this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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Notice I said nothing about what is just or unjust. I'm strictly talking tactics. And at this moment in the Trump regime's authoritarian breakthrough, non-violence is still our best bet. History of these sorts of breakthroughs shows that authoritarian regimes are best countered by broad-based public resistance. And yes, that means from normies.
As soon as you start shooting back, you yield the upper hand to ICE and the regime's goons. They know how to deal with violence... It is their language. What they don't know how to deal with is a pissed-off grandma in a chicken costume with the full moral backing of 70% of the population.
The grandma will still die from breathing in the pepper spray they put in the air intake of the suite. You're saying deaths of innocent protesters are worth it? I'm sorry, but have you been to a protest where ICE gets violent? Are you waiting until someone is killed? Because that's already happened.
We should remain nonviolent in the face of our allies being abducted, tortured, and killed? Where is the line for you? Honestly?
Because I'm not saying this to get people to go do random acts of violence against ICE. I'm saying this so that people like you realize that the preparation for a resistance is needed NOW. You don't just go out and be violent. That's not at all what the Black Panther Party was doing. And honestly, that preparation is likely far too late even now.
When ICE commits violence against the unarmed grandma in the chicken suit, they radicalize ten more grandmas—and solidify the position of the normies against ICE.
And anyone who shows up to a protest is making their own risk assessment. Some protests are the strollers and marches type, and that's a pretty low risk level. Some protests are spicier, and they tend to draw a different crowd with a different risk tolerance.
And yes, I'm saying we should remain non-violent in the face of ICE's atrocities, because that is the best tactic for gaining and retaining the wide-spread support necessary to defeat them.
I think the part you're missing is what that support gets us. When there's wide-spread support for those opposing ICE, that gives us more of an ability (and the people power) to attack the pillars of support that prop up the authoritarian regime.
When ICE shows up. There are no nonviolent protest. Right now the violence is just in one direction.
Do you think an organized group of people physically protecting a Grandma from state violence is any less effective in radicalizing people? I'd argue it's MORE effective. Do you think people want to go out and protest when they are surrounded by other people that will stand by and do nothing when they get grabbed?
All nonviolence is doing is allowing ICE to do their true violence in private. We don't resist so they take someone away and do their violence off camera. They take their children away. They put them into camps and brutalize them. They kill them in a means that is not public or passed off to another country to do it for them.
Does resisting increase the risk of a lethal act at that time? Yes. But lethal acts are already happening. Right now they're just happening off camera and "a man found dead in ICE detention" is the story.
Standing by and doing nothing is not reducing harm and it's not helping radicalize people. It's just allowing the state to do it's violence off camera while still filling the media with lies of violent protesters.
Showing people what organized physical resistance actually looks like gives people that are already on the streets hope and solidarity. I know. I've experienced it.
Yes. As soon as ICE blood starts spilling onto the streets, you lose the normies real quick. And then the bad guys have justification (in the eyes of some) in hitting back even harder.
Ehh I never said do nothing. There's quite a large gulf between "de-arrest" / "put cones over pepper bombs" and "shooting people". I do think most people don't want to go out and protest if it's really "go out and engage in armed conflict with the state."
You're conflating violence with resistance. The two are not the same. One could argue one is a subset of the other.
Again, that's not what I'm advocating.
I'm curious. If you don't mind sharing, where/how did you experience this? What was the resistance?