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Thoreau, yes. Gandhi and MLK also. All examples of peaceful civil disobedience. Equating their work and the the BLM lawlessness is grotesque.
Blocking roads and harassing motorists is not spinning cotton or mining salt. There's no nexus between the 'demands' and the disobedience.
Much of the effect of civil disobedience is forcing the state to arrest and prosecute you for your violations. The greater the nexus of the violation to your complaint the better. Frequently leading them to appear petty and vindictive, rallying others to your cause.
Thoreau's version was very different. Thoreau was breaking the very law he objected to. Same with Rosa Parks. But in many other cases, the protests were breaking other laws which the protestors had no objection to (except when used against themselves). Blockading streets is not Thoreau's version of civil disobedience.
It hasn't been that for a long time. The state figured out the counter -- just make the penalties very severe, the way it was for the Charlottesville torch-carriers or January 6. Can't run your cause while in solitary in the D.C. jail or incommunicado in a Federal rape camp. And if the media is on the other side, this will all look deserved.
Instead, "civil disobedience" nowadays is theatre. Groups nominally outside the government demand unpopular stuff, and groups inside the government who want that stuff but know it is unpopular pretend their hand is forced.
Thoreau, MLK, Gandhi all went to prison / jail. The demonstrations today are not civil disobedience, I understand the demonstrators of today want to inherit the legacy of civil disobedience, at best they're wearing it as a skin suit.
As you correctly point out the demonstrators are in collusion with factions in the government. Where did historic civil disobedience collude with the nominal opposition to effect change by breaking laws orthogonal to their demands?
Can any crime be newspeak civil disobedience, bank robbery, murder?
Thoreau spent a day in jail (and didn't succeed in changing the law either). MLK, a few weeks, in which they let him write letters to newspapers. Put MLK in a Federal Prison for 18 years, like Stewart Rhodes was for January 6, and he's neutralized, and probably his organization too.
I think Stewart Rhodes was overcharged and over sentenced but I wouldn't describe his actions as civil disobedience either. Is he being prevented from writing letters to newspapers?
Weren't the Oath Keepers infiltrated by informants and under cover agents?
Of course they were. Another way the government can shut down opposition; all the right-wing groups are throughly infiltrated.
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As much of a Thoreau fan as I am, being a New England Native you have to be; even knowing he never really "got back to nature" and was eating pies made by loving relatives while living in the woods just 2 miles from town. You can't put him in a catagory with MLK and Gandhi for spending one night in a local jail.
@SSCReader inserted Thoreau, I was agreeing as an example of peaceful civil disobedience. I find him a better example than the mobs blocking traffic. Compared to Gandhi he's a poser, but still a better example of civil disobedience than the BLM rioters / looters / demonstrators.
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