Reading: How Nonviolence is Misrepresented (Brian Martin) [2008]
To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
I give special attention to his questionable assumption that violence always triumphs over nonviolence. In my judgment, Gelderloos’ arguments are based on pervasive double standards. In addition, he fails to spell out what levels and types of violence he considers acceptable, an omission that undermines his argument.
This was also part of my problem with Gelderloos's book, too, though I won't be “making a case for nonviolence.” This links in with my criticism of: If you're not going to define “violence,” you can't really discuss the use of “nonviolence.” This fails its entire argument because it doesn't want to elaborate on either, meaning the criticisms of “nonviolence” (and “nonviolent” activists) fall flat.
This is also why, even if I don't like the essay, Ward Churchill's work is better than Peter's because it makes the argument clear and doesn't muddle concepts. He rarely engages with “nonviolence” and focuses on “pacificism.” As a result, Churchill doesn't have to delve into a definition of either “violence” or “nonviolence” because we can at least understand what pacifists tend to do (and he also explains this, too).
Through history classes, Hollywood movies and the daily news, most people come to believe two things about violence. One is that groups with a greater capacity for violence — armies, weapons, military industry and ruthlessness — can nearly always win over those with a lesser capacity.
Neglect that Martin doesn't incorporate the 'why' here, it's not exactly false that groups with greater capacity for enforcing violence to maintain themselves (oh, hey, a key understanding that Martin ignored) are better at winning over those with less capacity (for whatever reason).
It's just... true, especially when it comes to the domination of the state over the peoples within its borders (or those outside the borders that it seeks to control). Empire-building also makes this very clear.
But that's a different form of violence, and any person can recognise that violence is not always equally bad. This is why:
This is the assumption behind the question “What would you do to stop the Nazis?” asked rhetorically as a presumed refutation of nonviolence.
Did pacificism (better term than “nonviolence”) stop the Nazis? I'd argue that it couldn't (and I don't even just mean in the context of WWII's military campaigns), especially considering the industrialisiation of torment that the war became known for (both in terms of industrialised genocide—the Holocaust—and in terms of creating systems of surveillance that we've only built upon as decades went by).
Not to mention: How many governments today who “fought” the Nazis (nominally, I'd say) have benefited from taking in former Nazis? How have those places been influenced by former Nazis having power? Hell, how has Germany been influenced by the reinstatement of Nazis who knew how state-craft worked into their own governments?
We can also look at Italy and fascists. Or Europe as a whole and its continual support of people from the far-right (with a number of links to former Nazis of the WWII era).
How has a purely pacificist action stopped them? This is why I cannot be a stalwart defender of that.
Second, most people believe that violence is a tool, usually a neutral tool. If it is used by bad guys — the enemy, terrorists or criminals — violence is bad, but when used by good guys — “our side” — then it is good.
This is a false dichotomy. Violence, as used by oppressors, is always bad. Inherently so. Violence, when used by the oppressed, can be either. Killing your local rapist? Fine. Bashing the gay bashers? Also fine. Context is key.
But all violence by “my side” can't be purely categorised as good. We know that a lot of men who led movements used their position to sexually abuse women and girls. Should I categorise that violence as good? (Would I do it if they raped my enemy? No. Context matters, and this is also something I would say that Peter failed at engaging with cohesively.)
Most supporters of revolutionary warfare accept these assumptions; they believe revolution is a good cause and hope to use armed struggle to achieve it.
This is a failure of understanding. The armed struggle that people discuss is used because they have no other choice; very few people, outside of those who sound like intelligence agency infiltrators and people who've never endured any kind of violence against their person, hope for an armed struggle.
If we could win without the physical fight, most people would prefer that. Will we? It's pragmatism, and Martin is missing this.
Cool that I'm reading a dude who can't read a dude who also can't read. Good grief.
Mohandas Gandhi
Did the reviewer read Peter's book? Because while I disagree with the structure and analysis that Peter engaged in, he already adequately (not brilliantly) dealt with this example. What would be better would be to highlight inaccuracies, which do exist.
However, with regards to Gandhi: In many ways (because he did try to get commutations for sentences, like that of Bhagat Singh), he also recognised that his own movement would not function without the people willing to put up arms to protect it. He also recognised why people may engage in the violent action that he wouldn't do.
But I also still think it's worth noting that he said shit that really should be questioned, like how Jews should've gone willingly and submitted to the Germans during the Holocaust... Who the fuck says that kind of shit? Even if it was supposedly, as I've seen, “in line” with his own views. Even if he was apparently anti-Zionist.
It's worth noting that a lot of people at the time took issue with him saying that, and it seems to only be supporters who will twist themselves into pretzels to say that his apparent “nonviolence” was still fine. (Even his contemporary critics pointed out that it makes no sense to go willingly to the concentration camps because the Nazis viewed them not even as people. How do you deal with that if you choose to do nothing except make yourself an example because what? People will feel bad? I won't blame Jewish people for dying in the camps as many people, especially some Zionist revisionist historians, do. But I also wouldn't tell people to make plans for passive resistance so their deaths have meaning in prompting some people to stop it... somehow but without physical fighting. We'd be better off with them alive.)
Nonviolent action thus encompasses a wide range of activities that go beyond conventional, routine action but do not involve physical violence against humans. When people think about nonviolent protests, rallies and sit-ins commonly come to mind, but there are many other sorts, such as workers refusing to tear down an iconic building, judges resigning in protest over political pressure, roads activists digging up streets and planting crops, and office workers misplacing or destroying files on dissidents targeted for surveillance and arrest.
Protests can work but often do not. They provide support for a wider movement, but they will largely be ineffective due to the strategies that people will opt for. For example, a protest held in a park isn't very helpful because you can opt to walk around it. A protest that doesn't hold space does little to resist.
Who cares about iconic buildings? They should fight to not tear down buildings where people live for the sake of developers. They should be squatting. Are they? Not normally.
As a person who willingly lost a job in protest (as an immigrant, no less), it does nothing. Judges are replaceable. Someone shit will always take the job. Same goes for teachers who protest their work environment and the safety of their students from the institution and other teachers. Not a reason to not fight, but it is a thing to be aware of.
These aren't bad things to do, but they aren't nearly enough on their own. Reading anything by a Panther would tell you that.
... From reading this and also reading comments about The Failure of Nonviolence, I am guessing that book is a fight with Brian Martin. Did Peter ever write a book where he wasn't arguing with a specific person? I guess I'll find out.
Here I concentrate on arguments for pragmatic nonviolence because they allow a more direct comparison with Gelderloos’ case. Principled nonviolence has its own arguments and criteria which are important but given less attention here.
The problem is that Peter doesn't know how to write a book (I'd argue that he can barely form a coherent essay for all the baffling decisions he makes in terms of ensuring readability for his audience—this is not because one can't read them, but it is because he obfuscates his points behind a list of arguments without making those clear until the very end... like we're reading a novel where someone forgot 'foreshadowing' is a useful tool).
So Martin kind of implies here (and elsewhere) that Peter is focusing on “principled nonviolent action” and also doesn't engage with “pragmatic nonviolent action.” (Part of why I think the other Nonviolence book is a fight is because of Martin mentioning Gene Sharp, who I know is criticised in that book.)
The problem is that, after critiquing everything, Peter does default back to “diversity of tactics.” He's not wrong here; we do need a diversity of tactics. Peter's major failing is less with the concept of the book and almost entirely the execution of it (namely that he never puts his actual point at the beginning to make it easier for his examples to flow into it; he starts off with a vitriolic attack, gives examples, and then attempts to make his point... which feels like a constant backtracking).
Nonviolent action involves withdrawal of support from the system. It is a challenge to the legitimacy of standard behaviours or policies.
As a proponent of abolishing school systems, I'd have to ask: What happens to a lot of people across the globe if they refuse to send their children to school? And what support systems do we have to fight that?
Many countries consider that neglect (and even these so-called “activists” do) and will therefore enforce surveillance on those families along with police brutality (in the form of stealing their children).
Numerous people have very good reasons for not sending their children to school (disabled children, Indigenous children, racially marginalised children, immigrant children), but society mandates it. This disregards a person's needs. What will “pragmatic” nonviolent activists (as Martin calls them) do when a person's child is stolen because they refuse to support this state institution?
Nonviolent action usually wins more support than does violence.
Sociologically, I have to ask a question: Why? Where do our views come from?
Opponents, by not being physically harmed, are accorded a certain respect: implicitly, their health and life are respected. Opponents are less fearful and hence do not have to be as ferocious in defence or attack.
Please tell that to the many people who've been shot by cops or ICE for simply trying to de-arrest or protect their neighbours. Your opponents do not become “less fearful,” and this is a massive misunderstanding of both police and military forces.
When violence is used against nonviolent protesters, this is widely seen as unjust, and can lead to a major reaction against the violent attackers, a process Sharp calls political jiu-jitsu.
Tell this to the families of the people who lost their loved ones to that brutality. This feels incredibly heartless to say that they become examples of the injustice. They're gone forever, symbols or not. Is it better that they're dead or left for such? I don't think so.
Nonviolent action allows widespread participation. Women, children, elderly people and people with disabilities can participate in many forms of nonviolent action. This can be a goal in itself.
While I critique Peter because the hyperfocus on violent tactics is masculinist (not the use of violent tactics, but the hyperfocus on them), I think this is an egregious error in understanding all of these demographics.
Not to mention all the kids, elderly, and disabled people who've been gassed and have suffered incredible damage (which even people outside of these demographics can suffer) for simply existing in a protest.
Martin is as bad at arguing a point as Peter is. They were made for each other.
Violence often alienates potential supporters.
Who? Why? This is a sociological question that neither you nor Peter explore, though he does accidentally hit the reasons why it happens without considering anything beyond those near-misses.
Martin does try to explain why, but uh:
A psychological perspective called correspondent inference theory helps explain why. People often infer someone else’s motivations by looking at the consequences of their actions. If the actions lead to people dying, the inference is that activists are motivated to kill — not to liberate, which might be their actual motivation. This theory helps explain why terrorists’ motives are so widely misinterpreted.
I'll have to look into this, but I think people are better at contextualising events than we assume they are. I also think indoctrinisation is a huge chunk of why people feel alienated, which comes with a heaping dose of disinformation (e.g., “cops there to protect you” when you visibly see that that's never true).
While this is from 2008, I think we could probably find similar examples that are older than this. However: Take Luigi Mangione. He had a lot of widespread support for his actions, even if people wouldn't do it themselves. Why is that? Is it because they could empathise with his actions?
I'd also argue that, even among proponents of violent tactics, they create streams of disinformation. Peter himself has done this with KYLR (kill your local rapist). I have my suspicions as to why, but it's notable that a lot of men have a tendency to bristle at this and engage in “but what if you make a mistake and he's not guilty?!” (Notably ignored are two key things. First: 'Your' local rapist doesn't mean that I kill any rapist; it means I have the option to kill my rapist. Second: It is not a requirement that it happens, as men like Peter often represent it; it is a slogan of possibility that implies the victim should hold more power in that decision-making process than those who aren't, which isn't what usually happens.)
Violence targets individuals, but harming individuals is not an effective way to challenge systems of oppression. Killing a politician does not undermine the state, because politicians can be replaced, sometimes with ones who are worse. Furthermore, a person who is a politician has other roles, such as parent, friend and musician. Violence, by not discriminating between roles, destroys much that is good, rather than targeting the damaging roles and building on the beneficial ones.
Full offense, Brian, but I don't care if a genocidaire has created the most brilliant symphony to ever exist. I do not care if he's someone's best friend, and I do not care that he has a family.
Did they give the same consideration to the people they killed? Should we have cared that Hitler was a painter? Do I need to care that Mao adored the ballet? Should I care that Stalin, despite his many atrocities, was a Georgian boy who endured poverty?
At some point, who people are is forfeit when they are presiding over the deaths of a number of people via genocide, pogroms, and legislated murders (or murder-by-policy).
Also, your resigning judges in the prior example of nonviolence's benefits can be replaced with worse people. You can't be like, “Oh, that's a bad idea because politicians can be replaced” and then ignore that it literally happens in the same example you provided elsewhere.
Violence restricts participation. Young, fit men predominate in both armies and armed liberation movements. The secrecy accompanying armed struggle also limits participation.
Hmm. I wonder if there's a word that supports why this is? Is it misogyny? Mayhaps. But we also know that women can and do form revolutionary units (Rojava was well-known for this, though the YPJ was founded in 2013. So he couldn't have known. But also, there are examples of women-led units across history. Reading books isn't hard, especially if you're paid to have 'research' as part of your job.)
Violence as a method clashes with the goal of a nonviolent society.
This assumption is improper. The goal shouldn't be a nonviolent society. Liberation doesn't necessarily mean that we should disengage in responses that might appear violent.
Since the definition Martin gives is “harm against another,” I can only assume that slapping someone is violent. But is there a contextual use to it? Similarly, if we have someone who is routinely attacking people and refuses to stop no matter what we do, what are our options? I have seen zero prefigurative explorations of how to handle these situations, and most people like Martin have a tendency to assume that because they want a nonviolent world... that we're going to have one.
Rather than take up Gelderloos’ claims about nonviolence one by one, it is more illuminating to understand his perspective as stemming from a few key assumptions. At the core of his thinking is the view that nonviolence cannot be successful against violence.
At the risk of having to defend Gelderloos's shitty book, the core of his thinking (which he poorly writes because, again, he cannot make his point clear at the beginning of anything) is that we need a diversity of tactics and that nonviolent action does not work on its own. He largely cribs this from Mumia's work (which is something that Mumia does discuss in We Want Freedom and is something that he openly reflects upon).
It's important to note this because he also states that the state is inherently violent (something most—should be all—anarchists agree upon).
Some of these arguments sound strange. How, for example, can nonviolence be patriarchal when women have been so prominent in nonviolent action whereas armed groups are almost always dominated by men?
Perhaps Martin could try looking at the inherent patriarchy that has existed within movements, rather than acting as if women don't engage in a diverse range of tactics.
While this example makes me want to throw up, it's worth looking at why so many women's groups in all political ideologies keep popping up. Mujeres Libres popped up because the men refused to engage with their needs, so they took it in their own hands; this is one of the most common things to happen, especially within anarchist organising. Misogyny is a key component.
On top of that, a lot of women are pushed to focus on care work, even in movement building. Why? Misogyny.
That's a rather simplistic way of looking at it, but it happens in every organisation and also institution (as a female-perceived person working in a school, the men often forced me to do their woman-related thinking for them—how should we celebrate women's day? do you want flowers? which flowers?—while also trying to mansplain why girls shouldn't do certain things and how I was too emotional or making too big a deal of something). It's fucking misogyny, just like this point.
Which is literally what Peter badly argues because he misogynistically ignores the criticisms leveled at the whole bit about how violence is machismo. The point is that the hyperfocus on violence and the assumption that everything be done through violence is machismo, not that violence is inherently masculine.
Reading is a core skill that everyone involved has neglected.
ON TOP OF THIS, Martin also misses the best pieces that would support himself for this patriarchy chapter: the over-reliance on bell hooks (notoriously anti-violence) and the statement right before a quote he uses which says that this will likely be peaceful and healing work, which he does not state in any other chapter.
political jiu-jitsu
You people sound like fucking dweebs. I hate this phrase.
In guerrilla struggles and other campaigns involving violence, there is also a great amount of nonviolent action, for example during the Vietnam war, the Iraq war and the second Palestinian Intifada. Why should violence be given all the credit when both violence and nonviolence are used?
I think Martin is suffering from the constant problem I had with Gelderloos's work and didn't realise that he was struggling with it at all. Peter annoyingly concedes that this nonviolent actions worked, but they worked because they were supported with armed resistance. Which isn't wrong.
It's just that he waffles on and on and on and buries the fact that he recognises that all the work together made it possible. It's really annoying, and it actually angered me because I sat through so many chapters with similar critiques... only to later go, “Oh, for fuck's sake, couldn't you have said that 10 pages ago?”
Peter is a bad writer. Full stop.
Gelderloos’ second argument against nonviolent campaigns is to say they didn’t really change anything. They weren’t liberation. They didn’t overthrow the state — just the current rulers — and didn’t overthrow capitalism. “The liberation movement in India failed. The British were not forced to quit India. Rather, they chose to transfer the territory from direct colonial rule to neocolonial rule.”
Please stop making me defend this piece of shit, Martin.
He's not wrong here, though. Let's look at the trajectory of India: Did they do anything other than change leadership? While they gained independence, did that shift anything in the region (e.g., political dynamics with nations developed as a result of partition, like Pakistan)? Did that remove them from the capitalist structure? (Kerala might have CPI members in parliament, but uh... how many others? And how did that impact their exploitation ever since?)
India may've gained independence, but did all the people of India gain liberation? Those are two very different concepts, and it's hard to argue that they gained the latter (it's also hard to argue that some people, particularly those of the Dalit, gained the former).
It's an argument that I'd make for where I live now. Did the Velvet Revolution actually do anything substantial? Or are people here still forced to endure capitalist exploitation, just without the Communist Party and the Soviets running things?
He very clearly doesn't state that the independence movement failed because India became independent, but liberation isn't the same thing. And I'd argue that most people on this planet are not liberated.
He refers approvingly to the Black Panthers in the US in the 1960s and 1970s and the anarchist revolutionaries in the Ukraine in the early 1920s, among others, none of which overthrew capitalism or the state.
It's less because they succeeded (since they didn't) and more because it was a stated goal. Find me a movement where that's a common feature, particularly among “principled nonviolent activists” or “pragmatic nonviolent activists.” It often isn't because much of their work will not upset the status quo or will only shift it vaguely.
Even within the anarchist movement, there's a reason that Emma Goldman is widely read and well-known while Lucy Parsons isn't. And it's because the former was not seen as a threat by the state, while the latter was (with her library having been burnt down and then the FBI taking what of her library wasn't destroyed after her death, including her own work). It's worth considering why that is.
If a campaign fails, Gelderloos attributes this to the use of nonviolent action and insufficient use of violence. In the 1989 pro-democracy movement in China, “the students who had put themselves in control of the movement refused to arm themselves …” (pp. 122-123). The double standard here is that Gelderloos does not mention the failure of armed movements in Bolivia, Latvia, Malaya, Philippines, Uruguay and many other countries.
If anything, I'd say you're both guilty of this. Peter fails to really read much about Tiananmen (and also Kent State)... But both of you fail to actually engage in the why of why something failed and the resulting actions afterwards.
Which is annoying.
In referring to recent campaigns that unseated governments in Serbia, Ukraine and other countries, Gelderloos says they were “orchestrated” by the US government (p. 100). He doesn’t give any evidence for this claim, aside from citing one newspaper story.
This was also a problem I had. It veered way too close to the color revolution losers. (And even if the US provided funding to some groups, they're not providing funding to all participants; this denies the agency of an overwhelming amount of people, and I find it grotesque that Peter even tried it.)
Gelderloos addresses none of the complexities of these situations, simply assuming that because the US government was involved, therefore it orchestrated the whole operation.
Yep. This is a very, very valid critique continuing from the above.
In one of many examples, in 1944 the dictator of El Salvador — a US client state — was toppled in a popular nonviolent campaign.
After, ironically, killing a US citizen at a protest and then being questioned about it by the ambassador who also said that Maximiliano Hernández Martínez should resign.
And since Martin acknowledges that El Salvador was a “client state” of the US, I wonder what kind of pressure that led to. Also, El Salvador didn't escape the military dictatorship because... the provisional president Andrés Ignacio Menéndez was later overthrown in a coup by Osmín Aguirre y Salinas in the same year (October 1944). And he was recognised as a proto-fascist.
He resigned in January 1945, scheduling an election (which he rigged), and was followed by Salvador Castaneda Castro and basically continued the projects that Martínez started. (He also loosened restrictions on labour unions only for the Ministry of Labor that he re-established to decide that strikes were illegal, which is cool.)
Hmm. What a weird example to choose! I would say this points to Martin doing the same double-standard as Peter.
Gelderloos claims that the nonviolent strategy of generalised disobedience cannot bring power to the people because the state still controls key resources and the loyalty of the military and police: “in recent decades, the only significant military defections have occurred when the military faced violent resistance and the government seemed to be in its death throes.” (p. 99). To the contrary, there are quite a few cases in which military defections have occurred without there being much violent resistance, including the Philippines in 1986, various Eastern European countries in 1989, the Soviet Union in 1991, and Serbia in 2000. Gelderloos is right that military defections are essential for revolution,20 but defections can occur as a result of nonviolent methods such as fraternisation.
Question: How many of those military-included movements have maintained liberation for the people and didn't fall into their own personal goals of leadership? Even using the above example of the 1944 toppling in El Salvador (where the former military attempted a Palm Sunday coup and failed prior to the student activists' protests), what happened to the military provincial leader who kind of wanted to do things better for people?
Ah. A coup a mere five months later.
But also, how many times do military-led coups actually succeed at liberating people rather than recapturing control but for someone else? It's a valid question to consider, and I don't see that happening here.
It also neglects the interactions of the military with the mafia to retain control, which at least one of those examples (Eastern Europe) struggled with and continues to struggle with.
In a forthcoming paper, Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth
... Yep, I'm more convinced this article is what he fights with in The Failure of Nonviolence.
But just because violence might be justified does not mean it is the best option. If someone at a party swears at you, you might be legally and morally justified in suing for slander, but it is seldom a wise idea to do so: it is likely to be very costly and could harm your reputation even more.
Punching them can also be an option. Suing them would be ludicrous in this instance, but I think the immediate action of swiftly hitting them in the jaw would be beneficial.
Of course, it depends on why they are swearing at me. If they're being a misogynistic prick, I think it's fine. If I were (for some reason) treating them like shit, then it'd be out of line. Too many people mistake it for always being out of line (and also criminalise it as assault, adding further violence to a situation—we don't need the cops in that situation, I guarantee you).
This is also a weird example. Swearing as violence without any context? Maybe we should have everyone involved start working on defining some terminology.
Historically, many pacifists do not engage in nonviolent action and many nonviolent activists are not pacifists.
Lmao, half of my critique. (But also, which pacifists are out here engaging in violent action? Is it the definition of 'violent' that's broken or is this true? It's weird that people whose primary attribute is to be against violence aren't engaging in “nonviolent action.” Peter made this point about terminology and failed to address it at all, so... Someone should and did not.)
Gelderloos often uses sources in a selective, misleading fashion.
Things I have also said, especially because of his use of bell hooks.
Gelderloos explicitly rejects presenting a definition of violence: “… one of the critical arguments of this book is that violence cannot be clearly defined.” (p. 3). He says that many activists consider everyday activities, such as “buying clothes made in a sweatshop”, to be violent and says the concept of violence isn’t useful when “no two people can really agree on what it means” (pp. 124-125). However, even though activists may have different conceptions about terms, it’s still possible for analysts to agree on meanings.
Also conflating weird shit like a wolf killing a dear, which forces us to put human concepts onto two non-human animals.
The question arises: are there any methods that Gelderloos rejects? Does he reject use of machine guns? Does he reject missiles? Does he reject biological weapons? Does he reject nuclear weapons? Does he reject torture?
Valid critique. (But if you know Gelderloos, he rejects a lot of the anti-abuser violence enacted by victims against their abusers in favour of ~healing~. So yes, there are things he avoids; ironically, they are ones you'd think he'd logically support, but no.
One of Gelderloos’ chief complaints is that nonviolent activists are unwilling to support activists who use violence. Is Gelderloos willing to support any activist, even ones who use land mines and chemical weapons? If not, then his strictures against nonviolent activists, who draw a line at a different place, reflect a double standard in his argument.
This feels like a weird strawman to be building because, while I agree that Peter needed to outline his own boundaries? Watching a lot of “pragmatic” and “principled” nonviolent activists let people rot in jail for using weapons in a nonviolent way (e.g., Prairieland—where one person shot at the ground near a cop, intentionally so that someone else could get away from the cop shooting them).
If the presence of a gun bothers you, even while people aren't being violent, I have to question your ethics. Maybe Martin would agree with me that these people should be supported, but a lot of people have ignored these people for the sheer existence of a gun (and the lies the cops told—like how the cop was somehow injured in his back by the person who shot at him... despite facing that person).
Again, Prairieland is too recent. But it's too common to watch people let others get hanged for presumed violence they refuse to interrogate in their own minds. See the historical example of the Haymarket anarchists.
Prominent anarchist Murray Bookchin
... He had relocated himself to a libertarian socialist/minarchist view in the 1980s, which is typically not aligned with anarchism. (It still supports and enables hierarchies, which is contradictory with anarchism.)
If you wanted a widely accepted anarchist, Graeber would've been the go-to because he's yet another example of someone Peter misrepresented in this text (and his whole thing around Occupy was a focus on primarily engaging in a Gandhian Nonviolence pact). This would've been known in 2008.
Another rationale arises out of the anarchist belief in prefiguration, namely that means should reflect ends. If the goal is a world without organised violence, this means avoiding violence in the struggle for such a world.
Wild assumption. There is a vast difference between “a world that avoids violence” and a “nonviolent world.” One of these two acknowledges that violence may happen to us and, while we prefer to not use it, we may have to in order to halt certain behaviours. It is not a go-to solution, but it is an option that must be weighed heavily.
Ironically, anti-abuse activists have spent the most time considering what constitutes violence and how it can be used (if at all). Weird that no men seem to engage with these unless they can weaponise them in some way.
Gelderloos gives no hint of debates over violence and revolution within the anarchist movement: for him, anarchism seems to mean his own particular set of beliefs. Nor does he acknowledge the anarchist sensibility that is widespread in nonviolent movements.
This is a critique I leveled at him, too. He rarely engages with anarchists (and usually only when he disagrees with them); he doesn't synthesise any of the sources. Instead, his work primarily rests upon the shoulders of Marxists.
Which is something more people should point out. Not because we can't learn from Marxists, but it definitely highlights a failure to engage with the community he's critiquing (even “as an anarchist”). It's not like the work wasn't there when he first wrote the book (or when he had it republished or updated), but he simply wasn't curious to engage.