CMV: Martyrdom is a tool for the powerful.
I'm not advocating for any act of violence.
I just find it strange whenever violence is brought up as an option there will always be an argument about how you can't make someone into a martyr. I find this strange when you consider figures like MLK Jr who accomplished a lot on life and then was killed. Now public opinion of MLK Jr did greatly approve after his death but since his death his message concerning both race and class consciousness had been greatly erroded and white wash. Take for example how many people express MLK wouldn't want the government assisting black people because "MLK would want peoplr to be equal" despite MLK Jr actively advocating for programs to help black people because equality would require equity after years of financial mistreatment.
MLK Jr, The Black Panthers, Gandhi, all achieved great things in life only for their efforts to be redirected or stopped once they were no longer here to personally see their message. What more is that the people who killed them didn't prescribe to this fear of making them martyrs. In fact governments in general don't seem to worry about very public acts of violence. If martyrdom was such a powerful factor wouldn't there be much more hesitantion towards acts of violence, from on the streets all the way to the jails?
It feels like Martyrdom has become a tool meant to exploit people's sympathy and their belief in some karma in order to control them.
If you want to change my view I would like clear examples of people who death's really did contribute to the accomplishment of their goals more then their living actions did in the long term. I believe short term outage doesn't do much in the long run. Or maybe when someone's death did significantly make a situation worse.