Reading: The Failure of Nonviolence
Chapter: Real Democracy Now By: Peter Gelderloos (2016) related tags: #tFoN
This whole chapter focused on the 15M movement and Real Democracy Now, but I don't think it engaged in actually analysing much.
Nonviolence in the 15M movement, as in so many other movements, meant amnesia, the suppression of a collective memory of struggle and all the experience and wisdom that comes with that memory. People who remember hundreds of years of struggle against authority cannot be tricked into a simple reform that promises to make things better by changing the election laws. People who remember hundreds of years of struggle know that what little they have, they won by fighting. They remember how to make barricades, how to assemble molotov cocktails, how to use guns, how to survive in clandestinity, how to protect themselves against infiltrators. Just as the reformists of Real Democracy Now erased the true history of the uprising in Egypt, full of street battles and burnt police stations, they tried to erase the rich history of anticapitalist struggles in Spain. They tried to tell people who had spent their lives in the streets that the only way to win was to be peaceful because that’s what the television says.
I think part of why I find Peter's book so hollow/shallow is that he doesn't want to do the hard work of finding all the connections. I know someone would be like “but that's not the point of his book,” but it actually is. If he wants to discuss how coerced nonviolence operates and from where it gains its “power” over people, he needs to look at how people are routinely force-fed the narrative of “how things are.”
The coerced nonviolence, even by its advocates, in our organising spaces is not merely the result of those advocates (as much as his book keeps trying to lay it primarily in their laps). He superficially recognises the systems that promote it, but he fails to give them their primary responsibility. As a result, it creates hollow sentiments that—despite whatever truth they may hold—can be easily broken down or utilised against his own argument.
It is no coincidence that in precisely those places where social struggles were still alive and well—Barcelona, Madrid, the Basque country—nonviolence failed to control the movement. In cities that did not have strong social movements at the outbreak of 15M, the indignados bought into the reformist and nonviolent discourse en masse, and often disappeared after about a month.
Such as this superficial statement. Why is it that Barcelona, Madrid, and Basque country are “places where social struggles were still alive and well?” What makes them 'special' in comparison?
I'm not even necessarily agreeing entirely, but this is a question that he does not answer. It becomes a circle. The struggle is alive, ergo they know how to use a diversity of tactics... because the struggle is alive. We don't get an exploration of how they keep it alive (if they do) and what prompts them to be more willing to include combative techniques and strategies (and why that is... and also just how they do it).
This is what I mean when I keep saying this book is superficial.
Given that most of these hundreds of thousands were fresh off the couch and new to the streets, the situation confirmed our argument that authority trains people in nonviolence whereas experience trains people in an antagonstic approach, but it was frustratingly slow going.
Cute way to imply that these folks were lazy rather than (as most people in the so-called “under classes” are) busy or tired from the sheer exhaustion of existing. Maybe we shouldn't insult newcomers, accidentally or not.
The first time I was ever assaulted in a protest, it was not at the hands of the police but by a peace cop, a pacifist appointed to prevent disorder in a protest. This is a logical extension of the nonviolent position. A fundamental tenet of nonviolence is that it is legitimate to impose a singular method and a limited set of tactics over an entire movement. This is authoritarian thinking.
I think there is a better way to analyse this sort of behaviour because it's not inherently a “logical extension” of the nonviolent position, but it is authoritarian thinking that a lot of people fail to consider. It's a logical extension of not recognising what violence is.
When anarchists reserved the sound system and the central space in the plaza to hold a debate on nonviolence, the paper on which the reservation was written down suspiciously disappeared. When they reserved it again, it disappeared again, and a new paper appeared with another event written down for the same day and time. Without the sound system, no more than 100 people could participate in the event, which had to be held on the margins of the plaza.
Okay, but was the reason for them doing this because it was a debate about nonviolence or because the people were anarchists? That would at least give us a good way of understanding what they were doing, why they were doing it, and then being able to point to their actions.