Is civil disobedience a threat to democracy?

Basic discrediting and propaganda. Why even read fox news?

We know that’s not true, so you don’t need to entertain the claim.

The christian white power structure is trying to build itself back up.

It is farcical at this point.
The Orangutan gave a blanket pardon to all the violent insurrectionists. He, Musk, and his goons commit illegal act after illegal act in their also illegal rampage through government agencies. Elected representatives are being blocked from accessing the departments by Musk’s thugs, while Elonski and his minions, unelected, unqualified and unvetted, have gained full access, revoking access to actual employees, and shutting down entire agencies, which, again, they are not allowed to do.
Yet any resistance, no matter how mild, to this overt and rapid dismantling of democracy the rule of law, is painted by these demagogues as lawlessness.
Even merely delaying appointments of the Orangutan’s deeply unqualified clowns, a tactic the republicans have been happily using for the past decades against democratic nominees, is suddenly something their opponents are not allowed to employ.

Fox News always has a way of making the Democrats seem way better than they actually are. The Democratic party is not a true opposition. The Republican wing/Fox News just likes to paint them as such. And Democrats allow this to happen so that the overton window can perpetually shift right. Dems don’t have to actually oppose anything, but can make sounds as though they do. Shit, they handed over the election to Trump just so they could continue to commit genocide, destroy academia, shred the concept of free speech, and attack the concept of civil disobedience as something essential to a society worth saving.

Is civil disobedience a threat to democracy? Shit, you’d need to define democracy before we could answer that one. Show me a democracy and maybe we could discuss what it would mean to save it.

Nope, possibly a threat to those participating to extreme degrees though.

Straight out of 1930s Germany,

Trump and the other Fascists ( Musk) are the threat to Democracy.

Fox News is just clickbait to sell ads. CNN & MSNBC too. You can’t even read anything on their site if you have an ad blocker.

Civil disobedience almost is democracy.

Well, of course it is.

Democracy is only successful when everyone turns their minds off and blindly obeys the leader.

Trust the government and all will be well. Promise.

Why, @ragingloli, you do love us after all.

Civil disobedience may or may not be a threat to democracy. The key of the quote in the question is that Democrats don’t practice what they preach. They went after Trump on J6 because he dared to use the word “fight” in a speech. They claimed that was a bridge too far. But they called for violence against conservative SCOTUS justices, they have called for physical violence in the streets, they urged violence and hatred against candidate Trump which seems to have directly led to 2 assassination attempts, they are calling for violence against Trump saying “We are at war!” and so many more. They supported riots, arson, assaults, looting and even murder, setting up bail out funds to get the criminals right back out onto the street. All this is laughed off as not being serious and the complicit media and weak minded fools believe it.

Civil disobedience and calls for violence are not the same thing. But neither does it exclude it from being threats against democracy. In the case given, the calls for violence and fighting in the street are being called civil disobedience. I’d call them threats to democracy because they are being done as a way to undermine the duly elected POTUS.

The opposite entirely! Civil disobedience IS democracy. It is government by the people (not by the bribed politicians).

We should celebrate and encourage civil obedience.

@elbanditoroso So when does civil disobedience turn into riots? Aren’t riots civil disobedience? And if that is the case then J6 was just civil disobedience.

@seawulf575 that’s a matter of degree, and I am not going to try to define it.

But to say that all civil disobedience turns into riots is ludicrous.

@elbanditoroso No, all civil disobedience does not turn into riots. But how people respond to riots is apparently a matter of degrees as well, or maybe just a matter of sides. As I pointed out, Trump making a speech and using the word “fight” (not in the meaning of physical altercation) was apparently enough for Dems to move civil disobedience into threat to democracy. Yet actual riots that burned down buildings, looted businesses, assaulted and killed individuals were deemed to be mainly peaceful protests (civil disobedience) by the same people. So it is that matter of degree that matters. Do we have a definition that everyone is held to or is it variable depending on what sort of political gain you are looking to push?

One of the main things about Democracy is the people vote for the leader or leaders in the country. Other important aspects are the right to free speech and rule of law. The main protection under free speech is the right to speak out against the government, so protests are in accordance with that. It’s worth noting free speech is protected, but location matters and location can affect whether saying something is legal and protected.

Keep in mind many extremist Trumpers are extremist Libertarians. At the extreme end Libertarians are very close to being anarchists or point blank actually are. They don’t want a government and fancy themselves to be revolutionists a la the US Revolution that fought against the existing King’s rule and against taxation without representation. Many of them might say they care about the constitution, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and the vote, but in reality they just want what they want by any means.

@seawulf575 People were arrested and convicted for the rioting that happened during the BLM protests. The legal actions taken by the courts are separate from the frustration you have with Democrats who fail to acknowledge there was some rioting. The law did address it. Maybe not to your satisfaction, but it is not as you portray it.

The rioting displaying frustration with the government and race inequities and the murder of a Black man, is different than trying to stop a vote and literally target and threaten the VP and Speaker of the House.

I don’t think Trump was charged because he used the word fight, was he? I understand why Republicans feel that Democrats ignore their own leaders using words like fight and war, but the Trump supporters are the party of guns. When Trump said fight on Jan 6th there were literally civilian citizens who had been organized carrying weapons who were there to stop the vote. Even if they had done it completely independent from Trump, those citizens were blatantly disrupting Democracy and breaking the law. The rioting during BLM was didn’t rise to the level of stopping a vote.

I realize we can find Democrats and leftists who have guns too, but it is not organized in the same way, and the majority of the party and the party platform is against guns and violence, so the threat feels different and is different.

@JLeslie “People were arrested and convicted for the rioting that happened during the BLM protests.” This is true, though not as many as were arrested from J6. Nor were any of them held for years without a trial while being denied bail. And considering the BLM riots hit many cities, doing billions of dollars in damages and destroying lives, that is a sad statement. So while the law did address it, they did not address it in the same way. Which brings me back to the difference in how similar situations are treated. One is given the excuses and the other isn’t. Which give me reason to question whether the definition of “Civil Disobedience” is being applied evenly. Until that is done, this question is not truly answerable.

And yes, that was the crux of why Trump was being called an insurrectionist. He said we will fight for your rights to a fair election and we will keep on fighting. So the Dems went over the top claiming he incited the riot and was an insurrectionist. They, of course, had to exclude his whole speech where he told the crowd that they would soon walk to the capital where they would peacefully and patriotically protest the injustice, so the people could let their elected leaders know how they feel.

So your definition of civil disobedience is only if you feel it interrupts a vote? See, my view is civil disobedience is more about using peaceful means to try forcing change in a law or a policy. That is what protests are all about. But let’s look at the BLM riots. Do you think those getting beaten or whose livelihoods were destroyed or the kids that were murdered had their rights taken away? What about those that took over police stations and whole sections of a city? What about those that burned courthouses? Do those fall into your definition of something that goes beyond civil disobedience?