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: