Protests Seen as Harming Civil Rights Movement in the '60s

I've recently had some conversations about activism and protesting about climate change on Tildes, which made me remember these polls again. I think they are a good historical reminder, and they demonstrate that masses much too often care more about comfort and privilege rather than justice.

These polls also show that you don't need to convince the majority to effect change. In fact, focusing on that might be detrimental to your cause. People who are bothered by your protest, because it disrupts "order", will try to tell you how to effect change while sitting in their own comfort. But this is not important.

Here is the gist of it, with MLK's own words.

"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

Believing in the timetables created by comformist opinions would be a grave mistake for climate activists. We need more confrontation, more radical acts, and more direct action. We don't need to make friends with the majority to do this. We need to shake things up, and most people don't like that. You can see this by the worsening majority opinion of the Civil Rights movement after they intensified protests. But the activists were right, it was an urgent matter, and they succeeded. So, we don't need to play nice.

For example, after MLK's asssassination people started burning down cities, which resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1968 passing. You can see this in the citations; basically the government feared further escalation, and that's why they had to pass the act. Another example is the suffragettes' bombing and arson campaign in Britain and Ireland, which helped with their cause by putting pressure on people in power.

I'm not giving these examples to say there should or should not be one-to-one copies, but to show that being radically confrontational does work. Radical confrontation and direct action are what we need for climate justice, because time has been running out for a while, and every day past without a radical change makes things much worse. So we should cast off the yoke of mass approval and meekness. We need to embrace the confrontation.

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This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I live in a country that's extremely dominated by the right. Leftist people are almost non-existent, and it's even often used as an insult. By leftist I just don't mean it in the anti-capitalist sense, but also for cultural stuff like not being a homophobe, racist, misogynist, etc. In fact, these are even more important qualities in this context.

I've gone through and am still going through my fair share of ideological growth. Even though I've always been progressive by the standards of my country, well, it was a low bar. So I had to unlearn a lot of things, and learn a much more critical approach. I'm a constant learner, and I'm interested in politics, so in the long run it's changed me a lot.

Another thing is that I've always had a strong egalitarian tendency since my childhood. I think this is an important trait that enabled me to grow past the conservative hierarchies. I'm really glad I did, and I plan on continuing to do so. However, this came at a personal cost I deem great.

Simply put, I have a lot of trouble connecting with people anymore. I still can connect with people at some level as long as we don't talk about politics, but it's an important area to me, and more importantly, as a human being, I don't think I will ever be able to overlook someone who grossly objectifies women every day, expresses queerphobic sentiments constantly, jokes about violence against minorities regularly, or genuinely wants pogroms to happen to minorities.

This is not a single person, but it's the general attitude of the population here. Men tend to make more edgy reactionary remarks, but women aren't that different politics-wise either. Some of my friends are left or left-leaning, but most of them are right-wingers who say and believe in stuff like that.

I've tried to be understanding, see it from a different angle, tried to consider that people are 3-dimensional. But there's a limit. Both because I grew, and because some of them regressed, I now look at these people and feel like I'm a complete stranger. As a person who bonds with people hard, this is extremely upsetting to me. Loneliness has been a burden of mine for a long time for various reasons, but in the last few years I was finally starting feel like I had found a social circle I could truly belong to. Despite all the stuff I mentioned, in personal relations, these people had qualities I found quite positive and precious at the time. For example, they were much less the stereotypical "feelings are for women" type of guys, which are extremely common here. Maybe first time in my life, I was feeling truly at home. It's probably why I struggled for years to keep it going.

For a very long time, I tried having talks with them, explain stuff to them, listen to them. They didn't work. I tried being aggressive, because they are still kind of dudely dudes who sometimes "respect" a dominant attitude, but that didn't work either. I feel like they are truly lost, and infuriatingly, unapologetically reactionary.

I fear that if I abandon them I won't be able to find a new social circle like this one. I have international friends as well, and I love them, but anyone can guess that for some stuff you want local people to bond with.

Part of my frustration is due to how most people here tend to follow comically evil beliefs. If this was just a rare occurance, I wouldn't have reacted this strongly, because I'd know there were a lot of egalitarian people. But they are an extreme minority. The dehumanization is suffocating.

There isn't much to add. This is a cost I didn't consider would come to pass, but I think I've outgrown these people, except for a few friends who I appreciate. It's demoralizing losing your social circle again at this age, to start all over. Again. But I think it's mostly unavoidable, because I am done trying to be tolerant of their evil.

Has anyone gone through, or is going through, something similar? What was or is your experience like?