ID: photo of Martin Luther King Jr. waving at the crowd during the March on Washington, on it is his quote: “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    20 days ago

    “Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented”

    • Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize 1986

    Quoted from his acceptance speech -
    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/acceptance-speech/

    Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, now part of Romania. During World War II, he, with his family and other Jews from the area, were deported to the German concentration and extermination camps, where his parents and little sister perished. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 by advancing Allied troops, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist.

    • in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 days ago

      “You shouldn’t pay attention to politics it’s unhealthy.” - My “liberal” “centrist” family. “You should focus on yourself” they say, “It is what it is, can’t do anything to change it, work on yourself” they say, as if the most enlightened and reasonable perspective is to put a blanket over your head and pretend that the monsters don’t exist. They’d say “It’s hard to take you seriously, maybe become a politician or economist” but when you give them reading material written by economists, politicians, as well as lauded minds like MLK Jr or Einstein, they roll their eyes and go “You shouldn’t pay attention to politics it’s unhealthy, focus on yourself.”

  • 🎨 Elaine Cortez 🇨🇦 @lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    I feel like it should be a normal thing to openly stand against fascism. If anyone has a problem with me because of that then they’ve proven themselves to be people I would never want to interact with in the first place

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    20 days ago

    You know, a lot of comments are bringing up voting like there was any chance of votes preventing this. A lifetime of gerrymandering, court stacking, propaganda, and general fuckery led to this, and the only question was when the religious right wing and oligarchs made their move

    Voting? That’s not shit.

    What matters is real change brought by real people.

    The people that didn’t vote? That wasn’t all protest non participation. Voter turnout has always been low because the average person just does not care.

    Which means they won’t care if the people that do care tear down the currently successful right wing revolution with a counter revolution. All you have to do is keep just enough comfort during transition, and nobody will lift a finger from that group. They will not give a flying fuck at all.

    Frankly, even if they did care, they’re also the segment least able to do a damn thing about any of it. They lack the will, the training, and the functional personal motivation to do anything but hunker down and wait, even if their comfort level does drop to the bottom.

    I can’t say that’s good or bad, but it is what it is.

    It’s up to the people that care to make changes. Right now, the right seems to care a fuck ton more than anyone else, so they’re pulling it off.

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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    20 days ago

    In a similar vein, anyone eligible to vote and chooses not to implicitly supports whoever wins.

    • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 days ago

      lol no, I’m not going to get mad at my neighbors, I’m going to get mad at people who are actively trying to hurt them, not the ones accidentally doing it

      The problem isn’t that fascists were voted into the White House. The problem is that there are fascists in the White House. Anything that doesn’t address that problem is equally implicit in supporting fascism. Arguing with your neighbors doesn’t get fascists out of the White House. If history is anything to go by it has obviously done the opposite

      • rascalnikov@literature.cafe
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        19 days ago

        I think they are linked. Democracy can only work and thrive with an educated and/or informed population who is willing and able to have public and civil discourse. The fact that the political climate is the way it is now, so divided and only engaging to act on petty revenges, allows for fascism to take root. We saw this in Germany prior to the second World War. When NSDAP began beating people up in the street who opposed their ideology, with little repercussions for such behavior, led to the beer hall putsch, and eventually the rise of Herr Hitler. I can see parallels with the modern day political climate of America. The issue is that we voted them into the white house; I think that might even be more jarring than them being in there itself. Democratically voting a fascist in power is a tell tale sign that our democracy is not working.

        • Chakravanti@monero.town
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          19 days ago

          We did not democratically elect a fascist. He cracked the election with a forgein Agent the CIA did nothing about.

          Not the same fucking thing.

          • rascalnikov@literature.cafe
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            18 days ago

            Even if that is the case, though you’ve provided no literature or evidence to substantiate such a grandiose claim, there are so many people who blindly support trump and would defend him against all logic and evidence. The fact that you see in many online spaces such massive support for a man like this is very concerning for democracy; just as it was when Hitler gained more and more support in his rise and seizure of power.

            • Chakravanti@monero.town
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              18 days ago

              I don’t need to provide literature. I’m just assuming that you heard Trump admit to the fact, at his inaugeration blather at about 53min in, that Musk did the crack of the system of election counting in all the flip states he was in and left right after bomb threats and other vague threats upon each counter site.

              As for the excess of ignorance on the internet, well, I just can’t say that I as well give way too much attention to folks running their mouth at me about this shittoo.

    • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      20 days ago

      No, you bootlickers can repeat the same bullshit party lines and shove your heads up your ass as far as you please to maintain your personal comfort and shield yourself from reality (and from those actually responsible for and who benefit from fascism, which you miraculously never confront or even hold accountable, and are freely willing to compromise with give in to), but that doesn’t change it - participating in an oppressive system, and voting for one of either oppressive parties designated to you by those benefiting from that system to placate you with an illusion of choice is literally the opposite of protesting said system (E: never even mind that the idea that you can vote fascism away is beyond ignorant and laughable in its own right, it’s demonstrably wrong)

      TL;DR: your vote didn’t protest shit, it was manufactured consent for the status quo, get off your fucking high horse

      • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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        20 days ago

        I’m genuinely curious what vote of mine didn’t protest shit, given that I’m not, nor ever have been, a Seppo.

      • drthunder@midwest.social
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        19 days ago

        The problem with having these arguments online is that you don’t actually know what nonentity did besides vote. What did you do? I’ve gone to rallies, I’ve written my representatives, I helped out at my college’s Gaza camp, I wrote and called my college’s chancellor about the Gaza camp, I’ve distributed literature about Palestine. And I fucking voted, uncommitted and then Harris, because as public enemy #1b (trans) I don’t have the privilege to let whoever wins win. Because people couldn’t be bothered to do the bare minimum and take an hour or two to go vote for the lesser evil, the government is erasing me from existence.

      • Zink@programming.dev
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        18 days ago

        And yet you participate in society. Curious!

        By the time you get to the general election in the US where it’s guaranteed to be one candidate or the other, that is not where individual efforts have an effect. Those efforts need to happen early in the process.

        We are literally living through the drastic harm INCREASE that happens when people didn’t vote for harm reduction.

        But I’m not totally disagreeing with you here. I don’t really consider myself an accelerationist, and definitely not a democrat/liberal/capitalist, and if they redid the election I would vote against Trump 10 out of 10 times against almost any real democrat or independent or 3rd party. But the accelerationist path may be the only way through this.

    • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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      19 days ago

      Do you join the KKK and vote for the “harm reduction” candidate for grand wizard?

  • Chakravanti@monero.town
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    20 days ago

    Fuck that. Protesting today ain’t what it was in his day. There ain’t much sanity left anymore and don’t matter how you try to stand let alone move.

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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      20 days ago

      They had dogs let loose on them.

      They were beaten.

      They were sprayed with water cannons capable of taking you off your feet and throwing your body into whatever hard object stops it.

      They were arrested.

      They were lynched.

      It was not easy then and it won’t be easy now.

      • Chakravanti@monero.town
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        19 days ago

        That’s not what I’m talking about at all. Back in that day, we fought and it fucking counted against the man’s capability. Then in the 70’s, everyone was all pathetic to no acceptance by the man who suffered nothing for the “protests” and about jack fucking shit has happened since to any effect.

    • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      20 days ago

      So… Don’t protest* evil. Got it. 🙄

      (*on a more serious note, you having a narrow and wilfully ignorant view of what protesting actually means doesn’t change the fact that not protesting evil makes you complicit with it)

      • Chakravanti@monero.town
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        20 days ago

        No. Don’t is right. Fucking kill it. Telling someone who is evil will never stop it. Removing his means of being evil will be your only successful method. Don’t misunderstand my first expression murder doesn’t remove the means and anyone else will simply take their place.