Ask Lemmy

It seems too easy to me to make such a clear narrative. And one could argue the same about pacifists being a psyop. The media broadly prefers pacifists, as do most educational establishments. I think there is truth to what you are saying, that often people in groups are pushed to violent action by provocateurs. This justifies crackdowns and surveillance, as well as to smear them. However peaceful actions do tend to lack any ability to effect change against a rigid structure, especially one willing to use violence even against those who do not.

The ideal for those who want to control is to have small groups commit reprehensible acts on relatively small scales and on targets that seem almost unrelated to their cause, just general terrorism, while the mainstream versions of those movements condemn any violence at all, and can easily be ignored or squashed when they get too large.

Successful change against repression of any kind has always involved a threat to the power base, or the power itself. Even nonviolent action against structures that give power generally need to be defended from violent repressiion, resulting in the end with violence from both sides. Strikes were met with crackdowns which had to be met with resistance to be taken seriously. The stonewall riots helped show that a repressed community would not simply lay down forever.

Yes, calls to violence should be met with suspicion, but pacifism is the absolute rejection of violence, and the romance of such a pure position is a tool of oppression used when it is useful to do so. Those who wish to do good will often search for ways to do good without compromising on their other values, while those who wish simply to control will do whatever best maintains control.

This does not mean that we should simply do the most expedient thing to gain power and allow the good to come later, but that we must be realistic when examining our options and not let our values cause us to lose. On the other hand, our values lend us our strength by being our point to rally on. When what we want is a good for all we will have more support than opposition, and without that we cannot win and any victory would be hollow.