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How Violence Protects the State
'Violence is the modus operandi of the State. To build a free society, we will have to use different means.'
On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, he spoke passionately in a sermon at Riverside Church in New York about the war in Vietnam. In this gripping speech about the hypocrisy of bringing democracy through napalm and the audacity of fostering a brotherhood through war and killing, he made a daring confession: “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today —my own government.”
The most significant social movement in the US in the coming months will be the Occupy movement, as it returns in some numbers to the street. As the Occupy movement grows more polarized between strategies in light of its upcoming spring activities, it might do well to reflect on the logic of Dr. King’s brave statement. Contrary to what Peter Gelderloos and others have claimed, it is violence and the stasis of a dysfunctional system of oppression that protects the state, not nonviolence. How does violence protect the state? Do a few general internet searches on the Occupy movement in images to see how that movement is visually narrated (not to mention how it feels to see the portrayed reduction of a promising national movement into a series of police confrontations).
“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today —my own government.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.Examining these images with some detachment, we might wonder how this civil war with police began. This examination might also give us some clues about the general population’s confusion about “what Occupy wants,” and the US citizenry’s preference for political candidates who do not create violence on the streets—even if those elected officials ultimately maintain systems of greater violence within our society and between it and other nations. If the choice is between unruly demonstrations and elections, Occupy risks becoming a reason to turn to politics as usual.
Paradoxically, while the public will be fascinated by police/Occupy confrontations, and while the media will mock activists’ lack of moral character and strength for accepting violence as an effective strategy, it will only make the way safer and clearer for greater state violence to be perpetrated in the name of national security. Who knows, we may be pulled into a new war with Iran in the coming year —what better way to stifle a movement: delegitimize it (through violence), and then unite us against a common enemy!
Violence in opposition to the State relieves the State and the citizenry of any guilt for a brutal response to all protesters—and it refocuses from the nominal issue to the issue of violence by protesters. Thus any violence by protesters serves the state well (just ask anyone employed by the government who has hired an agent provocateur). It is a weapon of mass distraction. Stop worrying about the uptick in home foreclosures, the dead being shipped back from Afghanistan, and the new increases in the Pentagon’s proposed budget—look at the violent window-breakers from Occupy who threaten us all!
Just a few weeks ago, I was in dialogue with an official from the Pentagon’s weapons acquisitions team. In his final assessment (the conversation was about the present year’s National Defense Authorization Act and our Metta Center advocacy of alternatives to killing), our organization’s proposal of a nonviolent policy—a new U.S. policy of deep reconciliation to combat terrorism— “creates guilt, which is not good.” In other words, by repressing guilt, we can continue killing people.
Keep in mind that soldiers are committing suicide in higher numbers than ever before, and therefore we should pay attention to what this guilt is telling us. This mindset of denial echoed by the Pentagon official, integral to waging war, is rooted in a belief about ourselves as separate from one another—in other words, that we should be able to kill one another without remorse, which is the supreme superstition of a violent system. On the level of the Occupy movement, we might formulate it as a principle: activists cannot harm the actors of the State without harming our movement. The more we fight against the police, the more we allowing ourselves to be seen as accepting violent tactics, the stronger we make the system we want to change, the deeper that system digs in its heels. The more we entertain the use of violence, or even create occasions where it can break out, the more violence is justified. Why? Because as Max Weber’s definition of the State suggests, it "upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order." Violence is the modus operandi of the State. To build a free society, we will have to use different means.
Nonviolence is not just protest, it is not simply occupying space and it is not just about adversarial confrontations; it’s about our humanity. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan brilliantly document the power of civil resistance when it uses nonviolence as its means to replace leaders. We should read their work and others, but we should not be afraid of going deeper either; more than changing a certain regime at this time, we need to transform a culture.
In short, in order to delegitimize a violent system, we have to delegitimize violence. This change requires us to adopt a principle about human beings and human dignity: we will not use violence against others because we want to create a vibrant culture, a merciful culture, a generous culture because we as human beings have the potential to nurture these qualities within ourselves and each other. We will not degrade human dignity because it is not worthy of ourselves as people; let this be the motivation for our long-term struggle. The power of the violent State system would stand much less chance against a movement committed to this nonviolent, compassionate spirit of unity.
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130 Comments so far
Show AllThe state will create violence, blame the Occupiers for the state created violence in order to expand and fund its oppression, repression and violence against the population of a country. Having observed this state created violence 1st hand in 1970, not to mention the police created violence televised in Chicago at the Democrats convention which was watched by 10's of million because it was televised.
Great article. It needs to be repeated, ad nauseum if necessary, that violence will kill any movement toward real democracy. "Violence is the modus operandi of the State" should be the mantra we repeat over and over again until it is embedded in our souls.
Not only of the state but virtually every system where there a hierarchry relies on violence so as to ensure those at the top remain in power. Remove "the State" from the equation and society breaks down into competing rival factions trying to gain the upper hand via violence.(The Congo, Somalia, Cambodia as examples)
At the core of this is the desire of one group or individual to have more power then another and this done through the accumulation of wealth and property. Sates that more equitably distribute wealth and power tend to be less violent.
The concept of the Potlatch was one where the First Nations tribes sought to ensure wealth redistributed so as to decrease strife within the tribe. Prestige was "earned" by those in the tribe that gave away the most goods rather then those that accumulated the most goods.
It a concept we should revisit.
>>“Poverty is the worst form of violence.” Mahatma Gandhi
Even though Peter Gelderloos uses Food Not Bombs as his "street cred" he was not very active in our movement. Food Not Bombs is dedicated to nonviolent direct action and many of us have studied the examples he sites in his book for years and it is clear he really has no idea what he is talking about. His book is poison in our movement. I remember reading Emma Goldman's Living My Life and being so impressed at her dedication to nonviolence after she was involved in shooting Frick. She couldn't have made a more powerful argument against violence. I guess Peter didn't read that or the other many other powerful calls for nonviolence by anarchist though history. Any of us that have seen violence up close and personal would not support the concept. The broken windows of Seattle were a huge distraction from the tens of thousands of us that shut the WTO down using nonviolence.
Using the word "violence" to describe ALL use of force is one of the great propaganda coups of the 1%. There's a huge moral difference between an assailant attempting a forcible rape, and the victim who employs lethal force to defend against it.
There's not an animal in the world that won't won't try to fight off a predator to protect itself and its young. Why should our "humanity" hinge on standing there with our hands in our pockets and letting the cops assault us and those around us?
I strongly recommend that advocates of such "nonviolence" watch this video.
Watch ALL of it.
Because there's a big lesson there for us.
When we can show the brains and courage of the water buffalo, police brutality will be a thing of the past.
sj
http://www.vidmax.com/video/3005/Water_buffalo_versus_lions_versus_the_croc_AMAZING_VIDEO_/
With all due respect, conflating societal considerations to the comparison of circumstance of "lethal force" and 'animals in the wild' reflects precisely the linear disregard for the scope of life and unnamed outside influences on the creatures you present in a manner devoid of the scope of context of the lives of those same creatures. It is a distancing meme that suggests a chasm while asserting it is solid ground - by your own argument - suggestive of patterns of 'lies of omission' and derisive assertion of not engaging violence insinuated as being the failure of 'hands in pockets'. You have a great deal to look forward to as you learn about the subject. It is a life long study.
With all due respect, I don't understand what you're talking about.
Not sure you do, either.
But if you can try to elucidate, I'd be interested to see if either of us could figure it out.
As far as studying the subject goes, I'll just side-step the effrontery of that remark, and let you know that I have been diligently studying the subject, nearly "full-time" for over 50 years --- and some of that is direct experience, not just reading & research.
So I may not have all the answers, but at least I think I may know some of the questions.
But my point is simply this: you have a natural and legal right to defend yourself from an imminent threat of grave bodily injury or death even if it means using lethal force, and you have a right to likewise defend other innocent persons.
I don't see the moral superiority of allowing yourself or anyone else to be brutalized by thugs --- especially not when you out-number the thugs by at least 5 to 1.
The whole "nonviolent" thing strikes me as a bit of a narcissistic martyr complex.
Here's what I know for sure:
"Nonviolently" resist a mugger and you get mugged.
"Nonviolently" resist a rapist and you get raped.
"Nonviolently" resist a murderer and you get murdered.
And "nonviolently" resist and oppressor and.....
sj
Nonviolence can be a legitimate and powerful tactic. But it is being promoted here as a stand-in for non-militant, non-radical, non-confrontational and by extension, non-effective responses to the ruling class.
If by "nonviolence" you mean civil disobedience, then yes, most certainly.
The use of force should always be a last resort and never a first response.
If one can prevail by persuasion, so much better.
But when that's not a viable option -- and sometimes it isn't -- then the use of force may be the only reasonable course.
sj
Agreed.
We have different experiences and perhaps, as a result, have different points of reference. It has nothing to do with "moral superiority". It is simply recognition that what you know for sure may very well be true for you right now, but is not true for me. The variables in our respective experiences exceed any case specific citing of your surety. I'd agree that neither of us has the answers and the capacity to live questions that embrace that openendedness is a centering that never loses its value.
The video, though clearly an example of water buffalo dynamics that prevailed, the same could be said about human struggles using human methods of timing, attention, resistance and focused jujitsu with power - an aspect of martial art if you will. The water buffalo did not gore and kill, it flipped and drove the aggressors. The young buffalo still had to be encircled, protected and nurtured, I would add, by the herd. We do not know if it survives. The dynamics of an injured calf in water buffalo herd dynamics and general environment though ignored, are an unknown reality and not engaged in your writing. I continue to find that, for myself, the courage and brains of non-violent wisdom do indeed apply in the long haul.
In social psychology, "game" is the name given to any encounter or series of encounters that are goal-oriented and have rules. Nearly all social interactions, even the most trivial ones, are games.
In the "prisoner's dilemma" game, where two people have to each decide whether to cooperate or compete, the most-rewarding balanced outcome is when both cooperate. The most imbalanced one is when one cooperates and the other competes: the cooperator loses everything. The least-rewarding balanced outcome is, of course, when both compete.
The best strategy in that game --and in many others, including the extremely interesting Ultimatum Game that's producing experimental evidence against "homo economicus"-- is to open with a cooperative offer, but after that respond in kind. By doing that, the would-be cooperator at least doesn't get taken to the cleaners by a respondent who chooses to compete.
Mapping those findings onto relationships with the ruling class and their henchcreatures, we see that we are urged to compete with one another and cooperate with the ruling class, who are competing with us. And, as per the theory, we're losing more and more in every round of the game. Eventually we'll be reduced to the status of serfs, because our opponents are psychopaths.
I don't know what that suggests to you, but to me it suggests that we should reverse our strategy: start cooperating with one another and going tit-for-tat with the ruling class and their minions. No little petty provocations. But any time they make a competitive move against us, we should return it in kind and with interest.
We are many, they are few.
I agree completely, as this is the new paradigm of cooperation that inevitably must replace unsustainable competition "greed at any cost' paradigm.
Historically, the "prisoner's dilemma" is framed in terms of prisoner cooperation against the guards, with some combination of one or more prisoners confessing to the guards to gain individual value. When one or the other confesses, they would individually respectively benefit beyond mere cooperation -- but when both confess, they both lose more than mere cooperation.
It is clearly true that this can be generalized to society at large, that overall cooperation will necessarily game the system at relatively lower payoffs individually and collectively, then the accentuated individual awards of non-cooperation / competition, which yields beneficial outcomes to a very few.
Overall, when we yield to exclusively competitive forces -- we all lose collectively MORE ( and risk the Earth as well) -- than if we had cooperated in the first place.
The limited preferential gains to a very few, who will not share, is not in society's favor, individually or collectively (irrespective of the few, who think that they matter most).
That's brilliant. I did not know about that paradigm. I agree about the strategy. We are capable of imposing a very high rate of "interest".
In Canada, non-violent modes of protest have been tried - tossing teddy-bears, throwing pies, blowing bubbles (look up Officer Bubbles on youtube). They weren't particularly effective as there was no follow-up.
Amazing video. But humans are sheep, not buffalo.
That's rather an insult to sheep -- who will, indeed, attempt to fight off a predator.
But point well taken.
Maybe we can learn.
sj
Implied in this article and many other similar articles is the state's right to use violence, which is hardly criticized compared to the judgments passed on "anarchists" and other boogeymen. How many "pacifists" have sent their own kids off to serve the police state in the military, the police, or some military contractor while passing judgment on other anti-war activists?
Likewise, implied in the article is the tiresome refrain that working "within the system" is a formula for success, while the system denies us any alternative to the Democrat's own "Teflon President," who has perpetuated nearly every awful policy implemented under the Bush Administration. In fact, many Predator drone-loving "progressives" are already lining up to vote for Obama, thus proving to the world that our progressivism is becoming a boutique philosophy that excludes most of the world's population and focuses on cutesy issues about textbooks and the Susan Komen Foundation to avoid seeming "unpatriotic" about our proud campaign of extermination being waged against anyone who resists our foreign policy ambitions.
Yup. The anger (if you can call it that) over police violence comes nowhere near the level of outrage over black bloc tactics. How is it that pacifists can get so worked up over a broken window, and there is such less visceral anger over police shooting pepper spray in a woman's face? Perhaps people don't know what pepper spray actually feels like?
I'm also really impressed by the pacifists that advocate such for Americans and shout down everything else-while expatriating themselves to other countries and not having to live directly with the results of their ideology.
DC-CPH:
I'm afraid you've lost me on this one. Just about every purist pacifist and nonviolent activist who practices passive self-defense tactics that I know of is far more pissed off about police brutality than they are about broken windows. Who are these people who display "less visceral anger over police shooting pepper spray in a woman's face" than they display "outrage over black bloc tactics"?
I have never met such a person, regardless of their professed brand of political ideology. Even mainstream media coverage of street demonstrations that turn violent adopts a semblance of false equivalency - people throwing bricks at the cops is bad, and the cops responding by bashing demonstrators' heads with their truncheons is equally bad.
Violence against property is almost universally perceived as a far less egregious antisocial act than violence against another person. Who are these misguided "worked up" people you are talking about?
Bill from Saginaw
Maybe you are right, but with the flurry of articles lately talking about the "cancer of occupy", I guess I've just missed any comparable outrage over police violence.
Perhaps he is talking about early commenter "gladtobeincanada", whose physical location allows him the luxury of the "violence is bad" moral posturing, relative to those of us in the US who have to deal with the shit in this country, the world's most violent state.
Because deep down people fear freedom and respect authority. Many cover their fear by taking the "moral high ground." Fear is the mind killer.
At one protest (Quebec, I think), the black bloc were all found to be wearing police issue boots. Nobody apparently gets too upset about police impostors or tactics.
One other important factor left out of discussions about modern activism is the fact that past movements succeeded because they had the numbers to impact the system financially. Today, half of women, minorities and other groups who successfully lobbied for their own rights in the past have become so assimiliated by the system that they reject and despise activism. Women are some of the most hateful spokesmen for the conservative movement today, and Barack Obama is a shamelessly steadfast spokesmodel for imperialism and militarism and state violence. Until the millions of unemployed or working poor can be motivated to go into the streets and join them, I think it's unrealistic and unfair to make demands of the Occupy movement as if a few thousand with no political support can create a paradigm shift just by repeating happy slogans....
"If the choice is between unruly demonstrations and elections, Occupy risks becoming a reason to turn to politics as usual," Van Hook writes.
Possibly, but I'm not sure this takes into full account the depth and breadth of popular disillusionment across the country. With Congress' approval rating at about 10%, a whopping 43% feel that people selected randomly from the phone book would do a better job than the current crop of corrupt and authoritarian politicians on Capitol Hill. (38% disagree with that assessment, while another 19% are not sure -- see Rasmussen.)
The Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates are currently polling at 6 and 7%, respectively, compared to the 0.12% and 0.4% of the vote they received in 2008.
And with 80% saying that corporations have too much influence over the political system, I wouldn't worry too much about a return to "politics as usual". People are rightly pissed off, and to me it seems like a rather sweeping assumption to claim to know how average people would react to "unruly demonstrations" against this corrupt system. (BTW, what is the suggested alternative to "unruly demonstrations"? As antonyms to "unruly," my thesaurus offers: easy-going, docile, mild and calm. Is that what we are advocating? Is that how we expect to win over the average pissed off citizen, much less extract any concessions from our bought-and-paid-for fascist government?)
Van Hook goes on to say, "Violence in opposition to the State relieves the State and the citizenry of any guilt for a brutal response to all protesters—and it refocuses from the nominal issue to the issue of violence by protesters."
First of all, can we at least attempt to distinguish between "self defense" and "violence"? By "violence in opposition to the State", I assume she means any physical resistance to police aggression. If that is indeed what she is saying, than the problem with this position is that it ensures a position of not only weakness, but powerlessness. The police know (because we are explicitly telling them) that there is absolutely NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of demonstrators fighting back against whatever they throw at us. Therefore they can act with impunity, knowing that at worst they might get suspended for a week or two (with pay). A video of the incident may go viral on YouTube and might generate some sympathy, but does that translate into action? When people watch young women getting brutalized with no one coming to their aid, do you think that inspires average people to join the movement? I doubt it.
Instead of this mantra of "nonviolence, nonviolence, nonviolence," we should at least be talking about effective methods of self defense and how to physically protect ourselves from police violence, how to resist their repression. The police train day in and day out for crowd control and protest neutralization, and yet, activists think they can go take an intersection shouting "whose streets, our streets", and that will be enough. And then, once their protest is predictably shut down and everyone's hauled off to jail, they think that shouting "the whole world is watching" will be enough to shame the police into behaving nicely. It isn't.
The problem with insisting on absolute adherence to complete nonviolence and purging anyone from your movement who may have another approach is that you are handicapping yourself, as well as everyone else in the movement, and you are making the job of the police that much easier. It is like playing chess while promising that won't use your queen, knight, rook or bishop. Why would you do that?
You raise a lot of good points, but I particularly want to agree with this one:
"Possibly, but I'm not sure this takes into full account the depth and breadth of popular disillusionment across the country. With Congress' approval rating at about 10%, a whopping 43% feel that people selected randomly from the phone book would do a better job than the current crop of corrupt and authoritarian politicians on Capitol Hill. (38% disagree with that assessment, while another 19% are not sure -- see Rasmussen.) "
If anything, I think that discontent in this country is often gravely underestimated-and part of the reason why is because somehow, I think a lot of the places where it is present are never really taken into account.
I would like to comment on the phone book poll, too. We actually have a name for that type of government -- demarchy, or rule by lot. I believe we should abandon democracy and move to demarchy. Democracy always leads to corruption and tyranny. Plato recognized this over 2000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” -Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I don't think this would be such a bad idea. It would certainly eliminate much of the corruption, and would be more representative of the general population too.
Good point.
When I see these kinds of poll numbers, I can't help but think that the American people as a whole are in a sort of pre-revolutionary mindset. The big fallacy that pacifists make is that strict nonviolence is necessary in order to "win over" the people to our side. The fact is, the people overwhelmingly agree with the political views of the Occupy movement, and therefore the invocation of Martin Luther King's strategy of nonviolence doesn't apply in this situation. The civil rights movement's strategy was to awaken the American people to the injustices of segregation and institutionalized racism. This was done through images of police viciously attacking nonviolent demonstrators with dogs and fire hoses. Through appealing to the conscience and morality of the nation, the civil rights movement was able to transform the country's attitudes toward race, which was 99% of the battle in overcoming segregation.
In our current situation though, the country already overwhelmingly agrees that the system needs to change. More and more people are growing fed up with all elected representatives, rejecting the two-party system and demanding an end to corporate influence in government. Our job is not to convince the general public that our cause is just, but to force the government to either radically reform itself or to relinquish power, in short, something of a revolution. This could conceivably be done nonviolently, but it's not likely because like any government, this one will use violence to protect the status quo. The question is whether the movement allows itself to be repressed, or defends itself. This is why I think a distinction needs to be drawn between self defense and violence, and for that matter, property destruction.
I think you are making a lot of sense here.
One could say that the way forward isn't really a question of "violent" or "non-violent" activist/protest confrontations with the police, but rather a more direct confrontation with the SYSTEM itself -that will preferrably not require violence.
The anology I am thinking of is with the 5th Republic movement and Party in Venezuela. They were overtly revolutionary, and when confronted violently, they defended themselves in kind, but the core strategy was not about violence, but rather "peaceful"or "orderly" overthrow of the system.
I think this may be the very kind of revolution the American people are prepared to support.
DC-CPH:
Excellent points. Maybe public disillusionment and disgust with the two party system is far more widespread today than it was back in the street protest era of the Vietnam War. I heartily agree with your point on the distinction between complete passivity and reasonable self-defense measures in response to police brutality. Most of all, I share your view that "purging" the Occupy movement of everybody who has a different approach is counter-productive and self-defeating.
My biggest problem with the black bloc movement faction has to do with the emphasis upon masking human faces. My concerns are both aesthetic and practical.
The visual effect of a chanting gang of black clad demonstrators wearing ski masks is that the immediate impact in onlookers is to evoke fear, aping the eerie machisimo of riot cops behind their visors, night raid Special Ops warriors, or - well - stereotypical terrorist evil doers.
If the primary goal is to conceal your identity from the surveillance state, why dress up like a sinister thug? Wear a clown mask, maybe Donald Duck, or Ronald McDonald. Even the classic, only semi-threatening "V" mask affiliated with Anonymous is preferable to facial attire commonly favored by executioners on gallows beheading duty, highwaymen, or Klan-like vigilantes. Enough with the dark theatre. Do you really think a massed Darth Vader presence confronting the police barricades is going to scare the cops into behaving humanely or running away?
The other downside is that the wearing of masks greatly facilitates the undercover dirty work of government agent provocateurs.
Now that buzz cut, clean shaven narc can commingle among his masked brothers and sisters, escalate the slogan rhetoric, toss out the first Molotov cocktail, and then slide seemlessly back into the anonymity of the crowd to gleefully watch the chaotic tit-for-tat street violence erupt. Mission accomplished.
The problem of COINTELPRO undercover police infiltrators and snitches is bad enough as it is. Everybody wearing masks is an invitation to make things worse, more violent, and even less accountable.
Bill from Saginaw
Those are good points Bill, about masking up in black and being intimidating. Your idea of being more creative with the strategy actually seems to be the approach that Occupy Oakland is now taking, for what it's worth: http://hellaoccupyoakland.org/from-oakland-hella-love/
Someone the other day posted stats on CD about the Green and Libertarian parties having 6 or 7 % poll numbers, when in the past they got less than 1%. Sorry, didn't save it.
For current polling numbers, see Public Policy Polling, here: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/02/romneys-electability-argument-weakening.html
2008 results here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_third_party_and_independent_presidential_candidates,_2008
Great points.
Yet another argument about the psychopathic Elite and their use of unidirectional (from the top down) violence and how we, the lower rungs of the social ladder, have to bend over and take it. Otherwise we are just as bad as the perpetrators.
When did it become a social crime to defend oneself from assault?
Even Ghandi counseled self-defense, including the use of force (violence) to protect oneself or one's family. (oops, I'm not supposed to mention that, am I?)
Correction, YOU interpret non-violence as 'bending over and taking it'. Interesting to see the application of the ROYAL 'we'. Step off the 'social ladder' being imposed on your thinking and see what the world looks like.
Let me ask you a question: Have you EVER been on the receiving end of unprovoked Police brutality, during a protest or just walking down the street? If so, did you feel the need to defend yourself?
Have you ever been subject to Police 'stop and search' based solely on your appearance?
The 'social ladder' exists and is used as a framing argument for those who may not understand the concepts of hierarchal class structure as imposed by the Elite.
Driving while black or Hispanic. Walking down any American street with dark skin. African-Americans are the paradigm of non-violence and look what it got them. When they rioted in the 50s and 60s, they got results, but after the government shot MLK, every other black leader got the message and things started rolling downhill again.
Let's see what happens in Greece over the next few months. Will they non-violently submit to slavery, or will they resist.
The Greek *people* (not necessarily the Greek elite) are unafraid to be creative. Plus, judging from what I've observed, the average Greek is more in tune with social concerns than I'd say even the average [white] American. They tend to see one another as extended family. It doesn't hurt that the conflict is seen as arising between foreign entities and their nation.
Galenwainwright, you are correct about Mahatma Gandhi:
" Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest".
Unfortunately Mao was correct when he said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
History goalie.
Again, I point out the publication of =Lotus In a Sea of Fire= by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh some 2 weeks before the Riverside speech of Dr. King. To which must be added, I am not a believer in coincidence.
Fighting for his people, Hanh levered Martin into the speech - on HIS time schedule - by publishing some private correspondence and averring to MLK that a =rooster would crow=. I make no apology for being this well informed.
Trylon.
Thanks for the information, Trylon. By coincidence, or serendipity, I received a book in the mail from a friend by Thich Nhat Hanh just this afternoon, "You are Here."
Also, thanks for the information about TNH and MLK.
I orderd Lotus in a Sea of Fire this evening. It has the subtitle "a Buddhist Proposal for Peace."
I, a lifelong Ghandian pacifist distinguish between various categories of violence. There is violence to beings and there is violence to property. Beings have feelings and free will, property to a much lesser degree. I believe "Ploughshares" and Edward Abbey have a cohesive arguement in the imperative to destroy objects of repression or harm. Capitalism elevates property above beings, Capitalism sacrifices beings on the altar of property.This article narrates as if Occupy decided to promulgate violence, what I see in Occupy is more weighted towards a nonviolented path. Most of the Occupy confrontations have been solely with violence emminating from the state forces. Some Occupy actions have had an element of property violence and a few with "being" violence. As we know it is difficult to sort which violence is agent provocatuers and which are rebels. Keep in mind the most strictly non-violent confrontations will absolutely be the target of agent provocatuers, there is no necessity on the part of the rebels to damage property in order for agent provocatuers to act. Kent State was two FBI agents firing over the heads of students in the direction of the National Guard. I propose that just as vegetarians do not eat meat (killing animals) yet may gracefully accomadate others in their meat eating, that Occupy and other rebels follow, what seems to be the political expedient for revolution, and allow others to make their own free will choices as to how they wish to overcome global scale violence. Much in the spirit of MLK not attacking the Black Panthers. That said I cannot condone aggressive "being" violence but defensive "being" violence might be acceptable. As we know Occupy is about implementing a democratic anarchistic process, avoiding agenda's so as to be able to include the whole 99.9%. This article does a disservice because it seems to claim Occupy has made a choice to use some forms of violence, I have not seen this decision. Occupy is very threatening to the state, just witness the Homeland security/police raids and the plethora of disinformation. Yes Ghandian non "being" violence is most powerful but condemning others who choose a variant path to your same goals may not be the wisest action.
I agree with you. Thank you for pointing out that Capitalism elevates property above beings, too. Edward Abbey was a great man.
I think the most important thing to consider is public perception. Anyone who conducts property damage as a form of political activism/expression should do so selectively and intelligently, in order to win more allies than enemies among the 99%. This is essentially what Anonymous does (to electronic property). If the state wants to define property damage as "violent" toward the 99%, there should be a PR campaign by activists to highlight why it really isn't. Furthermore, the Guerrilla Girls (who "defaced property" by posting posters/stickers at art museums) were able to deflect criticism by using humor in their campaigns. Humor is a great way to deflect negativity and even increase public sympathy. In fact, this is what was used to highlight the injustice of the actions of the "pepper-spraying" cop(s) (http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/).
Nonviolence is how the French Revolution, American Revolution, and Civil Wars were able to change the power structure. Oh, wait...
Change yes, improve debatable. But see my full analysis elswhere here.