seaners
New Member
Sorry, I joined this discussion late, I don’t hang out on the main board too much. I don’t think the thread has been all that interesting for me because it’s been framed in a way to suggest a rightness and wrongness of actions which I see as moralizing, hence the comments above. Allow me my two cents…
First of all the very term violence is quite abstract, and we’ve seen posts arguing about what does and does not constitute violence. [ Common sense would dictate to most people that kicking in plate glass windows is a violent act, which leads me to wonder about the common-sense of anarchists who claim that it isn’t. If property damage isn’t violence, then an Israeli bulldozer smashing a Palestinian home is a non-violent act? If smashing windows is supposed to be a symbolic act, what message is it sending? That we’re angry but not that angry? (probably very close to the truth in many instances…) That this is as far as we’ll go in our dissent? How dangerous. I bet the G8 are quaking in their Guccis. ] We’ve arbitrarily lumped together such actions as a fistfight and hydrogen bombs as ‘violence’ but other actions seemingly just as valid escape the definition - scaffolding collapses on a building site killing workers, a boy catches a fish, cars pile up on an icy motorway. What about the mental violence of being forced into a job that you hate? Or the implied violence of destitution if you don't do it? Everyday life is violence, it's just that some are more obvious than others. The term itself is an absurdity and serves its use normally to legitimise and reinforce the order of things.
One of the definitions of the State is that it is the body with the sole claim to be the legitimate user of physical force, or violence, and this it accepts with gusto from the overt use of police, courts, jails and armies to less brutal examples like schools, workplace regulations or monetary policies. The state is violence. It always has been and always will be. I am anti-statist. I am an anarchist, hence I wish to see the state destroyed. I do not wish to add to its legitimacy by voting or appealing to the powers that be to exercise that power. This is where the idea of direct action comes about, where people decide on the course of action they wish to take as best fits their particular circumstances and go and do it without appealing to a higher authority. Sitting in a lock-on outside a government office appealing to them to be nicer is not direct action. (It may be useful as part of an ongoing intermediate struggle, but it is not taking action, it is appealing for others to take action) Indeed burning down the said offices in an attempt to change government policy is not direct action, however exciting and militant it may be, it is still appealing to the man, and hence not only legitimises that authority but strengthens it as now it can be said to represent people it didn’t before. Which in a roundabout way brings us back to the original question. Or maybe I’m just jumping back there for the craic. When is political violence justified? Briefly I think political violence is justified when the oppressed take direct action to rid themselves of oppression (and to ensure that they in turn do not become the oppressors, leftists). Read into that how you will, it will change dramatically depending on circumstances.
This will make a lot of people feel uncomfortable, and you have to ask why. It makes a lot of self-professed anarchists uncomfortable. It is fucken absurd, but most anarchists view political violence by the oppressed as legitimate as long as it takes place anywhere but here, any time but now. Our history is filled with viloent acts, from bomb-throwing to prime-minister-stabbing, from industrialist assassinations to shooting back at the pigs. Violence has almost always been seen as one of the acceptable tactics for anarchists to use, so what has happened to make it so unfashionable these days? (And believe me, compared to the times of Goldman, Berkman et al for example it is unfashionable to be an advocate of violent upheaval among the anarchist milieu these days) As the globalization of capital continues, us anarchists in whiteyland have found ourselves swept up among the privileged classes (on a global scale) In terms of a national or local scale we may not be the most well-off group of people, but compared to a worldwide level we are massively privileged. If you compare this era of college-attendees and well-paid graduates to the immigrant slum-dwellers of the New York Jewish and Italian anarchist scenes in the early 20th century its blatantly obvious who has more to lose if there was a violent upheaval. This can explain why its ok for western activists to glorify AK47 wielding Mayans in Chiapas but to shit their pants in indignation when someone throws a rock at a riot pig during a ’peaceful’ demo. It’s nothing less than white supremacy. We live in the belly of the beast. Our wealth directly results in the immiseration of most of the people on the planet. I don’t want people to feel guilty about it, it’s not like we have a choice in the matter. I want people to do something about it, and condemning any action that challenges the legitimacy of the standing order of things is self-serving, racist, classist bullshit.
For all the talk of anti-vanguardism among activists, how often do we see support for uprisings or assaults against the state that take place outside of our organising structures? Outside of our control? A classic case was the Feb 25th riot in Dublin that saw confused silence from most who would be excited if it happened somewhere else and tabloidesque bleatings of ‘scum’ from most of the leftist commentators (with a handful of notable exceptions) If it is uncontrollable it must be condemned. Leftist, statist bullshit. Poor people fight cops, attack bosses, burn schools, sabotage infrastructure and rob banks all the time in acts of spontaneous outrage, unmediated by political parties, trade unions or other hierarchical organisations. Where is the anarchist support for such actions even at a verbal level? Are we all so privileged that we can no longer see the joy in a bandito robbing a bank and shooting cops?
Who do we think we’re alienating with our own violent actions? It’s obviously the comfortable classes and not the impoverished underclasses who are probably more happy to see pigs getting some of their own violence dealt back to them than to see a bunch of privileged weirdos line up to get hit on the head with sticks and then cry and whinge about it. I expect someone to come on saying how working class they are and how they disagree with all this talk of violence. Which is fine. It’s called a difference of opinion. More importantly why do we care if we’re alienating the middle and upper classes? We’ve already had their bloody revolutions and we’re living in the violent consequences of them now where a global oligarchy sucks the life out of the world and shits all over its inhabitants. If you get uncomfortable with the alienation of the middle classes, ask yourself one question - if it all went down tomorrow, which side of the barricades will you be on?
Pacifism is pathology - Ward Churchill
First of all the very term violence is quite abstract, and we’ve seen posts arguing about what does and does not constitute violence. [ Common sense would dictate to most people that kicking in plate glass windows is a violent act, which leads me to wonder about the common-sense of anarchists who claim that it isn’t. If property damage isn’t violence, then an Israeli bulldozer smashing a Palestinian home is a non-violent act? If smashing windows is supposed to be a symbolic act, what message is it sending? That we’re angry but not that angry? (probably very close to the truth in many instances…) That this is as far as we’ll go in our dissent? How dangerous. I bet the G8 are quaking in their Guccis. ] We’ve arbitrarily lumped together such actions as a fistfight and hydrogen bombs as ‘violence’ but other actions seemingly just as valid escape the definition - scaffolding collapses on a building site killing workers, a boy catches a fish, cars pile up on an icy motorway. What about the mental violence of being forced into a job that you hate? Or the implied violence of destitution if you don't do it? Everyday life is violence, it's just that some are more obvious than others. The term itself is an absurdity and serves its use normally to legitimise and reinforce the order of things.
One of the definitions of the State is that it is the body with the sole claim to be the legitimate user of physical force, or violence, and this it accepts with gusto from the overt use of police, courts, jails and armies to less brutal examples like schools, workplace regulations or monetary policies. The state is violence. It always has been and always will be. I am anti-statist. I am an anarchist, hence I wish to see the state destroyed. I do not wish to add to its legitimacy by voting or appealing to the powers that be to exercise that power. This is where the idea of direct action comes about, where people decide on the course of action they wish to take as best fits their particular circumstances and go and do it without appealing to a higher authority. Sitting in a lock-on outside a government office appealing to them to be nicer is not direct action. (It may be useful as part of an ongoing intermediate struggle, but it is not taking action, it is appealing for others to take action) Indeed burning down the said offices in an attempt to change government policy is not direct action, however exciting and militant it may be, it is still appealing to the man, and hence not only legitimises that authority but strengthens it as now it can be said to represent people it didn’t before. Which in a roundabout way brings us back to the original question. Or maybe I’m just jumping back there for the craic. When is political violence justified? Briefly I think political violence is justified when the oppressed take direct action to rid themselves of oppression (and to ensure that they in turn do not become the oppressors, leftists). Read into that how you will, it will change dramatically depending on circumstances.
This will make a lot of people feel uncomfortable, and you have to ask why. It makes a lot of self-professed anarchists uncomfortable. It is fucken absurd, but most anarchists view political violence by the oppressed as legitimate as long as it takes place anywhere but here, any time but now. Our history is filled with viloent acts, from bomb-throwing to prime-minister-stabbing, from industrialist assassinations to shooting back at the pigs. Violence has almost always been seen as one of the acceptable tactics for anarchists to use, so what has happened to make it so unfashionable these days? (And believe me, compared to the times of Goldman, Berkman et al for example it is unfashionable to be an advocate of violent upheaval among the anarchist milieu these days) As the globalization of capital continues, us anarchists in whiteyland have found ourselves swept up among the privileged classes (on a global scale) In terms of a national or local scale we may not be the most well-off group of people, but compared to a worldwide level we are massively privileged. If you compare this era of college-attendees and well-paid graduates to the immigrant slum-dwellers of the New York Jewish and Italian anarchist scenes in the early 20th century its blatantly obvious who has more to lose if there was a violent upheaval. This can explain why its ok for western activists to glorify AK47 wielding Mayans in Chiapas but to shit their pants in indignation when someone throws a rock at a riot pig during a ’peaceful’ demo. It’s nothing less than white supremacy. We live in the belly of the beast. Our wealth directly results in the immiseration of most of the people on the planet. I don’t want people to feel guilty about it, it’s not like we have a choice in the matter. I want people to do something about it, and condemning any action that challenges the legitimacy of the standing order of things is self-serving, racist, classist bullshit.
For all the talk of anti-vanguardism among activists, how often do we see support for uprisings or assaults against the state that take place outside of our organising structures? Outside of our control? A classic case was the Feb 25th riot in Dublin that saw confused silence from most who would be excited if it happened somewhere else and tabloidesque bleatings of ‘scum’ from most of the leftist commentators (with a handful of notable exceptions) If it is uncontrollable it must be condemned. Leftist, statist bullshit. Poor people fight cops, attack bosses, burn schools, sabotage infrastructure and rob banks all the time in acts of spontaneous outrage, unmediated by political parties, trade unions or other hierarchical organisations. Where is the anarchist support for such actions even at a verbal level? Are we all so privileged that we can no longer see the joy in a bandito robbing a bank and shooting cops?
Who do we think we’re alienating with our own violent actions? It’s obviously the comfortable classes and not the impoverished underclasses who are probably more happy to see pigs getting some of their own violence dealt back to them than to see a bunch of privileged weirdos line up to get hit on the head with sticks and then cry and whinge about it. I expect someone to come on saying how working class they are and how they disagree with all this talk of violence. Which is fine. It’s called a difference of opinion. More importantly why do we care if we’re alienating the middle and upper classes? We’ve already had their bloody revolutions and we’re living in the violent consequences of them now where a global oligarchy sucks the life out of the world and shits all over its inhabitants. If you get uncomfortable with the alienation of the middle classes, ask yourself one question - if it all went down tomorrow, which side of the barricades will you be on?
Pacifism is pathology - Ward Churchill
