By Any Necessary Means

[RemyZee]

I'm not 100 percent sure this is appropriate, but I see this in graffiti all over the place and I was wondering what people think about it I don't know.

 

[Tired]

I don't understand what this is about without additional context.

 

[tree]

Are you referring to the words "By Any Necessary Means"?
Or something else?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_any_means_necessary
"By any means necessary is an English phrase or a translation of a French phrase that has been attributed to at least three famous sources. The earliest of these three sources is French leftist intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1948 play Dirty Hands where he used a French equivalent of the phrase. The second is Martinican anticolonialist intellectual Frantz Fanon who used another French equivalent of the phrase in his 1960 address to the Positive Action Conference in Accra, Ghana. The English phrase entered American civil rights culture through a speech given by Muslim minister Malcolm X at the Organization of Afro-American Unity's founding rally on 28 June 1964 in Manhattan, New York. "

 

[Judge]

The phrase meant a great deal to Malcolm X:

https://www.blackpast.org/african-a...nding-rally-organization-afro-american-unity/

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

It is Antifa. Anarchosocialist thugs.

By any means necessary means to achieve a political and societal goal, even if it means arson, violence, theft, and bloodshed.

They are trying to pump up their brothers for action, and also to intimidate the populace. Do not be intimidated.

 

[Hypnalis]

I don't know who is painting it, but the rest of @Yeshuasdaughter post is correct.

It's one of those phrases designed to support grey-area or extremist views and actions, along with "for us or against us" and "accept the whole ideology without question, or you're against us".

Never trust people who think that way or use those phrases. They may not be dangerous in any way, but the odds that they are is way higher than a random person (10 times at least).

BTW it's used figuratively occasionally, to motivate an individual, as a stronger version of "whatever it takes". But that context doesn't apply to graffiti.

 

[Au Naturel]

I don't know who is painting it, but the rest of @Yeshuasdaughter post is correct.

It's one of those phrases designed to support grey-area or extremist views and actions, along with "for us or against us" and "accept the whole ideology without question, or you're against us".

Never trust people who think that way or use those phrases. They may not be dangerous in any way, but the odds that they are is way higher than a random person (10 times at least).

BTW it's used figuratively occasionally, to motivate an individual, as a stronger version of "whatever it takes". But that context doesn't apply to graffiti.

That phrase is usually associated with left-wing revolutionary rhetoric. However. the sentiment applies to violent extremists on the right as well. Most of the people saying this are posers. It is a performance for an audience and not a real sentiment. The risk is that it can egg on the mentally disturbed to act on it or heat up an internet bubble to a boil.

There are a few people who really believe this. We call them terrorists and dictators.

"Any means" intentionally leaves open all possibilities up to genocide. Ultimately, it distorts Machiavelli's "The end justifies the means." misquote. What Machiavelli actually said was:

...let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world, there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.

https://factmyth.com/factoids/machiavelli-said-the-ends-justify-the-means/
And that is sadly, very true.