Honestly they're just the controlled opposition at this point. They'll never improve anything, just put on the breaks some.

Violence is how we assure our votes are heard. But voting is still important. Even if it's only used for movement building.

“progress in when big strong men get voted for and take action” or something. I do feel sorry for you

What the fuck? Weirdest shit to say while advocating violence.

Slaves were not freeing themselves, they were on the run. They were not safe. They did not get a fair shot in the world and most often did not get to live successful lives. And even after passing those amendments that stuff still didn't get better but they had the law on their side and that changed history. Slaves had been fighting and running for centuries before countries started passing laws to change that, the only reason why slavery isn't as big of a thing today is because laws were codified to stop it. And the only reason why that happened was because stories were shared, insight was offered and empathy, understanding and knowledge won. You'll probably say something super disrespectful acting like Americans working today with their AC, Internet, eating more food than anyone back then could imagine is slavery but that is absolutely absurd. It isn't fair today, we can do better but my god the calls for violence are pathetic when solutions are right in front of your face.

Japanese internment ended six months after Japan surrendered

So it ended because of policy, not because of violence? What are you pointing out here I don't understand? The internment of Japanese citizens was wrong but it wasn't because of some violent episode it ended?

Trump, Bush, FDR and Lincoln all took horrific actions.

Great explanation? Lincoln has two main problems from what I remember - he changed the law to arrest people who opposed the war, protested, editors of newspapers, Confederate sympathizers which you can definitely say wasn't cool but on the other side, these were people basically supporting slavery or at least being Ed Sheeran about the enslavement of people, so feel how you want about that I dunno. He also continued the abuse of Indigenous Americans which is super fucked up, but you're starting to fall into the leftist problem where suddenly nobody is perfect, everyone is bad and now you've set such impossible ridiculous standards nothing will get done it's called a circular firing squad, and it's really fucking dumb especially when looking back in history and applying modern lens on these people's entire actions. Lincoln ended slavery, that is what happened and it was for the best.

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Have you heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain? Tons of people here on Lemmy will tell you actions like that helped acquire worker's rights but they actually didn't. Historians look back and recognize it likely delayed worker's rights because the response was suppression as a form of retribution/punishment. This same thing happened with Nat Turner's Rebellion. You did not get the weekend because people died for it, you got the weekend because people worked together to get it. They spoke, they voted, they educated.

Violence is an important part of history and politics.

Yes it is but looking at history violence almost always just makes things way fucking worse. Cherry picking instances of violence you support isn't the look you think it is. When you have an option to actually JUST FUCKING VOTE. And make change without killing innocent people, many of them poor and unable to escape violence, YOU'RE the asshole here. Don't you understand that? You're basically demanding people throw their bodies into a meat grinder to get what you believe is right.

The Haitian Rebellion was the only successful slave rebellion and that was because a multitude of reasons that had nothing to do with their choice to be violent. Their adversaries were weakened, slavery was already being seen as a cruel and evil thing, smart people used their words to get everyone to work together. It wasn't violence that achieved independence for them. Nat Turner did his best as did John Brown, so did Lincoln, so did FDR, and so did Obama, regardless of how you choose to view these people they did want to make a change that was positive just like you do. Left-leaning people want so badly for the best candidate possible, they literally want a messiah to be every option they have and they want every scenario to have a pretty little solution with no bloodshed or cruelty, but then they also want to engage with violence and cheer on slaughtering of the bad guys. It doesn't make sense. Crucify and kill anyone who isn't perfect and all you're left with is more violent people?

My point isn't violence is bad and you're dumb for saying it or something, my point is calling for violence is bad when you have such an easy fucking lay up of a solution. Which is to just fucking vote, get the right people in and let time march forward. If you try to engage in violence you will enact the suffering of so many people who don't choose that for themselves. Slavery wasn't defeated with a sword, kings weren't defeated by the guillotine. It was by the word and the pen and knowledge that we were able to push past these awful things in history. I find it absolutely absurd how many people want to leap to violence and can't understand they are literally the monsters they hate, history literally teaches us this time and time again. A revolutionary force engages in violence to make change, then that violence becomes the norm and they continue the violence because they believe they were correct to be violent in the first place.

This post is fucking stupid because it completely ignores times in history where collective action, voting and education made the most drastic changes - voting rights for women/POC/the young/the poor/the disabled, apartheid ended because of sanctions, the Great Salt March, the Singing Revolution, it goes on and on where non-violence got better results than violence ever could've. It is through collective action and taking back your government system. If voting did not matter they wouldn't put so much god damn effort to get people to not vote. Murdering Caesar did not make Rome better.

I know some people who can't accept that the system isn't functional anymore, simply because they would have complete mental collapse at their powerlessness in the face of the present evil.

I see a lot of people say "oh so I should do nothing??" when they're told voting does not matter. Seems like a whole bunch of people do just vote and put their faith in the electoral system.

Luxemburg and the Spartacists had criticized the SPD in 1914 for having become a bourgeois party. Its like, they knew what was happening, they just didn't do anything about it until 1917. Naive in that they continued to trust the SPD despite identifying its actual class character, when they should have been organizing, educating, and building for the split, so that when the split happens the mass of workers are prepared.

Its a really interesting point to make in this thread, since "rioting" was ~~ultimately~~ part of what defeated the German working class. Police would infiltrate the movement, incite putschism or convince people to switch the target of an action. Over and over, defeat after defeat, still the power of the bourgeois in Germany was crushed by the revolutionary workers. Except, there was nobody on the left who could lead and organize a transitional government, they'd all been killed in riots or exiled.