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We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters -- then we are for it!
Vladimir Lenin
The Left’s current penchant for political violence is neither an outlier nor something new. Violence has been an integral part of socialism from the get-go. Don’t believe me? Take it from Lenin. The rise of Zohran Mamdani and the rise of violence go hand in hand.
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Discussion (10)
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From the New York Post:
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People really do not like accepting that bad things can/will happen to them. And now - a LOT of people act like they and others are in the middle of a video game.
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I don't play video games in that depraved a manner. Most games don't have options to act this depraved.
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Violence (or at least the realistic threat of violence) is inherent in any system in which individuals are not free to make their own decisions.
When a collective outranks the individual, the collective must have a mechanism to deal with individuals who refuse to go along with the collective. There will always be individuals who refuse to go along with the collective.
A system with no collective responsibilities (full libertarian) will be chaotic, and few or none will be able to realize the full benefit of their liberty.
A system of "ordered liberty" (which is I think a decent description of aspirational United States) does have collective requirements, enforced by the threat of violence by police, but ideally tries to keep as much individual liberty as possible.
But back to socialism, the system requires suppressing the individual liberties of a large portion of the population, so a large application of violence (or large-scale threats of violence) are necessary.
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