A warning about the Richmond Rally

I hope there's no violence. Antifa and any other. Left-Wing groups shouldn't respond with the least violence. That's not just for their safety. History has shown the Left cannot win that way.

This is demonstrated by history: the Spanish Civil War, and the radical Left movements of the 60s & 70s. It may be fairly argued that the Bolsheviks in Russia not only came to power through violence but they continued to rule by violence afterward. Yes, that's true but it took nothing less than World War to sweep them into power. They were opportunistic. The other communist regimes were variants on the Bolsheviks. Not only that, they didn't really win. The system they created was, in every way, worse than the one they replaced. At no time could you call them liberal in the sense of giving their populace freedom, but the wanted to change an established system, unlike Conservatives who want to preserve it, or roll it back to a time when they thought it worked.  

The mentality of these groups is fed by fear. The fear generates anger and creates delusions of persecution and paranoia, which generate hatred. The only way to stop that, in the long run, is to de-escalate in the face of violence. I'm not talking about this as an absolute. People under physical assault must defend themselves. I'm saying don't meet the threat with threat. Stand in the storm and repeat a message of peace.

Fear and anger aren't evenly distributed in these groups. Some members, especially the leadership, are more paranoid and militant than the others. A small number are intractable. De-escalating won't stop those individuals. However, it will drain the power of their hateful messages, and cause the groups to wither. It's a long-run strategy.

It's not just the RW who's fearful of the Left. The lack of police presence. Some of that might be due to the Richmond protesters being heavily armed and authorities trying to de-escalate. But I think most of it is there's just a universal distrust of the Left, a lingering consequence of the Cold War and 1960s race riots. (Violence against African-Americans was overlooked, but that's a different subject). The Left has to prove its faithfulness and trustworthiness in a way that's not demanded from the Right. By definition, the Left wants to change an established system, where the radical Right is often seen as vanguards of it. This has been true throughout history. In Weimar Germany after World War I, the courts punished Left Wing radicals far more than those on the Right. However, they had the direct threat of the Soviet Union and its agents all over Germany.


No matter how angry these protesters make us, we on the Left must refrain from ANY violent rhetoric. Any word of violence. An Antifa idiot punching one of these guys is all the proof they
need that the entire Left are a bunch of terrorists.

The Left betrays its goals when it resorts to violent means. Brutality and barbarism are antithetical to democracy and ruins trust between factions. It creates a spiraling cycle of revenge and hatred that makes rationality arduous in itself. And rationality is the only good solution conflict.

And we can't afford to fight a civil war with the imminent crisis of Global Warming seizing our planet. It will cost us resources and time we now can't afford to lose.