Reading: Against the Corpse Machine (Ashen Ruins) To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
Can be found here.
Disregarding the famous, definitive and prognostic Marx-Bakunin split in the First International near the end of the 19th century, anarchists overall have continued to cling to the obsolete notion that anarchy is best situated within the otherwise statist Leftist milieu, despite the bourgeois democratic origins of the Left-Right spectrum. Since then communists and Marxists, liberals and conservatives alike have had us right where they want us — and it’s shown in our history.
Considering the vast number of Marxists I keep reading in the book that cited this, it is very funny to read this line. Hey, Peter. I think this might be a critique of you, too.
Violence must never be romanticized or fetishized, and resorting to violence should not be a casual decision, tactically, strategically or personally. However, the current dominant anarchist critique shares much too much common ground, not incidentally, with that of the Statists and Leftists, which may as well be the standards of the capitalist and the politician for all the difference it makes. As such these standards deserve careful — and skeptical — scrutiny.
This line is also very amusing, especially because this piece was cited (or rather, a quote within this piece from another was cited) almost simultaneously with telling the reader to read bell hooks. You know, an author who has universal disdain for all violence and is not someone who Peter even bothered critiquing for it. Or noticing that at all.
The rise of the primitivist critique of society...
... Well, this is going to be fun. Sigh.
Refusing to confront and reconcile the effect anarchism’s modern industrial origins has had on its vision (likewise the Bohemian middle class current gaining popularity), as well as failing to appreciate the opportunities presented by taking a serious look at the Primitivist critique (are you paying attention anarcho-syndicalists?), will surely spell failure just as quickly as joining the government did in Spain ’36 (anarcho-syndicalists, are you still listening?).
This isn't entirely wrong because there are a lot of anarchists who get really fussy when you start critiquing unions and their structures that necessitate their perpetuate existence rather than being something that is either temporary or transitory.
Not sure that primitivists hold a monopoly on this critique, and I've generally not found primitivist critique to be appealing in the past.
Part of this transition means that anarchists must reconcile our own violent past with our vision of the future society and reject the hold that Leftism, Statism and privilege has over the debate.
This doesn't mean anything. What violent past? There is nothing to understand this as having a meaning outside of the author's head.
The anarchist as reactionary is clearly illustrated by the continuing debate over violence. Not unlike the capitalist press, we anarchists have never come to terms with our violent history. With the rise of anarchy as a growing force, the stereotype of the anarchist as a violent disturber of public order has again been raised and reinforced by the media, government and within the larger affiliated movement itself in an effort to discredit and marginalize us. Again and again, anarchists are forced to make nuanced arguments about how “property destruction is not violence” and that “the real violent element is the police”, despite the fact that these arguments are not getting through and without recognizing their defensive nature. Do anarchists really eschew violence? Not at all. The violence/non-violence dichotomy is a false one, but playing into it effectively prevents us from forging our own strategies and distinct vision of society.
While I agree that the violence/nonviolence dichotomy is false (as rhetoric), I find myself wondering if the people who are continuing to do this are engaging in rhetorical games as a means to try to convince other people to “move to anarchism.” I'm not sure.
What I mean by this is that I think these anarchists are trying to get other people to recognise that the destruction of a window at Wells Fargo or some other bank isn't the same as an Israeli bulldozing a Palestinian home (see next quote). And I understand why they're doing that with non-anarchists, but I do think that maybe it does us all a form of disservice.
Why, then, if our goals are opposed, should we allow their moral rubric to be imposed upon us? Instead of claiming that smashing a window isn’t violent — a point that average people reject out of common sense (and therefore makes me wonder about the common sense of some anarchists) — why don’t we drop the semantics and admit that, yes, it’s very clearly violent and then make a case for it? Do we consider the Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes non-violent? If, on the other hand, smashing a window is merely a symbolic act, but not violent, what message are we trying to send?
This makes me want to know why these people are doing this rather than exploring the context of violence being used. I do think that we have to be able to explain the strategy and how that strategy fits into the larger picture.
I also think it's fine for a person to view one as violence (the Israeli bulldozing a Palestinian home) while believing the other to just be a more aggressive tactic to help force people to engage with and listen... sort of like when you've been being talked over for hours, get frustrated, and suddenly smash a glass out of desperation.
Sure, they might both be forms of violence, but I do think there are people who think it's a rhetorical trick to try to soften the blow of destroying a bank window for non-anarchists. (I do think focusing too much on maintaining the dichotomy of violent versus nonviolent is a problem.)
Ward Churchill does a good number on this presumption in his book Pacifism As Pathology...
Starting to sense a pattern in the citations for HNvPtS, and it's really interesting.
Anyway, this author at least engages with anarchist sentiments and highlights them, which makes me wonder why it is that they got ignored in Peter's shitty book (especially Malatesta's quote about passive resistance).
Alfredo Bonnano offers a good alternative to CrimethInc.
Aha. I also have a lot of critiques of CrimethInc, but it's good to know that this piece is largely a critique on them and the way their milieu behaves (in 2002). Makes me wonder who the author is.
That is, we should remember that Denmark Vessey’s planned slave insurrection intended to kill every single white person, including women and children. In his mind, all the white oppressors, both current and future, had to be wiped out. We may view this as terrorism now, but we should evaluate why very carefully. Is it because we are against violence, or is it because under his analysis of race in America we are embarrassed to find that many of us are oppressors? Columbine and the school shooting in Germany, in which 13 teachers were killed, again cloud the issue of terrorism. Generally, classmates and teachers would not be considered legitimate targets for violence — although as I mentioned, the Contras targeted them and anarchists in the past targeted capitalists and politicians, often for deterrent effect. However, it is not hard to understand how one could perceive of teachers and school bullies as oppressors to whom a negative example is worth providing to deter future oppression.
Even in 2002, this feels rather tone deaf. While you can empathise with (but not agree with) Denmark Vessey's plans and understand why he would do it, it is immediately obvious what would happen should that kind of plan be taken to fruition. There's a reason a lot of people bristle at that sort of violence, and it's worth actually having nuance about it in order to have that discussion.
Columbine was not done out of bullying (a thing we have known since Columbine would happen, if only we would've listened to the survivors who had discussed how they repeatedly tried to seek help or make it clear that at least one of the two boys made them feel unsafe... only to be ignored by administration). I don't know anything about this school shooting in Germany to discuss it.
And I am one of the first people to critique schools and teachers (and teaching). That school shooting and many of the ones that followed it were not done because the people were bullied; they were done out of a sense of entitlement. That nuance must be there.
William Meyers writes in his essay, Non-Violence and its Violent Consequences, that, “The only times the corporate media is against violence is when it does not serve the greater ends of corporations.” While he’s talking about the media, we could just as well substitute “middle and upper classes” and “the State” in the obvious places and it would still ring just as true.
Maybe I'll remember to come back to this essay.
Take for instance the case of the woman in New York who, upon being visited by an armed police officer serving her with an eviction notice, attacked him, knocked him down several flights of stairs and then set him on fire. Where was the support from the anarchist community for this woman? Her actions were clearly defensible.
Same place most of them are when any woman fights back, tbh. Wringing their hands.
There have been some who have argued in a variety of ways, most notably and recently in the Rock Block Collective’s Stick it to the Manarchy, that violence is masculine, and that it marginalizes and alienates women and other less privileged people by it’s “uncompromising” attitude. “Manarchy,” is defined in the document as, “[a]ggressive, competitive behavior within the anarchist movement that is frighteningly reminiscent of historically oppressive male gender roles.” They give their take on violence, claiming that taking an aggressive stand towards authority and capitalism (the capitalists and their minions, they somehow forget, are the truly privileged ones, after all), “...means that many women, people of color, the young and elderly, and the economically disadvantaged do not have what it takes to participate in the manarchist revolution.” Not only does this show a startling lack of appreciation for the history of working class revolutions that, after all, are made by the disadvantaged — it also fails to appreciate the history of revolt within communities of color and by women and in many ways paints women as the same dainty emotional creatures as do the sexist defenders of male-dominated politics. Is it perhaps possible that modern Leftist feminists have finally found common ground with the patriarchs in their joint attack on violence as contrary to women’s more noble, innate nurturing and mothering instincts?
... Does Peter just crib ideas from different places, kind of cite them in a context, but then pass them off as his own?
Anyway, this critique of Rock Block is weird because they aren't entirely wrong about how violence typically takes on a masculinist flavour (and it's even more true when you watch what happens to people of marginalised genders who engage in aggressive or violent responses and how a lot of the manarchists leave them to struggle—this is a point of critique not brought up here or in Rock Block's piece).
Contextually, this piece also misrepresents the context of what they quote Rock Block as having said. When violence is the only or primary response to everything, then it is less likely that you're going to get women, people of colour, the young and elderly, or economically disadvantaged to participate... and they are alienated not by the violence but by the macho actions behind the violence (which also determines whether they are fit to participate).
Another aspect to Rock Block's critique that they're ignoring is that they pointed to the ways in which manarchists will just do things and not communicate them, which places more people in danger. This is not a refusal of violence, but it is a refusal of doing so without consideration for the people around you... especially if you are privileged in comparison to those around you.
Suffragettes rioted on many occasions, burning churches, attacking officials, battling cops and destroying property. It is more convenient to the Statist argument to forget that on more than one occasion national monuments, theaters and government offices shut down, and downtown shops were boarded up to protect them not from rampaging black-clad youths, but from the attacks of violent stone-throwing Suffragettes. Likewise forgotten are the Bolivian women who strapped dynamite to their bodies and seized government buildings or the courageous old women who stood strong just recently against whip-wielding Argentine police. And what of the women of the BLA and Weather Underground? What of Diane Oughton, blown up with two comrades when the bombs they were making accidentally detonated? What of the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade? Are we to believe that any time a woman acts aggressively that she is male-identified? Granted, the “Manarchist” document does not explicitly use this term, but it may as well, given the way that it’s used by self-appointed non-violence and pacifist authorities in the larger movement to marginalize women who are out of their control or make them uncomfortable. Rather than claiming that violence goes against women’s nature, isn’t a better explanation of the underrepresentation of women in armed groups the patriarchal system of privileges and exclusion that dominates society, and our own groups, in general?
This is such a bullshit argument for such a short piece that, while it had problems, did not even make these inferences... Especially that shit line questioning if the Rock Block Collective believes women are male-identified when they engage in violence. This is such a red flag.
Because again, they didn't eschew violence as a whole. They eschewed specific behaviours and the propensity to focus first on violent action without consideration of the people around you. At least, that's the vibes I got from it.
Laina Tanglewood in her article, “Against the Masculinization of Militancy”
This article isn't easily accessible, so I can't read it to see what the context of the critique is. This makes it useless to me (and also strangely poignant that this is what Peter is referencing... not the article, mind you... but this piece using the quote from this article).
The fetishizing of Mumia abu Jamal, particularly among anarchists has always troubled me a great deal. I have often found it quite amazing the way anarchists will argue till they’re blue in the face about how Mumia is innocent and the poor victim of a cruel frame-up. What’s more, his innocence is often the lynchpin of their argument.
Again, noticing a pattern in Peter's writing that makes him look more and more like a hack.