Reading: The Failure of Nonviolence
Chapter: Policing the Black Block, Disappearing the Ghetto By: Peter Gelderloos (2016) related tags: #tFoN
Some farmers destroyed construction equipment or shot at surveyors, while a number of sabotage actions were carried out by radical environmentalist and anarchist groups. As the resistance grew, it also became fashionable, and a large number of people from the folk-punk music scene who had been influenced by environmentalist and anarchist ideas flocked in and began to take part. However, these musicians and folk punks showed a strong adherence to nonviolence and shied away from any real social conflict. On a number of occasions, they spoke out against property damage, in favor of the right of bankers to be bankers, explaining that sabotage against banks was a violation of that right, and at one major protest they organized patrols to prevent vandalism against companies connected to the highway construction. This was especially hypocritical because many of them, aspiring to be professional musicians, sang about resistance, some would say exploiting histories of struggle where people had used the very tactics that they were trying to criminalize.
Specificity would work here. He loves calling out folks, so why not do it here? It's bizarre.
Also, white artists (like white academics) have a habit of extracting from communities they don't belong to without giving back. Perhaps that would also provide some interesting discussion here beyond how he's framing it and would actually put some blame in the corners that need it. (It's not just white artists and academics because the system itself incentivises all people to do just that, but they are largely more willingly to engage in it as a result of white supremacy.)
As with the previous chapter, there are no sources for anything. It's entirely polemic. Perhaps it's his own experience, I don't know. But it would've benefited him to provide even news articles or other pieces of information that would've supported his claims. Sometimes it'd be nice, especially when talking about somewhat niche events, for someone to actually drop even some news articles. As with everything, most footnotes (when they exist) have been more polemic (or self-promotional) and less resourceful.
... There's a whole section that fails to even delineate different anarchist demographics participating in varying events (other than one time, where he states 'white anarchists' and then points to them pushing nonviolence). Through most of this, he makes it unclear which anarchists he's even talking about because they simultaneously says that anarchists condemned action and then that anarchists supported the riots. It's confusing.
Like, yeah. Anarchists often end up having multiple perspectives (that's par for the course), but it'd be nice to at least have some kind of delineation between who was more likely to do what and maybe why. Again, no sourcing of any information (most of which should have some degree of sources, even if they're only news articles). He may be saying true things, but he's putting the entire onus on his reader to backtrack any information... which feels weird.
(After multiple complaints of lack of sourcing, he finally drops... three, but they're not for any specific event. They are largely for his point, which he's not doing a great job at making. I guess beggars can't be choosers.)
When indigenous people, anarchists, and immigrants fought with police or carried out property destruction in the protests against the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, protesting the capitalist spectacle, the gentrification that always accompanies such mega-events, or the fact that the Games were being held on stolen indigenous land, some nonviolent activists denounced the riots, portraying them as the work of privileged white male anarchists endangering more “vulnerable” people.
This kind of thing would've been good on a chapter of its own, especially the discussion of how a lot of marginalised anarchists get swept under the banner of the “privieleged white male anarchist.” Peter doesn't do this (and also contributes to it, even if accidentally, by not at least trying to generalise demographics).
The example of Darby may seem like a strawman to principled proponents of nonviolence, because Darby is not a pacifist. However, to those of us who have to share the streets with pacifists, the distinction is not always so clear.
This also would've been better as a chapter on infiltration and with examples of how people try to conduct entrapment within protest movements, but it doesn't necessarily work in this book (which he also kind of recognises). Just because Darby and pacificists “might look the same” in some capacity, it doesn't mean they are and doesn't mean Darby proves your point.
The fact of the matter is, violence is an ambiguous and moralistic category, so nonviolence inevitably becomes an exercise in hypocrisy. Even Gandhi organized a volunteer effort to support two British colonial wars in South Africa. The same criteria that can label Gandhi a supporter of nonviolence can also be applied to Brandon Darby. Darby might have been a fan of Che Guevara, but nowadays most people who side with nonviolence also fetishize Guevara or the Zapatistas or violent rebellions that happen far away.
As a result, this entire paragraph sounds nonsensical. Just delete it and write another chapter or a proper essay. Do you have editors? Friends who help you out as editors? Because if so, I'd find new ones.
Furthermore, a large part of Darby’s violent posturing was intended to entrap activists who might be inclined to use combative, illegal means.
Yes, but we also have bastards who will effectively entrap people into getting arrested even while engaging in nonviolent marches. It's called kettling. The purpose is similar, so it's not worth talking about in this way because there are better and more analytical ways to explore it.
The fact of the matter is, Darby was motivated by a political condemnation and a philosophical rejection of violence in social movements. In a December 29, 2008 open letter he published on Indymedia, Darby denounced those who take action motivated by “anger and hatred” and explained how “The majority of the activists who went to St. Paul did so with pure intentions and simply wanted to express their disagreements with the Republican Party”, making a distinction between good protesters who only want to voice their opinions, and bad protesters who wanted to take action and, in his mind, deserved to go to prison. In subsequent writings about the Occupy movement from his new column on the rightwing Breitbart.com, Darby’s rejection of the use of violence by political movements is crystal clear.
This still speaks of a better way to discuss people like Darby than uh... whatever he's been doing.
Also, this is a small-scale version of the same rhetorical flourish. He puts info toward the end that would've been better at the beginning. It feels like a gotcha moment that he's trying to create (if I'm charitable, to make a person thing one thing and then BAM another), and it really just makes me hate the way this is written because it's not really shifting my viewpoint but is making me wish I were reading a better analyst.
The FBI does not try to spread combative tactics within a social movement, they try to catch people red-handed and lock them up for life. One of their objectives is in fact to discourage people from using combative tactics by making people think that if they use illegal methods, they will be caught and severely punished. Because they aren’t the sharpest crayons in the box, nearly the only way they have been able to make cases is by threatening people until they agree to snitch, or by using psychologically manipulative informants to convince impressionable targets to take on an action they are not ready for. The FBI focus on those willing to go beyond peaceful protest clearly shows what kind of activities worry them more.
I hate to break it to you, Peter, but their goal is not just to discourage combative tactics. It's to discourage tactics they perceive as successful. The same is true of the CIA.
We also know this because “nonviolent activists” who they have believed to be successful and who they saw as undermining the current status quo (which they serve) have routinely been stalked, harassed, and investigated. Just because they take the easy way out with people who have a propensity to use combative methods doesn't suddenly erase their actual goals in favour of a more simplistic explanation.
They're there to disrupt movements and whatever solidarity arises from them.
Nonetheless, Darby’s action took advantage of a major weakness in one sector of the anarchist movement. By posing as a supporter of extreme tactics, he was able to get two people imprisoned because the broader scene left themselves vulnerable to someone who used intimidation, bullying, and macho posturing, someone they did not know well enough to trust in a situation of such great risk.
If Peter would actually, I don't know, provide resources on anything... a person could actually analyse Darby's actions. For instance, posted on the Houston Indymedia (06 Jan 2009):
The FBI documents make it clear that Darby did not restrict his informing to people he alleges were planning illegal activities. He also gathered information on numerous people who were engaged in lawful activism; including some who had no plans to attend the Republican Convention. “The wider net cast by Darby in his information gathering shows that he was part of an FBI campaign to suppress political dissent and activism,” said Will Potter, an award-winning independent journalist. “By gathering information on law abiding activists and then defending his actions as stopping violence, Darby contributes to the public perception that political dissent is criminal, which has a chilling effect on free speech.”
His behaviours were not limited to illegal activities. That is useful information and also highlights that these peopl are useful tools for the state in all organising. It also lets us explore their behaviours and what they report on most. Not to mention that the same article also points to how, as an older activist, he held sway over the two younger anarchists whose lives he ruined (but also that they disagreed with him and were kind of bullied into it).
Peter's writing in service of a specific narrative decreases our analytical ability on just this one moment and doesn't help us learn from it at all.
Others by unmasking or filming those who try to protect their identities, and making these videos available to police (whether by handing them over directly, or putting them on Facebook, which has become the primary investigative tool of police agencies across the planet).
A better conversation to start with, and then make this a part of, is why filming at protests isn't necessarily a good thing.
During the Oscar Grant riots, the media, the police, and proponents of nonviolence spoke with the same voice, claiming that the rioters were white anarchists from outside Oakland, come to take advantage of the situation and cause trouble. Delegitimizing rioters as outside agitators, and equating the categories of “anarchist” and “outside agitator” is nothing but the regurgitation of a longstanding government smear tactic. The US government used it when anticapitalist struggles heated up after World War I to justify the Palmer Raids and their deportation of thousands of immigrant anarchists.
Once again, he's already highlighting what the better and more engaging and useful conversation would be... which could house this frustration while also creating space for analysis.
The most upsetting part of this conspiracy theory [that black bloc is infiltrated by police provacateurs] is that it is clearly designed to sabotage debate. It becomes impossible to debate masking up or damaging property if such tactics are presented as police provocation strategies. And the mass media themselves help to spread the theory in a clear attempt to discredit enemies of the State.
THEN ADDRESS THIS MORE. Why is it such a short tangent to everything else?
Conspiracy bloggers have been extremely effective at using underhanded means and the superficial medium of the internet to fabricate “proof”.
This is a chapter or book of its own.
Another common discourse that serves to criminalize rioting is the idea that breaking the law, rioting, or using “violence” is a privileged activity that puts oppressed people in danger. Taking advantage of the fact that people in a Black Bloc are often so well masked that it is impossible to tell their race or gender, some aficionados of identity politics have made the claim that Black Bloc anarchists are all white males, even coining the term “manarchists” to describe them. To ridicule this idea, someone created the website, Look At These Fucking Manarchists (http://latfmanarchists.tumblr.com/), featuring hundreds of images of riots and armed struggles from around the world, showing women, people of color, people with disabilities, transgender people, and queer people building barricades, fighting with police, burning banks, or physically defending themselves, juxtaposed with ironic captions. A picture of armed women from an anarchist militia in the Spanish Civil War is captioned, “C’mon manarchists, fascism has to be fought by using our nonviolent feminine wiles, not hypermasculine aggression!” A photo from a February 2013 protest in Bolivia in which people in wheelchairs fought with riot police after traveling hundreds of miles to the capital was captioned, “This week in Bolivia, a bunch of ableist manarchist rioters clashed with police forces over the country’s broken welfare system. Don’t they know that fighting cops is really privileged and fucked up?”
... I'm sure the blog he referenced is actually engaging with the ideas that a lot of people have regarding manarchists and the toxic masculinity within movement spaces.
I'm sure they, like Peter, have actually listened to some of the legitimate complaints people have made and have taken them seriously.
... Nah, why would they bother when they can make flippant attacks and refuse to engage with the arguments of people who have genuine grievances? Why bother when they can make people look stupid instead of actually caring?
Identity politics were also used at Occupy Oakland to divide participants, preserve the mediating role of NGOs and professionals, and discourage direct attacks on the system.
Conversations around identity politics are necessary, especially with regards to how they can be deployed as a means of silencing people or to neglect other issues (e.g., overlaps between marginalised groups that go neglected in favour of focusing on one identity or aspect of an identity), but I cannot take this conversation of Peter's seriously when he refuses to engage with genuine critique about 'manarchists' and flattens everything by using an equally as flippant Tumblr (which honestly looks like he or his friends made it).
... It's really hard to focus on reading any of this when he jumps around and repeats himself so much. I honestly don't understand why people like his work. Even when he has a decent point, it gets muddled in the mess.