i was going to reply to a
GotR post directed at me following my condemnation of non-violence as inherently 'better' but i can't seem to find it. so i'll flesh out my thoughts here.
before i delve into why i feel as though violence shouldn't be wafted away in progressive movements, i think it's important to establish what protests are meant to achieve. they are mechanisms of effecting change and disrupting the state--ways of mobilising folx en masse in order to achieve a goal. in the face of patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism et al., protests like worker strikes and sit-ins have been integral for the betterment of labor. although individual workers in our society lack the means of self-liberation, gatherings allow for a much more pronounced statement in the battle against oppressors.
it's also important to establish that my acknowledgment of violence as a useful and sometimes necessary mechanism of change doesn't mean that i am pro-violence. often, discussions of nonviolence are unproductive because champions of 'safety' and 'non-harmful methods' create a false dichotomy of non-violence vs violence. to address us as solely violent actors is a misconception. instead, i believe that progressive actors should consider every tool in their toolbox and determine the best method of action. sometimes, this might be violence. often it is not. doing away with historically effective methods of protest under an arbitrary moral guise is a misguided action.
nonviolence is doing the work of the state for the state. pacifists pushing for nonviolent methods in the face of an unsympathetic bureaucracy allows for the state to establish dominion of violence. the state wishes for a nonviolent opposition--they're far easier to ignore and have far weaker of a chokehold. feel free to march around washington exclaiming transphobic, white feministy 'pussies fight back' mantras, but how will this coalition effectively curtail the heinous policies the state wishes to enact? what are the effects of your march? therein lies the problem: nonviolent coalitions are often historically far less effective.
now you may just falsely cling onto gandhi, martin luther king jr., et al. with your whitewashed history and wish to prove me wrong. your knowledge of history, however, is from the mouth of the coloniser. the history taught in our public education system is from a patriotic, winner's perspective. look no further than the accounts of american imperialism and east-asian hegemony being obfuscated under the guise of a 'bad guy' or 'democracy' in order to understand the very framing that you've been taught. to promote martin luther king as the messiah of the civil rights movement is to ignore the black panthers party that helped espouse national movements and allow him to gain a foothold. to espouse mlk's tactics as superior is to ignore the power that black revolutionaries and resistors afforded him.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state
"In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr.‘s Birmingham campaign was looking like it would be a repeat of the dismally failed action in Albany, Georgia (where a 9 month civil disobedience campaign in 1961 demonstrated the powerlessness of nonviolent protesters against a government with seemingly bottomless jails, and where, on July 24, 1962, rioting youth took over whole blocks for a night and forced the police to retreat from the ghetto, demonstrating that a year after the nonviolent campaign, black people in Albany still struggled against racism, but they had lost their preference for nonviolence). Then, on May 7 in Birmingham, after continued police violence, three thousand black people began fighting back, pelting the police with rocks and bottles. Just two days later, Birmingham — up until then an inflexible bastion of segregation — agreed to desegregate downtown stores, and President Kennedy backed the agreement with federal guarantees. The next day, after local white supremacists bombed a black home and a black business, thousands of black people rioted again, seizing a 9 block area, destroying police cars, injuring several cops (including the chief inspector), and burning white businesses. A month and a day later, President Kennedy was calling for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, ending several years of a strategy to stall the civil rights movement. Perhaps the largest of the limited, if not hollow, victories of the civil rights movement came when black people demonstrated they would not remain peaceful forever. Faced with the two alternatives, the white power structure chose to negotiate with the pacifists, and we have seen the results."
being a pacifist also comes from a place of privilege. guess what loves, violence is already here. the state has already worked against radical movements through methods including but not limited to: assassinations, provocateurs, black-jacketing, etc. the cointelpro program, which is still alive and well today, worked towards silencing and 'neutralising' folx who were pushing against the state. not only that, but racist, patriarchal [et al.] structural violence through policies like the war on drugs, police violence, redlining of houses, the school to prison pipeline, etc. are already forming violence. they are tools of the state systematically crafted in order to create capital. there is a direct link between extraction of capital and societal oppression.
it is privilege which blinds you to these structures as you're not affected by them. it is privilege which says that the white pacifism pushing towards black liberation is enough to stop the imprisonment and slave labor that is happening. it is privilege which allows white people to gain social and economic capital from supporting black movements yet not actually supporting black people. it is privilege to write heartfelt letters to your senators while many folks affected by us imperialism are fighting for their lives. it is privilege to erase history and rewrite it in your own nonviolent pacifistic guise. it is privilege to have a patronising, patriarchal stance against those who commit acts of violence because their oppression is part and parcel to their livelihood. it is privilege to say that other issues are more important--that our own forced migration of native americans and now elimination of their water sources isn't of concern.
sometimes you just have to fight back. resist with purpose.
