Notice how everyone knows what is needed to be able to eat or mulch a person, but no-one is directly mentioning the part about killing being required.
I don’t know why we need euphemisms for this. Genuinely I’m asking, not presenting an opinion.
It would be very crass indeed to talk about killing the rich, but the cold hard fact is that if psychotic people are leading the entire planet to get properly fucked, it’s the moral thing to do to get rid of them somehow.
Obviously humanitarian values hold that one shouldn’t kill needlessly.
I guess “eat the rich” reminds us of what we need to do and why; because the poor are hungry for the resources the fucked up rich people are hoarding. It’s also very clearly implied that we could kill the rich, but that we’re willing to avoid it if our hunger gets sated some other way.
In other words “hey rich assholes, we’re not violent people, but unless you start making this more fair, this is going to end up in a situation in which we will have to resort to violence, and there’s a lot more of us than there are of you”.
Or as Percy Bysshe put it more eloquently a few centuries ago in a political poem (thought to perhaps be the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance.)
Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.
And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there;
Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;
What they like, that let them do.
With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay,
Till their rage has died away:
Then they will return with shame,
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek:
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!
I don’t think you have to look very far to see discussions of guillotines and the like - I’m not sure that the discourse is as restrained as you think.
Yes, you can find people straight up advocating “we should sharpen the guillotine”, but even then it isn’t “the rich don’t deserve to live” but more of a directly implied threat of dying just like what happened in the French Revolution, and that was quite literally class warfare.
So even saying “let’s sharpen the guillotines” (which I’m all for), it is a restricted form of threat. It’s not about the lack of implied threat, that’s my point. I think we all know that eating a person unalives them.
The point I’m making is that while the implied threat is death, the way the threats are made really do show how much more moral the working class is compared to the capitalist scum who genuinely don’t mind saying inhuman things and straight up advocating for inhumane working conditions and whatnot.
It’s not about “restrained discourse”. It’s the way the death threats are made. “Eat” reminds people that the reason to attack the rich is literally hunger, not anger. “Guillotine” reminds us of how effective the brutal revolution of France was for them.
Both situations that the rich ruling class can willfully avoid if they choose to share.
They just never fucking do.
So while there is a direct threat of death, saying “eat the rich” / “sharpen the guillotine” is still a humane response which gives the people under threat a chance to resolve the situation peacefully. It’s not like some genocidal rightwing rhetoric of “the only good [enterraciststereotype] is a dead [enterraciststereotype]”.
You see the difference there? (Not asking sarcastically, I’m trying to communicate something that I haven’t written much on so it’s still prolly coming out a bit incoherent at time.)
Notice how everyone knows what is needed to be able to eat or mulch a person, but no-one is directly mentioning the part about killing being required.
I don’t know why we need euphemisms for this. Genuinely I’m asking, not presenting an opinion.
It would be very crass indeed to talk about killing the rich, but the cold hard fact is that if psychotic people are leading the entire planet to get properly fucked, it’s the moral thing to do to get rid of them somehow.
Obviously humanitarian values hold that one shouldn’t kill needlessly.
I guess “eat the rich” reminds us of what we need to do and why; because the poor are hungry for the resources the fucked up rich people are hoarding. It’s also very clearly implied that we could kill the rich, but that we’re willing to avoid it if our hunger gets sated some other way.
In other words “hey rich assholes, we’re not violent people, but unless you start making this more fair, this is going to end up in a situation in which we will have to resort to violence, and there’s a lot more of us than there are of you”.
Or as Percy Bysshe put it more eloquently a few centuries ago in a political poem (thought to perhaps be the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_Anarchy
In the past the commoners treated badly had to contend with rulers in castles with canon loaded with grape shot
I don’t think you have to look very far to see discussions of guillotines and the like - I’m not sure that the discourse is as restrained as you think.
Yeah you’re still doing it. Euphemism, that is.
Yes, you can find people straight up advocating “we should sharpen the guillotine”, but even then it isn’t “the rich don’t deserve to live” but more of a directly implied threat of dying just like what happened in the French Revolution, and that was quite literally class warfare.
So even saying “let’s sharpen the guillotines” (which I’m all for), it is a restricted form of threat. It’s not about the lack of implied threat, that’s my point. I think we all know that eating a person unalives them.
The point I’m making is that while the implied threat is death, the way the threats are made really do show how much more moral the working class is compared to the capitalist scum who genuinely don’t mind saying inhuman things and straight up advocating for inhumane working conditions and whatnot.
It’s not about “restrained discourse”. It’s the way the death threats are made. “Eat” reminds people that the reason to attack the rich is literally hunger, not anger. “Guillotine” reminds us of how effective the brutal revolution of France was for them.
Both situations that the rich ruling class can willfully avoid if they choose to share.
They just never fucking do.
So while there is a direct threat of death, saying “eat the rich” / “sharpen the guillotine” is still a humane response which gives the people under threat a chance to resolve the situation peacefully. It’s not like some genocidal rightwing rhetoric of “the only good [enterraciststereotype] is a dead [enterraciststereotype]”.
You see the difference there? (Not asking sarcastically, I’m trying to communicate something that I haven’t written much on so it’s still prolly coming out a bit incoherent at time.)