"The racism of the judicial system, a major and violent component of our society, though one rarely prioritized for opposition by pacifists, has had a major impact on the American psyche. Violence and criminality are nearly interchangeable concepts (consider how comfortable pacifists are in using the terminology of statist morality- for example, “justice”- as their own), and a chief purpose of both concepts is to establish blame. Just as criminals deserve repression and punishment, people who use violence deserve the inevitable karmic violent consequences; this is integral to the pacifist position. They may deny believing that anyone deserves to have violence used against them, but a stock argument common among pacifists is that revolutionaries should not use violence because the state will then use this to “justify” violent repression. Well, to whom is this violent repression justified, and why aren’t those who claim to be against violence trying to un-justify it? Why do nonviolent activists seek to change society’s morality in how it views oppression or war, but accept the morality of repression as natural and untouchable?
This idea of the inevitable repressive consequence of militancy frequently goes beyond hypocrisy to outright victim-blaming and approval of repressive violence. People of color who are oppressed with police and structural violence every day are counseled against responding with violence because that would justify state violence already mobilized against them. Victim-blaming was a key part of pacifist discourse, strategy even, in the 1960s and 70s, when many white activists helped justify state actions and neutralize what could have become anti-government outrage at violent sate repression of black and other liberation movements, such as the police assassinations of Panther organizers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Rather than supporting and aiding the Panthers, white pacifists found it more fashionable o state that they had “provoked violence” and “brought this on themselves."

Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State - Nonviolence is Racist
@6 months ago with 89 notes
#nonviolence #militancy #pacifism #panthers #black panthers #black panther party #bpp #jusicial system #america 

"The point is not that white activists, in order to be anti-racist, need to uncritically support any Asian, Latin@, indigenous, or black resistance group that pops up. However, there is a Eurocentric universalism in the idea that we are all part of the same homogeneous struggle and white people at the heart of the Empire can ell people of color and people in the (neo)colonies the best way to resist. The people most affected by a system of oppression should be that he forefront of the struggle against that particular oppression, yet pacifism again and again produces organizations and movements of white people illuminating the path and leading the way to save brown people, because the imperative of nonviolence overrides the basic respect of trusting people to liberate themselves. Whenever white pacifists concern themselves with a cause that affects people of color, and resisters among the affected people of color do not conform to the particular definition of nonviolence in use, the white activists place themselves as the teachers and guides, creating a dynamic that is remarkably colonial. Of coarse, this is largely a function of whiteness (a socially constructed worldview taught diffusively to all people identified by society as “white”). Militant white activists can and do incur similar problems when they disrespect allies of color by dictating the appropriate, orthodox method of struggle."

Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State - Nonviolence is Racist
@6 months ago with 275 notes
#why nonviolence protects the state #pacifisim #militancy #militant revolution #privilege #violence #nonviolence 

"Time and again, people struggling not for some token reform but for complete liberation- the reclamation of control over our own lives and the power to negotiate our own relationships with the people and world around us-will find that nonviolence does not work, that we face a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative. We must reclaim histories of resistance to understand why we have failed in the past and how exactly we achieved the limited successes we did. We must also accept that all social struggles, except those carried out by a completely pacified and thus ineffective people, include a diversity of tactics. Realizing that nonviolence has never actually produced historical victories toward revolutionary goals opens the door to considering other serious faults of nonviolence."

Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State
@6 months ago with 12 notes
#nonviolence #pacifisim #violence #militant revolution #real change 

"White pacifists (and even bourgeois black pacifists) are afraid of the total abolition of the white supremacist, capitalist system. They preach nonviolence to the people at the bottom of the racial and economic hierarchy precisely because nonviolence is ineffective, and any revolution launched ‘by those people,” provided it remains nonviolent, will be unable to fully unseat white people and rich people from their privileged positions. Even strains of nonviolence that seek to abolish the state aim to do so by transforming it (and converting the people in power); thus, nonviolence requires that activists attempt to influence the power structure, which requires that they approach it, which means that privileged people, who have better access to power, will retain control of any movement as the gatekeepers and intermediaries who allow the masses to “speak truth to power."

Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State - Why Nonviolence is Racist
@6 months ago with 44 notes
#privileged #nonviolence #violence #pacifists #pacifism #reform #white supremacist #white supremacy #racism 

"Nonviolence declares that the American Indians could have fought off Columbus, George Washington, and all the other genocidal butchers with sit-ins; that Crazy Horse, by using violent resistance, became part of the cycle of violence, and as “as bad as” Custer. Nonviolence declares that Africans could have stopped the slave trade with hunger strikes and petitions, and that those who mutinied were as bad as their captors; that mutiny, a form of violence, led to more violence, and thus, resistance led to more enslavement. Nonviolence refuses to recognize that it can only work for privileged people, who have a status protected by violence, as the perpetrators and beneficiaries of a violent hierarchy."

Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State- Nonviolence is Racist
@6 months ago with 1772 notes
#racism #why nonviolence protects the state #nonviolence is racist #militant #pacifism #nonviolence 
"The racism of the judicial system, a major and violent component of our society, though one rarely prioritized for opposition by pacifists, has had a major impact on the American psyche. Violence and criminality are nearly interchangeable concepts (consider how comfortable pacifists are in using the terminology of statist morality- for example, “justice”- as their own), and a chief purpose of both concepts is to establish blame. Just as criminals deserve repression and punishment, people who use violence deserve the inevitable karmic violent consequences; this is integral to the pacifist position. They may deny believing that anyone deserves to have violence used against them, but a stock argument common among pacifists is that revolutionaries should not use violence because the state will then use this to “justify” violent repression. Well, to whom is this violent repression justified, and why aren’t those who claim to be against violence trying to un-justify it? Why do nonviolent activists seek to change society’s morality in how it views oppression or war, but accept the morality of repression as natural and untouchable?
This idea of the inevitable repressive consequence of militancy frequently goes beyond hypocrisy to outright victim-blaming and approval of repressive violence. People of color who are oppressed with police and structural violence every day are counseled against responding with violence because that would justify state violence already mobilized against them. Victim-blaming was a key part of pacifist discourse, strategy even, in the 1960s and 70s, when many white activists helped justify state actions and neutralize what could have become anti-government outrage at violent sate repression of black and other liberation movements, such as the police assassinations of Panther organizers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Rather than supporting and aiding the Panthers, white pacifists found it more fashionable o state that they had “provoked violence” and “brought this on themselves."
Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State - Nonviolence is Racist
6 months ago
#nonviolence #militancy #pacifism #panthers #black panthers #black panther party #bpp #jusicial system #america 
"White pacifists (and even bourgeois black pacifists) are afraid of the total abolition of the white supremacist, capitalist system. They preach nonviolence to the people at the bottom of the racial and economic hierarchy precisely because nonviolence is ineffective, and any revolution launched ‘by those people,” provided it remains nonviolent, will be unable to fully unseat white people and rich people from their privileged positions. Even strains of nonviolence that seek to abolish the state aim to do so by transforming it (and converting the people in power); thus, nonviolence requires that activists attempt to influence the power structure, which requires that they approach it, which means that privileged people, who have better access to power, will retain control of any movement as the gatekeepers and intermediaries who allow the masses to “speak truth to power."
Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State - Why Nonviolence is Racist
6 months ago
#privileged #nonviolence #violence #pacifists #pacifism #reform #white supremacist #white supremacy #racism 
"The point is not that white activists, in order to be anti-racist, need to uncritically support any Asian, Latin@, indigenous, or black resistance group that pops up. However, there is a Eurocentric universalism in the idea that we are all part of the same homogeneous struggle and white people at the heart of the Empire can ell people of color and people in the (neo)colonies the best way to resist. The people most affected by a system of oppression should be that he forefront of the struggle against that particular oppression, yet pacifism again and again produces organizations and movements of white people illuminating the path and leading the way to save brown people, because the imperative of nonviolence overrides the basic respect of trusting people to liberate themselves. Whenever white pacifists concern themselves with a cause that affects people of color, and resisters among the affected people of color do not conform to the particular definition of nonviolence in use, the white activists place themselves as the teachers and guides, creating a dynamic that is remarkably colonial. Of coarse, this is largely a function of whiteness (a socially constructed worldview taught diffusively to all people identified by society as “white”). Militant white activists can and do incur similar problems when they disrespect allies of color by dictating the appropriate, orthodox method of struggle."
Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State - Nonviolence is Racist
6 months ago
#why nonviolence protects the state #pacifisim #militancy #militant revolution #privilege #violence #nonviolence 
"Nonviolence declares that the American Indians could have fought off Columbus, George Washington, and all the other genocidal butchers with sit-ins; that Crazy Horse, by using violent resistance, became part of the cycle of violence, and as “as bad as” Custer. Nonviolence declares that Africans could have stopped the slave trade with hunger strikes and petitions, and that those who mutinied were as bad as their captors; that mutiny, a form of violence, led to more violence, and thus, resistance led to more enslavement. Nonviolence refuses to recognize that it can only work for privileged people, who have a status protected by violence, as the perpetrators and beneficiaries of a violent hierarchy."
Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State- Nonviolence is Racist
6 months ago
#racism #why nonviolence protects the state #nonviolence is racist #militant #pacifism #nonviolence 
"Time and again, people struggling not for some token reform but for complete liberation- the reclamation of control over our own lives and the power to negotiate our own relationships with the people and world around us-will find that nonviolence does not work, that we face a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative. We must reclaim histories of resistance to understand why we have failed in the past and how exactly we achieved the limited successes we did. We must also accept that all social struggles, except those carried out by a completely pacified and thus ineffective people, include a diversity of tactics. Realizing that nonviolence has never actually produced historical victories toward revolutionary goals opens the door to considering other serious faults of nonviolence."
Peter Gelderloos, Why Nonviolence Protects the State
6 months ago
#nonviolence #pacifisim #violence #militant revolution #real change