[m2c] How Nonviolence Protects the State: Pacifism equals pacified to this activist

[usman x]

http://www.southendpress.org/

How Nonviolence Protects the State

by Peter Gelderloos
(new from South End Press)

 Ah, the "diversity of tactics, " dodge.
 Cf., "Pacifism as Pathology, " by Ward Churchill.

Since the civil rights era, the doctrine of nonviolence has enjoyed
near-universal acceptance by the US Left. Today protest is often
shaped by cooperation with state authoritieseven organizers of rallies
against police brutality apply for police permits, and
anti-imperialists usually stop short of supporting self-defense and
armed resistance. "How Nonviolence Protects the State" challenges the
belief that nonviolence is the only way to fight for a better world.
In a call bound to stir controversy and lively debate, Peter
Gelderloos invites activists to consider diverse tactics, passionately
arguing that exclusive nonviolence often acts to reinforce the same
structures of oppression that activists seek to overthrow.

Contemporary movements for social change face plenty of difficult
questions, but sometimes matters of strategy and tactics receive low
priority. Many North American activists fail to scrutinize the role of
nonviolence, never posing essential questions:

 - Is nonviolence effective at ending systems of oppression?
 - Does nonviolence intersect with white privilege and the 
   dominance of North over South?
 - How does pacifism reinforce the same power dynamic as patriarchy?
 - Ultimately, does nonviolence protect the state?

Peter Gelderloos is a radical community organizer. He is the author of
Consensus: A New Handbook for Grassroots Political, Social, and
Environmental Groups and a contributor to Letters From Young
Activists. He is the co-facilitator of a workshop on the prison
system, and is also involved in independent media, copwatching,
anti-oppression work, and anarchist organizing.

URGENT NEWS  Gelderloos has been detained by the Spanish courts. The
charges they have levied against him are quite serious. Please read
more here to see what you can do to help. [see end piece below]

----------------
http://www.utne.com/issues/2007_141/cover_story/12533-1.html

Arms and the Movement
Pacifism equals pacified to this activist
June, 2007 issue
By Peter Gelderloos
author, How Nonviolence Protects the State

I could spend plenty of time talking about the failures of
nonviolence. Instead, it may be useful to talk about its supposed
successes. Frequently cited examples are India's struggle for
independence from British colonial rule, the U.S. civil rights
movement of the 1960s, and the peace movement during the war in
Vietnam. Though they have not yet been hailed as a victory, the
massive protests in 2003 against the United States' invasion of Iraq
also have been applauded by nonviolent activists. In claiming these as
victories for nonviolence, however, pacifists have engaged in a
pattern of historical manipulation and whitewashing.

In India, the story goes, people led by Mahatma Gandhi built up a
massive nonviolent movement over decades and engaged in protest,
noncooperation, economic boycotts, hunger strikes, and other acts of
disobedience that made British imperialism unworkable. The movement
suffered massacres and responded with a couple of riots, but on the
whole, the movement was nonviolent and eventually won independence,
providing an undeniable hallmark of pacifist victory.

The actual history is more complicated. Many violent pressures also
influenced the British decision to withdraw. The British had lost the
ability to maintain colonial power after losing millions of troops and
resources during two extremely violent world wars. The armed struggles
of Arab and Jewish militants in Palestine from 1945 to 1948 further
weakened the British Empire, and these conflicts served as a clear
threat of what might result if the Indians gave up civil disobedience
to take up arms en masse.

India's resistance to British colonialism included enough militancy
that the Gandhian method should be viewed most accurately as one of
several competing forms of popular resistance. Pacifists white out
those other forms of resistance, ignoring important militant leaders
such as Chandrasekhar Azad, who fought in armed struggle against the
British colonizers, and revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, who won
mass support for bombings and assassinations as part of a struggle to
accomplish the "overthrow of both foreign and Indian capitalism." The
pacifist history of India's struggle cannot make any sense of the fact
that Subhas Chandra Bose, the militant candidate, was twice elected
president of the Indian National Congress, in 1938 and 1939.

Ultimately, the liberation movement in India failed. The British were
not forced out. Under pressure from a diverse resistance, they chose
to hand power over to the parts of the resistance they felt would best
uphold their interests, shifting from direct colonial rule to
neocolonial rule. What kind of victory allows the losing side to
dictate the time and manner of the victors' ascendancy? The British
continued to fan the flames of religious and ethnic separatism so that
India would be divided against itself, prevented from gaining peace
and prosperity, and dependent on military aid and other support from
Euro/American states.

Independence from colonial rule has given India more autonomy in a few
areas, and it has certainly allowed a handful of Indians to sit in the
seats of power. But the exploitation and the commoditization of the
commons and of culture have deepened. Moreover, India lost a clear
opportunity for meaningful liberation from a foreign oppressor. Any
liberation movement now would have to go up against the confounding
dynamics of nationalism and ethnic/religious rivalry in order to
abolish a domestic capitalism and government that are far more
developed.

The U.S. civil rights movement is one of the most important episodes
in pacifist history. Across the world, people see it as an example of
nonviolent victory. In truth, it was neither nonviolent nor a victory.

On the contrary, though pacifist groups such as Martin Luther King
Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference had considerable power
and influence, popular support, especially among poor black people,
gravitated toward militant revolutionary groups such as the Black
Panther Party. According to a 1970 Harris poll, 66 percent of African
Americans said the activities of the Black Panther Party gave them
pride, and 43 percent said the party represented their own views.

The nonviolent segments of the civil rights movement cannot be
distilled and separated from its revolutionary parts. Pacifist,
middle-class black activists, including King, got much of their power
from the specter of black resistance and the presence of armed black
revolutionaries.

To cite one example: In the spring of 1963, King's Birmingham campaign
was fixing to be a repeat of the dismally failed action in Albany,
Georgia, where a nine-month civil disobedience campaign that began in
1961 had demonstrated the powerlessness of nonviolent protesters
against a government with seemingly bottomless jails. Then, on May 7,
after continued police violence in Birmingham, 3,000 black people
began fighting back, pelting the police with rocks and bottles. Just
two days later, Birmingham -- up until then an inflexible bastion of
segregation -- agreed to desegregate downtown stores, and President
Kennedy backed the agreement with federal guarantees.

Within days, after local white supremacists bombed a black home and a
black business, thousands of black people rioted again, seizing a
nine-block area, destroying police cars, injuring several cops
(including the chief inspector), and burning white businesses. Within
weeks, Kennedy ended several years of stalling and called for Congress
to pass the Civil Rights Act. As King himself said, "The sound of the
explosion in Birmingham reached all the way to Washington."

In short, the largest victory of the civil rights movement came when
black people demonstrated that they would not remain peaceful forever.
Faced with the two alternatives, the white power structure chose to
negotiate with the pacifists, and we have seen the results: The
movement was successful in ending de jure segregation and expanding
the minuscule black petty bourgeoisie, but fell far short of full
political and economic equality, to say nothing of black liberation
from white imperialism. People of color still have lower average
incomes, poorer access to housing and health care, and poorer health
than white people. De facto segregation still exists. Political
equality is also lacking. Millions of voters, most of them black, are
disenfranchised (from voting for white candidates in a white political
system that reflects a white culture) when it is convenient to ruling
interests, and only three black senators have served since
Reconstruction.

The claim that the U.S. peace movement ended the war in Vietnam
contains the usual set of flaws. With unforgivable self-righteousness,
peace activists ignore the fact that 3 million to 5 million
Indochinese died in the fight against the U.S. military; tens of
thousands of U.S. troops were killed and hundreds of thousands
wounded; other troops were demoralized and had become ineffective and
openly rebellious; and the United States was losing political capital
(and going fiscally bankrupt) to a point where pro-war politicians
began calling for a strategic withdrawal.

Some pacifists claim that the huge number of conscientious objectors
who refused to fight points to a nonviolent victory. But far more
significant than passive conscientious objectors were the active
rebellions by black, Latino, and Native American troops. The
government's plan, in response to black urban riots, of taking
unemployed young black men off the streets and into the military,
backfired. Fragging, sabotage, refusal to fight, rioting in the
stockades, and aiding the enemy contributed significantly to the
decision to pull out ground troops. The Pentagon estimated that 3
percent of officers and noncommissioned officers killed in Vietnam
from 1961 to 1972 were killed by their own troops. In many instances,
soldiers in a unit pooled their money to raise a bounty for the
killing of an unpopular officer.

"By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam
is in a state approaching collapse," wrote Marine Corps Colonel Robert
D. Heinl in the Armed Forces Journal in June 1971, "with individual
units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and
noncommissioned officers, drug-ridden and dispirited where not near
mutinous. Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious."

Although they were less politically significant than resistance from
within the military, bombings and other acts of violence in protest of
the war on white college campuses should not be ignored in favor of
the pacifist whitewash. In the 1969-70 school year (September through
May), a conservative estimate counts 174 antiwar bombings on campuses
and at least 70 off-campus bombings and other violent attacks
targeting ROTC buildings, government buildings, and corporate offices.
Additionally, 230 campus protests included physical violence, and 410
included damage to property.

In conclusion, what was a very limited victory -- the withdrawal of
ground troops after many years of warfare -- can be most clearly
attributed to two factors: the successful and sustained violent
resistance of the Vietnamese, and the militant and often lethal
resistance of the U.S. ground troops themselves. The domestic antiwar
movement clearly worried those in power, but it had certainly not
become powerful enough that we can say it "forced" the government to
do anything, and in any case, its most forceful elements used
violence.

Perhaps confused by their own false history of the peace movement
during the Vietnam War, pacifist organizers against the invasion of
Iraq seemed to expect a repeat of a victory that never happened. On
February 16, 2003, as the U.S. government moved toward war with Iraq,
Agence France-Presse hailed weekend protests as "a stinging rebuke to
Washington and its allies." The protests were the largest in history;
excepting a few minor scuffles, they were entirely nonviolent. United
for Peace and Justice and some other antiwar groups even suggested
that the protests might avert war.

As we now know, they were totally wrong, and the protests were totally
ineffective. The invasion occurred as planned, despite the millions of
people nominally, peacefully, and powerlessly opposed to it. The
antiwar movement did nothing to change the power relationships in the
United States. President Bush received substantial political capital
for invading Iraq, and was not faced with a backlash until the war and
occupation effort began to show signs of failure due to the effective
armed resistance of the Iraqi people.

A good case study regarding the efficacy of nonviolent protest can be
seen in Spain's involvement with the U.S.-led occupation. Spain, with
1,300 troops, was one of the larger junior partners in the "Coalition
of the Willing." More than a million Spaniards protested the invasion,
and 80 percent of the Spanish population was opposed to it, but their
commitment to peace ended there; they did nothing to actually prevent
Spanish military support for the invasion and occupation. Because they
remained passive and did nothing to disempower the leadership, they
remained as powerless as the citizens of any democracy. Not only was
Prime Minister Aznar allowed to go to war, he was expected by all
forecasts to win reelection.

Until the bombings. On March 11, 2004, just days before the voting
booths opened, multiple bombs planted by an al-Qaida-linked cell
exploded on Madrid trains, killing 191 people and injuring 1,755.
Directly because of this, Aznar and his party lost in the polls, and
the Socialists, the major party with an antiwar platform, were elected
to power. The U.S.-led coalition shrunk with the loss of the Spanish
troops. Whereas millions of peaceful activists voting in the streets
like good sheep have not weakened the brutal occupation in any
measurable way, a few dozen terrorists willing to slaughter
noncombatants were able to cause the withdrawal of more than a
thousand occupation troops.

So much for the victories of pacifism.

The Madrid bombings do not present an example for action, but rather,
an important paradox: Do people who stick to nonviolent tactics that
have not proved effective in ending the war against Iraq really care
more for human life than the Madrid terrorists? From India to
Birmingham, nonviolence has failed to sufficiently empower its
practitioners, whereas the use of a diversity of tactics got results.
Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system
that is based on centralized coercion and violence.

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
the 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.

[Peter Gelderloos is an activist and community organizer who has
worked with Food Not Bombs and against the School of the Americas.
Excerpted from his book How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007),
published by South End Press, an independent, collectively run
publisher dedicated to the politics of radical social change;
www.southendpress.org.]

--------------------
http://www.southendpress.org/news/news/news10

Peter Gelderloos Detained in Spain

South End Author Peter Gelderloos Arrested While Copwatching in Spain

On 23 April, 2007, Javier Mazas and Peter Gelderloos were arrested
during the police response to a small demonstration organized by the
Assamblea de la Okupacion (Squatters Assembly) on La Rambla, in
Barcelona. At the demonstration, someone set off a petarda, a loud
device designed to shoot flyers into the air. The police response was
exaggerated, and they arrested one demonstrator. Peter, a US citizen,
was arrested blocks away from the demonstration when police became
suspicious based on his appearance. At the time, Peter was observing
the first arrest and making sure police were not mistreating the
detainee (in the US, Peter is active with Copwatch, as well as
Anarchist Black Cross, Food Not Bombs, and other groups).

The two are currently charged with illegal demonstration and public
disorder, and a terrorism-related article has been applied to impact
the severity of sentencing. Javier and Peter currently face between
three and six years imprisonment. State repression is proceeding from
two angles—first, police are falsely claiming they saw these two set
off the petarda, and second, the government is trying to portray a
small protest as a semi-terrorist act. The investigating judge yelled
at Peter that in the US he would be sent to Guantanamo for such an
action, and the prosecutor and judge have described the petarda as a
mortar, and the protest as an urban guerrilla action designed to send
the message that the squatters were a paramilitary force. The
government also initiated deportation proceedings against Peter, and a
7 year ban from the Schengen territories (most of western Europe),
falsely claiming he was in Spain illegally (Peter’s passport, which
could prove his legal entry, was locked up with him during the 48
hours allowed for appeal). After two days in custody, Javier was
released to await trial, while the judge imposed an unprecedented
30,000 euros bail on Peter, who was sent to Modelo prison to await
trial.

Surprisingly, the Barcelona collectives were able to raise bail in
just one day, and after 2 days in Modelo Peter was released on
provisional liberty, though he has to sign in at court every two weeks
and remain in Spain until trial, which might not begin for two years
or more.

The two arrested would like to raise money to recover the bail and pay
back the Barcelona collectives (the money is refunded after trial but
the groups here are already strapped and the sooner they get paid back
the better). They also need money to cover court costs. If you are
able to send money, email shigmagism (at) yahoo dot com for
directions, explaining how much you can send and whether it is a loan
(to defray bail, which is refunded eventually) or a gift (to help
cover legal costs).

An additional effect of the charges is that Peter is prevented from
returning to the US and continuing his work there. (He has support
obligations to several prisoners, had been planning on working with an
infoshop, and had been preparing a tour for his two recent books—How
Nonviolence Protects the State and Consensus: A New Handbook for
Grassroots Social, Political, and Environmental Groups).

Another important way to help is to organize solidarity with the
movement in Spain. Javier and Peter are not the first two to be framed
by the police in Barcelona. There is a strong climate of repression
here. Squatted social centers are evicted every month, and anarchists
and squatters are in prison or awaiting trial for fighting
gentrification, defending squats, fighting the prison system,
supporting immigrants, and showing solidarity with the Italian
anarchist movement (which itself was recently hammered by a strong
wave of repression). You can find more information about some of these
other cases at

http://karcelona.revolt.org/
http://presosalacalle.net/
http://www.325collective.com/prisons_juan.html

(much of this is in Spanish, underscoring the need for more
translations and communication)

-- 
"Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted 
with enslavement." Lee Maracle
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre
https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml
http://noii-van.resist.ca/