“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” - Malcolm X
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” - John F. Kennedy
“I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle.” - Nelson Mandela
The JFK quote here is perfect. A single line that evaluates exactly what is happening. And if violent protests are to occur, everyone will shake their heads and go “this isn’t America!”
“This isn’t the USA!”
They said about a country built on a violent revolution against the Empire that controlled it and a civil war that was never finished.
Don’t forget about the genocide on the actual North American people!
Worth noting that the Malcom X and Nelson Mandela thought processes were what eventually led to the formation of the Black Panthers during the civil rights era, and subsequently led to gun control laws being started by republicans. During the civil rights protests, people quickly realized that peaceful protests were violently broken. But heavily armed peaceful protests had police nervously watching from across the street.
Because police had no qualms about firing into an unarmed crowd to get people to disperse. But when the entire crowd is armed to the teeth and can immediately return fire, the police are suddenly okay with watching from afar. This was the start of the Black Panthers; a group who organized heavily armed protests.
When conservative lawmakers saw a bunch of heavily armed black people (and allies) on their front steps, and saw the police unwilling to break the protests, those conservative lawmakers got really fucking sweaty. So instead, they gave the police tools to arrest individual protestors. The Mulford Act was drafted and quickly passed. At the time, it was the most restrictive gun control law the country had ever seen. It was written by Ronald Reagan (yes, the same Ronald Reagan that the right uplifts as a paragon of conservative values,) and was supported by the NRA, (yes, the same NRA that lobbies for looser gun control laws in the wakes of school shootings.)
This gave the police the power to arrest individual protestors after the fact. Instead of firing into the crowd to disperse the protest, they would wait for the protest to end, follow the protestors home, then kick in their front doors while they were having dinner with their families. (Remember all of the “don’t bring your cell phone to protests because police will arrest you a week or two later if your phone was pinged nearby” messaging during the pandemic protests? Yeah…)
This led to the Black Panthers diving underground. They realized what was happening after protests, so they took efforts to guard their members’ identities. They pulled tactics straight out of anti-espionage textbooks. Randomized meeting places, so police couldn’t set up stings ahead of time. Code names, so arrested members couldn’t rat even if they wanted to. Fragmented info, so no one person (even the leaders) could take down the entire operation if busted. Coded messages. Dead drops. Et cetera, et cetera…
We’re on a rocket trajectory straight down that same pipeline now.
Plays “baby shark” on repeat.
The state of education in America 55 years ago.
The best thing about America is that the music always stays relevant.
Wonder if we’re going to get any World War 3 bangers soon.
Here’s a whole album full, from around the same time - KMFDM - WWIII
in the schoolyard I was told (and never doubted because i’m dim) that KMFDM stood for Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode and to my amused surprise I have just learned that the young me was wildly misinformed
Don’t worry, you can still have plausible deniability - listen to their song Kunst and you’ll see the Depeche Mode meaning has been co-opted and muddied by the band. You know, for fun!
oh that’s fascinating to learn that this was a very very widespread bit of fake news back then. Like Marilyn Manson being the kid from Mr Belvedere. Or Marilyn Manson having a rib removed so he could nibble his own sausage.
Were there any popular Afghanistan invasion songs? I recall many songs such as Fortunate Son for the Vietnam war but I can’t really recall popular 2010-2020 anti war music.
Pretty much any punk song from 2001 onwards was anti-war on terror/Bush.
I’d personally recommend the album Mobilize by Anti-Flag, but that’s just my nostalgia talking, fucking banger album though.
Nice song. But that’s from 2002, just like the other user which linked a 2006 song. They all seem to be before 2010.
Where did anti war music go from 2010 to 2020? Did being anti-war become unpopular or were they just less featured in our media? Or did people stop making anti war songs?
After the death of Bin Laden, a decade of constant warfare, and the machinations utter crushing of the leftist movement re: occupy, anti-wot protests, the GFC, etc., etc. we were all just burnt out. You still have generic anti-war songs here and there, but it wasn’t as pressing an issue for people.
That makes sense. I was wondering if this could somehow be blamed on Justin Bieber and the Swifties but war fatigue is probably the cause.
Wonder if things will change or people are still in the “tired” phase.
America forgot it was at war in Afghanistan until the disastrous pullout. You gotta have awareness of a thing to rage against it
Audioslave did some but they weren’t “mainstream” popular.
This one is more about Bush and the lame response to the Katrina disaster but Tom Morello said it’s a “finger-pointing song” and includes lyrics about trading lives for oil.
From my recollection, Afghanistan wasn’t singled out in pop culture music; rather the entire “war on terror” was lumped together.
People were applauding this at the time too.
What’s this?
Kent State Massacre.
Anti-Vietnam war rally at a university saw the national guard called in to stop it, and they ended up killing 4 people.
Yikes.
But props to the Columbia U staff for walking out. In other universities this was just par for the course, and the faculty stayed put as students were arrested
Or was it just not reported?
I would imagine media would have loved to report on an additional element of the story, but
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/yale-students-demonstrators-detained-amid-pro-palestinian-protest/
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Or if homeless people are committing a crime by being homeless
You’re allowed to be homeless, you’re just not allowed to sleep.
Well if you were a real American homeless person you’d just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and learn to sleep sitting upright with your eyes open while saying “yes sir” to the officers who consistently harassed you
Just hang upside down from the underside of a bridge to like a bat.
Manufactured incident. If you read what those young adults on the ground are saying its clear this is the all being inflamed by the media and school officials. Not the students of which many are Jewish in support of Palestine.
whats the context? im ootl on this one.
There’s massive student protests for Palestine going on at American universities right now. The universities are calling in the police to arrest their students. Some have locked down their universities and moved to online-only lessons to ignore the protests.
Why do they care so much about the protests that they are having the students arrested? I don’t get it. Just let them protest
Protest is generly seen as criminal or crime adjascent behaviour in the US in my experience. The average person is unable to see the bigger picture that protest slot into and even in cases like this where nobody is inconvenienced somebody or some institution will cry about it.
Yep. A lot of people are uninformed and see protest as a disruption. Most people, even educated have tunnel vision sometimes. The people that get the big picture are empathetic or considerate and usually the ones who protest.
Students once again standing up for a populace having war brought to them courtesy of the US of A.
The Land of the Free*
* Unless you disagree with the mainstream narrative, in which case you should not be free.
“Courtesy of th US of A” is more anti-US fluff than bare truth. Netanyahu and those of power in Isreal are due far more credit. Everyone involved is shite.
i mean, the us of a is literally financing and enabling all of it…
No, political officials are enabling it. The majority of Americans do not support it, myself included. My initial point is that pointing the big fat finger at the US, while not mentioning the people LITERALLY killing eachother, is typical anti-US fluff. I get fed up with people doing that, even if I detest our involvement.
thats literally what we mean we we say the US is doing it.
the fact you support it or not doesnt currently bear any weight on what is happening, and will continue to happen in there.
My gripe comes from that first part, where the latter I agree with. The countries at war are to blame moreso than the enablers and profiteers …Technically. I am not saying the US is innocent… but this isn’t the US “doing it” we’re aiding a crooked ally. I’ve read comments so often that seem to wholly blame the US. We’re a super easy target to criticize, thus my calling the first statement anti-US fluff. Even if I’m arguing semantics.
We deserve plenty of credit and i think passing it off as fluff is pretty disheartening to be frank.
What about this whole debacle ISN’T disheartening? Blaming the US, pointedly, for something we’re involved in IS moreso fluff… believe it or not, Isreal and Palestine are to blame. All other actors are just playing the same fucking role, as always, in the ever grinding meat-wheel of warfare. There are no “heartening” tales from this. I would LOVE to see the US have no involvement, for a change, but that’s not how “allies” work. Geopolitical fuckery will ever stand in the way of true peaceful avoidance for any country tied to ones at war.
blaming the us in something the us is involved in is perfectly reasonable.
If you hadn’t said “finanacing and enabling ALL of it”, I’d agree. We aren’t the country to bear the crux on all of this, even if we are playing second-banana. Palestinian extremists did a fucking awful thing, and then Israeli officials made it, somehow, worse.
Without our funding they couldn’t do what they are doing. We are paying for the genocide. Take that shit somewhere else you liberal nazi.
Liberal Nazi? The fuck are you smoking?
Cut a liberal and a nazi bleeds
Admin at this school is suspending students based on their political beliefs. They use the bad faith arguments that opposing Israel is equivalent to antisemitism. The same tactics that the Chinese government has uses.
Oh shut the fuck up, you don’t know shit about China and they have nothing to do with this. They actually support Palestinians unlike genocide Joe
This feels so our of context. Like, what is the link between the state of education and a picture of 20 police people standing on top of a stair?
They’re at a university. Arresting students who are protesting against the genocide in Gaza. They want the university to halt collaborations with Israeli universities.
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It’s a bit of fake news, blown totally out of proportion because of “Israel First.”
But still, ACAB.
The police crackdowns on pro Palestine demonstrations are pretty big right now I wouldn’t say this is “out of proportion”. Colombia shut down their entire school
This is the riot police showing up at the University of Texas today
And going into the school to cancel the protest
Yikes!
I mean the media characterization of “antisemitism” and the subsequent response is blown out of proportion.
To my knowledge the vast majority of protesters have welcomed Israelis into their ranks, and the few agent provocateurs from the first few days are gone now. Which makes sense, considering how much Bibi’s genocidal actions are undermining Israeli interests.
Yeah that is just the same old lie that governments use. Demonize any protestors by twisting their message and bonus points for planting a few false flags. Zeteo wrote a pretty good article about it:
I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’
Ah, yes, the famous American right to free speech
