How Nonviolence Protects the State is a 2005 book by Peter Gelderloos which challenges the perception that strict nonviolence is the best way to change the world, as opposed to a diversity of tactics. The book is also heavily critical of nonviolence for being "wrapped in authoritarian dynamics, and its results are harnessed to meet government objectives over popular objectives. It masks and even encourages patriarchal assumptions and power dynamics. Its strategic options invariably lead to dead ends. And its practitioners delude themselves on a number of key points."
Summary
Nonviolence is Ineffective
Nonviolent activists like to claim the success of the Indian independence movement, the civil rights movement, the cap on nuclear weapons, the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war and the 2003 anti-war protests as excellent examples of nonviolence bringing about massive changes in society. But a closer examination reveals all of these successes to be overstated and whitewashed by nonviolent activists.
Indian independence only really occurred following the Second World War and armed resistance by Jewish and Arab militants in Palestine. Furthermore, Indian revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh and Chandra Shekhar Azad frequently endorsed assassinations and bombings while being hugely popular. Furthermore, India was never really granted independence, quickly being taken over by multinational corporations run by much of the Global North, and Britain hand-picked the new government, whilst fanning the flames of ethnic hatred to destabilize the country.
The anti-nuclear movement was again not exclusively nonviolent, with groups like Direct Action in Canada and guerillas like Marco Camenisch in Switzerland, and several major nuclear accidents forced governments to reconsider its use. The US civil rights movement did not entirely succeed, as people of colour still have to deal with lower wages, worse housing and healthcare in a form of de facto segregation. During the 1960s and 1970s, armed groups like the Black Panthers and people like Malcolm X had greater support than pacifists, a fact which has been covered up by governments, schools and charities. Nonviolent movements by MLK had largely failed, and it was only during violent moments like the Birmingham Uprising, when revolution looked like an imminent possibility, that the government began to legislate legal equality for African Americans.
The anti-war movement against the Vietnam War saw violence in numerous areas. Soldiers frequently assassinated their commanding officers fire stabbing, shooting, explosions and sometimes openly mutinied. Back home, civilians began to bomb and burn down military facilities and corporate assets that gained from the war. The purely nonviolent protests in 2003 against the Iraq War completely failed to stop the invasion or even hinder the ability of the US military to act, with the notable exception of the 2004 Madrid Train Station bombings in Spain (although this was committed by a far-right group which must be fought).
Pacifism's failure also flares up in World War II, where the Jewish community in Germany and Poland pursued a strategy of nonviolent resistance to the Nazis from 1933 and 1942 which completely failed to prevent the Holocaust, which only began to slow down with armed resistance (assassinations, bombing and arsons) like the Auschwitz and Warsaw Uprisings, which saved tens of thousands of people from their death.
Nonviolence is Racist
Given that nonviolence ignores the imminent need for racial justice and equality, and how it argues that violent resistance is wrong. Indigenous people, the descendants of slaves and refugees of war need to employ violence as a matter of survival, and claiming that this is ineffective or makes them just as bad as their oppressor is extremely dehumanizing. Many famous non-white activists (like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and MLK) are tokenized by white pacifists, and their support for armed struggle is extensively downplayed. The misrepresenting of prominent anti-racist activists to suit your own agenda and denial of anti-racists choosing their own path to liberation upholds white supremacist power structures.
Nonviolence is Statist
Nonviolence ensures a state monopoly on violence. States - the centralized bureaucracies that protect capitalism; preserve a white supremacist, patriarchal order; and implement imperialist expansion - survive by assuming the role of the sole legitimate purveyor of violent force within their territory. Any struggle against oppression necessitates a conflict with the state. Pacifists do the state’s work by pacifying the opposition in advance.
Nonviolence is Patriarchal
Nonviolence completely ignores patriarchy (a system of dividing people into two rigid gender roles, man and woman, and assigning men greater power, to great harm to social health). Pacifists also frequently claim that advocacy for armed struggle reinforces patriarchy, but this is based of shoddy pseudoscience (about women being naturally nonviolent, an idea that harms the feminist movement) and denial of feminist history.
Various examples of explicitly feminist groups, uprisings or groups with large female or queer membership which have rejected nonviolence and embraced armed struggle include the Nigerian Oil Platform Occupations, First and Second Intifadas in Palestine, Stonewall Rebellion, Vietcong, Black Panther Party, Mujeres Creando, the Zapatistas, Suffragettes, Weather Underground, Direct Action, Wimmin’s Fire Brigade and Rote Zora.
Women and queer people who supported violent struggle include, Laina Tanglewood, Sue Daniels, Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, Frankye Malika Adams, Sylvia Rivera, Ann Hansen, Emma Goldman, Mollie Steimer and Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, one of 60 indigenous american activists murdered by the FBI's paramilitaries in the 1970s.
Nonviolence is Tactically and Strategically Inferior
Nonviolence is Deluded
The Alternative: Possibilities for Revolutionary Activism
Criticism
Despite being one of thhe most read and popular books in revolutionary circles, the book has faced some strong criticism. In the article 'How Nonviolence is Misrepresented' (read here), it is argued that the book misrepresents nonviolence and fails to consider various debates and theories in the pacifist community.
External Links
- How Nonviolence Protects the State at theanarchistlibrary