Q: Can the use of violence in activism be justifiable? If so, at what cost must the use of violence come?A: First, I'm not a pacifist -- which, at its most basic, means I'm agnostic on the issue. That is, I leave the question open, rather than concluding in advance that violence can never be justified, that it always leads to more violence, is counterproductive and/or always morally wrong. Nor do I believe that any violence is morally equivalent to all violence. Beyond this fundamental agnosticism, I can think of two general situations in which I think violence IS justified. The first is self-defense, which I would go so far to describe as a basic human right. Everyone, in my mind, is entitled to violently defend herself or himself against harm. That doesn't mean it's the smartest thing to do in every given situation, but if we say that people are not entitled to self-defense, then we may as well say they're not entitled to anything. Second, I think violence is justified when a preponderance of evidence supports the conclusion that a SPECIFIC application of violence would directly bring about a changed situation in which less violence is present, AND when the people who will bear the risks and pay the costs inherent in this violence are the ones (predominantly, at least) choosing to do so. Notice this is in no way a justification for the recent US wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, in which greatly increased violence continues to result and there was no reason to believe beforehand that things would have turned out much better. And, of course, both occupations have long been opposed by the populations of those countries, the people upon whom the vast majority of risks and costs have been imposed by outsiders. Nonetheless, in cases where the first two conditions I laid out can be met, then I would even go so far as to say that it would be immoral for someone to refrain from engaging in this violence, because -- again, I'm talking about if and when those first two conditions CAN be met -- refraining to do so would result in the continuation of greater violence. And that gets to my biggest problem with pacifism. While there are many pacifists out there who've done incredibly good work for all the right reasons, I think pacifism is very often (perhaps always) a delusional individualist philosophy. Why? First, because violence is a social fact of the world in which we live. From its rise to the present day, capitalism is a system based on inequality maintained by violence, and everyone is a part of that, albeit in significantly different ways. The same is true of the nation-state, which acts as the most direct violent enforcer of social inequality, and some other dominant social institutions. Thus, as individuals, we cannot extricate ourselves from violence anymore than we can extricate ourselves from the broader social context in which we live, which is one of inescapable interdependence in which our actions always have consequences for other people whether we like it or not. Therefore -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- we don't have the ability to start from a position of true nonviolence and then decide whether to become involved in violence. Instead, we start from a position in which, very sadly, we are already deeply involved in violence. From that starting point, we can either act to increase or decrease violence in terms of the foreseeable consequences of our actions. Given this, what's called "non-violent" activism is always preferrable to "violent" activism when 1.) it is an experimental attempt to figure out what works and doesn't work in situations where the consequences of particular actions are unclear, and 2.) when it is likely to decrease long-term violence without increasing it in the immediate short term, as "violent" activism would. Again, the emphasis in on the consequences of the acts, not the acts themselves as though they existed in a social vaccuum. People who act "non-violently" based on an analysis of these consequences may engage in "tactical non-violence," alongside committed pacifists without being committed pacifists themselves. Pacifists quite often make arguments based on such consequnces, arguing that "violent" activism always leads to more violence and is therefore always counterproductive. While there are many situation in which this IS the case, there are many in which it is not, and I've found that when you push a lot of pacifists further, they haven't really examined the historical record of this issue -- that ultimately, they're just trying to rationalize the delusion that they can extricate themselves from violence and wash they're hands clean in order to get into heaven or stay true to some other form of moral absolutism. But really, I think a lot of pacifists, on some level, realize this about their motivations. One statement I've repeatedly heard pacifists declare is, "For me nonviolence isn't a tactical issue, it's a moral issue." But that doesn't make sense. Moral issues are always tactical issues insofar as morality has anything to do with the foreseeable how our actions affect others. So what does it mean to be a pacifist? I think a pacifist friend of mine spelled out the logical extention of pacifism when she and I were first getting involved in activism. She ended a long argument on the subject with this: "Non-violence isn't a tactical issue for me. I would rather that I die and everyone else in the world die than engage in an act of violence." If that's not a statement of moral absolutism detached from social consequences, I don't know what is.
Q: What are some historical examples of violent activism, on a small or large scale, that you think made a huge impact (public opinion, legislation, change of leadership, revolution) on a social justice issue?
A: Well, violence always impacts social justice, and it's easy to ome up with many examples where violence had a negative impact relative to social justice. However, the Cuban Revolution obviously dramatically increased the health, education and well-being of that country's population on many counts relative to several Latin American countries where the was successful in overthrowing progressive revolutions and reducing the countries to their century-old role as sources of cheap labor, raw materials and food exports for the US. In addition to Guatemala, El Salvador and Chile, one Latin American revolution the US overthrew, in this case by organizing a proxy terrorist army occurred in Nicaragua after the Sandinista Revolution of 1979. Had the US not targetted the civilian infrastructure of the popular social programs of the revolution (murdering healthcare workers, teachers, etc.) and forced the Nicaraguan government to spend over half of its budget on defense until the population finally submitted and elected the Sandinistas US back opposition in 1990, Nicaragua would be a hell of lot better off and much more democratic and egalitarian than Cuba (which would also probably be a lot better without a 50 year trade embargo and the US's longstanding policy of regime change, be it through well documented assasination attempts against Castro, at least one attempted invasion, and the economic strangulation already mentioned). Does that mean the violence of the Nicaraguan Revolution which overthrew the Somoza dictatorship (Somoza was known by Nicaraguans as "the last Marine" since his family's dictatorship was originally installed under the direct US military occupation of the country in the 1920s) wasn't justified? It was incredibly popular, meaning that the people took the risk. Had more Americans been willing to take more risks (probably not by engaging in violence) to reduce their own country's violence, the Sandinistas might have prevailed. Other positive effects of violence? As the Pentagon Papers revealed, the US began abandoning the ground war in Vietnam because Johnson's advisors said the domestic security of the US could not be maintained against the militancy of the anti-war movement and Black uprising if Johnson granted General Westmoreland's 1968 request for more draftees. The threat of unrest and resistance (in part violent unrest and resistance) from the left combined with resistance to the war within the military (including soldiers killing their officers) and of course the violent opposition of the Vietnamese people to thwart an imperial take-over of the country... although, of course, millions of Vietnamese were killed and the country left in ruins. Were violent slave uprisings justified? Was the US civil war? Was the resistance to Franco, Mussilini and Hitler? It was a violent riot that started the modern gay right movement. More relevant to our times, there is no ignoring the fact that what turned US public opinion so dramatically against the Iraq War was the dramatic increase of US casualties during the first two years of the occupation.
Sunday 5/19: Vigil for the Children of Gaza
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