never felt so true, that's why protest is so important, to deny the pro status quo propaganda that life outside of the law and order of the state is fantasy
@Riddickisawesome101 That wasn't the question. At least, not as I understood it. Even if you had people you completely agreed with in charge, those people would need to institute rules. Even if most people agreed with those rules, there would inevitably be those who did not agree, for either principled or selfish reasons. If these malcontents decide they're going to ignore the rules, what do you do? You need LAW ENFORCEMENT.
@@Raziel312 again no most north native american society did not have LAW ENFORCEMENT, when the european entered in contact with them they found the idea absurd in the modern day it is how anarchist system works errico malatesta in 1920 about - congress "do not lay down the law" or "impose their own resolutions on others". their resolution are only "suggestions, recommendations, proposals to be submitted to all involved, and do not become binding and enforceable exept on those who accept them, and for as long as they accept them" to note, anarchy is the absence of authority, while anomie is the absence of order. People confuse the two because they are generally incapable of imagining that order can exist without authority. yet it does, it's called harmony, whole religions are based on it like daoism
Nah, they obviously haven’t gone far enough, because we’re still dealing with all the same BS. In fact, it’s probably time we start considering some not-so-peaceful methods.
It’ll become much easier to start once people lose their food or homes. Revolution happens once people are hungry and desperate. Too many people are too comfortable and don’t wanna give it up, even if giving it up would be for the greater good
Who will do the revolution? If you think the "revolution" will be something glorious like the French Revolution (note that it wasn't glorious), you are completely wrong. Probably, it will look like the MAGA rioter at the January 6th Capitol Attack. It is very easy to ask people to sacrifice their lives for some vague cause when you don't have people that depend on you like elderly parents or kids.
@@Riddickisawesome101I genuinely think project 2025 is going to be the catalyst. Once people see the EPA and FDA dissolve surely they will take action. Ideally project 2025 never gets implemented but with current polling I think we are in for a bad time
This is a highly timely topic. Here in Europe, protesting farmers are highly disrupting, like blocking highly used roads and threatening politicians. Some are infuriated and calling them terror-farmers, some are sympathetic to their cause. The thing is that farmers are protesting so many things, some of them are necessary laws that need to be implemented, like the reduction of greenhouse gasses, some rules are unnecessary bureaucratic. Let's see how it goes.
I know farmers are being screwed hard but it feels like I'm being gaslit by the whole spectacle because here corporate media, cops and politicians are pushing hard for the "we may not 100% agree but they're the worthy protestors" narrative, likely so that everyone can go back to the rural vs urban culture war narrative once this all settles. The fact that this will likely end up just slashing environmental protections doesn't help.
Derek Chauvin got charged when they burned down the 3rd Precinct. There is an argument to be made that the issue is protests do not often go far enough. The threat is not that you might be late to work, the threat is that you might not make it to work period.
People complaining that they're late to work are ridiculous to me. You might not be able to join a protest, but if you're supportive of the cause (like so many say they are), then being late to work can contribute to said cause.
@@dwarvenjesus4266black business owners even . Progressives don’t understand how society exists or develops. They just think it happens all by itself .
I voted in LA in 1993. Dick Reardon was a Republican, but he really didn't feel like one. He wasn't pushing a bunch of right wing stuff - he was super connected to Los Angeles culture and history, as I recall. He was no carpetbagger - The guy owned (owns) The Pantry, a very cool LA restaurant that has been open 24 hours a day since 1927. Like California Republican governor Arnold Schwartzeneger, he was more himself than a republican.
I’ll just say, if a protest is a protest, it should go all the way. It’s supposed to bother and be “anti” or “counter”. (Of course, it can be pro-something, but still it’s more for exercising dissent against the opposing side). An objective is the purpose of protest, it has a concrete definition of success. Otherwise i say it’s just trying to protest.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it in todays world the Civil rights movement hell even women’s suffrage would’ve not made it. The people we need to move are turned off by the slightest inconvenience
You're probably right. One day, I decided to explore outside my city using public transport and I saw some protesters supporting Palestine. It's been one month since I left my city now. And my city is already regarded as a upper-middle class bubble in my country.
Why do you think the propaganda machines changed our culture to oppose being inconvenienced more than they opposed evil? Because they saw that people who care more about morality than they care about self-interest can defend themselves against tyranny.
I think there is an argument that protests that interrupt average people could do more harm than good. Protests that interrupt rich people are an indisputable good though
They don't know how to protest. You start with non-disruptive protests to draw attention and use dialogue to turn the undecided crowd to your side. This requires patience, potentially years worth of effort. When you have a critical mass of supporters for your movement you start being disruptive. Start being disruptive too early and the undecided crowd will join the opposition to your movement and you lose in the court of public opinion.
The entire point of a protest is to be disruptive. It fundamentally can't work if you're not being disruptive, it's not a protest at that point. It's you telling people things they already know as if it should change their mind. If people are capable of ignoring the protest, it's not a protest. You've just described exactly how decades of propaganda have destroyed America's ability to defend itself against tyranny.
You can't force a change if it most people don't want that change. So if you're disruptive about something people don't want, I don't know why you'd think that would do anything. If white supremacists were constantly disrupting your day, would that make you want to adopt their policies? I fucking hope not
I wasn't old enough to vote in the mayoral race in 1993 in Los Angeles, but I did participate in the protests and riot against the LAPD as a teen. Vibes were apartheid like even then. The national guard came in and separated black neighborhoods from white so there's that I guess.
Until recently, I lived in Epsom (Surrey, UK). It's a place that has always gone solidly for the Conservative Party. But in the marketplace, there is a statue of Emily Davison - the suffragette who died from injuries sustained when tackling the king's horse at the Derby in 1913. If you look at her criminal record, it was way worse than the current climate protestors whom the conservatives have legislated against. But in their heartlands, they accept the protestor from 110.5 years ago as a heroine.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that the “white moderate” was a greater road block than those actively against the Civil Rights movement; stating they are “more devoted to order than to justice.” If we remain quiet and hope that the current systems in place will be sufficient to correct the inequalities they helped set up in the first place, then there is no chance that actual progress will be made in our lifetimes.
When you're trying to stop crimes against humanity, i think you should protest by any means necessary, even if that means stopping traffic or damaging supplies that could be used to cause more harm to an ongoing atrocity.
I think it pretty obvious that it is impossible to know whether any protest in which you are engaged or considering is ultimately worthwhile or justified - politics isn’t a play pen, there are no guard rails.
"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it." -V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution.
I really enjoy Gene Sharp, a liberation theorist. He surveys various global protest movements and considers what worked and what didn’t and why. Definitely recommend "Dictatorship to Democracy" (which is freely available online)
If I can't enjoy my $26 cheeseburger (plus tip) without being slightly inconvenieneced by people whining about "war crimes funded by our tax dollars", then protesting should be illegal.
Can you guys have a follow up episode talking about self immolation and the conditions that cause it and the effect on society it has? There’s a user by the username Crutches&Spice, her real name is Imani and talks about this in detail but would like to see a philosopher’s take or reaction to her videos about it.
What I'll never understand is when someone gets more upset when something is done by a protestor than by the existing power structure. People get mad about climate activists blocking roads but not by the same road being flooded or even melted. They get upset about property damage sustained during a protest but not enormous human and property damage carried out by police, military or neglect. They get angry by the same words (eg "from the river to the sea") when used by protestors but not when used by the party in charge. They angst about inconvenience caused by people protesting against the murder of real human beings. This baffles me. I'd understand people complaining about harm done by protestors if they were similarly upset by harm carried out by those in power.
Because those in power give them comfort, while protestors disrupt that comfort. I much prefer everyone had food and shelter than for a percentage of the population to have yachts and 3 mansions while thousands of people are starving
Two stories (from Amnesty International): “Abir, my closest sister, the dearest person to me, was also killed. Her loss broke my back. My brother Mohammed Al-Hadi was only recognized by his hair; nothing was left of my brother Khalil except his hand… My children were rescued from beneath the rubble alive. I look at them and cannot believe they are still alive.” Abir had previously been interviewed by Amnesty International after her fiancé and his mother were killed in an Israeli air strike during a three-day offensive in Gaza in August 2022. - It took him four days to retrieve the body of his baby daughter Ayla from the rubble; she was only recognizable by her clothes. The blast decapitated his five-year-old daughter, Arwa. "When the war started, I had only one mission in my life, to protect my children. I wish I were with them when the house was hit," he said. "My body survived but my spirit died with my children, it was crushed under the rubble with them."
Anyone who says protests "go too far" 99.9% of the time they're just telling you to shut up and submit to the status quo. Of course those in power are going to say that, they don't want their power threatened, why would they encourage protest?
Agreed. Just ask yourself why you need permits to protest without getting arrested. Because they’re scared of their power being taken away. If we were actually the UNITED states, we would divide power horizontally from the bottom up rather than top down
It really is. Question is: what are you protesting against? Is it against a system that utilizes collective funds for the exclusive benefit of the wealthy, against the usage of collective funds to decrease inequality, or against the very concept of compulsory collective funding? One is good, one is bad, one is justifiable but stupid (it’s in order).
@abaren730 The very concept of it. I know failures like taxation because of envy. And it's really the only way they can fund themselves is stealing from others. Nothing about it is good. The people at the top confused people like you into voting for higher taxes, so they can give you some crumbs. Because you're full of envy of people with more than you
@@dwarvenjesus4266 yes, it very much does. There’s a massive difference between protesting an untrue event and an untrue narrative. Example 1: Black Lives Matter. A lot of conservatives try to discredit the movement by debunking the legitimacy of the inciting incidents. In reality, it doesn’t matter if these handful of incidents were the fault of the deceased. The protests have been almost exclusively about the very true history of police harassment, discrimination, violence, and racism against minorities, particularly blacks. Example 2: All Lives Matter. Frequently a rebuttal to BLM, ALM is a reactionary counter movement that, fundamentally, believes that white lives are being devalued. While true equality does result in less for the advantaged compared to past exclusivity, this is not disadvantage. That’s why their actual message is: white lives are being made LESS than black lives. This is a false narrative, and not representative of their true beliefs: the current system of white socioeconomic dominance IS equality.
@@dwarvenjesus4266 Yes, it does matter what you're protesting against. In fact that's the most important part of any act of protest. In example, if you burn down a forest to protest deforestation, you're in the wrong no matter what.
@@harrys919 If they were violent, yes. They were evil. The ones that were peaceful were objectively good. MLK and Rosa Parks are remembered for their messages of peace and non-violence, for example. Be like those two. Peace works better than violence.
This video--in particular, the assertion that protests aren't required to represent an alternative order, only name the injustice of the present one--might benefit from reading Vincent Bevin's recent If We Burn.
While this did cover the usual protests, one thing that bugs me are the ones with paint/soup/whatever liquid of the day and attempting to defacing the arts over claims of climate concerns or similar nature. It doesn't really do much except attempting to tarnish artwork made by someone who isn't even alive anymore to even care, lasts maybe 15 minutes, and gets only a 5 minute segment on the news at best, where everyone just rolls their eyes. Rather than feeling like a protest with some kind of understandable logic, it just feels like a TikTok/YTShorts attempt of fame with a justifiable motive behind it, making the meaning behind it just feels lost as a result.
I enjoy this type of videos very much and I hope that you'll keep up with this format. The premise in the title of the video makes you say "well duh, of course protests are ethical" but then you hear all the arguments, both for and against the thesis, and you start to consider that the subjects (i.e. protests) might not be what they seemed to be before you watch the video and hear the different viewpoints, most of them coming from researchers, philosophers, and other specialists who gave the subject some thought and dove deeper in to it and explained it to those of us who either did not have the time, the mental capacity, or both, in an easier to understand way, all while keeping the nuances of said subject in scope. This is how I felt about the protests. I thought "obviously, they are ethical" and while I still believe that protests in and of themselves ARE something that is needed in order to bring light unto topics that are important/dire, protests can also be seen as shouting into a void, where no one will hear you regardless of how loudly you'll shout. And then, I begin to think about ways to either improve protesting as it is today, think of a new and better way of protesting (without the use of violence and illegal acts to get the point accross), or find an alternative to protesting (such as voting, which in the simplest sense translates to "Stop talking about acting. Act.")
I remember hearing a talk by former CIA agent John Stockwell, and he warned about accepting violence as a "reasonable" political protest tactic. He specifically noted that it was usually an FBI operative infiltrating a protest movement who would suggest violence in order to discredit a protest movement. As an example of how this works, the Occupy Wall Street movement began going downhill once the whole "variety of tactics" agenda included violence as a legitimate form of protest. If Stockwell is to be believed, a government plant made that suggestion first.
While it's true that infiltrators often use violence to disrupt protests, it all depends of context. In some situations there is no other choice but to confront, in that case better be prepared. Trying to incite a violent protest without proper tools and strategy beforehand is quite foolish, of course.
I always find it funny how many people say "Yeah im completely fine with protesting, but I dont want it to happen in a way that at all impacts my daily life and would prefer that I dont even have to see it unless I want to"
Power isn’t responsive to “regular” protest; they understand the inherent lack of physical threat from it, as long as protest does constitute disruption for regular folks outside of whichever moment, BUT no possibility of serious, concrete harm to whichever ruling class, nothing will change. Peaceful protest worked against people who didn’t know what it was; people in power now were either alive back when it worked, or sometimes even part of it, and they understand it. What they’re unfamiliar with is danger. I despise every single motive behind the Jan 6th insurrection in the US - but I won’t deny that I sorta envy people so sure of their convictions being above any common sense or law that they’d be willing to lay siege on the most powerful government on the planet. Imagine if people understood, not even just felt, a concrete sense of “or else…” behind progressive, constructive policy and movements. I believe it was you that had an essay about the “politeness trap”?
January 6th was the most damaging terrorist attack in US history. And it's the perfect example of an effective protest. Almost none of the participants suffered negative consequences for their actions, their actions made their stance MORE sympathetic in the eyes of the general public, they struck fear into the hearts of those who already opposed them, and ultimately the achieved their objective... to make it more acceptable to support Donald Trump.
This is such a challenging topic. I have many experiences that runs along a similar path. A few years ago, I was called for jury duty because a BLM protestor was arrested for blocking traffic in the Bay Area. My nuanced response to the DA meant that I was asked to leave. On my way down to get my jury duty paperwork completed, I noticed that everyone who was dismissed were people of color. 🤨
Likewise, I have made several pyrrhic attempts to protest against both invasions of Iraq. In one of those attempts, the pro-war side physically attacked me and my friends. So, the consequences were real for trying to prevent needless violence.
Finally, I tried to point out to a colleague that the PC push of the 90s could infuriate the public and lead to a backlash against social harmony and justice: my prediction was correct on some levels and the fight over language/vocabulary is a difficult strategy that might be counterproductive for a more equitable society. 🤷🏻♂️
I think most people hold there to be a big moral difference between damaging the property of a large corporation, and that of a small business owner who worked for years to carve out a living. One is strongly distasteful, the other should be intolerable
A lot of modern protestors remind me too much to RUclips pranksters doing weird shit at Walmarts just ibeing assholes to regular folks to get attention
Thank you for covering this topic, and I really appreciate Wisecrack taking a moral stance in its videos. I have seen how the protesters do their thing in Memphis, where last weekend they shut down the interstate highway for an afternoon to protest the local and federal backing of the Palestinian Genocide. I was there, locking arms in front of miles-long stacks of cars, trucks, and semis. Eventually, a man got out of his vehicle and assaulted one of us. Later, I read the bloodthirsty twitter comments about us. Additionally, there seems to be a credible story of one ambulance that, while it did not get stuck in the traffic, was rerouted to slower route into Memphis. I used to have the liberal notion that our protests somehow latently communicated profoundness to the bystanders. That unconsciously they would see how and why history would absolve our civil disobedience. But after thousands of comments from 2020 onward from people saying something akin to "This protest makes me less sympathetic" to looking directly at bystanders who will indeed kill us (e.g. Rittenhouse, the man in Memphis), I know now that protest is NOT about messaging or converting the unconverted. It's exactly what it says on the tin: no peace where there is no justice. Now imagine this: Since 2020, there have been no legislative advances that curb police brutality. Since the beginning of the 2023 Israeli war on Palestine, there has been no pulling of financial aid to the rogue nation, hell, even acknowledgment of the crimes from our representatives. Now, just like the protest sign reads at @ 21:11 'contents under pressure will explode,' we are going to absolutely see a conflagration in the future. And I believe the blood-baying animals that talk about killing us all will violently insert themselves into history.
Great to see some Ranciere visibility, I believe his work really points to the key issues that protest is struggling with in the media. Too many protests are operating on the logic of the parade.
I dunno man it seems pretty simple to me: all the protests that happened a long time ago and I get the benefits of them with none of the disruption, are good. All the protests happening now, where I get the disruption but not (yet) the benefits, are bad.
It's not who and what they're talking about that scares me the most... It's who and what they're not... We've seen this type of rhetoric before... And it has already begun...
Some times shit has to get ugly in order to the get point across..there is no ethical protest.. by any means possible.. the world is not ethical..thats just reality..
A very well put video as always, thank you. ❤ I believe that in order for a system to truly change, it must be disrupted. Not tech bro disrupted, but more so, you must make your problems the people who don't have problems problem. Ya feel?
The problem with protests is not the disruption or destruction itself, but their lack of strategy. It is useless and even counterproductive to their movement when the destruction only affects uninvolved parties, while the politicians or people with the power to meet their demands are safely watching from a distance with all their assets unharmed. That leaves them with little to none personal incentive to move or change anything. It even creates a disdain for the movement from the public at large.
Are anti accelerations arguments reactionary? Like take calls to abolish to police. Maybe there is some merit to the idea, but I feel like it would affect low income neighborhoods the most, making life in bad neighborhoods harder for some people. Is arguing for reform rather than abolishment reactionary? If so, is that a bad thing? This is a genuine question.
You are right that abolishing the police would affect low income neighborhoods the most, but you're incorrect that it'd be in a negative way. Studies have shown that increased police presence have direct negative impacts on those communities, and low income neighborhoods are the ones that have the highest police presence in the first place. Most arguments that try to de-escalate the severity of the change a protest calls for are an attempt to reduce the positive outcomes the protest seeks. The reason they're brought up is because less change is less good for the protestors, and more change is more bad for the target of the protest. It's all about control, not about reality. That's why you should question anti-acceleration arguments even harsher than the original topic, because they lack the basis to be given the benefit of doubt.
Only the protesting I agree with is ethical, everything else is terrorism, crime, or an insurrection. I saw that stupid AOC quote about how protesting was SUPPOSED to make people uncomfortable 1000 times on Reddit when the summer of love happened, but then the Canadian trucker protests happen and my most upvoted reply is "those guys were honking their horns way too much"
Protesting IS supposed to make people uncomfortable. The point is to make it impossible for ordinary people to live normal lives until the protest ends. Your protest needs to force people to take a side, otherwise it's not a protest, it's an idiot that can be ignored. The problem that arises is that protests inherently make people decide whether self-interest or morality are more important. And in America, self-interest has been the winner by a landslide for a long long time. That's why protests don't work in America anymore.
One modern protest I was hoping to hear you way in on was the Canadian Convoy Protest. It doesn't have nice obvious answer, it depends where you draw the line of the rights of the individual to the obligation to others.
"Please join me for a moment of silence for property." I get the sentiment behind the joke of being concerned about damages to property when the purpose of the protest is to address human suffering, but it is really wrongheaded when people pretend that it doesn't harm people when there is damage to their home and places of work that affect their livelihood. Many get by on a razor's edge and can't wait to hope that insurance or the government might help them out in the aftermath.
more and more our lives play out on the digital plane, maybe we need a new dimension to protests that disrupts people's digital lives. sayfor example overwhelming online traffic, or strategic bot campaings that fill people's spaces with political messaging. then it's also harder for people to claim physical harms, because we have a social tendency to discredit online actions for legitimacy.
I find it notable that right-wing protests didn't make it into the video (pardon, one was brought up for 5 seconds), except for counter-protest movements which are labelled as "reactionary antics" and likewise left-wing counter-protests aren't discussed even when they're an integral part of the topic of discussion like with Charlottesville.
This makes justice a huge historical thing and it sounds cheap. In hamburg g20 the burning of cars was an act of political theatre - creating stage for voices of oppressed. Though it is a wierd.jsutice to know that your car, bike has become a tool for greater justice by someone else's decision. Folks from Rote Flora were like riot is ok, but not in our neighborhood. This riot - disruption - justification works on a level where you do not have to live with the people in the everyday. When individual folks are stand in for system, ideology, state violence - so protesters can be rough, for they are not individual. In a way it is 'acceptable' as long as we have just one direction of progress, one deity, one democracy to be achieved - so it does not resemble old religious wars. However if multiple political endpoints are possible say the protection of animals through economic de-growth vs protection of the right of sick folks for new medicine - the violent nature of protests starts to be less easily justifiable, for it has no clear endpoint.
There's a term for those types of people. NIMBYs. "Not in my back yard". People who claim to be on board with positive change... as long as they can't see it, don't have to hear about it, and it doesn't affect them.
The saddest honest truth in terms of protesting, more coverage happens when people do absurd acts or resort to violence. . I cannot side with a protest in which people are killed, but I can understand a protest that damages property. . We're too relax with the noise because we're surrounded by noise; in one ear and out the other. . I'm all for non-violent protest and in a perfect world, that's more effective but alas. . .
If you cannot side with a protest in which people are killed, then what happens when the protest is against something that causes death? How do you stand when both the protest and the thing being protested get people killed? Surely you'll have thought about that and realized that's how ALL protests are. Nobody is protesting for the sake of greed, because its inherently self-harming to engage in protest. They're doing it because it's the right thing to do (in their mind).
@@dwarvenjesus4266but I suppose something like Jan 6th was completely justified in your opinion? Edit: my bad. It was an insurrection, not a protest. Carry on.
Thank you to Keeps for sponsoring this video! Head to keeps.com/wisecrack to get a special offer.
You guys are the Best 😊😊
My issue is that protesters don't go far enough, too often it feels like performance art and not active resistance.
it's a social event with its own subculture
BECAUSE NO ONE IS BOYCOTTING. They're all just screaming only to go and buy things that LITERALLY fund what they're protesting against.... No one is using logic.
Real protest is fueled by condensed research followed by a disruption is profit margins like the farmers in France are doing. American protest IS an act. None of them are having any real effect they are just getting high off the feeling of false unity.
Sheep are loud when they're together and still run away with the same fear. Elites move in silence and their force of power is felt by their presence alone.
can't place that much expectation on people, we try as much as far we are ready to try. Imposing as such will just lead us to disappointment. Gratitude to everyone who at least spoke up
I mean you can only do so much physically, march, have a peaceful sit down with local law enforcement about ways to improve policing and civilian to police relationships. Schedule a discussion with city leaders. ( We haven't done that last one yet here)
Protest have not gone far enough, The whole work force should come to a stop. We should take it all back.
Isn't this a strike? I think you're right but strikes are different from protests
@@pavelandreev4727you strike in protest they aren’t separate but more linked
B-B-B-BASED!!!!!
YES! couldn't agree more - every time the workers seize the means of production, things ALWAYS get better - we should be ALL protesting the government and how OUR money is being spent.
Yeah...good luck with that when the corporations hire illegals or push for AI to replace you
"First we raised our concerns, then our voices, and now our fists."
I love the beautiful irony of Michael doing the KEEPS ads.
"I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess"
"Do as I say, not as I do."
"Don't hate the player, hate the game."
between him, and Simon Whistler, they're doing well for mascots...
The problem isn't that protests have gone "too far", the problem is that protests are completely ineffective when it comes to economic change. Sure, a non-violent march in the streets might be useful once in a while when you're trying to effect social change like civil rights or whatever, but that only works because at the end of the day, letting gay people get married or women vote or black people use the same restrooms doesn't affect the bottom line of the 1%. Once the change you want starts translating into lost revenue for big corporations, then people see just how impotent protesting actually is.
The truth is, and people are still too squeamish to admit this because of how cozy the modern developed world has made life for them, but if you want real economic change in a system designed to resist it at all costs, your only option in the end will have to be violence. Trying to stop climate change by blocking traffic is one of the most naive and powerless solutions you could think of to solve these issues. When the rich and powerful see people protesting, they laugh at them, because it's a show of how impotent they really are to actually force change.
At the end of the day, all politics is about power, and the only power that normal people have that the rich don't is the power of numbers and the threat of violence that comes with it. That's the whole basis of the social contract. Protests might raise awareness of a problem, but unless you're willing to put violence on the table as a solution to get people in positions of power to change the rules by force, then you're just screaming into the void at that point. The people who control the levers of society don't care about your signs or your marches. In order to create change, the people with the power to directly change things must be threatened either with force or they must have their money and wealth forcibly stripped away from them. There is no other option, especially not when the problems we're facing have a ticking countdown on them.
Well said. Very well said.
You will get arrested or worst for doing the direct action that works...
Agreed. In America people like to reference the Boston Tea Party but forget that it wasn't just a bunch of people standing around complaining about the price of tea. When they dumped the tea in the harbor that cost people (and the government) money. So much of the protests today is just angry people standing around being angry, you're right, no one cares about those people being angry. Another issue, no leadership or goal. At the Boston Tea Party there were leaders who had goal. Occupy Wall Street failed because there were no leaders and no goals. I remember a protest from the Tea Party (republicans) like 10 years ago where they threw tea bags in the river (and fished them back out) as a protest against something Obama was doing. I'd be surprised if he even knew about it, because it had no effect because there were no leaders or goals beyond "be angry".
all the people who have been enfranchised since the Civil War haven't moved the needle because they're all indoctrinated into capitalism
@@firebat36 that is sadly true as well. Unless a socialist mass revolution is successful, you will probably be arrested for any direct action that would matter.
I am starkly reminded of Wynn Bruce, the climate activist that self-immolated in front of the SCotUS building on Earth Day 2022, not even two years ago. It was a blip across the country's several dozen News tickers, and then it was promptly ignored.
"What if you held a protest, and everyone came?"
The dude was so concerned about carbon emissions that he became carbon emissions.
It's like anti-oil weirdos destroying a pipeline when it's more efficient and less polluting than tanker trucks.
@@dwarvenjesus4266 your statement here kinda reeks of "do you perchance Own Things??"
if you would like to understand the motivations behind pipeline sabotage, read a book or two by Andreas Malm
@@LonkinPork Tell me how causing oil spills helps in any way.
Oh yeah lol
@@dwarvenjesus4266 I told you where you could learn these things. I'm not holding your hand.
Calling typical contemporary climate, nature, economic, animal or anti-war activists "extremists" or "militant" seem to be a misuse and misunderstand these words. Their actions are far less damaging than they would be if they were actually proportional to the damage they are protesting against. We need more actions and more policy, not less
Yeah it drives me nuts when some dipshits throw tomato soup on the Mona Lisa to... I don't know... bring awareness to something the entire planet is already well aware of? Like, fucking go after the oil companies! Disrupt their shit! They aren't even damaging the Mona Lisa, it's protected! So pointless.
Most climate protestors will block roads and go on marches within reason. Then there's extremists who will continue blocking the road even if an ambulance needs to get through. They're extremists because they they're extreme compared to the majority of their own group. It's not people misusing the word at all.
I like how you excluded race rioters
@@TheSundayShooterbecause a riot isn't a protest by definition? Of course they would be excluded from a conversation about protest.
That being said, rioting is a completely legitimate form of political action. When people reduse to listen to protests, riots are inevitable.
@@pennyforyourthots Attacking some random kid isn't a legitimate form of political action 10:37 and Michael doesn't distinguish race rioters committing assault
Not protesting the impending doom of all humanity is unethical.
Calm down. Go read some actual data and historical records.
@@poopenfarten800 How patronizing and typical of the ruling class and defenders of the status quo to pacify the agitated by using hand wavy references of magical data and fantastical history to justify the brutality and inhumanity of our contemporary social structure, Mr Poopen Farten 800 sir.
Please do not speak on behalf of the bourgeois who would not speak on behalf of you.
@@najunixis this satire?
if you think humanity as it is, is about to fail and crash down, then get your self in a position to not be effected by it. Learn a trade that will always be usefull to others (like a plummer, a baker, a farmer,..) and start creating a space for yourself.
They haven’t gone far enough.
They went too far about 4 years ago.
@@dwarvenjesus4266 clearly not if I said we haven’t gone far enough.
@@Them_kids_momma David Dorn would have disagreed with you, if he wasn't murdered by protesters in 2020.
@@Them_kids_mommaYou’re a domestic terrorist though, so your opinion doesn’t hold much weight
they had worldwide support from true progressives, not just Russian and Chinese astroturf movements @@dwarvenjesus4266
Not far enough. Been watching the Apple TV+ documentary '1971'... You can see how much more people fought for what they believed was right. Now, our music, our protest, everything is neatly packaged for a Capitalist aesthetic. Even the fact that I'm inspired by an Apple documentary is telling. We've lost our way imho
Hadn't heard of that documentary, going to check it out.
@@WisecrackEDU it's about music and protest in 1971, basically. Amazing stories, timeless music, legendary artists. Hope you enjoy it!
sounds right in my wheelhouse! @@josemelgar14
See "The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis - the truly subversive elements were curb stomped to submission, the rest were sold the myth of the neoliberal individual. The posioned carrot and the stick.
Protest need to be disruptive but less to the average joe and more to the CEO
I think the issue with this is how untouchable people like that are. We can’t really disrupt their private jet or 180 million dollar mansion, we need to make waves in the world that get coverage and disrupt the norm. Staying at home, not bothering anyone, and making a post saying “CEOs please have some humanity” realistically accomplishes nothing
@@TAKOHUMUblocking a airfield does sound better than blocking g a highway
That defeats the point of the protest. The CEO already knows they're a piece of shit doing evil on purpose. The point of a protest is to force people who don't normally even think about the thing you're protesting to pick a side.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 Not at all. The point is to change legislation and sway our rule makers. The best way is to make the CEOs who back these bad choices lose money for backing unpopular choices while convincing others to join your cause. Not stopping someone from being able to pick up their child.
@@TAKOHUMUBlocking traffic doesn’t do anything but cause resentment towards you
18:48 [Brennan Lee mulligan voice] Laws are threats made by the dominant socio economical ethic group in a given nation. It’s just a promise of violence that’s enacted and police are basically just an occupying army, you know what I mean??
So what? Are laws bad? Any laws? No matter what kind of rules you make, there will be those who disagree and will disregard the rule unless threatened with consequences. The idea that you could ever get 100% consensus on anything and therefore remove the need for law enforcement is a fantasy.
@@Raziel312you don’t need 100%. Democracy is the rule of the majority. The majority of people support free healthcare and cannabis legalization, but we still don’t get it (cannabis is still illegal in some states). Which shows we’re in an oligarchy. If we want an actual democracy, we gotta fight for iy
@@Raziel312 no it was a reality for most of human existence, inequality started when the powerful forced their rules on others, many society are centred on the idea of negating inequality
that you call it a fantasy show your lack of imagination and your ineducation in history and anthropology
“the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
― David Graeber
this quote never felt so true, that's why protest is so important, to deny the pro status quo propaganda that life outside of the law and order of the state is fantasy
@Riddickisawesome101 That wasn't the question. At least, not as I understood it. Even if you had people you completely agreed with in charge, those people would need to institute rules. Even if most people agreed with those rules, there would inevitably be those who did not agree, for either principled or selfish reasons. If these malcontents decide they're going to ignore the rules, what do you do? You need LAW ENFORCEMENT.
@@Raziel312 again no
most north native american society did not have LAW ENFORCEMENT, when the european entered in contact with them they found the idea absurd
in the modern day it is how anarchist system works errico malatesta in 1920 about - congress "do not lay down the law" or "impose their own resolutions on others". their resolution are only "suggestions, recommendations, proposals to be submitted to all involved, and do not become binding and enforceable exept on those who accept them, and for as long as they accept them"
to note, anarchy is the absence of authority, while anomie is the absence of order. People confuse the two because they are generally incapable of imagining that order can exist without authority. yet it does, it's called harmony, whole religions are based on it like daoism
Some of those that run forces, are the same that burn crosses
Rage against the machine was better before they got so political
@@roscojenkins7451 This is from their debut album. How could they be better before this?
@@SageWon-1aussie whooooosh
ah yes. rage on behalf of the machine.
@@loubertloubertplease tell me you're being sarcastic because of the online tweets
Nah, they obviously haven’t gone far enough, because we’re still dealing with all the same BS. In fact, it’s probably time we start considering some not-so-peaceful methods.
It’ll become much easier to start once people lose their food or homes. Revolution happens once people are hungry and desperate. Too many people are too comfortable and don’t wanna give it up, even if giving it up would be for the greater good
Who will do the revolution? If you think the "revolution" will be something glorious like the French Revolution (note that it wasn't glorious), you are completely wrong. Probably, it will look like the MAGA rioter at the January 6th Capitol Attack. It is very easy to ask people to sacrifice their lives for some vague cause when you don't have people that depend on you like elderly parents or kids.
@@Riddickisawesome101I genuinely think project 2025 is going to be the catalyst. Once people see the EPA and FDA dissolve surely they will take action. Ideally project 2025 never gets implemented but with current polling I think we are in for a bad time
"Protest in a way that doesn't effect anything so we can just ignore you please."
This is a highly timely topic. Here in Europe, protesting farmers are highly disrupting, like blocking highly used roads and threatening politicians. Some are infuriated and calling them terror-farmers, some are sympathetic to their cause.
The thing is that farmers are protesting so many things, some of them are necessary laws that need to be implemented, like the reduction of greenhouse gasses, some rules are unnecessary bureaucratic.
Let's see how it goes.
I know farmers are being screwed hard but it feels like I'm being gaslit by the whole spectacle because here corporate media, cops and politicians are pushing hard for the "we may not 100% agree but they're the worthy protestors" narrative, likely so that everyone can go back to the rural vs urban culture war narrative once this all settles. The fact that this will likely end up just slashing environmental protections doesn't help.
"One does not simply march into Washington"
- Boromir, probably
Derek Chauvin got charged when they burned down the 3rd Precinct.
There is an argument to be made that the issue is protests do not often go far enough.
The threat is not that you might be late to work, the threat is that you might not make it to work period.
People complaining that they're late to work are ridiculous to me.
You might not be able to join a protest, but if you're supportive of the cause (like so many say they are), then being late to work can contribute to said cause.
@@isaac1670also it gives you an excuse to not go to work lol
People also wrote "please don't hurt us" on their stores during those riots.
Defend violence and murder. Please. Make that argument.
I wonder if floyd hadn't been on so many drugs what would have really happened
@@dwarvenjesus4266black business owners even . Progressives don’t understand how society exists or develops. They just think it happens all by itself .
I voted in LA in 1993. Dick Reardon was a Republican, but he really didn't feel like one. He wasn't pushing a bunch of right wing stuff - he was super connected to Los Angeles culture and history, as I recall. He was no carpetbagger - The guy owned (owns) The Pantry, a very cool LA restaurant that has been open 24 hours a day since 1927. Like California Republican governor Arnold Schwartzeneger, he was more himself than a republican.
I’ll just say, if a protest is a protest, it should go all the way. It’s supposed to bother and be “anti” or “counter”. (Of course, it can be pro-something, but still it’s more for exercising dissent against the opposing side). An objective is the purpose of protest, it has a concrete definition of success.
Otherwise i say it’s just trying to protest.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it in todays world the Civil rights movement hell even women’s suffrage would’ve not made it. The people we need to move are turned off by the slightest inconvenience
You're probably right. One day, I decided to explore outside my city using public transport and I saw some protesters supporting Palestine.
It's been one month since I left my city now. And my city is already regarded as a upper-middle class bubble in my country.
Why do you think the propaganda machines changed our culture to oppose being inconvenienced more than they opposed evil? Because they saw that people who care more about morality than they care about self-interest can defend themselves against tyranny.
Wow I missed this video, and I hate how it has no visibility... This is a damn good video and please continue even if it does not do the best!
I think there is an argument that protests that interrupt average people could do more harm than good. Protests that interrupt rich people are an indisputable good though
In what way? I feel like you can only think this if you are part of the group that isn't listening and needs that interruption lol
That's the point of a protest. To force the average person to take a side. If the average person is unaffected, it can never work.
They don't know how to protest. You start with non-disruptive protests to draw attention and use dialogue to turn the undecided crowd to your side. This requires patience, potentially years worth of effort. When you have a critical mass of supporters for your movement you start being disruptive.
Start being disruptive too early and the undecided crowd will join the opposition to your movement and you lose in the court of public opinion.
The entire point of a protest is to be disruptive. It fundamentally can't work if you're not being disruptive, it's not a protest at that point. It's you telling people things they already know as if it should change their mind. If people are capable of ignoring the protest, it's not a protest.
You've just described exactly how decades of propaganda have destroyed America's ability to defend itself against tyranny.
You paternalistically think you can set a timeline on another man's justice
You can't force a change if it most people don't want that change. So if you're disruptive about something people don't want, I don't know why you'd think that would do anything. If white supremacists were constantly disrupting your day, would that make you want to adopt their policies? I fucking hope not
I wasn't old enough to vote in the mayoral race in 1993 in Los Angeles, but I did participate in the protests and riot against the LAPD as a teen. Vibes were apartheid like even then. The national guard came in and separated black neighborhoods from white so there's that I guess.
Omg. They approved Michael's "I'm bald but it's not too late for you" ad read
Thanks!
Until recently, I lived in Epsom (Surrey, UK). It's a place that has always gone solidly for the Conservative Party. But in the marketplace, there is a statue of Emily Davison - the suffragette who died from injuries sustained when tackling the king's horse at the Derby in 1913. If you look at her criminal record, it was way worse than the current climate protestors whom the conservatives have legislated against. But in their heartlands, they accept the protestor from 110.5 years ago as a heroine.
They didn't accept her so much as co-opted her image
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that the “white moderate” was a greater road block than those actively against the Civil Rights movement; stating they are “more devoted to order than to justice.”
If we remain quiet and hope that the current systems in place will be sufficient to correct the inequalities they helped set up in the first place, then there is no chance that actual progress will be made in our lifetimes.
When you're trying to stop crimes against humanity, i think you should protest by any means necessary, even if that means stopping traffic or damaging supplies that could be used to cause more harm to an ongoing atrocity.
Not only is disruption justified, it is required. A protest that can be ignored might as well have not even happened.
“Join me in a moment of silence for profit” 🤣🤣🤣
People been protesting for millions of years, and we still can't get it right.
I think it pretty obvious that it is impossible to know whether any protest in which you are engaged or considering is ultimately worthwhile or justified - politics isn’t a play pen, there are no guard rails.
That moment of silence for property 🫀👌
"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it."
-V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution.
I really enjoy Gene Sharp, a liberation theorist. He surveys various global protest movements and considers what worked and what didn’t and why. Definitely recommend "Dictatorship to Democracy" (which is freely available online)
Anybody else think about Cop City when he described what police order was?
If I can't enjoy my $26 cheeseburger (plus tip) without being slightly inconvenieneced by people whining about "war crimes funded by our tax dollars", then protesting should be illegal.
Can you guys have a follow up episode talking about self immolation and the conditions that cause it and the effect on society it has? There’s a user by the username Crutches&Spice, her real name is Imani and talks about this in detail but would like to see a philosopher’s take or reaction to her videos about it.
What I'll never understand is when someone gets more upset when something is done by a protestor than by the existing power structure. People get mad about climate activists blocking roads but not by the same road being flooded or even melted. They get upset about property damage sustained during a protest but not enormous human and property damage carried out by police, military or neglect. They get angry by the same words (eg "from the river to the sea") when used by protestors but not when used by the party in charge. They angst about inconvenience caused by people protesting against the murder of real human beings. This baffles me. I'd understand people complaining about harm done by protestors if they were similarly upset by harm carried out by those in power.
Because those in power give them comfort, while protestors disrupt that comfort. I much prefer everyone had food and shelter than for a percentage of the population to have yachts and 3 mansions while thousands of people are starving
Great points.
The answer is simple: They're afraid of authority.
@@DarkEdgePrince that is correct. But they don’t have to be. Strength in numbers works
@@Riddickisawesome101 That's how authority in the modern world gets you. They make you think you're alone.
Two stories (from Amnesty International):
“Abir, my closest sister, the dearest person to me, was also killed. Her loss broke my back. My brother Mohammed Al-Hadi was only recognized by his hair; nothing was left of my brother Khalil except his hand… My children were rescued from beneath the rubble alive. I look at them and cannot believe they are still alive.”
Abir had previously been interviewed by Amnesty International after her fiancé and his mother were killed in an Israeli air strike during a three-day offensive in Gaza in August 2022.
-
It took him four days to retrieve the body of his baby
daughter Ayla from the rubble; she was only
recognizable by her clothes. The blast decapitated his
five-year-old daughter, Arwa. "When the war started, I
had only one mission in my life, to protect my
children. I wish I were with them when the house was
hit," he said. "My body survived but my spirit died
with my children, it was crushed under the rubble with
them."
Anyone who says protests "go too far" 99.9% of the time they're just telling you to shut up and submit to the status quo. Of course those in power are going to say that, they don't want their power threatened, why would they encourage protest?
What about the people who were murdered in 2020? Did those protests go too far?
People wrote on their boarded-up shops "please don't hurt us".
Agreed. Just ask yourself why you need permits to protest without getting arrested. Because they’re scared of their power being taken away. If we were actually the UNITED states, we would divide power horizontally from the bottom up rather than top down
If looting is considered protesting so is not paying taxes
It really is. Question is: what are you protesting against?
Is it against a system that utilizes collective funds for the exclusive benefit of the wealthy, against the usage of collective funds to decrease inequality, or against the very concept of compulsory collective funding?
One is good, one is bad, one is justifiable but stupid (it’s in order).
@abaren730 The very concept of it. I know failures like taxation because of envy. And it's really the only way they can fund themselves is stealing from others. Nothing about it is good. The people at the top confused people like you into voting for higher taxes, so they can give you some crumbs. Because you're full of envy of people with more than you
@@abaren730 Does it matter what you're protesting against? That's never stopped people from protesting due to untrue narratives.
@@dwarvenjesus4266 yes, it very much does. There’s a massive difference between protesting an untrue event and an untrue narrative.
Example 1: Black Lives Matter. A lot of conservatives try to discredit the movement by debunking the legitimacy of the inciting incidents. In reality, it doesn’t matter if these handful of incidents were the fault of the deceased. The protests have been almost exclusively about the very true history of police harassment, discrimination, violence, and racism against minorities, particularly blacks.
Example 2: All Lives Matter. Frequently a rebuttal to BLM, ALM is a reactionary counter movement that, fundamentally, believes that white lives are being devalued. While true equality does result in less for the advantaged compared to past exclusivity, this is not disadvantage. That’s why their actual message is: white lives are being made LESS than black lives. This is a false narrative, and not representative of their true beliefs: the current system of white socioeconomic dominance IS equality.
@@dwarvenjesus4266 Yes, it does matter what you're protesting against. In fact that's the most important part of any act of protest. In example, if you burn down a forest to protest deforestation, you're in the wrong no matter what.
Not only is it ethical, but it is required.
Murder is ethical?
@@dwarvenjesus4266it isn't necessarily unethical. Depends who gets murked. Civil rights activists didn't just ask nicely
@@alexthewrecker4666 you are evil
@@dwarvenjesus4266 were the civil rights activists evil
@@harrys919 If they were violent, yes. They were evil.
The ones that were peaceful were objectively good.
MLK and Rosa Parks are remembered for their messages of peace and non-violence, for example.
Be like those two. Peace works better than violence.
ngl the ad read is fuckin hilarious. "dont end up like me, bald as fuck, cause being bald sucks, take it from me." have some pride in yourself man.
I love my bald head tbh. Took a while to learn, but bald bros are beautiful.
At this point in our climate destruction path, its unethical to not protest.
"was totallly expecting a 30 second video starting with "yes, duh" then the remaining time dedicated to the Wisecrack credits
Great video, as usual. Thanks for it!
Thanks for taking the time to watch!
Engagement for algorithm, this video is really really good, and it is a shame that the algorithm tanked it
Thanks, we really appreciate you for this.
This video--in particular, the assertion that protests aren't required to represent an alternative order, only name the injustice of the present one--might benefit from reading Vincent Bevin's recent If We Burn.
While this did cover the usual protests, one thing that bugs me are the ones with paint/soup/whatever liquid of the day and attempting to defacing the arts over claims of climate concerns or similar nature. It doesn't really do much except attempting to tarnish artwork made by someone who isn't even alive anymore to even care, lasts maybe 15 minutes, and gets only a 5 minute segment on the news at best, where everyone just rolls their eyes. Rather than feeling like a protest with some kind of understandable logic, it just feels like a TikTok/YTShorts attempt of fame with a justifiable motive behind it, making the meaning behind it just feels lost as a result.
I enjoy this type of videos very much and I hope that you'll keep up with this format.
The premise in the title of the video makes you say "well duh, of course protests are ethical" but then you hear all the arguments, both for and against the thesis, and you start to consider that the subjects (i.e. protests) might not be what they seemed to be before you watch the video and hear the different viewpoints, most of them coming from researchers, philosophers, and other specialists who gave the subject some thought and dove deeper in to it and explained it to those of us who either did not have the time, the mental capacity, or both, in an easier to understand way, all while keeping the nuances of said subject in scope.
This is how I felt about the protests. I thought "obviously, they are ethical" and while I still believe that protests in and of themselves ARE something that is needed in order to bring light unto topics that are important/dire, protests can also be seen as shouting into a void, where no one will hear you regardless of how loudly you'll shout. And then, I begin to think about ways to either improve protesting as it is today, think of a new and better way of protesting (without the use of violence and illegal acts to get the point accross), or find an alternative to protesting (such as voting, which in the simplest sense translates to "Stop talking about acting. Act.")
Consider gerrymandering before saying that voting is acting
Appreciate your efforts to put out engaging content that makes folks think.
Thanks a ton.
I remember hearing a talk by former CIA agent John Stockwell, and he warned about accepting violence as a "reasonable" political protest tactic. He specifically noted that it was usually an FBI operative infiltrating a protest movement who would suggest violence in order to discredit a protest movement. As an example of how this works, the Occupy Wall Street movement began going downhill once the whole "variety of tactics" agenda included violence as a legitimate form of protest. If Stockwell is to be believed, a government plant made that suggestion first.
While it's true that infiltrators often use violence to disrupt protests, it all depends of context. In some situations there is no other choice but to confront, in that case better be prepared. Trying to incite a violent protest without proper tools and strategy beforehand is quite foolish, of course.
I always find it funny how many people say "Yeah im completely fine with protesting, but I dont want it to happen in a way that at all impacts my daily life and would prefer that I dont even have to see it unless I want to"
Amazing video. This is extremely relevant to my country too, Guatemala. Peace ✌️
You should buy increasingly longer and longer wigs and claim that sponsor really works.
Power isn’t responsive to “regular” protest; they understand the inherent lack of physical threat from it, as long as protest does constitute disruption for regular folks outside of whichever moment, BUT no possibility of serious, concrete harm to whichever ruling class, nothing will change. Peaceful protest worked against people who didn’t know what it was; people in power now were either alive back when it worked, or sometimes even part of it, and they understand it. What they’re unfamiliar with is danger.
I despise every single motive behind the Jan 6th insurrection in the US - but I won’t deny that I sorta envy people so sure of their convictions being above any common sense or law that they’d be willing to lay siege on the most powerful government on the planet. Imagine if people understood, not even just felt, a concrete sense of “or else…” behind progressive, constructive policy and movements. I believe it was you that had an essay about the “politeness trap”?
January 6th was the most damaging terrorist attack in US history. And it's the perfect example of an effective protest. Almost none of the participants suffered negative consequences for their actions, their actions made their stance MORE sympathetic in the eyes of the general public, they struck fear into the hearts of those who already opposed them, and ultimately the achieved their objective... to make it more acceptable to support Donald Trump.
Suffering in silence is not a virtue.
protests are supposed to be disruptive, I say... we need to go even farther
Go further than murder? How tyrranical.
Called it! Protests! Can i have my golden star wisecrack? 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Firey but mostly peaceful, amirite?
@@dwarvenjesus4266did we not watch the same video?
This is such a challenging topic. I have many experiences that runs along a similar path.
A few years ago, I was called for jury duty because a BLM protestor was arrested for blocking traffic in the Bay Area. My nuanced response to the DA meant that I was asked to leave. On my way down to get my jury duty paperwork completed, I noticed that everyone who was dismissed were people of color. 🤨
Likewise, I have made several pyrrhic attempts to protest against both invasions of Iraq. In one of those attempts, the pro-war side physically attacked me and my friends. So, the consequences were real for trying to prevent needless violence.
Finally, I tried to point out to a colleague that the PC push of the 90s could infuriate the public and lead to a backlash against social harmony and justice: my prediction was correct on some levels and the fight over language/vocabulary is a difficult strategy that might be counterproductive for a more equitable society. 🤷🏻♂️
That’s crazy. What kind of justifications do they give? If any
Protesting isn’t enough.
Especially when you announce how long you’ll be doing it 🙄😒
I think most people hold there to be a big moral difference between damaging the property of a large corporation, and that of a small business owner who worked for years to carve out a living. One is strongly distasteful, the other should be intolerable
sometimes the music is so funky in these that i stop focusing on the words coming out yo mouth and start vibing to thee meaty beats
A lot of modern protestors remind me too much to RUclips pranksters doing weird shit at Walmarts just ibeing assholes to regular folks to get attention
Attention is the point of a protest. Making it impossible to ignore is the only purpose of a protest.
@@dontmisunderstand6041Well then I’ll hate your cause
@@KittySnicker Those who benefit from the status quo usually do hate attempts to disrupt it, which is inherently the point of any protest.
I though the point was change, turns out protestors are just attention seekers@@dontmisunderstand6041
@@dontmisunderstand6041 such brave much rebel
Thank you for covering this topic, and I really appreciate Wisecrack taking a moral stance in its videos. I have seen how the protesters do their thing in Memphis, where last weekend they shut down the interstate highway for an afternoon to protest the local and federal backing of the Palestinian Genocide. I was there, locking arms in front of miles-long stacks of cars, trucks, and semis. Eventually, a man got out of his vehicle and assaulted one of us. Later, I read the bloodthirsty twitter comments about us. Additionally, there seems to be a credible story of one ambulance that, while it did not get stuck in the traffic, was rerouted to slower route into Memphis.
I used to have the liberal notion that our protests somehow latently communicated profoundness to the bystanders. That unconsciously they would see how and why history would absolve our civil disobedience. But after thousands of comments from 2020 onward from people saying something akin to "This protest makes me less sympathetic" to looking directly at bystanders who will indeed kill us (e.g. Rittenhouse, the man in Memphis), I know now that protest is NOT about messaging or converting the unconverted. It's exactly what it says on the tin: no peace where there is no justice.
Now imagine this: Since 2020, there have been no legislative advances that curb police brutality. Since the beginning of the 2023 Israeli war on Palestine, there has been no pulling of financial aid to the rogue nation, hell, even acknowledgment of the crimes from our representatives. Now, just like the protest sign reads at @ 21:11 'contents under pressure will explode,' we are going to absolutely see a conflagration in the future. And I believe the blood-baying animals that talk about killing us all will violently insert themselves into history.
Love your work!
Don’t bring your cell phone, aka government tracking device, to a protest.
Great to see some Ranciere visibility, I believe his work really points to the key issues that protest is struggling with in the media. Too many protests are operating on the logic of the parade.
LOL "In problematic Halloween costumes."
Protests and violence is the voice of the oppressed and unheard
I dunno man it seems pretty simple to me: all the protests that happened a long time ago and I get the benefits of them with none of the disruption, are good. All the protests happening now, where I get the disruption but not (yet) the benefits, are bad.
nailed it.
It's not who and what they're talking about that scares me the most...
It's who and what they're not...
We've seen this type of rhetoric before...
And it has already begun...
Love your videos
Some times shit has to get ugly in order to the get point across..there is no ethical protest.. by any means possible.. the world is not ethical..thats just reality..
A very well put video as always, thank you. ❤
I believe that in order for a system to truly change, it must be disrupted. Not tech bro disrupted, but more so, you must make your problems the people who don't have problems problem. Ya feel?
"In a society that has destroyed all adventure the only adventure left is to destroy that society."
The problem with protests is not the disruption or destruction itself, but their lack of strategy. It is useless and even counterproductive to their movement when the destruction only affects uninvolved parties, while the politicians or people with the power to meet their demands are safely watching from a distance with all their assets unharmed. That leaves them with little to none personal incentive to move or change anything. It even creates a disdain for the movement from the public at large.
Are anti accelerations arguments reactionary?
Like take calls to abolish to police. Maybe there is some merit to the idea, but I feel like it would affect low income neighborhoods the most, making life in bad neighborhoods harder for some people. Is arguing for reform rather than abolishment reactionary? If so, is that a bad thing?
This is a genuine question.
I honestly don't think boycotting the police would ever work. It would turn low income neighborhoods into the wild west.
You are right that abolishing the police would affect low income neighborhoods the most, but you're incorrect that it'd be in a negative way. Studies have shown that increased police presence have direct negative impacts on those communities, and low income neighborhoods are the ones that have the highest police presence in the first place.
Most arguments that try to de-escalate the severity of the change a protest calls for are an attempt to reduce the positive outcomes the protest seeks. The reason they're brought up is because less change is less good for the protestors, and more change is more bad for the target of the protest. It's all about control, not about reality. That's why you should question anti-acceleration arguments even harsher than the original topic, because they lack the basis to be given the benefit of doubt.
looting is just wealth redistribution
This is an era wherein people complains too much about something just for views and fame.
You're awesome!
Ethical protesting is done by ethical people. It's the counterculture to ethical protest that is the problem.
Only the protesting I agree with is ethical, everything else is terrorism, crime, or an insurrection.
I saw that stupid AOC quote about how protesting was SUPPOSED to make people uncomfortable 1000 times on Reddit when the summer of love happened, but then the Canadian trucker protests happen and my most upvoted reply is "those guys were honking their horns way too much"
Protesting IS supposed to make people uncomfortable. The point is to make it impossible for ordinary people to live normal lives until the protest ends. Your protest needs to force people to take a side, otherwise it's not a protest, it's an idiot that can be ignored. The problem that arises is that protests inherently make people decide whether self-interest or morality are more important. And in America, self-interest has been the winner by a landslide for a long long time. That's why protests don't work in America anymore.
I love you all❤❤❤❤❤
One modern protest I was hoping to hear you way in on was the Canadian Convoy Protest. It doesn't have nice obvious answer, it depends where you draw the line of the rights of the individual to the obligation to others.
"Please join me for a moment of silence for property."
I get the sentiment behind the joke of being concerned about damages to property when the purpose of the protest is to address human suffering, but it is really wrongheaded when people pretend that it doesn't harm people when there is damage to their home and places of work that affect their livelihood. Many get by on a razor's edge and can't wait to hope that insurance or the government might help them out in the aftermath.
Nice work!!!!
When protests are watched over by cops, is it a protest or is it a statement that the child is unhappy?
more and more our lives play out on the digital plane, maybe we need a new dimension to protests that disrupts people's digital lives. sayfor example overwhelming online traffic, or strategic bot campaings that fill people's spaces with political messaging. then it's also harder for people to claim physical harms, because we have a social tendency to discredit online actions for legitimacy.
I find it notable that right-wing protests didn't make it into the video (pardon, one was brought up for 5 seconds), except for counter-protest movements which are labelled as "reactionary antics" and likewise left-wing counter-protests aren't discussed even when they're an integral part of the topic of discussion like with Charlottesville.
This makes justice a huge historical thing and it sounds cheap.
In hamburg g20 the burning of cars was an act of political theatre - creating stage for voices of oppressed. Though it is a wierd.jsutice to know that your car, bike has become a tool for greater justice by someone else's decision. Folks from Rote Flora were like riot is ok, but not in our neighborhood.
This riot - disruption - justification works on a level where you do not have to live with the people in the everyday. When individual folks are stand in for system, ideology, state violence - so protesters can be rough, for they are not individual.
In a way it is 'acceptable' as long as we have just one direction of progress, one deity, one democracy to be achieved - so it does not resemble old religious wars.
However if multiple political endpoints are possible say the protection of animals through economic de-growth vs protection of the right of sick folks for new medicine - the violent nature of protests starts to be less easily justifiable, for it has no clear endpoint.
They should be pinning this comment.
There's a term for those types of people. NIMBYs. "Not in my back yard". People who claim to be on board with positive change... as long as they can't see it, don't have to hear about it, and it doesn't affect them.
If only people could protest the way i want them to!
The saddest honest truth in terms of protesting, more coverage happens when people do absurd acts or resort to violence.
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I cannot side with a protest in which people are killed, but I can understand a protest that damages property.
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We're too relax with the noise because we're surrounded by noise; in one ear and out the other.
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I'm all for non-violent protest and in a perfect world, that's more effective but alas.
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If you cannot side with a protest in which people are killed, then what happens when the protest is against something that causes death? How do you stand when both the protest and the thing being protested get people killed?
Surely you'll have thought about that and realized that's how ALL protests are. Nobody is protesting for the sake of greed, because its inherently self-harming to engage in protest. They're doing it because it's the right thing to do (in their mind).
too many don't understand what protests are let alone how to do it right
Not far enough
Why do you say that? Did you not see 2020?
@@dwarvenjesus4266imagine if it was a leftist demonstration, would you change your tone?
@The_universal_cynic 2020 was leftists.
@@dwarvenjesus4266but I suppose something like Jan 6th was completely justified in your opinion?
Edit: my bad. It was an insurrection, not a protest. Carry on.
@@Snarl_Marx If 5/29 was justified to you.
Just got two great quotes to add to my PhD Politics thesis here, thank you! (And to Ranciere and Chanter!)