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Title: What is Violence?
Author: sub.media
Date: 2019
Language: en
Topics: violence, primer, theory, video transcription, non-violence, police, protest, Breadtube
Source: https://sub.media/video/what-is-violence/
Notes: film is available @ https://sub.media/video/what-is-violence/

sub.media

What is Violence?

SYNOPSIS: Our societies are heavily dependent on violence to function.

While states will attempt to hold a monopoly on violence and constantly

find new ways to legitimize their use of force, people struggling

against domination can also use violence to confront the hierarchical

systems oppressing them. While debates around violence and tactics seem

to be revived every time someone decides to fight back, the necessity of

physical attacks on power cannot be ignored. So, what is violence

exactly, and how does it function in the world?

It’s often said that anarchists are violent. And there’s plenty of

historical and contemporary evidence to back this up. But an inclination

towards violence is not the defining characteristic of an anarchist.

Just as it does not define what it means to be a liberal, or

conservative, or Christian... despite the far higher levels of violence

carried out by the members and guiding institutions of those groups.

There’s a reason why anarchists have been portrayed as singularly

violent by our enemies for well over a hundred years. Our ideas are

threatening to those in power, and so the phrase ‘violent’ is used to

discredit us. To paint us, and by extension our actions and beliefs, as

unwanted, anti-social, threatening and scary. An aversion to violence is

a good thing. We should all strive to minimize violence through the

actions that we take... and in fact, that’s the driving ethos behind

most anarchist practice.

That being said, violence is an intrinsic part of life. It always has

been, and it always will be. Human beings’ capacity for violence is

hardwired into our DNA. It’s precisely this capacity, combined with our

propensity for complex problem solving and mutual aid, that allowed us

to assume the apex position in the animal kingdom and overcome the

harsh, incredibly violent conditions of the natural world. And despite

all the advances made over thousands of years of human civilization, our

societies and complex economic systems are still heavily dependent on

the massive and systematic application of violence to function.

Understanding and coming to terms with this reality is the first step in

changing it. So... what is violence, anyway? And what’s it got to do

with anarchy? Because it’s both a common and incredibly loaded term,

there are many different definitions of violence, depending on who you

ask. And it’s worth pointing out that what’s considered violent to one

person might not be experienced that way by another.

That said, violence is generally understood as any action that causes

shock or pain to another sentient being. Often it describes a direct act

of force to assert agency or control over another person, but it can

also be indirect, passed down through hierarchies and encoded into

arbitrary sets of rules.

Violence can be physical or it can be psychological... and most often,

it’s a mixture of the two. When most people hear the word violence, the

first thing that often comes to mind is the use or threat of physical

force. Whether this takes the form of a punch to the face, a mass

shooting, a domestic assault, a death threat, rape, a sensationalist

news report about an armed robbery, or a debate over tactics.... this is

the realm of violence that everyone can relate to, to some extent. Maybe

we’ve experienced a specific manifestation of it first-hand. Maybe not.

Either way, we all know what it’s like to feel pain. We can all identify

with the sudden shock of unexpected danger.

This mode of violence speaks to, and resonates with our own past

experiences of trauma. This baseline empathy is the foundation for how

discourses around violence are used to isolate, criminalize, dehumanize

and otherwise repress specific individuals, ideas, and entire groups of

people. Selective narratives and the use of violent imagery become

weaponized to manipulate public opinion, fan divisions and justify all

manner of countermeasures in the name of safety and security.

Is it time to classify Antifa as a terror group? Burnie Carrick is a

former New York City police commissioner, helped put together an

anti-terror task force. Commissioner, how do you label this group? The

specter of the terrorist is the most glaring example, but there are many

other well-known tropes and stereotypes that shape the way that we

understand the world and each another, magnifying threats out of

proportion to reality, or manufacturing them where they do not exist.

Popular perceptions on violence are shaped by the ruling classes,

through their control over mass media and the operation of state

education and criminal justice systems.

The specific schematics vary according to local political

considerations, demographics and culture.... but one constant is the

casting of all those who challenge state authority as violent criminals,

on one hand, and the glorification of state violence as a necessary

counterbalance, on the other. This skewed lens is intended to obscure

the fact that states are responsible for the overwhelming majority of

violence in the world. In fact, when you peel back all the layers of

bureaucracy and self-aggrandizing mythology, that’s what states really

are: highly-structured systems of organized violence. As the front-line

agents of this violence, police, soldiers and paramilitaries carry out

atrocities and acts of brutality on a scale that is utterly beyond the

scope and capacities of even the most sadistic individual or ragtag

terrorist outfit.... let alone the scandalous acts claimed by

anarchists.

How can a broken window or a punched Nazi be remotely compared to the

carpet bombing of a mid-sized city, or the “enhanced interrogation” of

an “enemy combatant”? What is the assassination of a king or a

particularly brutal cop when compared to colonial genocide, or the

threat of nuclear war? A state’s violence is given direction and

legitimacy by its political institutions, whether cloaked in the hallow

robe of democracy or the unquestioned authority of dynastic rule. These

same institutions uphold the violence of the so-called “free market”,

destroying the ecosystems that support life and condemning the great

mass of humanity to choose between wage labour, or starvation.

To safeguard the infallible logic of this market, states lock up bodies

and regulate flow of human beings across imaginary lines. On the mantle

of border security, thousands of desperate people are sacrificed each

year to the sun-cracked rocks of the Senora desert and the dark depths

of the Mediterranean, while hundreds of thousands of others are forced

into the relative safety of squalid detention camps. So what are we to

do when faced with this level of violence?

When a person is being savagely attacked, everyone, aside from the most

die-hard pacifists generally accepts that it’s morally acceptable for

them to use violence in self-defense. Why then, is this same principle

not applied to the vastly greater violence of the state? Fostering the

legitimacy of defensive violence is a key component of revolutionary

strategy. Even when that defensive violence takes the form of attack

against the individuals and institutions that subjugate and repress us.

The Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta made it clear where he stood on

this question, declaring that “the slave is always in a state of

legitimate self-defense and so his violence against the boss, against

the oppressor, is always morally justifiable... and should only be

adjusted by the criterion of utility and economy of human effort and

human suffering.” Pan-African revolutionary Franz Fanon took it further,

observing that the violence waged by colonized peoples against their

colonial masters offered up a path towards the realization of their own

self worth, and noting that “the very moment when the colonized discover

their humanity, they begin to sharpen their weapons to secure its

victory.”

This historic truth shines through from the legacies of the armed

stand-offs of the Mohawks of Khanesatake, and the Zapatistas in the

jungles of Chiapas, struggles that helped Indigenous resistance in the

territories ruled by the Canadian and Mexican states. It shines through

every time the oppressed and exploited people of this world draw a line

in the sand and prepare to defend it by any means necessary. It’s worth

repeating that violence has often devastating, real world consequences,

and should be avoided and minimized wherever possible.

It is not something to be romanticized, celebrated, or turned into an

empty aesthetic, or and end in and of itself. State specialists in

counterinsurgency have long recognized that when analyzing the potential

of an insurgent movement, factors such as the strength of social

relationships, methods of organization and the ability to spread

conflict often prove more decisive than the outcome of any particular

battle. Building these qualities and characteristics often require

little or no recourse to violence whatsoever. But if nothing else, the

capacity for violence is an essential component for asserting and

defending autonomy. And while meaningful autonomy is not something that

so-called ‘progressives’ who fetishize non-violence tactics have any

interest in, it forms the basis of anarchism, and every revolutionary

project worth its name.