I find it extremely distasteful to describe backing down in the face of slaughter as "complicity." If that's the sort of thinking that follows naturally from the model of power dynamics being discussed here, then I think the model is likely intensely flawed.
On one hand, you are correct that it's an ethical problem.
But on the other hand I think it's more salient to understand that, say, the students shot down at Kent State were murdered and the general population of the country was on the side of the National Guard.... that's the kind of complicity that most people live under, the same complicity that believes people executed by police for non-compliance deserve their fates.
On one hand, it probably really is a good thing that we are generally aligned toward lawfulness, but at the same time it does make us complicit when the people charged with upholding that law use it towards criminal ends-- which is quite common in the US.
But on the other hand I think it's more salient to understand that, say, the students shot down at Kent State were murdered and the general population of the country was on the side of the National Guard.... that's the kind of complicity that most people live under, the same complicity that believes people executed by police for non-compliance deserve their fates.
If you actually read the thread up your position on it, you'd know that you were equating an unwilling to challenge tanks rolling through your streets due a fear of getting shot with an approval of such tanks rolling through your streets.
It seems to me that intellectuals spouting this kind of nonsense wide-up complicit to power and not in a it's-OK-cause-everyone-is, kind of way.
Complicity is a loaded term, so I can see why you'd feel that way. Perhaps it'd be better to say that such behavior enables the slaughterers to do what they do. As for the ethical question of whether a particular instance of backing down was right or wrong, hopefully our analysis of power dynamics avoids answering such questions and focuses on, well, the dynamics of power. That's not to say that such questions are irrelevant, they're just a different field, like the quantitative differences between the light emitted by configurations of dyes and the feeling evoked by a certain painting.
