What responsibility do a people have to change their country/state rather than flee it?

Great Debates
1

This is something I’ve been struggling with for a while now. I read about people fleeing places and complaining about the conditions where they fled to, or who move to other states because they don’t like the policies and bitch about how much they don’t like it, or they stay and bitch and moan.

But at the same time, I feel like they have some sort of obligation to stay and fight, rather than just flee and expect others/other places to be better to them.

I mean, I see the Gazans suffering and crying out, but I also see that Hamas has been the legitimate government of Gaza for something like 16 years. They’re letting Hamas speak for them, up to and including sneak terrorist attacks on Israel. People flee Texas because they dislike the politics. But they could have stayed, voted and protested. People flee Mexico/Central America/wherever, but they could have stayed and revolted.

What are the responsibilities of people who live somewhere to effect change for the better vs. merely flee to somewhere else? Do they have an obligation to their countrymen, or is it every man for themselves? What obligations do they have?

I struggle with this- I feel like they do have some sort of obligation to not just bail, but I’m not sure what shape that obligation takes.

2

You are obliged not to do bad things, and to do good things when you are able, but I do not think that always obligates you to join a war or spend time in political prison or worse. I have met Palestinians who moved out of Gaza, Taiwanese who fled military rule there, and Jews who moved out of Germany in the 1930s. It never occurred to me that any of them were bad because they could hypothetically have engaged in guerilla warfare instead. Then again, citizens who stood by (did not even attempt to flee) and shut up while, e.g., Nazis were doing their thing are totally guilty, so it is hard to judge sometimes.

3

Those who stay and fight are heroes. Heroes are, by definition, extraordinary. You can’t expect everyone to be a hero.

4

Depends. I think at some point you need to get involved with someone or something somewhere.

No one is obligated to fix every bad situation. But I don’t think much of permanent expats who move somewhere else and mock the shortcomings of their old country without embracing the new one. That’s just skimming the cream.

5

I left the United States because my duty to defend my country from the fascist bigots who are slowly taking over is outweighed by my responsibility to keep my children safe and give them the best chance at a good life that I can manage.

Other people may have a different personal calculus. That was mine.

Edit to add, seeing the new post above: As an expat, I have embraced my new country and am proceeding toward naturalization. I do know Those Kinds of Americans but I am deliberately and emphatically not one of them.

6

When was Hamas’s last election? How many current residents voted for them?

7

There was one and only one election for Hamas - after they were voted in they never held another one. Literally half the current residents of Gaza were not even born yet during that election, meaning more than half of the current population of Gaza have never been able to vote for anything in their lifetimes.

Even among people old enough to have voted in that long-ago election - not everyone voted for Hamas, they were but one party among many running for election. So it’s fair to say the vast majority of people in Gaza did NOT vote for Hamas, ever.

8

I dont know that this is exactly true. I mean, the guys with the guns are going to call the shots. What do you expect the average Palestinian to do, march in protest? They’ll end up just as dead as the governmant Hamas replaced. And the people fleeing Central America are up against the same thing - guys with guns.

Do you think the average Venzuelan really has a chance to change things at home without risk to their personal safety? The bellyaching about taxes in California and moving to Texas are not the same as having your life threatened.

I think everyone has to make a choice about their own future, and that of their family. If there is a chance to change things then you stay, but if there is a chance you and your family will end up dead for trying to change, then you flee.

9

May I ask where you live, and what kind of struggle you are involved in? Because I don’t think that being against the powers that be in Gaza, Russia, China, El Salvador or Texas is the same thing at all.
It also depends on your means, your age, whether you have children or not, your education, whether your skills, education, professional aptitude are valued elsewhere, you know enough other people that agree with your stance and you can trust, and so many other variables that any general answer will be wrong for most people confronted with existential political questions.
I, for one, am glad to belong to the priviledged class in a country where this is not yet an issue. I am very conscious if my good fortune, I will not judge lightly.
Well, sometimes I do. Conceded.

10

Hamas is the single party ‘government’ which has only had one election, maintains authority over Gaza by being the only ‘legal’ bureaucracy with which the UN and Red Crescent can negotiate, controls virtually all imports into Gaza via its network of tunnels, and until the late unpleasantness has actually killed more Gazans than the IDF.

Liberal Texans have long decried the growing authoritarianism and repression of civil rights but are outnumbered by the influx of residents moving to Texas specifically because of its reputation of a hyper-conservative enclave. The gerrymandering of Texas electoral districts has exacerbated this but it has become what the mean of Texans want, which is democracy in action albeit with a distinctly illiberal flavor.

People flee Central and South America because of the collapse of lawful authority, non-functional economies, and as a result of the general shit-fuckery by the United States that has turned many of those nations into authoritarian regimes even when they have a veneer of democracy. Illegal immigration from Mexico has actually been declining since 2007 (the cite is from 2019 but has continued); many Mexican ‘undocumented workers’ are in the United States for seasonal vocational opportunities and are not intending to remain in the US indefinitely.

It’s really easy to tell other people to “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps” when you are standing on elevated ground, but for some insight put on some boots and give it a try yourself, literally.

Stranger

11

I wasn’t meaning that they were equivalent, but more that the same phenomenon occurs in both situations- both dire and not quite so dire.

Living in Texas, and not liking the current political regime, it does frustrate and anger me when people just pull the ejection handle and move elsewhere. That doesn’t help- if anything, it tips the imbalance more toward the right.

And as far as Gaza goes, the sort of calculation that @snowthx mentions is what I’m talking about- at what point is there an obligation to do something, versus letting others do it for you, if only to make sure there’s a third entity there- Hamas, the Gazan people, and Israel, instead of letting the world lump Hamas and the Gazan people together.

12

I think your perspective is skewed if you think Texas is such a big and relevant problem and that people that are fleeing Texas are abandoning you to your fate. I would even guess that most people who leave Texas are not fleeing the political repression, they are just moving. To a better job, a better climate, to a new partner. The political climate may make the decision easier, but I doubt it is the main motive for most “emigrants”.
Compare this to the situation in Chechnia (random article from the Guardian I read this morning, could have taken many more from many places):

Imagine living there, reading things like:

Kadyrov’s law enforcement kidnapped Zarema Musayeva, the mother of several well-known Chechen dissidents, from her flat in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, far from Chechnya, and then brought her back to the republic, where she was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Her application for parole was rejected earlier this month.

“Inside Chechnya, Kadyrov can do whatever he wants,” said the opposition activist Yangulbayev, one of Musayeva’s sons. “But [in the kidnapping], he began to test his limits and to undertake these forbidden steps. Now the case is being used to scare other people and that’s why she is being kept in prison… They say: ‘Shut your mouth, because it’s not you who’s going to suffer, but your mother.’”

Russian investigative journalist Elena Milashina and a human rights lawyer were severely beaten in Grozny, the Chechen capital, on the day of Musayeva’s sentencing.

Delimkhanov, the Kadyrov ally, had also threatened to kill Musayeva’s entire family, and their relatives have been sent to the war in Ukraine.

“People feel this in Chechnya,” said Yangulbayev. “This fear is constant.”

So tell me what you expect people to do in Chechnia. You don’t know whom you can trust. Everywhere is full of state informants. They will torture your friends, your friends will tell them whatever they want about you. The courts always rule in favour of the prosecution.
If you compare this with the situation in Texas I fear you have not really thought it through.

13

I have a problem with the title of this thread, but not necessarily the concept. There is no responsibility to do something that is not possible, and it is often not possible to change a country or state. I also have a problem with the expression “a people” – only individuals have responsibility. Imputing responsibility to a group of people invites a lot of victim blaming and other evils.

You could change it to “What responsibility does a person have to work to change their country/state rather than flee it?” and that would be something that could be discussed. Most of the responses have been speaking to this question rather than the one in the title, but I thought these differences should be mentioned.

14

I have loved ones in Texas and they work at engaging others to vote, volunteer hands on with protecting/improving the environment and supports local npo agencies that provide basic essentials to the less fortunate.

I don’t understand the mindset of those who flee to another country because they fear the future here.

15

I think it’s a bit much for those of us who live in Canada and the US to criticize people who flee political persecution, when a lot of us have ancestors who fled political persecution to come here.

16

I have a friend who was in the middle of that nonsense in Sarasota last year (the liberal college that DeSantis’ people took over, not the Moms For Liberty debacle). This does not rise to the level of refugees fleeing a war zone, but…

Friend was fired, rudely and abruptly, because they were perceived as “woke” or something. Friend picked up and left the state, found better employment elsewhere and has been giving Florida the finger ever since.

What were they supposed to do? Move to another public university in Florida and wait for DeSantis’ morons to target that one too? Protests were made, speeches were given. But in the end, leaving Florida for some place better was absolutely the right thing to do.

If we make the argument that Florida now has somewhat poorer educational opportunities due to my friend fleeing the state, I’ll gladly concede the point. Then I’ll say if people there feel that way too they can vote out DeSantis and his ilk. Otherwise, I have little sympathy. Either way I completely support my friend’s decision.

17

A closely related question–and if anyone thinks this is a thread hijack, I apologize and am happy to move it, but I think it’s related–is, “To what degree is it reasonable to say ‘too bad, your leaders caused this’ when civilians are suffering?”

Gaza and Russian cities near the Ukraine border are obvious current examples. Going back, we might consider the average, non-Nazi German in WWII.

All of these folks are just trying to live their lives, aren’t necessarily interested in the goals of the conflict, so at what point is it reasonable to say “Sorry not sorry” when they get bombed etc.?

I have no answer except that it can’t be as simple as “**** all the Gazans” or “Israel is unjustified in defending itself at all because innocent Gazans might get [and, doh, are getting] killed”. It’s a continuum, but how to decide? Fortunately it’s not up to me…

18

No, not a thread hijack at all. What you’re asking is very close to what I’m getting at, especially with respect to Gaza.

I wasn’t trying to equate the political situation in Texas with the others, but merely to point out that the phenomenon seems to be the exact same, even when there’s not as much on the line. People don’t like what’s going on, and so they move rather than trying to effect change.

19

I feel like the phrase above implies some agency that they may not have: how would they effect change? OTOH Gazans mostly have cellphones and could call 1-800-KILL-HAMAS (or whatever the local equivalent is) and say “There are some Hamasters [my term] at these coordinates” and Israel might find that useful. Of course it could also be false, but it’s unclear what the utility of that would be to the average Gazan, or even to the Hamasters. Getting Israel to waste ordnance doesn’t do much, especially when Gaza is so heavily populated anyway–it’s not like they’re going to get IDF to use all its ammo on an empty lot.

20

Moving from Texas is concrete, immediate, and gives complete control of the situation to the person moving.

Becoming e.g. a political activist fighting what you see as Texas’ worst political problems is a Sisyphean task involvng decades of heartburn and effort for maybe slight change. Maybe. That you personally only slightly influence in concert with thousands of other activists each with slightly different goals and priorities and tactics from your own.

On an simple effort/reward basis it’s clear which is the “smart” move. And far more so once you put the discount of time on it.

IOW, you can live in much more congenial surroundings starting next month, or slightly more congenial surroundings starting in a decade or two if you succeed. The value of those 20 extra years in congenial surroundings is very persuasive.


Said another way, the people who stay behind and work diligently to change a situation, whether in Texas or in NK, are those for whom leaving is not a practical alternative in their mind.

And for those folks who are trapped there’s the choice between fighting or agitating or simply keeping their head down. And in many places, including e.g. NK and (probably) Gaza, agitating carries very real risks of changing your and your family’s situation from averagely bad by that society’s standards to most especially pointedly exceedingly bad, dead, or sincerely wishing to be dead.

That’s a choice only a tiny percentage of people are able to make.


My view is the best way to effect change is to simply leave the rancid situation. Soon enough it will collapse under the weight of population loss to smarter realms. Or, to the degree politics and society is at all responsive to their citizens, they’ll recognize that the public is not buying what they’re selling.

IOW … Collectively the brain- and body-drain will either starve out the assholes in charge, or collectively persuade them, or their successors, to change their tune in a more congenial fashion.