In Question of the “Peaceful Protest” (and in Defense of “Violence”)
- Introduction
The latest public discourse surrounding methods of nonviolent and violent protest pits these two strategies against one another, but fails to acknowledge what each truly means. Definitions of either are non-specific and have typically led to the condemnation of violence in all its forms. In particular, rioting and looting have been denounced as methods that supposedly counteract the initial message that the “peaceful protest” hopes to accomplish. The riot is often seen as “the voice of the voiceless” and as a symptom of political injustice when in reality, the “voiceless” are consciously articulating their sentiments.
Structural change necessitates conflict: effective change is dependent on how debilitating the conflict is to the institution. When people’s peaceful protests are ineffective, people come not to expect justice from nonviolence, and rightfully so. In fact, even the success of the “peaceful protest” is dependent on the possibility of violence against the institution. Is the threat of violence not a violent act in and of itself?
2a. The Rhetoric of Nonviolence
Shon Meckfessel defines nonviolence as “a rhetorical strategy in which the very definition relies on calling violence into the speakers’ mind even as the speaker disavows it.” In other words, for nonviolence to exist effectively, violence also has to exist, even if just in theory. Nonviolence is not, however, an aversion to conflict. It is also obviously not an armed struggle. Instead, what makes nonviolence so powerful is the potentiality of violence.
Nonviolence advocates seem to confuse the dismissal of nonviolence with a commitment to direct force no matter its legitimacy, like the instilment of an illegitimate authoritarian government after a coup. The phrase “Fuck the police” has become inherently violent and has led to fear in those who oppose it, including peaceful protestors. But even if language is read as violent, does it deserve to be met with brute police force? The issue is that “violence” is harder to define than “armed.”
The term “strategic nonviolence” has been replaced by “unarmed insurrection,” but this creates a false dichotomy between “nonviolent” and “armed,” which further perpetuates a dualism and unnecessary revulsion towards “armed” conflict. People often confuse that false dichotomy of violence versus nonviolence by associating violence with revolution and nonviolence with reform when in reality, violence is congruent with action and nonviolence with inaction. The choice of violence versus nonviolence is actually a choice between action and inaction.
There is no set definition for “violence” and “nonviolence.” As mentioned before, words with no action can still be read as violent. We do, however, know that nonviolence does not mean passivity, and as such, a nonviolent protest at least demands intervention — crowd control, defusing of counter-protest, the list goes on — even if it does not demand being armed or physically violent. Violence and nonviolence are actually interdependent and can work together to achieve a set goal. If this is the case, then why do people insist on labeling protests as “peaceful” from the get-go? It’s important to look at the way language is being used in these conversations.
2b. The Function of Language in Rhetorical Strategies
The language used to describe rioting is sometimes similar to that used to describe warfare. In reality, the privilege of true “war” is given only to the elites whereas the riot is associated with the poor and otherwise powerless. If we look at labor movements in America, even these have used coercion to persuade, this being the “brawl” (another term for the riot). A cornerstone of American society has been to limit government, often by street revolt. This allows for checks and balances by the American people on their own government, simultaneously expressing people’s agency. What is this, if not the contemporary “riot and looting”?
Unfortunately, democracies have institutionalized protest and persuasion, so these methods alone — that is, without violence — may not be enough to counter the state, and this is a current dilemma being seen with the spread of “peaceful protests.” Labeling and enforcing peace at a demonstration detracts from and attempts to purify the sentiments that precede the protest itself.
The focus should be on the reason why people take action instead of how they are doing so, as this further demonizes protestors, especially Black ones. Mass media is also complicit in the perpetuation of anti-Black messaging by focusing on protest tactics instead of police tactics. All protest actions are inherently conflictual once the police arrive: the police arrive with the sole purpose of neutralizing resistance – physically, morally, and psychologically – and repressing protesters.
In the words of folks from the Youth Justice Coalition in Los Angeles: “Showing up to a conflict with the mentality that you’re labeling protesters as ‘peaceful’ totally erases the power dynamic between a militarized force and unarmed residents of color. AND even if people at protests are doing things that are deemed ‘not peaceful,’ it’s either as a response to systemic violence OR they’re police/agents themselves.”
3a. Debunking Negative Connotations of Violence
Just as anyone can participate in nonviolent strategies, the riot is easily accessible: small amounts of violence by a large group of people seems to be most effective. Obviously, it is non-white people that are most at risk of state violence following a riot, but if the program becomes focused on not risking vulnerable populations, the only answer is reform and retreat. Similar to the need for ongoing conflict, there is a need for risk in order to foster a sense of urgency. On the other hand, when there there is a total avoidance of risk, the option of nonviolence becomes condescending: nonviolence becomes a performance rather than an effective strategy.
For nonviolence to mean something, the subject must already be strong but choose nonviolence. By doing so, the subject negates the oppressor’s idea that they are weak and must choose nonviolence because of that weakness, instead displaying nonviolence as a form of self-restraint: the subject is strong enough to be violent but chooses not to. When there is no structural power to wield, adherents of nonviolence and the contemporary “peaceful protest” must hope for their oppressors’ benevolence. This is a strategy that puts these folks at the mercy of the institutions they already know lack mercy and conscience.
As has been iterated before by people such as Jackie Wang and others, the innocent versus non-innocent binary not only serves to uphold anti-Black frameworks, but also convolutes the reality of situations. The rhetoric of guilt in the context of protest situations reaffirms the anti-Black structure of policing, preemptive policing in particular. When protests affirm their alleged innocence and peace, they are in reality whitewashing themselves and attempting to render themselves legible and credible to white civil society’s psyche. In other words, the distinction between peaceful and non-peaceful protests, grounded in anti-blackness, are made for the white supremacist body-politic. The rhetoric of innocence forces protesters to label their actions in accordance to white-supremacist standards.
3b. The Validity of Rioting as an Effective Strategy
In reality, violence against state property does not equate to the presence of torture and crimes against humanity, as opposed to that caused by institutions and regimes. Armed dissent has become less popular due to the increase in surveillance brought on by the neoliberal age, but militancy has not vanished. In fact, counterhegemonic militancy is explained by describing two forms of militancy: one can be labeled “The Party” and the other, “The Riot.” The Party is a top down approach where orders come down the chain of command to execute violence, similar to the guerrilla, terrorist groups, and the like. The Riot, on the other hand, is a bottom up strategy that is spontaneous, decentralized, and does not rely on hierarchy.
An analysis of revolts throughout history shows that it is mass defiance that works rather than formal organization. Lower-class people respond to the underlying force of insurgency, not organizations; this is especially noticeable in labor strikes. Disrupting institutions means withdrawing a dependable resource – like labor – and that capacity for withdrawal becomes a natural resource. When considering contemporary examples of the political riot, we see that there is a clear connection between the initial dismissal of the public’s concerns and the ensuing property destruction. After Mike Brown was murdered by a pig in Ferguson, Missouri, there were riots and looting to demonstrate the exhaustion and pain the Black community faced; this was not their first or last time. When the grand jury refused to bring Mike’s killer to trial, the demonstrations went national; this was the reach of the initial Black Lives Matter movement. When Freddie Gray was violently killed in Baltimore, Maryland, the riots in his name were largely ignored by media and political figures until the massive burning of a CVS pharmacy during one of these riots.
Similar to the way workers withdraw labor during a “labor strike,” the withdrawal of passivity from a marginalized community is interpreted by some as a “social strike.” The more nuanced version of this, however, would understand the riot as a collective force that manifests material antagonism to police and property relations; a “social appeal” instead. Unlike a strike, the social appeal by riot is not a refusal to participate entirely but is instead a refusal to act tame by participating in a “respectable” fashion. When the public creates immediate material consequences, such as property destruction and looting, there is a subversion of power that begs the institution to follow public opinion or perish. It is not necessarily the property damage that is highlighted here, but the willingness to engage in it. The riot occurs when there are limited conditions, leading people to desperate measures. There is a sense of condescension and racism when (specifically Black) rioters are likened to mindless animals rather than humans consciously expressing grief and anger through violence.
In a similar vein, Frantz Fanon wrote: “The existence of an armed struggle shows that the people are decided to trust to violent methods only. The native of whom they have never stopped saying that the only language the native understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force. In fact, as always, the settler has shown him the way he should take if he is to become free. The argument the native chooses has been furnished by the settler, and by an ironic turning of the tables it is the native who now affirms that the colonialist understands nothing but force. The colonial regime owes its legitimacy to force and at no time tries to hide this aspect of things.” (82-3, Wretched of the Earth)
4a. The Illusion of Property Rights as a Capitalist Tool
If violence is consistently defined as harm or threat on living beings, why do we keep having conversations likening violence to burning buildings and broken windows? This gears the conversation towards philosophy and theory, but nonetheless has material manifestations. Massino De Angelis calls this the “value struggle,” in which the antagonism that was previously hegemonically forced is made present, calling into question the values of the opposing groups. If the oppressed group does not value what is a “fact of life” for the oppressor — for example, the white oppressor’s acceptance that racism and police brutality are merely a “fact of life” versus the oppressed’s desire to subvert the system that makes this possible — then there is a value struggle.
By applying this theory to greater society, we can see that marginalized groups are rendered speechless in the face of dominant relational modes; that border line between opposing groups is the line of conflict. The value struggle only exists by questioning what was previously thought to be unquestionable. Any time dominant structures are questioned, there is a struggle of values between opposing groups.
In the “Second Treatise of Government,” philosopher John Locke – whose thoughts formed the basis for some of the United States’ most foundational values – explains that the law protects bodies and their commodities, inextricably linking people to their property. This equivalence of human rights to property rights is capitalist in nature and yet, self-proclaimed liberals’ own ideology finds this admittance too embarrassing to mention, which is why people are so quick to defend property even while acknowledging that property damage hardly subverts the institutions it symbolizes. Riots serve to illuminate this painfully embarrassing equivalence and the ensuing value struggle. The consequential denial of the capitalist superstructure is second-nature to anyone who has not yet divested from capitalist ideology.
Capitalism is deeply entrenched in the fabric of the country, but questioning and re-inventing meaning is necessary to bring change. People must have their core values challenged to then challenge the system they say needs to be changed. Post-structuralist thinkers have agreed that the “subject” and “subject position” are a socially-constructed process and position, respectively, by which an individual can speak and be understood as a speaker. The agreement that these are socially-constructed inevitably verifies that they can also be socially-challenged and thus, changed. Forming new subjects and abolishing old ones necessitates violence because none, especially those with the greatest power, will relinquish that power without violence. Frantz Fanon explains that violence on the colonizer’s body is required to disprove its inviolability; the post-colonial subject is thus borne of violation.
To defeat capitalist social structures, one must defeat what is at the heart of capitalism: the value of property over life.
4b. Property Damage: A Symbolic Liberation from Capitalism
Public non-injurious violence, such as property destruction, creates new subjects without adhering to the dehumanization that is a cornerstone of capitalism: the subject inevitably unlearns their submissiveness. Violence then becomes the integration of trauma into unity.
Property destruction is not just violence against inanimate objects; it is violence against what that property is used for, those who get to decide that, and what property represents. The verb “profane” describes the process of transforming the sacred into something mundane again, to be used by humans, and that is exactly what property destruction attempts to do: give back what rightfully belongs to the public. Property destruction targets not only the institutions that own the property, but also the relationship to property. The destruction of personal property during riots is minimal and never the goal of anticapitalist property destruction.
The way some bystanders choose to physically defend property by hurting protestors shows the way some people actively choose property over life, even when the property does not belong to them. In the United States, protestors attacking property is synonymous to them attacking the only thing this country sees as sacred, and this is why targeted property destruction is so powerful: it breaks the myth surrounding the sacredness of private property and becomes a tool for liberation.
References
This piece was inspired by Shon Meckfessel’s “Nonviolence Ain’t What it Used to Be: Unarmed Insurrection and the Rhetoric of Resistance.” You can find the full work at akpress.org.