25 quotes
The imperative of nonviolence overrides the basic respect of trusting people to liberate themselves.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
The people most affected by a system of oppression should be at the forefront of the struggle against that particular oppression.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
It seems that the only form of violence [pacifists] consistently oppose is rebellion against the state.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
We believe that tactics should be chosen to fit the particular situation, not drawn from a preconceived moral code.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
If pacifists are unable to defend their own gains, what will they do when they don’t have the organized violence of the police?
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
Oppressive social hierarchies exist and replicate themselves in the behavior of all subjects and must be overcome internally as well as externally.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
Nonviolence refuses to recognize that it can only work for privileged people, who have a status protected by violence, as the perpetrators and beneficiaries of a violent hierarchy.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
Losing fights can still be better than not fighting at all, because it empowers people, and teaches us that we can fight.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
Free speech does not empower us, and it does not equal freedom. Free speech is a privilege that can be — and is — taken away by the government when it serves their interests.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
The state is not a passive thing. If it wants to repress a movement or organization, it does not wait for an excuse, it manufactures one.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
In such a society (e.g. ours), pacifism really is passivism because not committing violence really has more to do with avoiding culpability than with taking responsibility.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
For revolutionary activists, however, victory comes from building power and out-strategizing the state. Such a path requires constant assessment and self-criticism.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
Arguing against nonviolence and in favor of a diversity of tactics should not at all imply a satisfaction with the strategies or cultures of past militant groups.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
People must build a culture that allows everyone to self-identify in terms of gender and that supports us as we build healthy relationships and heal from generations of violence and trauma.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
In practice, pacifist morality demonstrates that it is more acceptable for radicals to rely on the violence of the government for protection than to defend themselves.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
Put quite plainly, nonviolence ensures a state monopoly on violence. States 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.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
An anarchist is not someone who favors chaos but someone who favors the total liberation of the world through the abolition of capitalism, government, and all other forms of oppressive authority, to be replaced by any number of other social arrangements, proven or utopian.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
If a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system based on centralized coercion and violence, and if that movement does not realize and exercise the power that makes it a threat, it cannot destroy such a system.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
Nonviolence in the hands of white people has been and continues to be a colonial enterprise. White elites instruct the natives in how to run their economies and governments, while white dissidents instruct the natives in how to run their resistance.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)
The contradiction in ostensibly revolutionary pacifism is that revolution is never safe, but to the vast majority of its practitioners and advocates, pacifism is about staying safe, not getting hurt, not alienating anyone, not giving anyone a bitter pill to swallow.
How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)