"Civil Disobedience means accepting that what you are doing is illegal and dealing with the consequences. Period." Excuse me, the dude took his own life. That's a pretty powerful "fuck you" to the government. Another idiotic meme that needs to die: if a prosecution of an individual is unjust, it doesn't matter whether said individual went in expecting to become a martyr.
Remember that half of civil disobedience is gracefully accepting the punishment. You can't break the law and then argue you shouldn't be punished because it was 'only civil disobedience'- that's not civil disobedience. If they really believe in their cause, they shouldn't need other people to save them from it.
Civil disobedience is a crucial part of liberal democracy. What's scary is not that it's happening, it's that it's being vilified. I'd expect and want resistance to unjust laws, and in fact such resistance is a moral obligation.
According to prevailing wisdom, civil disobedience means you're a X-ist, denier gun nut who has fallen for disinformation. No room for questioning the official narrative, lives are at stake.
I would add that another component of civil disobedience is a willingness to accept the consequences, to be arrested without violence or any resistance. I should have included that in my original comment.
> Do you mean "necessary to be considered civil disobedience"?
No, I mean necessary to be justified. As I've tried to make clear, I'm not interested in arguing about the semantics.
I think practitioners of civil disobedience stress that acceptance of punishment is necessary to justify disobedience because (1) the laws passed by democratic governments are valid (even if unjust) and (2) because acceptance of suffering for your cause calls the public's attention. I've never heard it argued that the mere fact that you are technically being punished for a just law (in the case of indirect disobedience) gets you off the hook for accepting the punishment. Hence my MLK traffic example.
Personally, I would add that acceptance of punishment reduces your ability to deceive yourself into thinking you're disobeying for the greater good, rather than just for your own personal gain or fame.
Being a conscientious objectors during the Vietnam war is justified if you accepted the alternate role upon being drafted, or if you accept imprisonment. But do you think fleeing to Canada is justified? After all, most people agree that the government has a right to draft soldiers in times of national emergency.
Civil disobedience is all about breaking the law without hurting people. In general it only takes place when large numbers of people have a problem with the law itself. If the state enforces the law by hurting people then public opinion will swing in favor of the people who are being hurt. This is the whole point. Arguing that the opposition was not peaceful because they broke the law without hurting people is obviously wrong and misses the point.
It happens in the US too. An 84 year old nun was just sentenced to 3y in prison yesterday in Tennessee for taking part in a peaceful protect against the US nuclear weapon program. Being put in prison isn't as dramatic as being shot by snipers, but it does represent harm and it does affect public opinion (to what extent, who knows).
Civil disobedience is always an option, but those who use this tactic need to accept that the law will temporarily punish them pending some societal realignment. It's a big bet. It's still unreasonable to expect an exemption from the law because one feels that one's cause is just.
The point behind civil disobedience is that you knowingly break the law because you both believe the law is absurd AND you’re prepared to accept the legal consequences in the hope that society will look on your example as the punishment not being appropriate and change the law.
That's not what the commenter said. They outlined a classic stance on the concept of civil disobedience which is that one way of fighting unjust laws is to refuse to obey them. (the corollary to that is to be ready to face the consequences)
Absolutely, but I'm surprised to see so many people think that civil disobedience is a consequence free act. The whole point is that you break the law and then visibly suffer the consequences to get attention.
reply