nerd

Reading: The Failure of Nonviolence

Chapter: Who Are the Pacifists? By: Peter Gelderloos (2016) related tags: #tFoN

And here we go with a chapter that is going to be nothing but a list of grievances against varying groups and people.

Another common trait is that many of those listed pass themselves off as experts and attempt to exercise authority over social movements on the basis of that expertise.

He's more than likely not wrong, but I struggle with this critique because he routinely does this in things that he has not spent much time engaging with (or has engaged with passively) when he fights with people who've spent a lot of time researching them. One such instance is when he went after anti-abuse activists (who were also anarchists) who had elaborated why it was that therapy, as it currently stands, is a tool that more often supports abusers... and he sent dogpiles after them.

So he also does this on the regular, but it seems to be okay that he does.

They are professionals and careerists, and their flirtation with social movements is often a step on the road to personal advancement.

Something that he appears to have been doing in recent years through is academy-based connections.

In order, we get the following sections in this chapter: – Gene Sharp – US Military – Dalai Lama – George Soros – Bono and Bob Geldof – Chris Hedges – Rebecca Solnit – Movement musicians – Stratfor – Judge Ann Aiken – Mark Kurlansky – The Old School

Sharp is a member of the intellectual elite, and in 2012 he was even the favored nominee to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, an award he would have shared with mass murderers and war leaders like Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin.

Is this not more a critique of the Nobel Peace Prize than it is of Gene Sharp? While he may play into the system via it, he is not the one who developed the award and its nonsensical criteria. Why not criticise the role of the committee and how it promotes war criminals as peaceful and safe people?

In Sharp’s case, the prize would have been another element in the international operation to portray the Arab Spring as a series of nonviolent movements obediently following the tutelage of Western experts on democratic social change.

This is more applicable and a far more interesting conversation to have, especially if we could focus on commonalities like the colonialism/imperialism of these people and institutions.

In 2005, during the height of armed resistance to the US occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon got caught running a multimillion dollar covert propaganda campaign, paying to plant articles in Iraqi media made to appear as though they were written by locals, urging Iraqis to use nonviolent tactics to resist the Americans.

About the US military. This doesn't seem so much a critique of nonviolence but a critique of the weaponization of it (along with the logical conclusion of a coercive nonviolence).

In 1989 the Dalai Lama was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Again, this sounds like it'd be better placed as a critique of the committee granting it, the process, and the propaganda around it. It'd be another thing if they were directly giving themselves the awards.

Soros is largely credited with aiding the transition to neoliberal capitalism in Hungary. It is clear what this billionaire’s vision of an ideal world consists of.

I'm not supporting Soros in any capacity, but it is amusing because he can basically be blamed in all directions. His funding of education in Hungary supported Viktor Orbán, so that is also his ideal world...?

George Soros has a lot of things to critique, but this is a superficial examination at best, along with things that certainly need citations (e.g., “Gene Sharp's AEI also received funding from Soros”—okay, that's more than likely, but at least cite SourceWatch or something? citations are definitely needed in so much of this book).

His article was a virulent attack on the anarchist Black Bloc within the then-ongoing Occupy movement. Hedges, writing as though he were a movement participant and someone with the movement’s best interests in mind, makes a number of claims: that the Black Bloc is a group or movement inspired by John Zerzan, who wrote for the magazine Green Anarchy which was so dastardly that it even criticized the Zapatistas; that the Black Bloc members hate the Left more than they hate the 1%; that the Black Bloc is a sexist group based on “hypermasculinity”; that the violence of the Black Bloc is a perfect excuse for police repression; and that people should take action to purge their movement of this cancer. He extensively interviews author Derrick Jensen, who had previously supported violent tactics but subsequently denounced so-called Black Bloc anarchists because they had the gall to criticize him (for acting like a celebrity, for saying that some people should write books in favor of dangerous tactics and other people should carry out those tactics, for supporting authoritarian methods in the environmental movement, and so on).

Sounds like the hypermasculinity argument keeps coming, not from the people mocking manarchists for their continued misogyny... But from men like Chris Hedges.

And yet, Peter writes about it in an anti-feminist tone when he could actually point to the proper example of what he's talking about. Weird.

Rebecca Solnit IS ONE of the few influential proponents of nonviolence who actually participate in social movements on the ground, rather than as an elite journalist, academic, or celebrity. To her credit, she actually puts her money where her mouth is. It is worth noting that her influence is probably due to her being an accomplished writer, rather than (as far as I can tell, having overlapped with her to a certain extent) an inspiring example of the development of an effective practice in actual nonviolent movements. I point this out only to clarify her role, and to underline my earlier argument that Gene Sharp’s is perhaps the only nonviolent method that has effectively been put into practice, though with horrible results as we have seen. Rebecca Solnit advocates a more radical, involved, and committed form of nonviolent action, though I get the feeling that, given the stagnation of such action in practice, she has turned largely to slinging mud at ideological opponents.

... There's a lot of irony here, mixed with some interesting “I get the feeling that” (which isn't evidence that she has been doing what she says she has). Regardless of opinion on Rebecca Solnit, this is a perfect encapsulation of him writing in an antifeminist way (while portending otherwise). He doesn't bother to actually verify or even provide evidence of what he means when he says that he “gets the feeling” that she has turned to slinging mud. (Also, what does he count as “slinging mud”? And has he been doing it throughout his 'career'?)

And I doubt she could point to any source where proponents of nonviolence have been able to show that all violence is the same either historically, socially, or psychologically. I suspect that for many it is a religious conviction, but in any case the argument functions as a form of manipulation, the demagogic use of a category that cannot be defended.

... Sorry, he “doubts that she could point to any source?” I mean, he's not wrong about this, but these kinds of arguments are hard to take seriously when he's literally providing... well, in most cases? Nothing at all.

Instead of taking on the arguments of those she disagrees with, she tries to make them disappear.

And instead of pointing to specific arguments to be addressed in certain cases (see the section about manarchists), you also obfuscate and flatten critiques. Even when the critiques you discuss exist, you flatten others into them and then erase them because you don't like them. Literally, it's the same shit all over again.

That’s the whole point: unlike proponents of nonviolence, proponents of combative methods of revolutionary struggle cannot be high-profile. We cannot flirt with the movement and also become respected, professional writers like Solnit.

Actually sounds like a good critique to use elsewhere, though it's funny that “we” cannot be high-profile (but apparently some of “us” can use our names plainly and be so commonly referenced despite other issues while also accessing more elite spaces).

Even if she knew about Marius Mason, she would not have mentioned him, since part of her politics includes silencing any woman or trans person who contradicts her dogma that violence is a dude thing.

Does she? If yes, why not include a citation showing just that? (And I know a lot of feminists who do just that, but I think it's worth making very clear as an allegation. Dude can't handle the abuse allegations he gets because there's “no evidence,” but this level of systemic abuse gets no evidence either. It's weird.)

Unmasking every single false or misleading statement Solnit makes in this one article would take up more pages than I think she deserves, and the further I go in her article, the more I start to believe I am making a mistake in taking her seriously at all.

Was he sitting there reading her article as he was writing this? No wonder this whole section feels like him airing grievances.

Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor, is a key “global intelligence” company based in Austin, Texas. Its clients include numerous government agencies and Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, and Northrop Grumman, and its activities include spying on activists and dissident movements. In 2001, Barron’s magazine referred to it as “the shadow CIA”. In 2011 it made the news for being the target of a major hacking campaign by the groups Anonymous and Lulzsec, a campaign for which anarchist hacker Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to ten years in prison after being set up by an FBI informant, the unscrupulous “Sabu”.

... This isn't even in the same category as individuals. Could he not have split this into multiple lines of critique with specific examples? This is so annoying and makes for a difficult read.

Also, will he have anything to say on Backtrace Security? Which is part of why Sabu was identified? They were former Anonymous hackers who became critical of vigilante hacktivism. Sabu does deserve some criticism for turning to an informant, but would he have had to make that choice if not for others who forced him to make it? Worth considering.

It's also worth wondering if he'd take to task a bunch of the white hats who all moved in to work on protecting exploitative technology under the guise of “justice” and “democracy.”

At the beginning of his tome, Kurlansky does not define “violence”, but he does claim that all of us are indoctrinated in its use, whatever it may be.

It's like Peter and Kurlansky share something in common with not defining things.

His only evidence for this is a spurious linguistic proof: the claim that there is no word for “nonviolence”; that in our culture we can only conceive of nonviolence as the negation of violence and not a constructive practice in its own right. This is completely false. The words “peace” and “peacefulness” represent positive states and behaviors, respectfully, and “peace” probably took on its current meaning long before “violence” did.

I wonder if there's a way to, like... check that without having to rely on a “probably” statement to do all your heavy-lifting. Like, c'mon. Etymology is a field of study. Look for it instead of making needless spurious claims.

Anyway, this is also tedious.

In fact, there are very different kinds of violence, and the violence of the powerful—the prisons, the police, wage labor, working conditions, pollution, deforestation, sex reassignment surgery on infants, structural adjustment programs, rising food costs, the forcible reeducation of queer youth at “ex-gay” boot camps, gentrification, and a long et cetera—is not legitimized as violence.

Peter, be more clear about “sex reassignment surgery on infants” instead of being a flippant piece of shit. This is an easily weaponisable piece of text by the wrong people, when you're likely talking about the coerced surgical imposition on intersex kids (because, while it's still worth pointing out as bad, circumcision is notably not sex reassignment).

Good grief. Consider your fucking words and who you're talking about a bit more.

Why were the Cherokee given this dubious courtesy? Because they were the “civilized Indians”, who gave up a large part of their culture to imitate European dress, economy, language, and social institutions.

Not to mention that they were also the people who most often had their culture stolen from them in the name of white folks claiming land “as Cherokees” (while they also refuse to engage with any Cherokee cultural practices) which is why you get a fuckton of white people who claim Cherokee heritage but neglect even participating. (Meanwhile, mixed Black-Cherokee people often struggle to be taken seriously by both sides. Worth considering.)

In Poland, one group of partisans sheltered over 1,000 Jewish refugees, keeping them safe while fighting back against German occupiers.

I'm not going to contradict this, but it is again another example of him NEEDING TO CITE HIS FUCKING SOURCES. Would he not want people to go and learn about this? Or does he only want people to learn from him what he deems appropriate?

Citations may sound like an academic requirement, but they are quite useful in more ways than just ensuring you're properly crediting people. If you're making an argument or stating a fact, I can go look it up for whatever reason. And that reason can also be simple curiosity.

I deal with this resistance more extensively in How Nonviolence Protects the State, and a much better book on the subject is Yehuda Bauer’s They Chose Life.

Oh, we get Yehuda Bauer. Who writes Zionist-revisionist history that also doesn't really handle Holocaust survivors well (and definitely writes out Palestinians). Intriguing.

But yet again, Peter references himself. Does he have nothing else?

He really has ire for Kurlansky, which... Idk, he could've just wrote that essay or book instead. It would've made more sense there, but the whole list of everything

... This chapter has specific examples (finally), but it reads like a list of grievances that makes it hard to get through. Even if he's right about some things, it's very exhausting to read the same rehashing over and over (because at the beginning, he says he made this list without looking at their commonalities—had he done that, the analysis would've been far more cohesive and less like being trapped listening to someone rant about different people... while also wanting references to go back to (which we mostly didn't get for anything at all, except the items of his specific grievances).

It's also frustrating because he's claiming to do this analysis from an anarchist perspective, and like... most of that is, again, superficial. “This guy doesn't even critique the state!” or whatever. No shit. If they're not anti-state in any capacity, they simply aren't going to. Maybe point at what is lost and what they gain from not critiquing the state instead of acting like it's a surprise.

And if you accuse someone of something, then at least do more than an “I feel” when you say they're engaging in certain behaviours in their writing and personal appearances. It's weird otherwise.