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Title: Nonviolence Rhetoric Divides Us All Author: Hoods4Justice Date: Approx 2016-17 Language: en Topics: non-violence, intersectionality, diversity of tactics, liberals, NGO, Source: Unavailable Notes: Transcription by AnarchistBlackCat
You’ll often see a news article that states something like: “protest
turns violent after protesters throw tear gas back at police.” The point
being that violence started only after the tear gas was thrown back.
What then was the initial act of throwing tear gas at the protesters in
the first place classified as?
If your home is broken into, someone attacks you, and you defend
yourself with force, was it you who should be considered “violent” or
the aggressor that initiated the act? Most people would not consider the
defending individual as “violent” because they were not the initiator of
the violent act; they were forced into a situation where using violence
was needed to survive or protect themselves. Why is it any different
when said aggressor is the state or economic forces?
These are just two of many important questions concerning the ideas of
organizing primarily utilizing nonviolence. While nonviolence has firmly
cemented itself as the dominant and most acceptable tactic and theory in
social movements, its dubious record is enough to raise the question of
whether we should reconsider how we currently organize within social
justice and activist spaces. In this zine, we will explore issues and
ask questions we all too often refuse to confront.
Nonviolence and violence form a dichotomy both abstract and vague. Both
lack an exact definition and are often defined through moralizing
principles under the guidance of the state and/or economic or religious
entities. We habitually attempt to characterize situations based on what
we are comfortable labelling as appropriate, but our individual
perspectives often rigidly misunderstand actions rooted in bias.
Violence is often viewed as evil and problematic. Generally, it is
defined as acting aggressively and causing physical, systemic, or
economic harm to an individual or group of people who have not harmed
the aggressor beforehand.
Non-violence theory on the other hand distinguishes between principled
and pragmatic nonviolence. Principled nonviolence is the Gandhian
approach: nonviolence is a way of life, and the refusal to resort to
violence is made based on ethical grounds. In contrast, pragmatic
nonviolent action is deployed when it is more effective than violence.
Pragmatic nonviolent action is used in the context of specific problems
such as war, genocide, and oppression. Pragmatic and principled
nonviolence, both in theory and practice, often raise questions
regarding effectiveness and practicality.
In the following sections of this zine, we will consider the limitations
of nonviolence and its outcomes as we explore the language of violence
and nonviolence. We ask you to read this with an open mind. Most
proponents of nonviolence assume it is inherently good, that nonviolence
in theory as an alternative to violence achieves worthy goals, which is
not necessarily true, and that promoting the exclusive use of nonviolent
theory in action is not problematic. We have to distinguish and
decolonize what we mean by and define as violence, non-violence,
self-defense/community defense, and the ideology of nonviolent
resistance and determine whether nonviolence is effective in reality.
Activists who often lean more toward nonviolent tactics may not
understand the nuances of these terms, simply operating upon a perceived
moral high ground, celebrating its advantages but refusing to recognize
its flaws.
The current system is characterized by a monopoly on the use of force.
The state, and its many arms and branches, is defined as the gatekeeper
that allows this monopoly. States are centralized bureaucracies that
protect capitalism; preserve a racial supremacist, patriarchal order;
and implement imperialist expansion to survive. Those who are in power
manufacture laws to define the rules of political bureaucracy and
interpret existing rights, including the right to peaceably assemble
under the First Amendment. This mechanism sets the precedent in society
that your rights come from the state, and patriotism encourages us to
maintain the system that claims itself as the protector of life.
Nonviolent civil resistance often takes its justification in America
from the First Amendment, which outlines the right to “peacefully
assemble and the right to free speech,” but is often exclusionary of
differences in the way certain races are treated and the way that gender
and class affect individuals’ standing in society. The state decides not
only what is acceptable but also what is permissible-so creating
limiting and narrow rules for dissent that ultimate still reinforce the
continuation of oppression and state power. These rules are only weapons
readily given to us, yet they tame us, and we remain dependent on state
power. This restricts citizens' ability to autonomously carve their own
unique path to liberation, replacing considerations of effectiveness
with vague moralizing.
Many people think the state is just a synonym for “government’’. It is
more accurately described as the collection of institutions that combine
forces to perpetuate hierarchical society. Government, capitalism, and
organized religion are the three primary institutions, all of which
benefit from the rhetoric of nonviolence. All three institutions are
defended through the violence of the military, police, private security
forces, and vigilante militias.
The ideology of nonviolence is heavily influenced by traditional
interpretations of religion. The idea that you need to remain meek and
passive in the face of an aggressor, to "turn the other cheek" so to
speak, to maintain a moral high ground over your opponent comes from
Western Christianity (and perhaps the nuclear disarmament movement as
well). Christianity has long been used as a form of control and
pacification by imperialist regimes. These arbitrary ideas are not
grounded in the reality of liberatory struggle and are often counter
productive. Much of religious pacifist ideology was never fully
concerned with improving material conditions in the here and now because
they were more concerned with taking actions that would lead to
"spiritual salvation," so they were not thinking about winning. Though
this is not true in all cases, as many religious activists like Martin
Luther King Jr. and Daniel Berrigan truly tried to improve conditions
here on earth, you can see the difference between their pragmatic
actions and the idealistic stances of spiritual pacifism.
Pushing nonviolence as the only acceptable tactic serves capitalism as
well. Capitalism is inherently hierarchal, and a functioning hierarchy
requires obedience and subservience. Ever since its inception,
capitalism has been spread by genocide and left systemic inequality and
poverty in its wake. Most resistance movements are born out of a
reaction against the suffering that capitalism inflicts.
The 1920’s labor movement, in which mostly immigrant workers took direct
action against the state and capital, the state began to fear that the
rebellion would eventually overwhelm the system. A series of reforms
ensued and culminated in the New Deal of 1933. None of this would’ve
ever happened without the militant anarchists and communists who
physically fought the state and private security in the streets and
engaged in high risk acts of rebellion. On the other hand, these reforms
gave people the impression that the best way to achieve change was by
working within the system and taking the electoral route. In addition,
the 8 hour work day, unionization, employer provided health care
benefits, all of these are results of the labor movement. This is the
double- edged sword of reformism, which is a dead end for social change
because there's no longer any militancy backing up these demands and
thus little to no incentive for the state to hear them. But the
capitalists like it this way, and no doubt encouraged this direction.
Reformism encourages people to be good little obedient workers, teaching
that maybe if you behave yourself well enough and work hard enough, you
too can climb the social hierarchy and gain just enough to survive, but
never to thrive. A prime example is the American Dream, a lie so big it
constitutes an act of violence, fooling millions into voluntarily
forfeiting their right to support and punishing poverty. It suggests
that hard workers don’t need state "aid” (which they actually pay for
through taxes) and that poor people are NOT caught up in a system
inherently preventing them from success but are simply not working hard
enough. The ideology of nonviolence encourages class collaboration
instead of class warfare, where the goal should be to transcend and do
away with the class system all together.
We often refer to the system as “broken”, but it's actually functioning
perfectly, justifying its “creation of life” through violence. As Gary
Oldman’s character from The Fifth Element asserted, "By creating
destruction, we are creating life.” Capitalism, and its necessary
components, such as prisons, police, and other branches of government,
uses violence and distractions to exploit the producers of capital
gains. Meanwhile as patriotic consumers of this system, we participate
in non-violent reformism to legitimize the platform this country built
and its origins of settler colonialism and economic violence in exchange
for our freedom.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) help to perpetuate
nonviolent/reformist ideology and the process of pacification. They
encourage social movements to model themselves after capitalist and
hierarchal structures rather than to challenge them. Many radical social
movements, such as black, queer, and women’s liberation movements,
suffer from derailment by being asked to define themselves under the
banner of First Amendment rights guided by NGOs. The non-profit
industrial complex (or the NPIC) is a network of NGOs, nonprofits, and
privately funded activist organizations. Many have ties to Warren
Buffet, the Democratic Party, and the Open Society Foundation. The
intent is to act as nonviolent crisis negotiators between the state and
the people as supposedly sympathetic third parties to gain the trust of
grassroots activists and co-opt social movements in a way that prevents
them from being too much of a threat to social order. This results in
the indirect management of political movements by those same forces that
they're attempting to combat. Career activism tokenizes marginalized
issues by taking intersectionality or individualism out of the picture.
Such activists appoint themselves as spokespersons or as "representative
activists” of nonviolence while actively disregarding marginalized
communities’ autonomy to choose their own path to revolution.
NGOs exist to re-integrate social movements and activism back into the
state, and monetize revolutionary movements. By doing so they capitalize
on revolutionary feelings, just making it another commodity to be sold
and therefore branding it as essentially harmless to the state and
capital. Nonviolence and pacifist activism are an attempt to impose the
morals of the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat, particularly the idea
that nonviolence is a necessary component to revolutionary change. Such
activism suggests that as long as you remain nonviolent, you can earn
respectability, and the possibility of inclusion in the social hierarchy
that you were once fighting against. However, it's still engaging with
the state, and any gains earned are still within the scope of what the
state deems acceptable; therefore, the state’s legitimacy js never
challenged or questioned. This mindset allows corporations to continue
to mask their exploitative and colonial practices through
"philanthropic" work. Promoting ideologies of nonviolence to achieve
reform isolates and divides movements. If we think nonprofit movement
building and jobs are the only tangible spaces where our grassroots
movements can be engaged in fighting for social justice and creating
alternatives beyond this oppressive system, we will never create space
for or engage in radical social change.
We would like to acknowledge that current definitions of race and gender
are defined by Eurocentric standards, very much undermine other
definitions of identity applicable to those who are non-white or
non-western. They have also been used as tool to define who must be
permanently stuck as part of the labor class, for the purpose of
sourcing labor for the means of profit, and therefore must be
decolonized.
The rhetoric of nonviolence inherently excludes certain groups
historically affected by sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and
patriarchal societal standards. Often the label of “violent” is only
applied to certain races, classes, or genders in or out of activist
spaces. Those embracing nonviolence refuse to acknowledge that it can
only work for the privileged, whom the state considers first-class
citizens and whose rights are protected by state violence. They are the
perpetrators and beneficiaries of a violent hierarchy enforced by the
state. Proponents of nonviolence theory also disregard the immense human
cost of capitalism’s great enterprises, assuming that the violence
experienced by labor and the unemployed is the same, when, in fact,
factors such as race, gender identity, class, and the presence or
absence of unions create different conditions.
The US civil rights movement is one of the most important episodes in
pacifist history. Across the world, it been seen as an example of
nonviolent victory, but it was neither a victory nor nonviolent. It was
successful in ending legal segregation and establishing basic liberties
and extending upper-class opportunities for blacks, but these were not
the only demands of the movement. Activists wanted full economic and
political equality, and many also wanted black liberation in the form of
black nationalism, black inter- communalism, communism, black anarchism,
or some other system independent from white imperialism. None of these
demands were met, not equality, and certainly not liberation. Instead,
blacks are the most incarcerated people in this country and targeted by
police violence, both in a racially disproportionate manner. “Dr. King’s
policy was that nonviolence would achieve gains for black people in the
United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if
you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to
change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious
assumption: in order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a
conscience. The United States has none.” - Stokely Carmichael.
Nonviolence theory implies that with nonviolence the indigenous
community of any nation could have fought off all the genocidal
colonists who took their land and resources through excessive use of
violence. The nature of such violence is reminiscent of the type of
American culture that prioritizes white corporate interests over
indigenous struggles for self-determination: settler-colonialism.
Nonviolence theory also implies that blacks could have stopped the slave
trade with hunger strikes and petitions and that those who rebelled were
just as bad as their captors. It's also naive of us not to realize that
many liberation movements don't have nonviolent alternatives but have to
prioritize armed resistance or guerrilla warfare for simple survival.
Gandhi and King understood it was necessary to support armed liberation
movements when nonviolent resistance was not an option and when
nonviolent resistance prioritized tactics and respectability politics
over end goals. However, liberal pacifists eradicated this part of the
historical struggle and re-designed nonviolence to fit their own
comfort.
[Transcatscribe’s note: At this point, as an Indian, I cannot in good
conscience not note that Gandhi did not at all support armed resistance.
Further, his “activism” was primarily as a collaborator to the British
to benefit upper class Indians (who are to this day almost exclusively
upper caste), and collected the equivalent of millions of dollars in
corporate donations from the same. He specifically disassociated himself
from, and even sabotaged more radical movements led by lower caste
and/or lower class Indians, and completely ignored women other than as
property of men, as is “traditional” in the Hindu religion. He was most
Certainly not an anarchist, as some like to think. He was more like a
one man NGO, and his political actions were practically
indistinguishable from modern reformist NGOs. Read more in Arundhati
Roy’s
fantastic book on B. R. Ambedkar.
Now back to scheduled programming :)]
“Nonviolence is an inherently privileged position in the modern context.
Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and
middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context.
It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an
unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy;
and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence.
Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all
their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, many of whom are
people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater
violence, u7 such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the
movement’s demands or pacifists achieve that legendary 'critical mass.'"
~ Peter Gelderloos, "Why Nonviolence Protects the State-Nonviolence is
Racist”
Like race, advocating for nonviolence in the context of gender identity
is an inherently privileged position. Nonviolence theory assumes that
instead of defending ourselves against indirect or direct violence, we
can rely on third-party institutions that are given a monopoly on the
use of force to institute justice and protect our bodies: including
police, Congress, and the judiciary system. While we like to pretend
that our judiciary system is just and able to rectify violence, it
operates with the implicit bias of its actors, and by the time the
system provides "justice”, someone is either critically hurt or dead.
For femme/women/queer/trans/gender non-conforming folks, the systemic
violence is unimaginable. Bigotry within political and economic realms
is an inherent part of the system under which we live. Bodies in the
hands of the state have become a commodity for politicians to actively
summon arbitrary laws regardless of these laws’ violent outcomes, while
corporations see bodies as a source of capital gain without our mutual
consent (e.g. fashion).
The idea of gender's being defined or controlled by the state or
industry, in itself, is an act of violence. After all, in wars, in
social revolutions, and in daily life, women, queer, and transgender
people, particularly those who are also people of color, are the primary
targets of violence in patriarchal society. From police violence to
sexual assault, attacks are far often common if you re not cis, male,
white, and straight.
In patriarchal society, nonviolence only gets you what you want when
what you demand isn’t a meaningful threat to capital gains and the
state. In the case of sexual violence, men have been given a pass to
abuse and dominate because instances of sexual violence reinforce the
systems of domination that legitimize state control and capital
accumulation. Sexual violence and other forms of force have historically
been used to perpetuate racism, sexism, and colonialism. White
colonizers gazed at the bodies of people of color, defining them as
inherently "dirty" and unworthy of respect and normalizing the act of
rape especially in regards to indigenous and black women. Colonizers
used sexual violence to kill and dehumanize indigenous populations as
part of “ethnic cleansing”. White slave owners raped black women, who
were considered the property of their slave owners, to produce an
exploitable labor force. The normalization and control of sexual
violence by males requires the idea that female sexuality needs to be
suppressed, and the social code of female sexual “purity” is needed to
control reproductive labor. This also contributes to the formation of
the nuclear family. Such exploitation of women is necessary for
capitalist means of production. State discipline operates through
individual instances of gendered and domestic violence. For example,
police officers abuse their spouses and family members at 2-4 times the
average rate. Officers like Daniel Holtzclaw abuse state-sanctioned
power to put vulnerable people in more vulnerable situations in order to
rape and abuse them. Incarcerated people experience similar violence at
the hands of corrections officers. In these cases, the violence of rape
transcends even the victim: these acts of domination serve to reinforce
state actors’ monopoly on violence and to remind marginalized people
that they have no recourse under the law when the perpetrators are those
responsible for “justice”.
The continuous violence against marginalized people's bodies has always
been part of socio-capitalism. Assimilation, similar to a doctrine of
nonviolence, forbids radical thoughts and reactions, forcing us to
submit to hetero patriarchal and capitalist means of production as
opposed to liberating us. Proponents of nonviolence believe that it’s
better for a victim of violence to move on in silence than to fight
back. Nonviolence theory implies that it's better to be a victim who
tolerates abuse or rape than one who plunges a knife or shoots a handgun
at assailants to disrupt domination. According to neoliberal doctrine,
this type of self-defense, ironically, contributes to the cycle of
violence and shifts the blame to victims who stood up for themselves and
resisted. Marginalized people experiencing intimate and state violence
cannot stand patiently waiting until a sufficiently large segment of
society can be mobilized for nonviolent action. Patriarchy has given cis
white men a monopoly on violence, with some allowance given to those who
wish to assimilate to the rules and values of such structures. These
people, and their institutions of police, gender roles, racial
groupings, and economic class structures, place our identities into
rigid, racialized, gender binaries in moral and social contexts. Queer
identities and lifestyles threaten the sexual status quo, the production
of the labor force, and the heteronormative structures that have been
created to defend it.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said “A riot is the language of the
unheard”, and Stonewall was very much that: a spontaneous, violent
demonstration by members of the queer community against a series of
police raids of gay clubs located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood
of Manhattan, New York City. The queer community was treated as less
than human, their freedom to voluntarily associate with one another, a
simple and basic human freedom, being violently denied by the state and
heteronormative society, so members decided to assert their natural
human instinct to fight back and defend themselves against oppressors.
The ensuing days of rioting and confrontation with the police resulted
in the queer community’s gaining a basic, if limited, recognition of
humanity. The bar raids ended, police toned down their open bigotry, and
the modern gay rights movement, now pacified, began. While radical
groups like Act Up and the Pink Panthers maintain the spirit of
resistance through self-defense and understand that the system we have
is unaccommodating and violent, many white privileged LGBTQAI liberals
see the apex of their movement as being the result of negotiations with
the state regardless of how exclusionary these negotiations have been
for non-cis white comrades, for example, prioritizing same sex marriage
or difficult-to-enforce anti-discriminatory laws. Ever since, the fight
for queer liberation has been domesticated, limiting, and reduced to
within the reasoning and expectation of the state while excluding those
who refuse to assimilate or indoctrinate themselves into these fixed
narratives of white gendernormative queerness.
Those experiencing poverty often face direct violence whether they are
homeless undocumented, or lower class. They deal with both general state
repression and police violence. Class structure in capitalist society is
a form of control meant to be directed towards the poor, the youth and
elderly criminalizing them for yielding less capital. The United States,
likes every capitalist society, is composed of masters and slaves. Often
lower class people are taught from birth that their poverty is their
fault, for not working hard enough. Meanwhile the majority of rich
people make and maintain their wealth through exploitation, inheritance,
deals with the state, or other means that have nothing to do with work
ethic. Class structure is meant to keep certain people permanently
dependent on the higher classes, which ties directly into racism and
sexism, as it's easy to maintain such a structure if certain communities
are just permanently given the role of laborers. Contrary to capitalist
propaganda, financial success has nothing to do with a strong work
ethic, and everything to do with a market dependent on violence.
Non violence is inherently ciassist because it negates the ability for
poor and lower class people to fight against violence perpetrated by
classism. So according to the proponents of nonviolence the workers
never should have been allowed to take direct action and riot against
the rich on May 4th 1886, which is what inspired the celebration of May
1st as international workers day.
Many radical groups have tried to maintain the militant anti capitalist
spirit of May 1st, with varying success. Liberals and the Democratic
party have relentlessly attempted to co-opt the day and make it about
reformism and pacifist democracy. Thus continuing the pattern of
“progressives” and their ilk constantly whitewashing historical
narrative and radical movements to fit them into the reformist
structure. Poor people must decide whether to play within the rules of
this fictional middle class society or to simply survive. How can you
blame people for choosing survival over arbitrary moral codes? Lower
class survival - whether that means begging on the street, shoplifting,
squatting, etc.- only exists relative to violence. No one would have to
engage in these survival tactics if violence was not first being
inflicted upon them. Additionally, these survival methods are
criminalized, furthering capitalist justifications for police violence
and mass incarceration. State violence is then the cause and the
consequence of poverty, making poverty cyclical, racialized, and
generational. In order to maintain their power, the ruling class must
ensure that the poor stay poor. For workers to not just survive, but to
be liberated from the ruling class means to directly challenge
capitalist moral order - to collectively refuse to work, to militantly
confront the ruling class, and to forcibly take back resources that the
rich will never willingly hand over. "Never be deceived that the rich
will permit you to vote away their wealth." - Lucy Gonzalez Parsons
Bigotry and violence still exist because they are deeply woven into the
very fabric of our corrupt system. The history of civilization is the
history of violence and defusing violence. To suggest that nonviolence
defuses violence not only engenders a false sense of security but also
endangers cis women, queer and trans people, and people of color, who
are often the direct recipients of these various forms of violence. We
can't allow white ignorance to cloud any of our judgments when it comes
to the process of liberation. Who benefits more from this? The reforms
that came out of these movements do not diametrically oppose resistance
or liberation. Saying they do indoctrinates people into settling for
“just enough”. Prioritizing reform as a main goal is what separates
pacified resistance and breaking down walls.
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom
by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them”.
-Assata Shakur
Nonviolent tactics do not guarantee a nonviolent situation or movement.
While nonviolent resistance is a common tactic aimed at achieving a
nonviolent situation, where the goal of social change is through
symbolic protests, civil disobedience (often considered "violent” in
practice, which is why it's vaguely defined by nonviolent activists),
satyagraha, or other methods without using violence, the choice is often
out of participants’ hands when challenging the state’s official
narratives. Often those who organize under the banner of nonviolence
spend more time appealing to state approval of their actions rather than
organizing toward tangible change and alternatives without state consent
or respectability in mind. This creates the shaming, criminalization,
and tone policing marathon of anyone who collectively or autonomously
takes part in any self-defense, militant, antifa, or
abolitionist-centered resistance.
Many white liberals at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in
Philadelphia tone policed activists and tried to shame people for saying
“Black Lives Matter". One protester was overheard criticizing police,
after which two white Bernie Sanders supporters went between the
protesters in question and the police (who were at least nine feet away
from each other as it was), put their hands up and said, "Don't say
that! The police are our friends!" Later in the evening, as protesters
attempted to push onward toward the convention center, police became
more aggressive and tried to drive their cars into the crowd to block
the protesters and break them up. Some officers stepped out of their
vehicles and waved their nightsticks around and began shoving
protesters. Eventually, the protesters, through sheer numbers, were able
to overwhelm the police and start pushing them back, at which point
"peace police” activists tried to surround the police cars to defend
them and push protesters away from the police. We really have to ask
ourselves, whose side are these "peace police” really on? If your
purpose is to protest then why are you defending the very same people
who just initiated aggression toward protesters and attempted to stop
them from reaching their goals?
During the 2016 anti-Trump demonstrations in the aftermath of the
election, many Hillary Clinton supporters engaged in very aggressive
tone policing of POC, queer, and radical activists all in the name of
"peace”. One man in DC was attacked and beaten by Hillary supporters for
speaking about how Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States.
Activists in New York City were shoved and attacked for burning a flag
(an accepted form of free speech), which Hillary supporters deemed
"violent”. The "peace police” even went so far as to attempt to get the
activists exposed to the police and arrested. Even if you don’t agree
with the act of burning a flag, how do you defend attempting to get
someone arrested for doing so? How do you claim to be fighting fascism
by so violently attacking freedom of expression? Many POC, queer,
feminist, and radical activists felt marginalized and disenfranchised by
the constant tone policing of these actions and stopped showing up all
together.
Tactics and strategies defined only under the moral code of nonviolence
end up being reduced in terms of scope and range of effectiveness.
People's comprehension of resistance is limited to just nonviolence,
which undermines other forms of opposition more inclined to utilize a
diversity of tactics to achieve goals, including all forms of
resistance. Resistance is the act or power of opposition to any sort of
wrongdoing. Anything that involves opposing the state is subject to
direct violence (punishment), and any form of opposition, even
nonviolence, will be viewed as an act of terrorism, thus “precipitating
state violence. So, how can we prepare for that? This is a question that
we must ask ourselves and our communities. No answer will be the same.
Strictly enforcing nonviolence as the only acceptable solution to our
problems will never allow us do this. Resistance has no inherent limits,
and nonviolence sets limitations because it ends up being clouded by
arbitrary ideas of morality often narrated by those with privilege.
Absolute nonviolence does not offer any recourse for the defense of
innocents against injustice and brutality other than endangering them
and subjecting them to the absolute authority of the state and its
chosen enforcers. The use of diversity of tactics is a form of
resistance that periodically uses force to disrupt oppression and
business as usual, stepping beyond the limits of nonviolence. To truly
practice a diversity of tactics is to celebrate direct action beyond
nonviolent theories and mobilize beyond just strictly nonviolent
actions. The social diseases of this world are complex and can't be
refined by one fixed tactic or one fixed solution. This is what
nonviolent resistance offers, a very limited capacity to eradicate
systemic violence.
During Occupy Wall Street 2011, one of the major conclusions emerging
from those spaces was that many people considered destruction of
property an act of violence, even though destruction of property
systematically has been part of the settler-colonialist experience and
the founding pillars of capitalism: the privatization of indigenous land
and marginalized communities through the gentrification and
commercialization of this land through development, nevermind how much
damage and death inflicted on the affected communities. Yet when
marginalized people and those who are willing to put themselves on the
line decide to take drastic measures to do something about it, those
same “allies” frown upon those who've chosen to do something about it
through strategic property destruction which both in principle and in
practice is an acceptable and effective tactic used to win in the
struggle against state and capital.
Property destruction is simply a tactic used to wage war on an
institution, to hit them where it hurts by costing them money and
resources. Many people don't realize that the Boston Tea Party, idolized
by liberals and conservatives alike as one of the defining moments of
the American Revolution, was an act of property destruction. Yet when
people of color, queer individuals, and anyone else who's just simply
tired of the status quo decides to do the same it's now somehow
“violent” and "unacceptable". Ask yourself this, how do you wage war
against an institution, like a bank, corporation, or state agency? If
anything, the proponents of "nonviolence”, who often claim that their
goal is to reduce human casualties, should be happy that the war is
being waged on the property of the institution rather than its
employees. But they still insist on casting destruction of property as
“violent” because once again the goal of nonviolence is not to reduce
violence or suffering, it's to manage and neutralize resistance to the
point where it poses no threat of radical change to the system. Many
liberals and right wingers like to cast property destruction during
protests as counterproductive. They'll often try to frame it as “how
does destroying your own neighborhood achieve anything?” ignoring the
fact that people often resort to such tactics when they feel fully
disenfranchised and hopeless and because there's nothing else they can
do. Property destruction is simply an act, and targeted destruction of
oppressive institutions offers something tangible.
The demonization of anyone who challenges the system is often a role
taken on by corporate media, usually referring to property damage rather
than the injuries inflicted upon protesters by the police as “violence”
and to often cast protesters as violent criminals or "thugs” (usually
directed toward black uprisings). Corporate media like FOX, CNN, MSNBC,
and phony liberal outlets like Buzzfeed are interested in frightening
the public by creating biased narratives about radial circles like they
have successfully done with various political prisoners.
Nonviolent civil resistance is often socially invested in state
sanctioned “reformative justice activism” here in the United States,
which often conflicts with the ideals of the many groups who choose to
lean away from reformative justice and invest their effort more into
abolitionist and antifa dynamics. Reformative justice only ends up
preserving the objectives of the ruling class, white working class, and
capitalist system. Often, those with privilege refuse to acknowledge
that enforcing the exclusive use of nonviolent rhetoric to manage
activist spaces into being non-threatening makes it easier for the state
to manage issues in a way that serves them. The state undermines
marginalized communities and what they autonomously consider their own
path to liberation and self-preservation. Those with a senseless need
for entitlement and masochists thrive in such spaces.
A nonviolent movement can only exist when it does not face forceful
opposition that would require self-defense, and we don't live in that
kind of world. Nonviolence can only be useful in the framework of a
diversity of tactics, not when it's the only approved tactic available.
Nonviolent resistance also makes extensive use of a martyr mentality and
the creation of propaganda. The idea is that if the oppressed fight back
with force, the larger society, which believes in the narrative of the
state, will see those people as hostile violent criminals, and side with
the state, while if you take the beatings and the violence without
defending yourself, the larger society will see your suffering and
hopefully side with you against the oppressor. Then the ensuing
pictures, videos, news stories, etc create propaganda that can be used
against the oppressor and injured martyrs to rally around. The problem
is that for all the years that this ideology has been around, very
little if any progress has been made, and no progress has been made
toward overthrowing capitalism and moving toward an equal classless
society without states. This also puts people's bodies and safety on the
line and creates unnecessary casualties.
Insisting on remaining "nonviolent" in a system that's inherently
violent is in essence insisting that people endanger themselves. The
fact is that non violence" rhetoric isn't actually non violence at all;
it's simply a reinforcement of the idea that the state is the only
institution allowed to use force. It is not violent to arm and defend
yourself, to wear shields and body armor, etc. When you’re up against an
institution that's inherently and openly violent and murderous, it’s
called being prepared. As stated above, The ideology of nonviolent
protest is essentially perpetuated to create propaganda. This is a
cold-hearted way to think because you're putting other people's bodies
and lives on the line. This also appeals mostly to privileged
individuals, especially middle-class whites, as they can afford to
operate under such a mentality since they're less likely to have the
same type of violence perpetrated against them that people of color,
poor people, and queer individuals face simply based on their identity.
In a way, protest organizers operating under this ideology are
committing indirect violence against the people they are supposed to be
protecting. We can see how well this supposedly works by the fact that
we've been marching and fighting for the same issues for decades now
with little to no change. This doesn't mean that in order to win the
battle you need a full out armed insurrection. Just protect your body
and hold the space. Defend yourself with shields, barricades, armor, and
helmets and learn hand-to-hand combat and disarming tactics, whatever
you may need. This way, when the enemy is committing violence against
you, you're able to defend yourself against and roll with the punches. A
bunch of beaten, arrested, and dead people can't hold a space for very
long, can they?
How you gonna allow your ENEMY to tell you, you don't have the right to
RESIST??!!"
- Ramona Africa, MOVE Organization
Protests, resistance movements, and social struggles are almost always a
reaction against systemic violence. Was the civil rights and black
liberation movement a reaction against systemic violence perpetrated
against black people or a "violent” movement? Most people would agree
with the former. If violence and oppression does not exist in the first
place, why the need for a resistance movement? People would be happy and
see no reason to engage in struggle if violence did not exist. Most
abolitionist, anti-colonialist, antifa, and radical circles, especially
non-western, understand that the state framework is beyond repair and
national liberation is a violent process, especially under authoritative
regimes. Violence is a virtue of fascists, who believe in force to
implement absolute rulership and hierarchy, and imposing nonviolent
rhetoric and tactics endangers the community. Oppressive institutions
are trigger happy and have no reservation against using force to impose
their idea of an ideal society, to which resistance against said rigid
hierarchy mandates armed resistance. The Philippine revolution against
316 years of both Spanish and American occupations is built on armed
resistance. During 16 years of American occupation, which led to over
1.5 million Filipinos killed, millions of dollars of resources stolen,
and ethnic cleansing, armed resistance via gorilla warfare was the only
viable response. Like during the Philippines-American War (1899-1902),
nonviolent resistance was not the only option when settler colonialism
came into direct contact with the native people of the Philippines in
brutal subjugation. Guerilla warfare was and is necessary to defuse the
already occurring violence and genocide. Now the Philippines embraces
neoliberalism, creating substantial amounts of structural violence by
implementing policies adversely impacting and marginalizing the poor. In
Bicol, direct violence is used extensively to eliminate those standing
in contradiction to neoliberalism. The mindful force of the New People's
Army represents violence from below challenging violence from above.
Armed resistance is a form of self-defense. Community defense already
implies the defense of self. In most cases, it is in your own interest
to defend your community. Many people hold these to be different things,
but they are not. Malcolm X once said, “I believe it's a crime for
anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality
without doing something to defend himself.” - MALCOLM X (Believe, I
Believe, Crime, Accepting, Brutality)
If you're aware that systematic and direct violence marginalizes black,
brown, indigenous, trans, and queer individuals on a daily basis, why
would you recommend nonviolence or pacifism over actually achieving
goals? While many marginalized communities are reprimanded for
self-defense, it is universally understood that it is necessary for
survival. Robert F. Williams, a black civil rights leader, advocates
armed resistance to racial oppression and violence. J Williams quickly
learned to navigate regular brutalization at the hands of whites for
being black in the Deep South. “I have asserted the right of Negroes to
meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense - and have
acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the
history of our Western states proves, that where the laws in unable, or
unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in
self-defense against lawless violences." ~ ROBERT T. WILLIAMS.
Take the case of Korryn Gaines, a black mother and copwatcher who was
shot and killed during a police raid in Baltimore County. Korryn
defended her five- year-old son from police violence with a shotgun,
even shooting one of the officers as they invaded her home. Korryn’s
decision to take up arms against the police demonstrates the necessity
of self-defense by black women when faced with an imminent threat of
violence. In this case, self-defense was classified as "violent" while
the state’s own violence is never classified as such.
Furthermore, black women have historically faced disproportionate
violence from white supremacist society as well as violent patriarchal
behaviors from men. Often, black women are silenced by white feminists
in discussions of patriarchal violence, and thus Korryn’s actions are
viewed as irrational or "crazy” by white society when in fact they are
the natural response of survival in direct opposition to a white society
that regularly harms black women’s bodies. Nonviolent tactics and
theories can encourage violence by subjecting marginalized people to
unnecessary direct violence. Self-defense is a legal justification for
the use of force in times of danger. Self-defense and armed resistance
to many are a way to sustain their community and protect their loved
ones, especially those fighting direct violence from imperialist and
authoritative regimes. Palestine is no exception to that. Palestinians
face a constant barrage of violence daily and have only managed to
survive as a people through direct armed struggle against the Zionist
regime and the settler colonial occupation. The Israeli colonial state
is an offshoot of U.S./European colonialism and imperialism, directly
inspired by the treatment of indigenous people in the Americas and the
treatment of blacks as property.
Why don't the proponents of nonviolence try to tell the Palestinian
people that they have to be “peaceful”? Choosing to be nonviolent does
not remove the fact that the rest of the year you’ve managed to
contribute to violence imposed upon another. You pay taxes right? The
money you pay goes toward the killing and bombing of innocent people in
Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. The fact that you're involuntarily
forced to subsidize murder should fell you something about violence.
Self defense is applicable not only in personal situations but also
against systemically violent institutions. Imagine you’re living in Nazi
Germany, and you hear the resistance movement trashed and destroyed Nazi
Party headquarters. What would your reaction be? Would you be thinking
“Damn those freedom fighters are so violent! What did the Nazis ever do
to them?” Or would you understand that these freedom fighters were
combating a violent institution, one that perpetuates systemic violence
against people every day, and therefore it's completely justified to
resist them wherever and whenever possible. The reason for demonizing
self-defense tactics as “violence” is to ensure that the state, the
ruling class, and the forces of capital maintain the monopoly on the use
of force, thus cementing their hold over society. If we maintain the
notion that certain groups are allowed to use aggression and violence
against others simply because the social code says so, and defending
yourself against these institutions is “violent” and not allowed, we are
allowing their violent and oppressive structure to maintain its
legitimacy and hold over society.
The territory of Rojava in northern Syria is a good example of building
an alternative system and using armed resistance to defend it. They've
managed to establish a libertarian socialist society inspired by the
ideas of Murray Bookchin, who developed his own ideology called
"libertarian municipalism” based on a synthesis of anarchist and Marxist
theory coupled with his own life experiences and a heavy emphasis on
environmental issues and feminism. Abdullah Ochalan discovered
Bookchin’s writings while in prison and decided to direct the remnants
of his Marxist-Leninist PKK to take inspiration from them. Rojava has
set about building a non-hierarchal society, where every citizen is
trained in arms and taught self-defense, with the aim of eventually
abolishing police in favor of local self-defense committees. This
society is based on a system of small self-governing communes that come
together to resolve larger issues. The fact that their libertarian
ideals may succeed and eventually spread further is a threat to the
Turkish state, as well as ISIS, so armed resistance and self-defense is
essential to their struggle. Without resistance, they would be wiped
out. They don't have the option to be "nonviolent".
"Colonization is violence in its natural state... and it will only yield
when confronted with greater violence... [Decolonization] is always a
violent phenomenon... Decolonization, which sets out to change the order
of the world, is, obviously, a programme of complete disorder.”- Frantz
Fanon
We often give the state a pass to incite violence whether it's excusing
police brutality, the invasion of foreign lands, violent occupation, or
the continuous endorsement of the aggressive displacement of indigenous
peoples from their land. Society, for the lack of a better word, has
always tended toward mediocre excuses, and this kind of masochistic
behavior needs to stop. We have actively encouraged people to stop
making excuses and start holding the state accountable for its violent
actions. We need to start prioritizing the well-being of our community
and be aware that this system has no conscience and is very much
inclined to resort to institutionalized violence to achieve its goals as
happened at Standing Rock and with the ongoing situation in Palestine.
Colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, corporatism, and the state are
actively waging war against humanity and Mother Earth. The capitalist
system is designed to create poverty and maintain inequality. Your
choice to be a bystander is silence against continuous systemic abuses
against indigenous people and other marginalized communities. The system
is a plague, a curse built to prey on anything in its path, and
political reform can only withstand so many social blows. You have the
power to change this. You must prioritize goals over tactics and
organize within reality to serve justice. We must normalize resistance
against all capitalistic enterprises and build a sustainable frontline
beyond the political merry-go-round and assimilation. We must recognize
that violence can't be fought using biased morality when the very
collective fundamental structure of life is in jeopardy. We must
decolonize how we organize in movement spaces truly inclusive of others
and celebrate a diversity of tactics beyond just nonviolence rhetoric
and hierarchical structures.
If we let the state define the limits of our struggle through a biased
perspective on nonviolence, our resistance becomes co-opted and
ineffective. We become pacified, and so our resistance then has no
actual propensity to create lasting effective change. So the only option
left in the struggle for liberation is to go beyond the rights
"awarded’' to us by state, to not just work outside the system but to
utilize a "violence" greater than the system itself against the system.
Violence is inherently a neutral action, but in civilization it takes
sides. Those with power redefine violence to demonize those who oppose
them. There is and never will be any peace in social justice, nor
civility in civil rights in a system that prides itself on violence to
achieve its economic and political growth. The only way there will be
peace is to create a system that values life above arbitrary concepts
like money, power, and property. Until we as activists and visionaries
realize that, our goals will never be achieved and we’ll be endlessly
marching around in circles, never creating anything greater.
Hoods4Justice
h4invc@gmail.com
https:// www.facebook.com/Nyhoods4Justice/
[Transcatscribe’s note: I have provided you with my best attempt to do
justice to a zine I digitized a while ago, but haven’t found anywhere
online. Please share this with your anyone who you trust, as I do
believe this would help radicalize a number of people who consider
themselves liberals or otherwise buy into nonviolent activism. Take care
as you foment revolution.]