[an orange character is driving a bulldozer, facing a house]
I am going to bulldoze your house
[a yellow character is shocked]
[yellow asks politely, hands clasped]
Could you please not do that?
[orange, pushing the bulldozer’s controls, answers]
NO!
[yellow walks away from their house, looking dismayed]
Well, I guess I tried to do everything I could
Too bad
[orange smiles smugly as they bulldoze yellow’s house]
https://thebad.website/comic/respectable_resistance
What Israel expects from Gaza…
And what AI CEOs expect from the internet. Way too many programmers already gave up, because jUSt ReAD tHE cOde beFOrE pUlL reQuESTinG.
The public education system in America doesn’t cover domestic violence against/by the state and state allies. There are some region exceptions but even those often don’t hit the full range of violent protest.
We’re taught about the labor movement and civil rights movement primarily through the lens of peaceful or passive resistance. They’re frequently presented alongside figures like Gandhi, who himself has had is image simplified and white-washed.
I didn’t know what Tulsa was until someone mentioned it online in a video essay. There is so much that I know only because the internet was open and history nerds started making youtube video essays and podcasts. Even then, I only know about things like the 1934 Minneapolis strike because I was in a construction worker’s union.
My kink is teaching americans about the MOVE bombing. Somehow it’s more known outside the USA than inside, you’d think a country bombing its own city 40 years ago would be a bigger deal.
I have read about this, but it was an adult, not when I was still in school. For all intents and purposes, I find that education about American History ends in the 1960s with the civil rights movement.
Damn you learned about the Haymarket affair in American school?
No I didn’t. It’s something I learned about as an adult when I was researching the black panthers, and the ways they were building black community,
The one-sidedness of the history of the Black Panthers was the one that really woke me up. For a long time, I had only known them from Forest Gump. I didn’t know more until much later.
This is what the West expects of Palestinians while they are annihilated. Maintain a quiet and courteous victimhood.
But that house could’ve had a bulldozer in it that would’ve bulldozed them first! It didn’t, but it could have!
he was probably happier to bulldoze my house than i am sad to lose
the worlds total happiness increased
so whatever
Housecuck
Bit late to object now, the plans have been available in the planning office for the past nine months.
I appreciate the original arthur, excellent choice
Better grab a towel
I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.
That’s the display department
With a flashlight
Ah well, the lights had probably gone
So had the stairs
But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?
Yes. Yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.”
How could Our Cause have failed? I upvoted and downvoted everything I was supposed to!
We even signed the big petition and did an op-ed in the WaPo, guess it’s time to take the L and move on, nothing else can be done.
nothing else can be done.
Why aren’t you doing it?
Quit my comfy regular job six years ago to become a full time activist.
Didn’t feel like being passive in the era of rising fascism and extinction level threat climate change.
I’m probably not the person you should be asking that question to.
My hero
Six years and this is where the worlds at. Seems you’re just as ineffective as everyone else. Good thing you post edgy comments though, that’ll turn the tide.
I’m probably not the person you should be asking that question to.
You’re exactly who I should be asking that question to; smugly superior writing cute little comics to attack and divide people.
If narcissistic triangulation was a meal you shoved it down your gullet in one go and asked for more.
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Aye, cute performative anger right there.
The goal has never been to save the world, one person alone can’t do that. The goal is to do our best to help those who are suffering from the current state of society, while building collective momentum in order to achieve structural change.
I’ve been doing extremely well on both of those goals, thank you very much for inquiring so politely.
Your life seems sad if you’ve reached the point where all you can do is bark and bite through a screen, maybe you’d have a better outlook on life if you too tried to follow whatever your dreams and ideals are. It helps become a calmer person. I’ll keep posting my comics. If you ask nicely, I’ll send you a kiss emoji next time. Have a beautiful day!
lol, go back to your pithy comics couched in the guise of social commentary.
Seems like that and ad hominem arguments are what you’re good at.
Sure, I love making them, I’ll make a lot more!
Pot calling the kettle hominem buddy, see you in the next one :)
Why do you assume that person isn’t?
Oh, that’s what we’re doing? Okay.
Why do you assume they are?
Why do you assume in the first place? They are, though; they occasionally talk about it.
I didn’t assume. You did, as did the other commenter. I asked a question.
They talk about what? Doing the same thing as others and then making smug comics that cut down others as not doing enough.
“Why aren’t you doing it?” assumes they’re not doing it. Claiming otherwise is as dumb as the “when did you stop beating your wife” kind of crap.
I just assume people who say this shit are snitches and deserve what they gonna get.
I just assume you and others like you would rather fall into the trap of division than foster unity to go after the select few who actually pull the strings and manipulate events.
I agree in part though; you all deserve what your going to get and it will be really unfortunate.
You’re up in here attacking a person who very sincerely claims to spend their time doing the things you’re complaining about people not doing. This is the ally you seem to want, but yet here you are. Just doubling down and getting hostile with anyone on the topic after you made a bad assumption.
What unity are you here fostering lmao? Kinda seems like it’s you being the divisive one here.
This is the ally you seem to want
You’re wrong. I have no use for those who insult and degrade those who’ve taken any action of any sort.
The rhetoric from OP in this comic is to deride the character who made an effort as “not being enough”.
The ally I want is one who draws this comic but with the last panel having community stepping up to bolster that individual and encourage them to continue resisting with their support. A comic that shows how the everyday people are stronger together when they support each other.
I’ll take allies that are willing to try what they’re capable of over those who lift themselves up by shitting on others for “not doing enough”.
Your original bad take was:
Why aren’t you doing it?
It has been you, from the jump, shitting on others, insulting and degrading others for “not doing enough”. Like what are you even saying, are we in the same thread? You started this by doing the thing you are literally now complaining about others doing.
[Edit: the rhetoric from the comic that I read is attacking the assertion that we can politely, civilly, solve heinous problems such as what’s depicted. It’s your idea that the comic represents shitting on people who do try. That’s been your interpretation that others don’t seem to share. And then you respond by doing the literal thing you are complaining about the comic saying, but the comic didn’t even say that. You have layers of wrong going on here and I think you’re just too defensive at the moment to see what’s going on.]
I am going to delete your post
Could you please not do that?
NO!
Well, I guess I tried to do everything I could.
Too bad :(
Fantastic
its not like its going to matter. they are bulding an interstellar highway tomorrow.
must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
god damn, you were faster xD
but good thing I just washed me towels. :)
I’m game! Let’s see who rusts first!
Actually, that’s today. In exactly thirty minutes.
God, this shit is stupid.
Let me explain it one more time:
Violence is part of resistance, but acceptance of violence is part of fascism. One can be violent in a mission to change the world. It is undeniably a fast but chaotic and imprecise way to make change. However, it MUST make you an outcast. If you try to create a society where violence is accepted as a method of change, you won’t have a society when you are done. You will have a battledome. You don’t get to be the violent extremist and the hero of the people in anything but a fascist regime. Deal with it.
fascist
You keep using this word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Can you define it? I think I’m up to a half dozen broad classes of definitions for this one word at this point.
This is ignoring nuance of individual cases. It’s mental gymnastics to justify a blanket rejection of violence. This “stupid” cartoon isn’t that far from real world examples, and in this cartoon you would be justified in violence to save your home. If your family (or entire culture) was inside you would even be morally obligated to do so.
The cartoon is stupid. It’s a strawman of ‘violence is bad,’ that suggests anyone who says so is a true pacifist, or recognition of violence as a problem is somehow equating a slap on the wrist with a sadistic rape/murder. No one actually believes that. It’s just negative partisanship to let people feel special for being brave enough to say ‘murder is bad.’ It’s morally pretentious BS that insults the intelligence of its readers, regardless of their views on violence.
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Damn, someone should tell all those people who successfully fought wars of independence that violence is bad actually. Or all the labor activists who gave us/you eight-hour work days. Yeah the Syrians should’ve just asked nicely I bet Assad would’ve listened.
Thank you for your explanation, I understand things so much better now! I’ve always celebrated the suffragettes as heroes, but no longer! I always celebrated Nat Turner, John Browne, and the abolitionists, but I see now that they’re evil too! I always celebrated the Hatian slave revolt, the resistance movements against the nazis, the ANC, the Warsaw uprising, the Ukrainian defense, the fight for Indonesian independence by Sukarno, and so on! They all used violence, what a fool I was for celebrating them! Thank you for making me see the light!
I completely fell for the “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” take from famed fascist Desmond Tutu. But thanks to your comment, I now see that violence bad. And if guy do violence, then guy bad! I can’t believe I never thought of that. What a well thought out take! Good job!
Why do some people think sarcasm suggests a superior opinion?
I don’t think anyone thinks that. What people do think is that when you attack the form of a comment rather than its content, then you don’t really have a response. I strongly suggest you try to find an actual rebuttal to what I said rather than whatever the fuck this is. You might learn something in the process, which is something you seem to be in desperate need of.
If we have to accept voting as a useful tool, then violence must also be accepted as a useful tool. Either all tools are used or we’re free to cherry pick without people getting upset at what we choose to not use.
I don’t think that is anywhere contested, see The four boxes of liberty.
The thing is that order matters and you don’t stop using one tool when the next one is justified. For the same reason that you don’t stop reporting on illegal behaviors or filing lawsuits, you don’t just stop voting and wait on people to start shooting. It makes no sense.
I never advocate to not vote. I’m a heavy advocate for voting, but voting for the best candidate at every level no matter their party affiliation, including third parties. I’m just tired of “leftists” saying that our only options are voting and protests. Whenever someone brings up getting violent, they’re laughed at or told it’s not viable. That we shouldn’t murder Nazis, including politicians on all sides and cops/ICE, cause that’s bad. That if you’re going to attempt it, don’t link yourself to any leftist movement cause it’ll make us look bad.
Tangent: I sometimes think of voting as a proxy for violence. Humans are extremely dangerous animals. When a society excludes so many people from voting that it fails to reflect the likely outcome of a war, then war is invited.
We already have a society where violence is accepted as a method of change. Look at the Iran War, or any of the other wars of aggression. Are they not trying to use violence to make changes in Iran?
Are those things accepted morally or accepted perforce? You don’t accept them morally, it would seem. Are you not part of this world? Are you alone in those views? Are those views absent from the American conceptual space? Of course not. Power differentials allow unpopular actions, and the trend toward imperial presidency in America has created a massive power differential.
Are those views absent from the American conceptual space?
Pretty damn close. And if you look at other wars and conflicts, the idea that we should even consider other options besides violence is often considered dangerously naive, if not outright treasonous. There’s a reason why we have a military budget higher than the next 9 countries combined, and why spending was at an all time high even under Biden. Yes, the ruling class is generally more warmongering and has to drag people along to a degree, but they are able to do so without too much trouble, and their propaganda is effective.
I guess my point is that it’s not so much a question of whether violence is an accepted tactic, which I think it always has been and probably always will be, but rather which conditions and targets are acceptable. If violence is seen as acceptable only under certain conditions, then once those conditions are eliminated people can turn to peace while having internally consistent beliefs. And should those conditions arise again, they can switch between war and peace as necessary.
Like, if innocent people are in danger and violence is the only means of protecting them, you don’t need to convince everyone, “violence is cool and good,” and then afterwards convince them that’s wrong. You just need to convince them, “using violence to protect the innocent is cool and good,” and they can keep believing that their whole lives.
Indeed, true pascifism is extremely rare. Most of the discussions are just about where the line of ‘just cause’ lies.
Are organizing, collective action, protests and strikes violent?
Collective action is inherently confrontational because there is always someone who disagrees with the collective’s view, but collective action alone is not inherently violent.
Nope. Those are all non-violent actions against fascism. But we’re starting to worry that non-violent peaceful actions have been ineffective, and beginning to wish for civil violence because bloodshed would be guaranteed to get rid of the 1% of people who are making life miserable for 99% of the population.
depends on the oppressor
my favorite part of being an American is pissing off other nations because we don’t protest “correct” enough so they mock us for being weak.
please get more pissy! I’m almost there!
So, be violent only if necessary, and feel bad about it?
That level of concision leaves out a lot but, basically, yes.
Rejecting violence because it’s part of fascism is like rejecting metal because it’s part of cars.
It’s a good thing that’s not what I was doing then, isn’t it.
Counterpoint:
Didn’t that guy terrorize an entire town?
And when we needed him most, he vanished
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Freedom fighter
freedom fighterWeird antisocial asshole.Seriously this was all over being told to pay to connect to the town sewer instead of pumping sewage into an irrigation ditch. This guy was just an asshole that decided to destroy his town because he couldn’t be a selfish fake-libertarian piece of shit and dump literal shit out in the open. The killdozer as an item is metal as fuck, but he died a pathetic shit-slinger who wrecked everyone else’s property and then blew his brains out to dodge accountability.
That’s one extreme of the story. The other extreme is that he’d been doing it, along with every other business in that area, for years, because there’s nothing out there. It’s just sand and rock for miles in all directions. There’s nothing to contaminate because nothing lives there.
The only reason he got involved in anything is because he was told it wasn’t going to cost him any money. He shows up and starts filling out the paperwork and it doesn’t say what he was told; it says he has to pay (souces differ) something like $6K-20K for an easement so he can dig up city property to access the sewer line to connect to it. He doesn’t sign that paper. Instead, he gets up and walks away from the table, leaving behind the paperwork he’d already filled out, which included his application to connect to city utilities. Since he filled out the application, they file it, process it, and approve it, which is what “allows” city hall to start levying fines against him for non-compliance.
Every other business in that area continued to do the exact same thing as him, but only he was being fined for it. What’s more, if he’d just stayed home that day and never signed anything, there’d be nothing anyone could do about it.
He knew he didn’t understand the system, so he didn’t want anything to do with it. Against his better judgement, he tried to comply. He started off acting in good faith. When he found out the other party wasn’t, he walked away from the deal. He should have taken every piece of paper with his signature on it with him, but he didn’t because he didn’t understand how the system works.
He thought that since he didn’t sign everything, that meant none of it was any good. When he got the letters from city hall about the fines, he did what he’d done with all the mail from city hall for years: threw it in the trash.
A city government, trying to expand its power and control, absued the system to extort money from someone who wanted nothing to do with them. If city hall had just left him, and well enough, alone, everything that followed could have been avoided.
[citation needed]
There’s nothing to contaminate because nothing lives there.
There is no such place on Earth.
Wow that’s a lot of lies
As someone not extremely familiar with the details of the situation, I don’t believe Heemeyer was in the right, but do you have any sources about what actually went on?
The Wikipedia page is pretty good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
The TLDR is an entitled white man doesn’t like to be told what he can and can’t do. Instead of installing a septic tank he tries to kill every one, only kills himself like the dipshit he was, and damage a bunch of buildings in a small town.
Tired strawman against nonviolent resistance which has proven effective in many many situations. There is no universally right or wrong tactic to resist. It depends completely on the circumstances.
Do we think the comic is implying that one should employ violence all the time, for everything?
Laying down in front of the tractor is nonviolent resistance but is treated by centrists and liberals as out of line anyways (i.e. blocking highways, throwing soup at paintings behind glass)
It’s not strictly against nonviolent resistance though IMO. It’s against protests that don’t do anything. You can nonviolently do a blockade or sabotage something, or do a strike, etc.
Yah, this person commenting is avoiding the fact that their are ways to escalate without becoming violent with other people. They’re Kind of proving the comic right.
I suppose it could be taken either way. I agree with you that successful nonviolent resistance often involves more confrontational tactics.
I’m just tired of leftists acting as if the only reason we don’t have a better society is because people refuse to just start shooting. Reality is much more complex than this. But maybe the author was not making this exact argument.
Preaching non-violence is how conservatives have tricked millions to their deaths throughout history. They know non-violence is the hope of every normal person and they prey upon that hope. It is a deadly trick used to peacefully walk millions into gas chambers.
We have concentration camps now. Hegseth has fired 20% of the command staff to replace them with military leaders willing to kill civilians on U.S. soil. We are at the endgame for normal people right now. Stop trying to walk us into the camps peacefully.
We either finish Sherman’s work or we die at the hands of conservatives. There truly is no middle ground. Allowing pure evil to continue living at the “end” of the civil war has resulted in this situation. As long as they continue to live, conservatives will do absolutely everything in their power to exterminate the normal people. It’s not an illusion. Believe your eyes and ears and believe conservatives when they call us their enemy. They have loudly proclaimed their hate for us for over 100 years and we have turned the other cheek. They now have us at death’s door and are raising their rifle. Pretending peace will save us is a deadly mistake and is what they are hoping we will do.
Calls for peaceful solutions are deceptions designed to walk us to our deaths. Do not listen to the message of the enemy. Stand up and fucking fight.
Not really though. If anything the fascists have tried to push people into violence so they can arrest them. This is exactly how the FBI disassembled radical eco-anarchist groups in the 90s.
Your summary of the current situation is also pretty exaggerated. ICE is committing crimes against humanity but not mass murder. We have free press and those people have lawyers, family, etc. We would know if they were being exterminated, if that’s what you’re implying.
The reality is a coordinated general strike would much more easily bring a fascist government to its knees than even an army of Benjamin Songs. You are not going to defeat the US military and if you give them the political legitimacy to escalate to that kind of conflict we’re pretty much cooked, if we aren’t already.
That’s not to say if they do bring the war to us we shouldn’t fight back but it hasn’t happened yet. And we don’t want it to. We want to fight on ground that works to our strengths, not theirs. And a civil war where they control the entire military and policing systems is not to our advantage.
I respectfully disagree. Conservatives do not need reasons to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely. Conservatives (such as those working for DHS or the FBI) are currently able to detain anyone without hearing and without any access to any “due process” via executive memorandum (such as NSPM-7) under the Patriot Act. The leader of the conservatives is actively directing this to happen and is openly and publicly promising to dramatically increase such detentions after midterms.
Detention without adequate nutrition, sleep or medical care is their current standard treatment for all detainees, even those who are eventually released. Some detainees that are NOT held indefinitely are held in these conditions for over a year and suffer permanent injury as a result. Many die under these conditions because they lose access to their needed medications or treatments or simply because the conditions breed deadly disease. Conservatives celebrate all of this. They will absolutely not stop without physically and forcibly being stopped.
Our lack of evidence of gas chambers or executions does not absolve conservatives of beginning the first stages of genocide against their enemies. They are doing absolutely everything they can to kill us and are quietly escalating the scale and pace with which they do it. There are no exaggerations here. Pretending it’s not happening is the standard play of conservative fascists. It always has been. We saw that exact same deception in WWII.
Yes conservatives arrest violent protestors, but they also arrest peaceful protesters in even greater numbers. Violence is immaterial to their arrest decisions. However, I am not suggesting violence in the streets is the only way to kill our enemy. Especially not when they control our military.
To erase an enemy on an industrial scale (which is needed when there are over 100 million of them), we can use perfectly legal methods. For example, conservatives despise regulations that protect their water and air. So, they have abolished those laws in countless conservative areas. This is a major opportunity to make sure millions of them develop multiple myeloma or pancreatic cancer without ever breaking a single law. Sure these diseases can take years to be effective, but for those of us in concentration camps years from now, that investment will be critical. In fact, we can even use the proceeds from such endeavors to fund further erasure projects before we are detained or executed. Combined with other industrial acts of resistance, we can make a massive difference without firing a single shot.
Conservatives have made it clear for over 100 years that we are their enemy. They have told us time and time again they want us dead. We need to listen to them. They are not pretending.
As we enter the endgame of their plans to oppress and kill their undesirables, any promise that peace is the solution is a lie that only serves the enemy. It is a lie that has killed millions in the past and is a lie that could kill millions in the present.
I think you know how dangerous it is to tell people to wait to resist. Please stop. There is no effective resistance from a detention camp. Conservatives will never stop trying to oppress and kill us as long as they continue to live. We must act now, while we still can.
The only way to stop a bulldozer is with a bigger bulldozer covered in concrete armor.
I raise your bigger bulldozer:
Needs a sword and some rockets.
Long live the legend of killdozer
Killdozer guy was a straight up fucking idiot though. His gripes were over fucking zoning regulations and he destroyed peoples homes and business over a simple zoning reg.
Fuck that stupid, entitled asshole
Or mud.
Is his name Arthur Dent?
“What do you mean, why’s it got to be built? It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.”
I hope he brought his towel with him.
Homey didn’t know about the towel yet.
Shouldn’t have ignored the notice in the back of the filing cabinet in the basement
