We don't have to like it, but it's undeniable that cops treat protestors in plated vests with rifles different than they treat protestors in tshirts with signs...

And this is why I am a proud gun owning liberal.

Fighting back is often the only choice you're left with when Nazis gain power, but I do wish people would keep in mind there's a difference between strategizing and being smart about how and when you fight back vs encouraging individuals to run full speed at the entire U.S. military with a bullseye on their forehead.

Also, if you're bringing fascists and rule of law into this, hopefully you're not wilfully ignoring how they gain power in the first place, or the fact that the Nazis literally used a legal expert that provided them with the legal shield they needed to carry out a genocide without ever breaking the law.

Carl Schmitt

Or that one of Trump's biggest defenders against the "crooked courts" that keep getting in his way, and leaving him with no choice but to act like a dictator, is a Harvard Constitutional Law professor who also just happens to be a Carl Schmitt fanboy.

Adrian Vermeule-OUR SCHMITTIAN ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

Common-Good Constitutionalism Is an Idea as Dangerous as They Come

Little known fact that the Nazis were at last turned back at Stalingrad by the wittiest picket sign made in the Soviet Union. The sign, which used a mock spelling of Hitler's name, simply read "A doof, Hitler". Many historians believe that the German military never fully recovered from this humiliation.

Why We're Organizing No Kings Protests on Saturday--A king is only a king if we bow down

For the would-be dictator, success depends on projecting power and creating an aura of inevitability. They need you to believe that Trump is the new normal, that the MAGA movement will be in power for the long haul, that the only rational move is to go along, keep your head down, and protect your own interests.

In short, it requires a countless number of people in a countless number of places to do something that the Trump regime doesn’t want them to do, or to NOT do something the Trump regime wants them to do. That’s how we shake off the aura of inevitability and halt the autocratic breakthrough.

For that to happen, people need to feel like we’re part of something bigger. We need to understand that we’re part of a movement. We need to feel like we will win.

https://www.howwefightback.com/p/why-were-organizing-no-kings-protests

worked out for this guy:

although to be fair he did get shot to death right before.

Well, technically, the Germans could have voted in a majority party on the left in the early 1930s and when that did fail they still could have just not voted for literal nazis.

So, Yeah. That was an option.

We will see in four years (or less depending if anything horrifically dramatic happens). But when violence has to happen, get ready to exercise your second amendment rights.

And if you see someone being taken away by fascists, make sure you and everyone else watching dont do anything except film it to post on social media. Maybe if you're feeling adventurous you can tell the brown shirts what theyre doing is bad, just make sure you dont do anything to actually stop them.

Can people learn about dictators that aren't Adolf Hitler? Please?

They actually are.

Non-violent resistances have historically had double the effectiveness of violent resistance movements. Violent resistances generally just get a bunch of people killed and only makes things worse.

The reason is simple. It's a numbers game. Only a few psychopaths want violence and those few are easily dealt with by police. Sometimes they can especially troublesome and need to be dealt with by the military (LA isn't one of those cases, Trump is just an idiot). It's only the very rare case that a violent resistance topples a government and in those cases it's just replacing one group of authoritarian psychos replacing another group. The French revolution ended up with a King being replaced by an Emperor after a whole lot of people died.

Meanwhile a non-violent movement can attract more numbers. You only need single digit percentages of the population to participate in things like general strikes to make an authoritarian regime collapse. But you aren't getting those numbers with a violent resistance, people have families to think about and violent resistances are easily vilified. An authoritarian regime can exercise violence against a violent resistance and kill it. If an authoritarian regime uses violence against a non-violent resistance it's clear to everyone who the villains are and an every broader number of people will participate and subtle and secretive ways.

History bears this out, a violent resistances don't work unless there's foreign backing and even then it's unlikely to succeed. Non-violent resistances have double the probability of success. Non-violent resistances are just about psychopaths that want to burn things down coming up with bullshit rationalizations for it.

Ah yes war mobilized state of Germany with the support of majority of Germans behind it famously known to be stopped by violent protests.

There are more guns than people in the US. Guns don't stop fascism, if they did we would not be here now. Furthermore, the majority of 2nd amendment gunholes are ready to support ICE not fight them.

This meme is stupid on so many levels.

Bro thinks it's a gun fight against the US military 💀

ok im sick of this bullshit.

i swear many people on lemmy seem to think only one way or another. no middle ground anymore.

There is a place for violent and non-vioent protest, and they can coexist. In fact they SHOULD coexist. Those engaged in violent protest however, should not be protesting openly in my opinion, and they should not be protesting in public, the forms of violent protest i think of is more assassination. Getting rid of maga cultists and maga cultist politicians that enable them. However i do not think assassination in terms of guns or bombs. i think poisons, viruses, fucking with maga cultist's houses to make them less safe in a more invisible way (creating a gas leak or electrical issue). The reason i think this is that it is harder for these moron cultists to combat, most of them do not understand more subtle violence, yes i know this is fucked up. And i REALLY hope it's not neccessary, but i feel we (america) and really most countries have a difficult time figuring out when actual guerilla warfare becomes neccessary.

Personally i would think of anyone who does such things to be about the same as luigi mangione who was obviously wrongfully imprisoned and thankfully there are others out there doing the real work. Also such things probably won't be put in the media anymore, they will hide it because luigi mangione galvanized a lot of people, they don't want martyrs, martyrs galvanize us all into resistance.

I am not saying you should do this. I am saying that there is room for both and for some reason both sides of this same fight are against eachother. Another way to do it would be to have backup protestors nearby in gear IN CASE things DO get violent. I think both of these are viable for "violent protest" the violent protesters in the latter case are backup for the peaceful protestors since if you dont have a weapon or any intention of committing violence on your oppressors then you will need someone else who is very willing to do so, and in my opinion, someone who enjoys it.

As "givessomefucks" said "We don’t have to like it, but it’s undeniable that cops treat protestors in plated vests with rifles different than they treat protestors in tshirts with signs…"

but this is why violent protest should be done subtly and NOT in large numbers, your goal as a "violent protestor" is more to support the peaceful protestors WITHOUT compromising their own goals of peaceful protest. So these two methods seem the most viable to me. They are right, you cant go into the protest with weapons and gear, that's why you need to be a LOT more subtle than this.

If things spill over and peaceful protests stop working then yes, violent protest might become the only real option in public. until then do NOT compromise peaceful protestors.