Speak Plainly Podcast
Hosted by 2 time best-selling trauma author, Owl C Medicine. A veteran of the US Military, Owl's no nonsense approach to mental physical and relational health is exactly what you didn't know you need. Listen in for ideas worth chewing on and science based tools for living life after trauma.
Speak Plainly Podcast
Why Luigi Mangione is a Necessity: the Radical Flank Effect
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This episode explores the concept of radical flanking and how extremism influences social movements. We discuss the roles of radical and moderate groups, the dynamics of the Overton window, and the implications of violence in the pursuit of social change.
• Examination of radical flanking in social movements
• Historical context: MLK vs. Malcolm X, Black Panthers
• The Overton window and its relevance to discourse
• Positive vs. negative flank effects and their predictors
• The role of violence in social movements
• Critical analysis of the necessity of dissent and radicalism
• Strong calls for reflection on activism strategies
#luigimangione #luigi #unitedhealth #unitedCEO #revolution #reform #ceoshooter
Music by Wutaboi
Email us at speakplainlypodcast@gmail.com
Buy me a coffee at
www.buymeacoffee.com/owlmedicine
Social Media
Facebook: www.facebook.com/owlcmedicine
Instagram: www.instagram.com/owlcmedicine
My Websites
www.rethinkingbroken.com
#rethinkingbroken #CPTSD
#chronicstressadapted #ComplexPTSD
#childhoodtrauma #Authorpodcast #bestsellingauthor #queerauthor
#adhd #dyslexia #dyscalclia #Queer #queerpodcast #queerhost
#adultswithadhd #veteran #therapist #nonfictionauthor #traumaauthor
#undiagnisedadhd #childhoodtrauma
#trauma #lifeaftertrauma #PTSD
Understanding Radical Flanking in Social Movements
Speaker 1Thank you , hey everybody , and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast , where we speak plainly about things that matter . I'm your host , owl Medicine , and , as promised , today's episode is the follow-up to the Luigi episode and it is on radical flanking . So if you haven't listened to the Luigi podcast , go back and do that . It was just two episodes ago and that will lay a little bit of the foundation . But I mentioned something in that podcast . I used the example of MLK versus Malcolm X and civil rights , and I used I talked about how MLK was only able to do what he was able to do because of the effects of groups like the Black Panthers and people like Malcolm X . So today I'm going to break down what I mean by that and I'm going to talk about the actual phenomenon that they have come up with a term for in sociology called the radical flank , because this is the phenomenon that I'm talking about . So today we're going to be discussing radical flanks radical flanks in history , basically groups who are on the far right or the far left , who shift . What we call moderate essentially is what a radical flank is doing . We're going to talk about radical flanks . We're going to give some examples from women's rights , from animal rights and from civil rights , of radical flanks in social movements . We're going to give some examples from women's rights , from animal rights and from civil rights , of radical flanks in social movements . We're going to talk about those social movements and how they're not usually monolithic and that's actually extremely important to kind of predict whether it's going to have a positive flank effect or a negative flank effect . Basically saying , does this idea of doing something extremely left or extremely right , does it work or does it backfire ? That's what we're calling a positive flank effect or a negative flank effect , because people who study these things always have to call them something fancy . So we're going to talk about that . We're going to talk about shifting the Overton window , which is basically the political viability of no , that's basically the window of discourse . That's what the Overton window is .
Speaker 1So stick with me through the end of this and you might learn something , especially if you are in the reform group and not the revolution group that I mentioned in the last podcast . So we all know about Luigi right ? This gorgeous hunk of a man who allegedly shot the CEO of United Health in the back of the head . Well , I made the podcast and I talked about how it's these radical podcast and I talked about how it's these radical . It's these radicalized things that actually cause things to happen in real life . Nobody wants to get behind the violence because everybody wants to think of themselves as a good little boy and a good little girl . So a lot of people are like , no , violence is not the answer . Violence is never the answer . But I'm not talking about whether violence is the answer or it's never the answer . But I'm not talking about whether violence is the answer or it's never the answer . I'm talking about does it work ? Does it work to make a shift in social movements ? That's the only thing that I'm talking about here today , and what we're going to do is we're going to look historically at situations like the Luigi UnitedHealth situation and we're going to say , okay , well , how did these things happen ? Who's doing them ? Why are they doing them and do they work ? And are there any predictors as to why they like , some work and some don't ? And the answer is yes , there are some predictors .
Speaker 1So the first time the word radical flank was really used was in 1975 by Joe Eierman , who , by the way , was a woman , which is probably why it didn't get coined until Herbert Haynes , 10 years later , almost in 1984 . And he wrote what's considered the seminal work on radical flanks in social movements . And it turns out there's actually been a lot of science on these things , a lot of looking at . What he looked at specifically was he noticed that there was increased support for moderate civil rights groups as radicalized groups emerged . And that's what we're talking about is , I've said for a long time , the left has gone right and the right's gone crazy . The Overton window , or the window of disclosure , because of that , the left has gone right and the right's gone crazy , which means the left is now more right and the right is more right . So our Overton window , if you're standing and you're putting your arms out in front of you like a giant piece of pie , you can move that left arm a good chunk over to the left and you're increasing the size of the Overton window and you're shifting it very far to the left . And what that does is it shifts the needle of what we believe is moderate . And Herbert Haynes was the first guy to really notice this and to write it all down and put it in a book .
Speaker 1So he's the guy . He's the guy when it comes to this stuff and I will quote him here . He says the turmoil which militants created was indispensable to black progress . Measurements for his studies were actually . He got really smart with it and was just like let's look at external income to moderates and there were a few other moderate groups in the civil rights movement that wouldn't release all of their documents . Some of them wouldn't release all , some of them wouldn't release part , but the NAACP released basically all of theirs . Well , yeah , all of theirs . And so he was able to look at NAACP donations and see are there increased donations after somebody does some crazy shit ? And the answer was yeah , there is . Just like when Luigi allegedly shot dude in the back of the head , he got like 50-something love letters , like handwritten love letters , 30-something emails , 130-something deposits into his commissary . Like Bae is booed up , bae is so booed up .
Speaker 1So , with this radical flank , what I said in the last podcast is that Malcolm X was the guy everybody loved to hate , right , and that's Luigi . If you were black , you probably loved him . Just like with Luigi , if you had been under the thumb of the oppression of these insurance companies , you probably loved him . Companies , you probably love him If you didn't experience firsthand the oppression and the threat to your own life via this system , then you probably don't really support Luigi , just like you probably wouldn't have supported Malcolm X . But who you would support is MLK . And as far as I'm concerned , we're still waiting on the MLK figure to pop up .
Speaker 1But I feel like we need probably another dozen or so Luigis to just really really shift this Overton window or really shift this window of discourse as to when we , because what this means , the Overton window , this window of discourse , is anytime that you're trying to figure out a situation , there are considerations right , and that consideration is the those considerations , that there's a number of them right . So that broad swath of considerations are the Overton window . It's the things that matter that we think about when it comes to a discourse on any subject . And what happens when a radical person like Luigi comes in , shoots somebody in the back of the head is now , even though we don't agree some do , some don't , but we as a whole don't agree that it's right or wrong but now it's added into the discourse . It's a consideration right , and whereas shooting a CEO in the back of the head wasn't really a consideration for most people , but now somebody did it , it made it real . Now it's a consideration , it's a possibility , and that's important .
Speaker 1So the Overton window is broken down into a few subsections . The outside is the unthinkable and the radical , and these are mirrored . The middle is the same and every step that we get closer to the middle is the same . So , whether you start on the far left or the far right , you're looking at the farthest left is the unthinkable or the farthest right is unthinkable . The next level in is the radical . The next level into that is acceptable . The next level into that is acceptable . The next level into that is the sensible . The next step in is the popular , and then the center becomes the policy , and then you get to the other side . Then you get back to popular , sensible , acceptable , radical and unthinkable . And that's why , luigi , shooting people or allegedly is unthinkable . It is an unthinkable act for most people Maybe not for some of us , but it is for most people . And so by stacking on unthinkable acts onto either end of the Overton window , onto either end of our window of discourse , we are increasing the possible solutions for one , because these are all you're looking at .
Speaker 1Okay , these are all the things that are meaningful and going to be impactful when considering how to deal with whatever this issue is and that middle one , that policy . That's what we're trying to go after . We're trying to go after policy changes . And I remember getting into an argument with a buddy of mine I've had on the podcast , jess , about social movements and these things and he was like , yeah , they don't fucking do anything . And I was like horseshit , they don't do what they want to resolve . But I think that's the concession . I think and those of us who are intelligent about it understand that that's the concession we demand these things on the as far left as possible , these unthinkable , radical like stuff that a handful of people might find acceptable or sensible . But when we demand these , these things in the far left that seem reasonable to us , we're like this is like , but it's unreasonable for the system . What we're doing is we're trying to get some policy pushed .
Speaker 1So when I was at Shop Chaz , which was the when we took over the police station in Seattle for two months or whatever , and they were driving around at night and throwing firecrackers and doing flashbang grenades and keeping everybody up and doing all the typical American warfare stuff , the whole thing was to defund the police and they wound up cut and we wanted them to cut it by like 50 percent , and they wound up cutting 50 million dollars , which is a drop in the bucket for the Seattle Police Department , but we did get them to cut the budget and to get a few of their giant like war machines out of the fucking city . So , like huzzah , it worked . It didn't work as well as we had hoped but or as well as we had wanted , but it did make policy change . And that's you . That's always the goal . If we're trying to make systematic change . The system makes change via policy . So what we're actually doing is we're trying to make policy change or we're just blowing up everything , blowing up the buildings and all of that , and most of us aren't willing to spend the rest of our lives in jail in order to do that . So again , thank you , luigi .
The Power of Radical Flanks
Speaker 1Luigi .
Speaker 1So the reason that these radical flanks work is they break it down sociologically into . They make the moderates appear more reasonable via the Overton window that we've been talking about . Or positive flank effect can come about because they create a crisis that authorities have to resolve through moderate concessions , because the moderates will be like , hey , just give us this . This is reasonable . But the thing about , like America and capitalism , and I think it's even more deep than that . I think it's just the biological being that we all live in , these meat sacks . As we get older , we're trying to conserve and conserve more and more and more and therefore we become more conservative , and I think the direction that our Overton window , or the direction that our Overton window is always shifting toward , is over toward the right . I think we're constantly , at least in America , shifting towards fascism and we need these extreme lefts to counterbalance that . I think we need . Like there was a phrase I heard a long time ago that said the system only works because there is constant dissent , and I believe that to be true . And since the system , I believe , is constantly pushing us because of the structure of it , it is constantly pushing us further and further to the right , we need this effort to push us further and further to the left .
Speaker 1And so occasionally these left wing groups , in animal rights especially , had in the past created crises that authorities had to resolve immediately . Action Network was a radical environmental group that threatened Staples about their refusing to use recycled paper , and they got so loud about it and dangerous about it that Staples decided to ask for help from a moderate group called the Environmental Defense Fund and radical armed groups , which have mixed reviews in the sociology as far as whether or not they work . When you look at they looked at like 50 some of them I think I'll get to those notes in a little bit and turned out that it was very much mixed whether armed resistances and things worked . But one that did work is turns out that radical armed groups often protect the moderate groups , allowing them to do their nonviolent actions , and this is something that I've seen over and over and over again , especially in Chop Chaz . It is a nonviolent place . That was the goal , but of course the police take wingnuts and crazies from all over the city and take them over to Chop Chaz and drop them off , knowing that they are mentally unstable , knowing that they're unsafe , knowing that they have all of these problems and that they're always str is there at those places to use that , to use that violence as a way to break up a perfectly legal , perfectly valid protest .
Speaker 1But there was a my group of friends specifically were the ones volunteering to , to walk the perimeter and to run security and be the people that says I don't fucking think , think so , you're not , you're not here , you're not allowed to be here , like you got to calm down and 99% of the time they're just deescalating , because they're phenomenal at deescalating , because they're the . They are the people that you don't want to piss off and they know , because they have to deal with the ramifications of what they do to other people when they get pissed off . So they do a phenomenal job of de-escalating , but they , because of their willingness , because of their willingness to be that boundary , they're the ones basically acting out as that role , as the radical armed groups allowing for these moderate groups to have nonviolent protests , because we know that they are always sending in people to stir problems and to create violence in nonviolent protests . I mean there was videos of cops lighting cop cars on fire . Like we literally have a video of a cop lighting a cop car on fire from one of the Black Lives Matters protests and they're like , oh look , they're burning vehicles . Except there was footage it was a cop who literally fucking did that to make it look like they're being violent and dangerous , like it's all a fucking sham .
Speaker 1So but there's , it's not just . It's not just positive . These radical flanks can backfire , and one of the ways that they can backfire is they discredit the entire movement by doing some radicalized things in some situations and this is why I was talking about whether a movement is viewed as being monolithic and the other is that it makes collaboration harder Once you have done something really extreme that most people find unthinkable or radical . You have themmed yourself Like in this whole us versus them radical . You have themmed yourself Like in this whole us versus thing , us versus them thing . You have themmed yourself super hard and people are not going to want to work with you because they see you as unstable or radical or whatever , even if what you did was very well thought out . But the important bit here is the predictors , the predictors of the radical flank effect . What predicts a positive flank effect versus a negative one ? So the thing that really matters in the prediction , the number one thing that matters , is the differentiation between moderates and the radicals . What happens is If a movement which all of these are social movements , environmental protection , women's rights and black rights , african-american rights in the United States
Radical Flanking in Social Movements
Speaker 1.
Speaker 1I wanted to give you a few examples . So I have the New York Radical Women , I have the Red Stalking Society and Insight . The Red Stalking Society and Insight were all radical feminist groups that helped to get women's rights on in policy Under civil rights . We have the obvious Black Panthers . We have the Black Liberation Army , which was a lot of armed resistance , and you had CORE or the Congress of Racial Equality , and then , with environmental , you have Earth First , and they were like chaining themselves to forests and doing tree spiking to destroy people's , to destroy the mechanisms that people were using to cut down trees . You have Extinction Rebellion , who was kind of actually moderate in their like . They're interesting . I'll talk about them in a little bit but they did a bunch of chaining to stuff and blocking of traffic in the UK and it caused a bunch of problems . But they were able to get a bunch of conversations being had in the UK that nobody wanted to have about labor rights and union rights and that sort of thing . And then you have the Earth Liberation . These are just a couple of the radicalized groups . These are just a couple of the radicalized groups and these radicalized groups .
Speaker 1The thing is , if you can differentiate yourself from the mods , which is usually the moderate group's job , it's the moderate's job to go . Ok , when there's a Luigi , what CNBC has to say oh , that guy's bad , that was bad , that was bad , that was terrible . He's not us . We're more moderate . We would never do that . That's unthinkable . And when you do that as a moderate you are going to get more support . Usually that's what Herbert Haynes found when he was looking through all of the civil rights stuff and looking at this and coining the term and doing the seminal work on radical flanking .
Speaker 1It turns out that the moderates get way more support , financial support from external systems if they differentiate themselves from the radicalized group . Then there is momentum . Momentum is another predictor . If there is a lot of momentum in the radicalized groups , as in people are radicalized and the radicalization seems to be building , then a lot of times large governments will accept moderate concessions in order to quell the radicalized groups . That's another way that another positive predictor for the flank effect .
Speaker 1Another is timing . If the radical effect happens after peak activism , then it doesn't work . If the radical flanking thing happens before peak social activism , then it has a much higher chance of working . Social activism then it has a much higher chance of working . And then there's polarization . If the polarization is low , it's easier for the radical flanking to work . And that one was interesting to me . But then I realized that I think what's happening is the opposite side isn't able to easily conflate the moderate and the radical if there is low polarization . If things are already ridiculously polarized , like they are in the US right now , it's hard and it's iffy because a group on the opposing side can lump together . Look at those people . Look at these liberals . Look at these libtards . They're shooting CEOs in the back of the head . He's a businessman , he's a hero . All the shit that you've been hearing on tv , by the way , fuck that guy . He's not a fucking hero . The polarization if it's low , it's easier to be able for the mods to go . No , they're radical . That's not what we do . We do this over here . That is a predictor of a positive flank effect .
Speaker 1So now I'm going to go into is nonviolent stuff better ? Is the nonviolent stuff better ? And it actually shows . Most studies show that violence , even as resistance , makes state oppression seem legitimate . And that's unfortunate , because violence is almost always a part of nonviolent protests . Because of the people that they send in to stir the pot and make shit up . They purposefully send in people that aren't even violent , that are mentally unstable or mentally divergent , and they're erratic . They move erratically the number of black men who have been murdered because they moved erratically is insane and they'll bring in people like that and because they know that that will discredit the movement . But even still , states seek to incite violence through provocation agents just to justify suppression . That's what I was just talking about . They constantly incite violence through provocation just to justify the suppression of a group .
Speaker 1If you're really interested in this stuff , there's some books that you could look into . One is called the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy and A Critique of Pure Tolerance . Both of these books talk about the flank effect and social movements and how to survive as a person of color in the United States . There was the study that they did some . They did quite a few studies on this . Like I said , individual ones , but there was a meta-analysis . I did quite a few studies on this . Like I said , individual ones , but there was a meta-analysis , and so I went to that to get the big overarching information . And there was a study of 53 challenging groups , which is an interesting way to call these disruptors , and this researcher found that groups willing to use force and violence were more successful overall . In the review of 53 socially challenging groups that are trying to get social movements to have policy change . 53 out of that , most of them needed to use force and violence , or at least the people who did use force and violence were more successful than those who were not , which directly is in conflict with .
Speaker 1A lot of studies say that violence , even as resistance , makes state oppression seem legitimate , and that's like I get that .
Speaker 1I see how that can happen . But I feel like we're at a place now in the world where we know the state is super fucked up . Every single person alive knows the state is fucked up . It's not just the hippies versus the businessmen in the 60s , where things are still pretty decent for a lot of people and you can make a living wage and you can buy a house and have , raise your family and all of that with a like just working one job .
Speaker 1Now we all understand that the state is ridiculously oppressive and so keep in mind a lot of this data is old , these radical flank effects . We haven't been having a lot of them . They kind of stopped doing as much science on it after civil rights . They've done some since then , but most of this is all done on women's liberation and civil rights and environmental rights , because the same thing the radical flank effect was happening in the 80s , with a bunch of hippies putting their dirty feet on boats and going out to places and fucking shut up that way , and that's how a lot of the environmental protections got put into place . People were bombing pipelines and stuff like that , being like well , it hasn't broken yet , but it's going to break , so we might as well bust it open right now and make you do a cleanup before it's chock full of all the oil and it's even worse . A lot of people find that unthinkable . I'm like , yeah , that's forward thinking , good job .
Speaker 1Another thing that they found in this study well , the Herbert Haynes found is he really believes and this makes sense to me that violence in social movements is really really underreported . That makes sense to me because we all know that violence is going to delegitimize any movement . People don't report when there is violence Makes sense , right ? We're not going to report violence if we know we're going to get in trouble for violence . It's the same thing when you make drugs illegal . People aren't going to stop using drugs , they're just going to stop letting you know that they're doing drugs . Same thing we're not going to not use violence , because violence is the only way to stop a violent person , and this has been the point for me the entire time .
Speaker 1We cannot tolerate intolerance and we are living in a system that was built on violence . We showed up , a bunch of white folks showed up here . A bunch of folks followed . We murdered all of the Native Americans , we enslaved all of the Africans and some of the fucking Asians and some of the fucking Scots and Irish and we just did all kinds of fucked up shit and we did it all through violence , through force , because it's our divine right . That's our divine right . We're supposed to go forward , be fruitful and multiply or whatever , and we did .
Speaker 1Our entire system was built on violence and if you think you can get out from underneath a violent oppressor without using violence , you're dumb . Sorry , but you've got to recognize that . You've got to recognize that we live in a system that has zero problem using violence to get what it wants , that has zero problem using violence to get what it wants . If you are unwilling to accept that violence is occasionally the answer , you are locking yourself into being dependent on a system that will murder you just for it to keep going and you're okay with that . And you know like , everybody's got their own path , everybody's got their own life . If that's the way that you want to go , then okay , and for some people that's fine . But I haven't had a life that makes me want to do that . I've seen the effects of our system firsthand in so many ways and it's fucking terrible . So for me , you've got to accept that we live in a system I think everybody understands that .
Speaker 1We live in a system in the Western world , in America especially , where they will just use violence to get you to do whatever they want and there's nothing that you can do about it . You can't fight back because that's called resisting arrest . They can just arrest you for nothing at all , make up a charge and then call it resisting arrest and then you're in jail for resisting arrest , especially if you're black or brown . We live in a system that actively , on an hourly basis , uses violence to get what they want out of , and if you think that you can get out from under that without using violence , you're a fool . Mama didn't raise no fool with me . It really sucks and I get that . You don't want that to be the truth , but it is the truth . You will never get out from under a violent oppressor without using violence . It's not going to happen ? Not when they have the amount of power and reach that the United States government has . You're not going to do it , and that was my point in the Luigiigi podcast to begin with .
Speaker 1How do we affect change ? We all like nobody wants to approve violence . Well , maybe not nobody , I'm fine with it . But most people don't want to approve violence and that's absolutely reasonable and I absolutely get why . But if we're not going to accept violence as a legitimate option to protect ourselves , then how are we going to protect ourselves against a violent , basically all-powerful , existential being the US government ? How are we going to do it ? They're willing to use violence , no-transcript , and loved and were supposed to take care of me .
Speaker 1I carry that every day . I live with it . I live with the fact that the people who were supposed to love me and care for me the most in the world hit me , beat me , took advantage of me , raped me . I live with that . So I'm okay with living with the guilt of having enacted pain on somebody . It's the same reason . I'm okay with the guilt and the pain of that last podcast of what happens when you cross my boundaries . It sucks . I'm not super happy about it . I wish I could have handled those a little bit better , but I'm not actually that mad about it because I get that my training is very intense and it's super hardcore and so long as I'm able to put up a boundary for myself and then repair the relationship and make sure that you know here's a boundary and you crossed it and you'll never cross it again , our relationship is cool , like we're good . Just don't ever do that again and we'll be all right .
Speaker 1It's really important for me to be able to do that , because if I don't do that , the other option is to live in constant fear every time I go out into any social event because somebody might cross my boundaries and I'm not going to stand up for myself . Terrifying , because I refuse to put up a boundary for myself when somebody crosses it because I don't want to enact pain on them or I don't want to make a scene , or I don't want to whatever . It's the exact same process for me . This is the same damn thing . I carry that pain . So I'm okay with inflicting violence to protect someone that I love or care about . Maybe that's because I'm a man or whatever , and that's the military talking , or whatever , but it Maybe that's because I'm a man or whatever , and that's the military talking or whatever , but it makes sense to me . I'm okay with that . I don't want it I would rather not , obviously but I'm okay with carrying that and I think that's the heart of why I did this podcast today .
Speaker 1That's why I wanted to talk about non-violent movements and violent movements and look at the people who have done a little bit of science on this , because it definitely has a lot of credibility among social scientists . Outside of that , I'm sure a lot of people are poo-pooing it and I've seen where some people are poo-pooing it , but there's good science here and it's got really good support from sociologists who study this sort of thing . It all makes perfect sense to me and it lines up with what I've seen and what I've read from social movements in the past . So , to recap , the reason I did this podcast is I really want people to think about how can we affect real change , change that affects you and me , and that probably is policy . It doesn't have to be . It does not have to be at all . In fact , I encourage people to find ways that they can improve their lives and their social world without affecting policy whatsoever , because I don't think we should be relying on government for much of fucking anything , because they're useless , as they have proved . But how are we going to affect change if they're willing to use violence ? And we are not . How ? How are we going to affect change on the moral high ground ? The moral high ground is only helpful if there are other people with more power who are willing to lend their power to you because of your moral high ground . This is why it worked for MLK . He took the nonviolent moral high ground .
The Necessity of Radical Action
Speaker 1What's really funny about that is CORE , the Congress of Racial Equality , turns out , and some of the Black Liberation Army . Both of them were the security detail for MLK . Like he's nonviolent ? Yes , he is . He has armed guards . How do you feel about that ? White people , you , how do you feel about that ? We all love MLK , right , everybody loves MLK . He got black people the right to vote and he did it nonviolently . He did it through his eloquence Fuck out of here . He was eloquent , a phenomenal speaker , and he had armed guards . He had armed guards that were part of the Black Panthers , the Black Liberation Army and Corps , guards that were part of the Black Panthers , the Black Liberation Army and Corps .
Speaker 1And the funny thing is in 1968 , the Black Panthers , according to the FBI , were the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States . And you know what the Black Panthers were most famous for Free breakfast for children . That was their most popular , most well-funded , most well-known act . They offered free breakfast for any child , I think down to the age of 8 or 12 or something like that . I don't remember the exact thing and I apparently didn't write it down . They were offering free breakfast to children and they were providing armed defense to other black people who were trying to be nonviolent . This is what I was talking about . When we're talking about predictors of radicalized armed groups often protect the nonviolent groups , as I like to put it .
Speaker 1I think , more specifically , the capacity for violence is necessary for any social change , because we live in a system that is inherently okay with violence and using violence to get what they want to pursue their ends . If we are unwilling to use violence to pursue our ends , we will never make any change , ever . That's my opinion . I hope it's yours , because I can't really imagine it being any other way . Maybe it's still not your opinion , that's okay . I hope you do some research . I hope you read some of those books . I hope you read a critique of pure tolerance . I really wanted to get this through people's heads .
Speaker 1The radical flanking works . If you don't like Luigi , fine , good , you're moderate . You're the people who are going to get policy changes . You'll barely make any policy changes , but you'll make some , just like the tiny concessions that we got from Chop Chaz in Seattle . You'll make tiny concessions . They'll hardly do anything , but you'll feel a little bit better and they will help a handful of people . We wish they got what they wanted .
Speaker 1Because I tend to sit on that radicalized side , because I have been radically affected negatively by the systems in power . So of course I'm radicalized and that's always going to be the case . The people who are in the furthest edges of the Overton window of what is the discourse that we are having , that furthest edge is the unthinkable and the radical and yeah , I'm a victim of the unthinkable and the radical effects of our system and black and brown people are so much more than I am . That's just the reality and that means that we are the ones that are going to be doing the most ridiculously extreme things in order to move the moderate needle , because people who are moderate , really they get the moderate needle and everybody else confuses them , because they have lived a life that has been insulated from the more extreme forms of suppression and repression the United States government and our capitalist system do . They've been insulated from that and so they actually benefit from this system 90% of the time . Yeah , it has problems , yeah it has flaws , but it works for them . Most of the time . For the people that it doesn't work for , that's us radicalized folks . We're the ones who have become radical and it sucks that . The only way that we make impact is by protecting the people who are doing nonviolence or by doing something so radical that it creates a crisis that then the government has to make moderate concessions to then fix the problem . Or we do like a Luigi thing and we create a . We shift the Overton window so dramatically by doing something that's unthinkable for most people that now the needle of what we consider moderate is moved , and it's moved far left , and , considering the way that the US is going , the needle is constantly shifting right . We need a constant influx every year or two years or couple of months even . It seems we need something extremely left to happen to shift our whole needle , to shift our whole Overton window left . That's what I think we need .
Speaker 1I hope that you learned something from this podcast . I hope that you understand the necessity for the capacity of violence when it comes to creating systematic change in a system that was built on and continues to use violence to enforce its policies and its goals . If you don't believe that by the end of this podcast , I don't know what to do . I don't know what to tell you . I hope you have a marvelous day , and that goes for the rest of you as well . I hope you have a marvelous day
Radicalizing Through the Capacity for Violence
Speaker 1.
Speaker 1Thank you again for joining me . Please share this with some friends . Please kick us out to a few folks . If you've got some moderate white folks in your group , send it to them . Maybe piss them off , maybe radicalize them a little bit , maybe get them , through logic and reason and through some sociological evidence , to consider hey , maybe the capacity for violence actually is necessary , even if it's an evil . We all have that term . We've heard the term necessary evil . The capacity for violence in resistance is a necessary evil in the modern world . I won't take any more of your time . Thank you for spending it with me and remember stay curious and stay uncomfortable . Thank you , you're dead , you .