How nonviolence protects the state

http://submedia.tv/stimulator/2010/05/31/the-resistance-is-blowing-up/
This week's guest is Peter Gelderloos

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Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project, on the Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
To learn more, see: http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
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Earlier in the show, I told you
about a militant action

in which a branch of the RBC
(|Royal Bank of Canada) went kaboom.

Predictably, any time brave peeps
try to take shit to the next level,

so-called radicals bring out the same
old tired arguments.

"The blowback from this action
will make it harder to organize."

"This action takes the movement
back 20 years"

"These people are irresponsible..."

Blah blah motherfuckin' blah.

Seriously.

These folks act like prisoners in a penitentiary

who suck up to the guards to get special privileges,

while snitching on those trying to start a slave revolt.

If they had it their way, these motherfuckers
would have us organizing marches and die-ins

til the end of the fucking world.

"According to my source, the end of the world
will be on February 14, in the year 2016"

"Valentine's Day.

Bummer."

To help us unravel why this annoyance keeps happening,

and since we have less than 4 years to go til
the whole fuckin' thing goes to shit,

I bring you Peter Gelderloos, author of
"How Nonviolence Protects the State".

Hey Pete, how the fuck are you?

[PG] Um, doin' pretty good today.

[SubMedia} So Peter, how the fuck
does nonviolence protect the state?

[PG] Basically the idea is that...

well especially in north america...

pacifists and non-violence advocates have had
a very defining role, and even a censoring role

in determining what other people's participation
can be in a whole range of social struggles,

and that the way that they have affected social struggles

has been, has made it very much easier for the state
to control those social struggles.

That non-violence plays a function
of recuperating social struggles,

of taking out their teeth,

of making them harmless,

so that they can just exist in this, in this sort of, um

cesspool of democratic plurality

in which everything is ok,

nothing can really be challenged or changed,

and ideas, opinions can be expressed uh, infintely,

without ever having any real impact,

without really translating into action.

Um, a lot of times, people will justify non-violence

making the very common sense, very simple
and ultimately false argument

that violence is the government's strongsuit,

and it makes no sense to fight the violence of the
government with violence of our own.

And what they're doing is conflating
very very different activities,

they're suggesting that somehow
defending yourself against police violence

or destroying commodities,

or taking over property,

fighting to free prisoners,

Indigenous people fighting to take over stolen land,

uh, things of this nature,

somehow has any similarities with
governments carpetbombing villages,

or using landmines,

or police torturing people,

or putting someone in prison,

that just because by some linguistic coincidence,
these difference things can be described as violence,

that somehow there's not only similarities
between them, but that they're the same thing,

and that one is going to reproduce the other.

When in fact, by fighting back,

people actually raise the stakes of repression
and oppression for the state,

and actually make real short term differences,

and I think also have a greater potentiality of
ultimately destroying the state and capitalism,

and helping us create those worlds that we want.

[SM] Why is militant resistance celebrated
throughout history?

Like for instance the American Revolution,

but when it happens in the present tense
it's discouraged?

[PG] I think it's because the left,
to a large extent subconsciously

has as its primary role to make resistance harmless.

States have recognized that resistance
will never disappear,

that struggles will never disappear,

and in the past they tried suppressing struggles
the first time that they showed their heads,

that there was any signs of them,

and that proved ineffective,

so nowadays the ways that states rule

is by accepting the inevitability
of conflict and resistance,

and just trying to manage it permanently.

And the best way to manage it
is to also have people in the resistance

who are managing it for you.

And that's really the role that non-violence plays,

and it's really encouraged, um,
by the media,

by various dominant political discourses,

that the state is allowed to use violence,

but people who are rebelling,

people who are angry,

people who are trying to um attack the system,

are aggressively isolated, slandered,
badmouthed, punished,

if they ever use violent tactics.

[REPORTER]* From the burned out shell of
an Ottawa bank in a quiet family neighbourhood

come loud cries of condemnation against the
self proclaimed anarchists who blew it up.

If blowing up this bank is advanced notice or a way
to boost the ranks of a murky anti-globalization movement,

it may have backfired.

[ Michel Juneau-Katsuya, "Security Expert" ]
There's been a wave of criticism

coming even from other special interest group.

[ REPORTER ] On the same website other activists

call the fire bombers everything from idiots to
domestic terrorists who crossed the line, too radical.

[Tom Quigley, Canadian Centre for Intelligence and
Security Studies] The mass of protesters in Canada
don't support violent activity to start with,

but there will be a minority that sees this as an inspir-
ational message in order to carry out further violent acts.

And so, in this way, the state and the media train -

especially more professionally-minded activists
within the resistance --

to enforce this code of non-violence so that they
never incur that loss in popularity or that bad press.

And this creates a self-policing function that...

and people who are sort of politicians of the movement
are more succeptible to it

because they're thinking often in terms
of their own careers.

[ Stimulator ] Give me some examples of how militant
actions have helped the motherfucking resistance.

[ Peter ] The revolutionary Anti Racist Action
in the Netherlands...

so we're talking about a very bourgeois
and democratic society, a wealthy society,

and also, this was um, this was a group
that was active in the 80's,

so relatively recently, the 80's
and the beginning of the 90's-

and they participated in a broader movement against Shell Oil company

specifically demanding divestment from South Africa.

So this is part of the larger anti-capitalist struggles
and anti-racist struggles

that had along their path certain goals
that they wanted to achieve,

certain things that they were fighting for
and more immediately

and so this group, Revolutionary Anti-Racist Action,

actually carried out a number of bombings
and sabotage campaigns against Shell,

and were successful in winning uh... that divestment,
in forcing Shell to pull out of South Africa

by causing them such immense amounts of damage,

also in the context of many other tactics,

including informational campaigns and boycotts
and protests and all these other things,

working together, had a very strong effect.

[Stimulator] Any time someone brings up the idea of
doing some gangsta shit, these punk asses bring up Gandhi.

What the fuck?

[ Peter ] Advocates of non-violence
they frequently say that non-violence works,

and the principal examples they use of that are
Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King in the U.S.

The problem with that is that this represents a great,
this constitutes a really great historical whitewashing.

That in fact the resistance in India
was incredibly diverse,

and Gandhi was a very important figure
within that resistance,

but the resistance was by no means
pacifist in its entirety,

that there were a number of armed guerrilla groups,
a number of militant struggles,

very important riots and other strong clashes,

which were a part of the struggle
for Indian independence.

So on the one hand Gandhi basically got negotiating
power from the fact that there were other...

other elements in the struggle which were
even more threatening to British dominance.

So the British specifically chose
to dialogue with Gandhi

because he was perhaps for them the least
threatening of the important elements of resistance.

And if those other elements had resisted, had not
existed, if those other elements had not existed,

they simply could have ignored Gandhi.

[ Stimulator ] Thanks Peter.

And that about does it for this edition of It's The End Of
The World As We Know It And I Feel Fine,

A triple cheese whoopwhoop w/bacon to the following slaves
for keeping this pulpit of vulgarity operational:

[SPELLING?] Gordon, Audre, Britain, Marine, Johal, Michael, Steven, Vincent, Secuda, Edwin, Jim, Peter, Michael, Rodney, Matthew, Dan, Bella, Carlos, Anastasios, Ryan, and Rhea...

I'd also like to let you all know that I have uploaded
a new piece of my upcoming film "End Civ"

for links to militant actions or to comment
on this show, just visit my fucking website

Now go out there and smash pacifism.

remember kids, you can ___
high quality video of this show at: