Reading: And After Having Burnt Everything?
To Contextualise: The Failure of Nonviolence Related tags: #tFoN
Note: Most of this is critical of the letter at the beginning, particularly in the responses. They barely engage with whatever critique exists and often neglect some of the key points in favour of supporting whatever action. (This doesn't mean that the actions themselves are inherently bad, but they refuse to do the critical self-reflection that we very much need to be engaging in. As a result, I don't find this piece to be particularly useful.)
letter...
I am not saying that we were wrong to behave the way we did. I have long been critical of the tendency to pour so much energy into building up “activist service industries” (legal support, medical teams, camp organisation, independent media, etc) until there is almost no one left to do the (in the end mostly symbolic) actions. In that sense, Strasbourg was a welcome change. But our arrogance disturbed me. There was no interest in participating, explaining, or at least showing some recognition of being part of a common dynamic, where people focussing on different things makes it possible for the whole action to happen and be powerful. The focus, perhaps the only interest, was in violent confrontation. And we seem to look down on anyone who questions or does not immediately understand why we think and act the way we do.
This would be part of the “not considering those around them” that I've been pointing to on repeat.
It is important to recognize that if it were not for the infrastructure provided by the camp organizers (which we mostly consumed), if it were not for the extremely hard work done by the legal team, which included negotiations with the police and creating legal and political pressure (which we scorn), and if it were not for the political and physical protection offered by the presence of thousands of protesters many of whom have political views and ways of acting different from our own, it would not have been possible to burn the border, destroy the cameras, or attack the police in the way that we did.
Same here. And it's these vital aspects of protection, support, and care that often receive the least amount of attention (and often are the first to lose it).
We organised in whispered meetings in small, closed, paranoid groups. If you are not on the inside there is almost no possibility to participate. Yet we take our actions into spaces (like the demonstration) where they directly affect people who have had no opportunity to dialogue, to doubt, to debate or to decide. And we expect them to assume the consequences. We expect them not to publicly criticise, but we give them very little opportunity to criticise in private. We expect them not to disassociate from something they were not, in fact, involved in planning or perpetrating. We expect them to respect our political position and forms of action, while we often behave in ways that suggest we have no respect for or interest in theirs.
Still more of that “we're not considering those around us” that I've pointed to. This happens even in other forms of organising (e.g., even peaceful marches make themselves entirely inaccessible to participants and expect us to take on the costs with zero information, like how people who don't speak the dominant language are left to figure shit out for themselves).
Sometimes it feels like our weakness, lack of direction, and lack of advance, creates a culture where we close ourselves into a political aesthetic (not even an ideology!) and limit what we can do, what we can say, and what forms of action are militant enough to be acceptable.
Even as a person who recognises the need for more direct and forceful actions, this is something I have been saying on repeat for as long as I can remember. It's also a concept Peter ignored in How Nonviolence Protects the State, and I doubt he'll address it in The Failure of Nonviolence (beyond referencing a text).
And maybe it is because I am getting older (and I see that the faces around me change: people get tired, burn out, disappear, while the average age of the kids taking to the street stays the same). Or maybe it is because beneath my black hood, and behind my mask, I am still a woman. And, like it or not, as a woman I worked hard for my militant credentials, said the right things, and proved myself time and time again through trial by fire. But the masculine, insurrectionist values of unswerving ideological conviction and willingness to hurt for the cause do not always come naturally to me.
I think it's wrong to attach this to masculinity because women can (and do) engage in hurting others. It's a personal mismatch with poor political grounding.
That, however, doesn't mean that it's not stuck in some aspect of patriarchy... because it can be and usually is.
I am not suggesting that we leave behind the path we are on, not at all, only that we follow it with great care and consideration, understanding what it does to us. We need to constantly deconstruct how we respond to our acts, how they change our relationships to other people, what we personally and collectively need to do to go through with certain acts and how that affects us and our relationship with and attitudes towards others.
This is also something I've been saying for ages. We all need to be deconstructing our actions and beliefs, even if we're not engaging in direct and forceful actions.
responses...
These are responses to the above piece. This one is something more people need to consider:
I went on the black bloc. But it was not an easy choice. It made me realise that our capacity to physically engage in the confrontational parts of the social war is fragile. It reaffirmed the need to search for some kind of long-term radicalisation of our struggles that goes beyond the creation of pseudo-military ghettos or playgrounds for twenty-something revolutionaries. Sometimes it feels like for a 25 year old black bloc activist, being 40 or being physically incapacitated seems far away, improbable or just downright embarrassing. But if that is the case, it seems even more inconceivable that they will reach that age and still be involved in militant struggle.
Disability (long- or short-term—the latter in terms of injury or illness) and aging are all things we can join at any time, and we rarely include this in our calculations (for anyone).
In another:
It is not totally true to say that the black bloc only works in “closed and paranoid groups”.
This isn't even what the piece they were responding to said.
States are trying to define any action that might weaken those in power as “terrorist”, and to create a dividing line between acceptable, non-violent demonstrators and the “evil hooligans”, “banlieue savages” or “anarcho-autonome”.
Same as above response, but this is exhausting to read all the time because this has literally been something that has been said for centuries... And people keep acting like it's new.