Reading: The Failure of Nonviolence
Chapter: Introduction: Nonviolence has lost the debate By: Peter Gelderloos (2016) related tags: #tFoN
When dissidents do not have this elite support, strict nonviolence seems like the surest way to kill a movement, as when pure nonviolence led to the total collapse of the anti-war movement in 2003[1], or an enforced nonviolence led to the collapse of the student movement in Spain in 2009[2].
Footnote 1:
This argument is documented in How Nonviolence Protects the State. In sum, nonviolent organizations predicted, after the largest protests the world had ever seen, that their peaceful methods would prevent the war. When they were proven wrong, many people who believed in this nonviolent model for change became disillusioned and dropped out, whereas other people became frustrated with the enforcement of nonviolence and the parade-like, self-congratulatory character of the movement, as well as its refusal to express rage at mass murder or condone the sabotage of the war effort. The movement imploded and disappeared with spectacular speed.
It may be documented, but it is not documented with anything other than conjecture. It's also not documented with elaborating on what any successes could like, whether there were any successes, and how that failure actually appeared.
This isn't to state that it's inherently wrong because these things can and do happen, but it's also assuming that all or most people dropped out because they were disillusioned with the nonviolent model.
How many people left because of racism in the movement? How many left because of sexism? There are many reasons for people dropping out, and it's worth noting that we do not have information as to why these people left/gave up.
Footnote 2:
In Spain, self-appointed student leaders prevented a discussion of a diversity of tactics and physically ejected students who tried to mask up or practice self-defense in the protests. They organized a series of huge protests and university occupations in response to the privatization of higher education, and after the largest of these protests, strictly nonviolent, the movement swiftly disappeared (until reemerging with a strike and riots three years later). After the university occupations were evicted in Barcelona, a part of the students used direct action and combative tactics to occupy an empty building in the city center and set up a “Free University”. The space for self-organization and alternative education was won only because some students decided to practice combative street tactics. Thanks to this illegal experience, the student movement was kept alive, and the self-appointed leaders were no longer in control of it when it reemerged in 2012.
What combative tactics did they utilise? This still keeps going with a good critique that most people have had about Peter's work, which is that he never outlines boundaries. I also know that's complicated because there is nuance, but it is possible to make clear what's happening and why.
Another bonus question is: Certainly there are writings on this in Spain from people who live there? Either in Spanish or Catalan? So why not provide them and ensure that there is additional information beyond this statement of fact with low-explanation?
In dozens of new social movements around the world, people have gone into the streets for the first time thinking that nonviolence is the way, because contrary to the claims of many pacifists, our society teaches us that while violence may be acceptable for governments, people on the bottom who wish to change things must always be nonviolent.
This isn't inherently wrong, but he does need to actually define terms. Not only this, we are often taught that obviously nonviolent (as in tactics that do not physically aggress against another person) are violent; blocking streets is violent, painting on windows is violent... So we do need to actually engage with what violence means, what it should mean, and then also engage in a conversation around what nonviolence is.
This is why from the Occupy Movement in the US to the plaza occupation movement in Spain to the student movement in the UK, tens of thousands of people who were participating in a struggle for the first time in their lives, who only knew about revolution and resistance from television or from public schools (which is to say, from the media or from the government) overwhelmingly believed in nonviolence.
While this may be true, there are people who recognised the utility of 'violent action' that supported this. Providing examples here would've been relatively easy, such as David Graeber's Concerning the Violent Peace-Policing, which was written in response to Chris Hedges's misrepresentation of black bloc. In 2012, Graeber wrote:
I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99%” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in.
Graeber also stated, in explaining “Diversity of Tactics” to Hedges:
The original GA in Tompkins Square Park that planned the original occupation, if I remember, adopted the principle of diversity of tactics (at least it was discussed in a very approving fashion), at the same time as we all also concurred that a Gandhian approach would be the best way to go. This is not a contradiction: “diversity of tactics” means leaving such matters up to individual conscience, rather than imposing a code on anyone. Partly, this is because imposing such a code invariably backfires. In practice, it means some groups break off in indignation and do even more militant things than they would have otherwise, without coordinating with anyone else—as happened, for instance, in Seattle. The results are usually disastrous. After the fiasco of Seattle, of watching some activists actively turning others over to the police—we quickly decided we needed to ensure this never happened again. What we found that if we declared “we shall all be in solidarity with one another. We will not turn in fellow protesters to the police. We will treat you as brothers and sisters. But we expect you to do the same to us”—then, those who might be disposed to more militant tactics will act in solidarity as well, either by not engaging in militant actions at all for fear they will endanger others (as in many later Global Justice Actions, where Black Blocs merely helped protect the lockdowns, or in Zuccotti Park, where mostly people didn’t bloc up at all) or doing so in ways that run the least risk of endangering fellow activists.
This is from someone who was at an Occupy Movement occupation (specifically the most well-known of them), and I think it's worth recognising the reality of what was happening on the ground.
Perhaps it's worth Peter engaging with this aspect and, you know, checking the veracity of it via other sources. Or compare the different movements. Or look at how 'Big Tent' aspects actually create difficulty in maintaining views such as the one Graeber outlined (as quoted above).
Peter doesn't do any of this because it's easier to do statement-as-fact without the rest of the footwork. People treat him as a researcher, but this is shoddy work at best.
This has been a collective learning process that has taken place around the globe, and the direction of that process has overwhelmingly gone from nonviolence to a diversity of tactics—the idea that we cannot impose a limitation of tactics or one method of struggle on an entire movement, that we need to be able to choose from a wide range of tactics, that struggles are more robust when such a variety of tactics are present, and that everybody needs to decide for themselves how to struggle (peaceful tactics, therefore, are included within a diversity of tactics, where nonviolence excludes all other tactics and methods).
Weirdly, he ignores all the times in which people do support diversity of tactics. I just outlined at least one example that existed within his own examples, and it wasn't someone who would be unknown to him; Peter misrepresents events without caring that he's doing so.
In the climate of the antiglobalization movement, which was heavily skewed towards nonviolence thanks to the disappearance or institutionalization of the social movements that came before us, and thanks to the heavy NGO participation, the debate felt like an uphill battle, although most of us were aided and inspired by the discovery or republication of texts from earlier generations of struggle, like Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology or Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.
So... Why not actually focus your critiques on the institutionalisation of social movements? Why not focus your critiques on how movements and other aspects of them were co-opted? Why not focus your critiques on the NGOs in question and how they usually try to run what movements look like? These are all valid critiques.
But they aren't the ones Peter ever made in How Nonviolence Protects the State. It's also worth noting that, while we can learn from both Churchill and Fanon, they were not dealing with at least part of that (NGO capture was not nearly as common or frequent, though they did have to deal with capture-by-charity and philanthropy—this is a concept that Peter ignores, too). These two concepts are comparable, but I do think their particular aspects should be explored on their own merits.
At that time, proponents of nonviolence frequently emerged from their ivory towers to debate with proponents of a diversity of tactics.
I'm going to keep pointing at him, but. Noted academic! David Graeber! Supported diversity of tactics! (Also, the ivory towers is so funny because Churchill was also an academic when he wrote Pacifism of Pathology.)
Like, I also have critiques of academics... but I just find it funny that we know there was one in Zuccotti Park who wrote in defense of diversity of tactics while supporting nonviolence and was (whether he wanted to be or not) the face of the movement. It kind of makes Peter's work look weird.
This doesn't mean Graeber was perfect (far from it—I critique him, too), but uh... It would at least give Peter a good direction to formulate a critique from rather than just doing statement-as-fact.
As this has happened, direct debate between the idea of nonviolence and that of a diversity of tactics has become increasingly rare. The criticisms of nonviolence that were published in those years made a number of arguments that would have to be either rebutted or acknowledged for any honest debate to continue.
Are we living on the same planet? Because I routinely see things screaming about not being violent when people are... not being violent (e.g., throwing paint on a sculpture, shoving a statue into a river). And it's not new. This hasn't decreased in the slightest.
It'd be better to say that more people have decided that a diversity of tactics is something they can vocally support.
— evidence of paternalism and racism by nonviolent organizations towards the struggles of poor people and people of color
Because only nonviolent organisations do this. /sarcasm
Yet proponents of nonviolence in recent years have not acknowledged these criticisms, neither to rebut them nor to revise their own positions.
One such criticism is above. He's basically rehashing HNvPtS's “arguments.” Which were so poorly constructed because he didn't even try to investigate most of these things, choosing to misrepresent sources or relying entirely on one source alone.
In social movements across the world, they have begun spreading the claim that the Black Bloc in particular, or masked rioters in general, are police provocateurs and government agents.
While true, could use a source. Graeber and Hedges would've worked here, too. I'm sure here are more, but still. Having something would've helped.
They have to rob their opponents of any legitimacy and prevent bystanders to the debate from realizing that there is indeed any debate going on, that the social movements contain conflicting beliefs and practices.
Peter, you did the exact same thing in HNvPtS against any movement where the US funded a portion of it. You basically were calling them colour revolutions and denying agency to a large contingency of people who most certainly didn't receive US funding.
And after organizing or participating in debates on nonviolence over a hundred times in Europe, and North and South America, I am convinced that those who have most often physically attacked fellow protesters have been supporters of nonviolence.
Convinced does not imply confirmation. It may be true, but it is not verifiable because you believe it to be true and have no evidence of it. (It could be that they have a vendetta against someone and their beliefs on nonviolence are irrelevant.)
This is certainly confirmed by what I have seen with my own eyes. The episode has played out so many times that it has lost all its humorous irony: proponents of nonviolence attacking those they disagree with for not using peaceful tactics.
Your eyes do not confirm anything for me. Also, what do you mean by 'attacking'? And again, if we don't know what 'violence' or 'nonviolence' are, how are we going to understand why you think it's violent or why those people don't? These things do need to be addressed.
Lies and manipulations are a resort of those who have lost an argument but don’t have the decency to admit it.
Would be nice if you applied this to yourself. Not specifically in this context, but definitely in another.
In the plaza occupation movement in Spain, self-appointed leaders imposed strict adherence to nonviolence, even prohibiting the blocking of streets or the painting of banks, and they boycotted any debate on the subject. In Barcelona, they even made the paperwork disappear when anarchists tried to reserve the sound system to organize such a debate. And during Occupy, a number of mainstream journalists posing as friends of the movement published denunciations filled with manipulations and misinformation in a bald-faced attempt to criminalize a part of the movement.
I wonder... Could there be other motives for this? Hmmm...
Instead they have turned towards the elite and gotten support from the system itself. Mainstream, for-profit publishing companies print out their books by the millions, in a stream of titles that increases as combative social movements gain more ground.
I have evidence that you refuse to understand the concept of “freedom of association” and have, because your “livelihood was threatened,” tried to coerce people into behaving in ways beneficial to you. I do not want to hear this criticism from your mouth or fingers.
Anyway, points to the veracity of my statement above that there are other motives at play beyond support for nonviolence.
Mainstream, for-profit media give nonviolent activists interviews while they demonize the so-called violent ones. University professors and NGO employees living off of grants from the government or wealthy donors (and living lush, compared to most other participants in social struggles), also tend to weigh in on the side of nonviolence, bringing a hefty array of institutional resources along with them.
Excuse me, Peter, but you literally had a short fellowship with the University of Linz, which happened during your trip to South America for the climate meeting (which you also crowdfunded for).
And if you had to pay for any of the travel to Austria, I have to really ask some questions about who was funding you. It's not unknown for you to have a bunch of academics in your milieu, including one who routinely shills you across Europe. And this kind of access builds your own inclusion into the system you keep critiquing.
In this book, I argue in favor of a diversity of tactics.
You claimed to argue for it in the last one, but you failed miserably there, too.
Those of us who have tried to create a more conflictive struggle have often been wrong, and sometimes we have been aided by the criticism of those who are more drawn to healing and reconciliation than to conflict.
Says a man who routinely responds to criticism with dogpiling and to people enforcing freedom of association with coercion.
My aim with this book is not to convert or delegitimize every person who prefers nonviolence. Within a struggle that uses a diversity of tactics, there is room for those who prefer peaceful methods as long as they do not try to write the rules for the entire movement, as long as they do not collaborate with the police and the other structures of power, and as long as they accept that other people in the struggle are going to use other methods, according to their situation and their preferences. It would also help if they acknowledged the historical failings of nonviolence, but that is only their concern if they wish to develop effective nonviolent methods that must actually be taken seriously, as contrasted with the hollow, comfortable forms of nonviolence that have predominated in the last decades.
This doesn't seem true. This seems like a lie. It also seems like someone is going “I'm not trying to do this, BUT...”
We need much stronger social struggles if we are to overcome the State, capitalism, patriarchy—all the forces that oppress and exploit us—to create a world on the basis of mutual aid, solidarity, free association, and a healthy relationship with the earth and one another.
Hey, Peter. What's free association, again? Is it when you harass people into doing something that goes against their beliefs and values (including ensuring that their community is safe for certain members) because it “hurts your income?” Hmm.
Already not looking forward to the other 97% of this book.