Then we should genocide all colonized/oppressed peoples since they tend to fight back and it’s rude ?

Also available as a smugimation, featuring state of the art sound effects

What in tarnation be an “up dog”, budzo?

OMG thank you very much Fart Master 69 you just unlocked a core memory

Ah shit you’re right, I’m an imbecile !

Hah, the cycle of recycling.

Got the idea from an IRC chat with a friend, guess he must have been quoting that meme, so I ended up copying this meme without being aware of its existence!

As a wise uncle once said, with great power comes the responsibility to sing about spiders.

That is actually a pretty huge typo.

Fixed it. Thanks a lot!

Also available as a smugimation

The silly sketch born of the silly idea that became this silly meme

Also available as a smugimation

The silly sketch born of the silly idea that became this silly comic

Actually… of all the people who argued back, you’re the one who found the middle ground to agree on.

Your description of an armed uprising is indeed the ideal scenario, and does fit historical caser.

I just don’t believe in its feasability against a hyper militarized modern imperial state.

To be clear, just because I’m rough in my disagreement doesn’t mean I dislike you.

I have friendly feelings towards most people who decide to engage in lefty communities (some exceptions apply).

Even towards that other person who’s feeling overconfident about geopolitics and made my blood boil a little… in the end we’re all on the same side of the class war and I strongly believe in empathy, mutualism, togetherness. Whatever happens in the world, you have communities of people all around the world who would let you join them and consider you their friend without a second thought.

We’re all tired of capitalism and violence.

Peace.

Your comment made me do a very long sigh, but fine, I’ll engage.

This is on me for going into an Internet debate on a topic on which I have scholarly expertise.

All insurgencies start as civilian uprisings - with or without guns.

Rojava had long pre-existing structures, they’re not a random uprising that armed itself. It’s a political party (PYD) and its professional militia (YPG) with command structure, logistics, training, external Kurdish support, not civilians grabbing weapons for a spontaneous revolt. It’s a disciplined paramilitary organization seizing territory when the Syrian regime pulled back, with US support.

This also applies to Talibans, FARC, ETA, LTTE, Hamas, etc. There are literally no examples of successful modern insurgencies *starting* as civilian uprisings. This is factually untrue. You are wrong.

they took advantage of Syrian state power fragmenting to launch their insurgency

This did not happen.

The PYD/YPG walked into a power vacuum and set up local governance. They did not wage an armed campaign against the Syrian state. They actually maintained a non-aggression pact with Assad for years. You cannot launch an insurgency against a state you’re not fighting.

The Syrian state did not lose Rojava because civilians had guns. It lost Rojava because Assad abandoned it. If he wanted that area, YPG rifles would not have stopped the Syrian air force, artillery, missiles, armor. We know this because when Assad did want territory, he flattened entire districts full of people with weapons who couldn’t do shit about it.

zapatista / vietminh / mao comparion

Youtube clip of the “bruh sound effect #2”

This is an unserious comparison.

Mao and the Viet Minh had millions of military grade fighters, supplies, training, heavy weapons, regime collapses that opened power vacuums, massive foreign backing, whereas the Zapatistas have rifles in some isolated rural communities and a few thousand non-military fighters.

This is merely the historical pattern almost all insurgencies must pass through.

Most insurgencies don’t start as peasant uprisings that get crushed and then re-emerge lmao

Talibans emerged from Mujahideen networks with Pakistani support, Hezoballah began with heavy iranian backing, LTTE instantly had external funding and territorial control, FARC never had a spectacular early defeat, ISIS captured Mosul in days… you’re just using some romantic examples from a handful of cold war cases and thinking they’re a general principle. They’re not.

If PR was the only thing standing between the Mexican state and crushing militant autonomy within it’s own borders, it would have happily already done so already.

The timing of the insurgency was not random.

The PRI’s legitimacy was fragile at the time. NAFTA had just launched, massacring indigenous rebels would have jeopardized it. The Catholic Church (very very important for PR in mexico) was asking to mediate a ceasefire. It’s political optics that constrained the state.

Besides, Mexico did crush them militarily. It took 12 days.

Modern states can annihilate insurgents when they stop caring about optics. see: Russia/Chechnya, Syria/Hama, Sri Lanka/LTTE, China/Xinjiang, Turkey/PKK, Ethiopia/Tigray, Myanmar/Rohingya, etc…

Mexico chose to not join this club. States restrain themselves for political reasons, not for fear of insurgents.

If you are going to take armchair revolutionaries to task for simplifying and essentialising the nature of insurgency (justified as it may be), you should be careful not to do the same yourself.

Pointing out the political context of the EZLN isn’t simplifying insurgency, it’s knowing the history.

I’m not making a theory, I’m explaining a case.

You’re the one stretching an outlier into a rule.

And I think things like swat would be substantially deterred by going after pigs at their dens in retaliation for every act of violence

MOVE bombing?

LA riots crushed in blood?

Waco obliterated?

Modern states don’t get deterred when you attack their symbols of power. They reply in kind with overwhelming force. SWAT isn’t scared of retaliation, they exist for this exact purpose.

You are LARPing your own suicide.

Sure, if you ignore the rest of the phrase containing the “perfect terrain” quote your reply is perfect👍

Modern day “people vs state” uprising are over in a matter of days.

It would not last long enough for any external support to stoke any flames.

Unless it turns into an actual civil war, military vs military instead of civilian vs military. Sure, then you’d have lots of foreign involvement, but civilians having guns would barely affect the eventual outcome if at all. Civilians vs military these days is hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby tier, in the USA it’d be even more asymmetrical and brutal given the state of your military.

Ask the survivors of the MOVE bombing how guns would have helped them, now add 40 years of military industrial complex and technological progress to the equation. You’ll get a mental picture of reality.

The armed uprising by the Syrian population was the 2011 insurgency, which ended in massacres of civilians. Following that, part of the Syrian army defected and formed the FSA. The civil war was an army vs army proper war, not a popular insurgency, there were no “civilians with guns” fighting, only trained military.

The Houthis are a very well organized movement with a lot of external funding and backing, it’s much more than a popular uprising (although it does have the support of the population). The people fighting that civil are were trained military, not civilians with guns who decided to fire back at an oppressor. It’s really a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

I’m sorry but I think you just aren’t well informed enough on geopolitics to be discussing these topics. I don’t mean this in an offensive way, but these topics are much more complex than “government vs the people”, there’s multiple sides and external third parties to all the conflicts you are describing in extremely simplistic ways, none of which look anything like a country’s population using its guns to fight against its own military.

Black Panthers / IRA

Neither the black panthers nor the IRA overthrew a state, or defended a territory against a modern army. Both movements were contained, infiltrated, and suppressed by states using overwhelming force/tactics. Their guns didn’t protect them from a modern government’s means of action (which is far more than just the military).

The only reason the IRA was able to last so long was the UK deliberately tolerating a small conflict in order to avoid political escalation. They thought it was preferable to have a rowdy Belfast than to flatten it like Russia flattened Chechnya, the terror attacks on the mainland did much more for the IRA than the armed resistance. The good friday agreement was the IRA giving up out of exhaustion, not a win for armed resistance at all.

guns in BLM

Well yeah, a handful of cops will be reluctant to escalate against a rowdy crowd. The same happens in France without guns, when protesters start throwing rocks the police backs away and waits for the CRS (riot police with military grade weapons) to take over.

Guns wouldn’t do much to deter SWAT, the national guard, etc.

I might be wrong (non-USA perspective here), but wasn’t there also a big political angle? Since BLM were protests against police brutality, it would have been really bad PR wise for the police to escalate with more police brutality, therefore they showed more restraint than usual, no? Optics of shooting back at protesters would have caused a huge nationwide mess. Wouldn’t call this a case of guns working, rather of politics constraining the states’ options. If the government had wanted to do Kent State 2.0, I doubt guns would have stopped them, but they chose not to.

I also don’t recall guns stopping rubber bullets shot at journalists, cars rammed into crowds, entire neighborhoods being gassed, activists being kidnapped in unmarked vans, tac units being sent in Portland, doing anything to protect Rittenhouse’s victims, etc…

You mean… apart from DAANES in northern Syria (more commonly known as Rojava)? Or the Zapatista territories in Mexico?

Rojava is not a civilian uprising with guns, it’s a militia state backed by a regular army (YPG), with US air support, US bases, US supplies. They’re fighting ISIS, not overthrowing the Syrian state through street protests.

Zapatistas are actually proving my point… when they launched in 1994, they got absolutely crushed by the mexican military and had to retreat to jungles and small autonomous areas. The only reason they survive is political, it would be terrible PR for the mexican government to launch a campaign on them so they let them live in peace. They lost militarily, did not overthrow the mexican state, did not force anything at gunpoints, and don’t control any major population centers. I love the zapatistas for what they’re doing, did some ethnographic work with them so I’ve interacted with them in person: when they talk about their uprising they don’t talk about victory but rather about a week of terrible bloodshed and sadness.

Russian and American militaries, with all their overwhelming might and superiority, lost their wars against dirt farmers living in caves

The US sent billions to the Talibans vs the USSR, it was a proxy war.

Various sources (allegedly saudis and pakistan) sent billions to the Talibans and Al-Quaeda vs the US, it was another proxy war. On top of that they had a lot of leftover US weapons from the previous war.

They were not fighting proles with guns, they were fighting an actual military with military grade weapons.

Don’t move goalposts, we’re talking about resisting the tyranny of the state here, demonstrators vs military.

PS: Calling them “dirt farmers living in caves” is straight up racist, try not to do that. Both Talibans and Al-Quaeda had central command, a very organized military, courts, intelligence units, shadow governments, taxation systems, bureaucracy… you’re just repeating the imperialist propaganda the USA uses to justify their defeat.