9 ms·

This is a good articulation of mlkjr's theology and dicipline around nonviolence, but I think its incomplete if you read it in isolation. His strategy worked b

This is a good articulation of mlkjr's theology and dicipline around nonviolence, but I think its incomplete if you read it in isolation. His strategy worked because it existed alongside MANY other voices, IMO the most underrated of which is Malcolm X, that rejected this "gradualism" outright and refused endless delay. They weren't organizing violence but they were instead making it credible that there is a world where those "peaceful" people do not accept complicity or "no" for an answer. This shifted the baseline of what a "compromise" could look like (as we today see baselines shift very frequently often in a less just direction) Seen that way, nonviolence wasn't just a moral stance, it was one side of a coin and once piece of a broader ecosystem of pressure from different directions. King's approach was powerful because there were alternatives he was NOT choosing. You cannot have nonviolence unless violence is a credible threat from a game-theory perspective. And that contrast made his path viable without endorsing the alternatives as a model

oceansky 8mo ago
He also had a 75% disapproval rating at the time of his killing. The violence against him, in contrast with the nonviolence stand, made it stand out.
- Rperry2174 8mo ago
  yeah the crazy part about that is one uncomfortable point many through history (and in threads today) have made is that nonviolence implicitly assumes a moral audience. And that injustice, once clearly exposed will provoke people's conscience. History obviously shows that that "moral audience" was certainly the minority then. MLK was already forcing that confrontation and by most accounts was succeeding slowly-but-surely. But it wasn't until his assassination that people were forced to confront the contrast he had been trying to illuminate all along. Even his disciplined non-violence he was met with brutal force (as were the peaceful protesters) and this forced some sort of moral reckoning for those who had deferred or were complicit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKnJL2jfA5A&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKnJL2jfA5A&feature=youtu.be
atoav 8mo ago
Essentially "good-cop-bad-cop" on a political level?
alansaber 8mo ago
Exactly, the potency comes from the fact that violence is the standard reaction
pixl97 8mo ago
If you give people one option it is a demand, and they may rightfully reject it. Now, give people two options with one of them seeming much better it becomes a choice. Violence is 100% an answer, it's just very rarely the best answer that can be provided.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
timschmidt 8mo ago
"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." -- Thomas Jefferson https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/tree-liberty-quotation/ https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
- zahlman 8mo ago
Gagarin1917 8mo ago
I’m not sure that logically tracks. You (likely) act in a non-violent way every day. If you want some kind of change in your life, you achieve it non-violently. Does that imply you are are actually a violent person that is choosing not to be violent? Are you implying “something violent” every day you act like a good person? MLK didn’t have support because people were afraid of the alternative. They supported him because they agreed with him message. I feel like you are just trying to justify violence to some degree.
- XorNot 8mo ago
  Everyday you're not trying to achieve political change. And a lot of those interactions are backed by implied violence: people paying for things at stores is not because everyone has actually agreed on the price.
  - zahlman 8mo ago
    > people paying for things at stores is not because everyone has actually agreed on the price. ... I genuinely can't fathom what it's like to live in a developed country and yet have such little social trust. You really imagine that when others are in line at a checkout, they have the intrusive thought "I could just bolt and not pay, but I see a security guard so I better stay in line"? You really have that thought yourself? Of course people have agreed on the price. That's why you don't see anyone trying to negotiate the price, even though they would be perfectly within their rights to try. And it's why you do see people comparison-shop.
    - XorNot 8mo ago
      If you break the law, what happens to you? What does the state do to you? Like say you persistently just refuse to pay a parking ticket after court orders to do so?
      - wrs 8mo ago
        You're missing the point -- I don't refuse to pay a parking ticket after the court orders me to do so. I don't stand in the checkout line trying to figure out how to run out without paying. I don't threaten people on the sidewalk and take their money when I notice there aren't any police around at the moment. I trust that the vast, vast majority of people act similarly. If they didn't, no amount of law enforcement would be enough.
zahlman 8mo ago
> His strategy worked because it existed alongside MANY other voices, IMO the most underrated of which is Malcolm X, that rejected this "gradualism" outright and refused endless delay. I have read very many people claim this and exactly zero reasons provided by them why I should believe it is true. It seems to me like basic common nature that if you see proponents of a cause behaving in a manner you find objectionable, that will naturally bias you against the cause. And I have, repeatedly, across a period of many years, observed myself to become less sympathetic to multiple causes specifically because I can see that their proponents use violence in spreading their message. I've tried very many times to explain the above to actual proponents of causes behaving in manners I found objectionable (but only on the Internet, for fear of physical safety) and the responses have all been either incoherent or just verbally abusive. > making it credible that there is a world where those "peaceful" people do not accept complicity or "no" for an answer. This would only make sense if social change required action specifically from people in power, who in turn must necessarily act against their best interest to effect it. If that were true, there would be no real motivation to try nonviolence at all, except perhaps to try to conserve the resources used to do violence. > You cannot have nonviolence unless violence is a credible threat from a game-theory perspective First, no, that makes no sense. If that were true, formal debate would never occur and nobody would ever actually try to convince anyone of anything in good faith. The premise is flawed from the beginning; you cannot apply game theory here because you cannot even establish that clearly defined "players" exist. Nor is there a well-defined "payoff matrix", at all. The point of nonviolent protest is to make the protested party reconsider what is actually at stake. Second, in practice, violence is never actually reserved as a credible threat in these actions; it happens concurrently with attempts at nonviolence and agitators give no credible reason why it should stop if their demands are met. In fact, it very often comes across that the apparent demands are only a starting point and that ceding to them will only embolden the violent.
- bnlxbnlx 8mo ago
  > I have read very many people claim this and exactly zero reasons provided by them why I should believe it is true. could you share some sources where people have discussed this? i'd like to understand their reasoning better
bnlxbnlx 8mo ago
intrigued by this. i've spent a lot of timer over the last years with very committed nonviolence folks, and i keep wondering about the conditions for this to work. can you recommend any sources that discuss this idea?
RickJWagner 8mo ago
Today, history remembers MLK as a great man. There are parades in his honor, workers are given a day off. Rosa Parks is another peaceful pioneer credited with bringing strides forward. Malcolm X and others are already fading from memory.
- hackable_sand 8mo ago
  You should get that checked out.
  - RickJWagner 8mo ago
    Ask any kid “ Who was MLK?” Then ask “Who was Malcolm X?” You’ll see.
- I-M-S 8mo ago
  I believe that was the OP's point: we remember a sanitized version of the myth of MLK that flatters modern sensibilities, while ignoring Malcom X because we don't like to acknowledge he played an equally important role in bringing about change.
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  Remembrance does not imply causation
GeorgeOldfield 8mo ago
yup. watch "the interview" with MLK he clearly explains what he thinks about violent insurrection. the article is whitewashing

oceansky 8mo ago

He also had a 75% disapproval rating at the time of his killing. The violence against him, in contrast with the nonviolence stand, made it stand out.

Rperry2174 8mo ago
yeah the crazy part about that is one uncomfortable point many through history (and in threads today) have made is that nonviolence implicitly assumes a moral audience. And that injustice, once clearly exposed will provoke people's conscience. History obviously shows that that "moral audience" was certainly the minority then. MLK was already forcing that confrontation and by most accounts was succeeding slowly-but-surely. But it wasn't until his assassination that people were forced to confront the contrast he had been trying to illuminate all along. Even his disciplined non-violence he was met with brutal force (as were the peaceful protesters) and this forced some sort of moral reckoning for those who had deferred or were complicit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKnJL2jfA5A&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKnJL2jfA5A&feature=youtu.be

atoav 8mo ago

Essentially "good-cop-bad-cop" on a political level?

alansaber 8mo ago

Exactly, the potency comes from the fact that violence is the standard reaction

pixl97 8mo ago

If you give people one option it is a demand, and they may rightfully reject it. Now, give people two options with one of them seeming much better it becomes a choice. Violence is 100% an answer, it's just very rarely the best answer that can be provided.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

timschmidt 8mo ago

"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." -- Thomas Jefferson https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/tree-liberty-quotation/ https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...

zahlman 8mo ago

Gagarin1917 8mo ago

I’m not sure that logically tracks. You (likely) act in a non-violent way every day. If you want some kind of change in your life, you achieve it non-violently. Does that imply you are are actually a violent person that is choosing not to be violent? Are you implying “something violent” every day you act like a good person? MLK didn’t have support because people were afraid of the alternative. They supported him because they agreed with him message. I feel like you are just trying to justify violence to some degree.

XorNot 8mo ago
Everyday you're not trying to achieve political change. And a lot of those interactions are backed by implied violence: people paying for things at stores is not because everyone has actually agreed on the price.
- zahlman 8mo ago
  > people paying for things at stores is not because everyone has actually agreed on the price. ... I genuinely can't fathom what it's like to live in a developed country and yet have such little social trust. You really imagine that when others are in line at a checkout, they have the intrusive thought "I could just bolt and not pay, but I see a security guard so I better stay in line"? You really have that thought yourself? Of course people have agreed on the price. That's why you don't see anyone trying to negotiate the price, even though they would be perfectly within their rights to try. And it's why you do see people comparison-shop.
  - XorNot 8mo ago
    If you break the law, what happens to you? What does the state do to you? Like say you persistently just refuse to pay a parking ticket after court orders to do so?
    - wrs 8mo ago
      You're missing the point -- I don't refuse to pay a parking ticket after the court orders me to do so. I don't stand in the checkout line trying to figure out how to run out without paying. I don't threaten people on the sidewalk and take their money when I notice there aren't any police around at the moment. I trust that the vast, vast majority of people act similarly. If they didn't, no amount of law enforcement would be enough.

zahlman 8mo ago

> His strategy worked because it existed alongside MANY other voices, IMO the most underrated of which is Malcolm X, that rejected this "gradualism" outright and refused endless delay. I have read very many people claim this and exactly zero reasons provided by them why I should believe it is true. It seems to me like basic common nature that if you see proponents of a cause behaving in a manner you find objectionable, that will naturally bias you against the cause. And I have, repeatedly, across a period of many years, observed myself to become less sympathetic to multiple causes specifically because I can see that their proponents use violence in spreading their message. I've tried very many times to explain the above to actual proponents of causes behaving in manners I found objectionable (but only on the Internet, for fear of physical safety) and the responses have all been either incoherent or just verbally abusive. > making it credible that there is a world where those "peaceful" people do not accept complicity or "no" for an answer. This would only make sense if social change required action specifically from people in power, who in turn must necessarily act against their best interest to effect it. If that were true, there would be no real motivation to try nonviolence at all, except perhaps to try to conserve the resources used to do violence. > You cannot have nonviolence unless violence is a credible threat from a game-theory perspective First, no, that makes no sense. If that were true, formal debate would never occur and nobody would ever actually try to convince anyone of anything in good faith. The premise is flawed from the beginning; you cannot apply game theory here because you cannot even establish that clearly defined "players" exist. Nor is there a well-defined "payoff matrix", at all. The point of nonviolent protest is to make the protested party reconsider what is actually at stake. Second, in practice, violence is never actually reserved as a credible threat in these actions; it happens concurrently with attempts at nonviolence and agitators give no credible reason why it should stop if their demands are met. In fact, it very often comes across that the apparent demands are only a starting point and that ceding to them will only embolden the violent.

bnlxbnlx 8mo ago
> I have read very many people claim this and exactly zero reasons provided by them why I should believe it is true. could you share some sources where people have discussed this? i'd like to understand their reasoning better

bnlxbnlx 8mo ago

intrigued by this. i've spent a lot of timer over the last years with very committed nonviolence folks, and i keep wondering about the conditions for this to work. can you recommend any sources that discuss this idea?

RickJWagner 8mo ago

Today, history remembers MLK as a great man. There are parades in his honor, workers are given a day off. Rosa Parks is another peaceful pioneer credited with bringing strides forward. Malcolm X and others are already fading from memory.

hackable_sand 8mo ago
You should get that checked out.
- RickJWagner 8mo ago
  Ask any kid “ Who was MLK?” Then ask “Who was Malcolm X?” You’ll see.
I-M-S 8mo ago
I believe that was the OP's point: we remember a sanitized version of the myth of MLK that flatters modern sensibilities, while ignoring Malcom X because we don't like to acknowledge he played an equally important role in bringing about change.
direwolf20 8mo ago
Remembrance does not imply causation

GeorgeOldfield 8mo ago

yup. watch "the interview" with MLK he clearly explains what he thinks about violent insurrection. the article is whitewashing