The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Is Violence Ever Justified? Does Violence Ever Solve Anything?

Painting: Washington Crossing the Delaware

Painting: Washington Crossing the Delaware

I notice a fair number of sweet, well-meaning people saying “violence is never justified.”

This is a position I have a lot of respect for, though it’s not my position. The hard-core pacifist, who always opposes violence, is a person of great bravery.

But to say NEVER is a strong statement. In the US, if you are saying “violence is never justified” with respect to the Baltimore riots, for example, you must also oppose all the wars and killing the US is involved in.

In practical terms, that must mean that you believe that every politician who voted for war is more unethical than any rioter. You must believe that George W. Bush and Barack Obama are far fouler individuals than any rioter.

Ethical outrage must be proportionate to the violence and the violence in Baltimore is nothing compared to the scale of the Iraq War, or Afghanistan, or drone murders. Nor is it anything compared to the scale of police violence against Americans, especially African-Americans.

NEVER is a big word.

What most people really mean is that they condemn non-state sanctioned violence, except sometimes, like, say, in the American Revolution, or the Maidan protests.

In fact, they approve of some violence and not of other violence. Most such people, were you to dig down hard enough, are hypocrites, but some aren’t, even if one disagrees with them. If you were to allow the USSR the right to crush revolutions along with the US, and condemn the American revolution, you wouldn’t be a hypocrite, just not a very nice person.

Trying to argue about popular will and/or democracy is a slippery road, mind. For example, the numbers on the American revolution with which I’m familiar don’t show the majority of the population being for leaving British rule. Maidan overthrew a democratically elected government in the Ukraine and the French revolution was made by the Paris mob, while most people living in rural areas of France (the vast majority of the population) would have preferred to keep the Ancien Regime.

Relatedly, violence often does solve problems. The Native Americans cleansed from North America were “problems” to the settlers, and violence dealt with that problem just fine. Fascist Germany was a problem to most non-German countries, Jews, Gypsies, Socialists, Gays, and many others and violence solved that problem. Carthage was a problem to Republican Rome and violence solved that problem.

And riots, rather better organized than the Baltimore ones, granted, solved the Parisian problem with the old Regime, while the Terror, terrible as it was, did make sure that there was to be no going back–even if France was to alternate between Republics and Empires for some time.

Violence often solves problems and it often does so rather permanently.

Here is what history actually teaches us about violence: People who are better at violence than those they fight get the spoils and often keep them for a long time. You do know that the Angles and Saxons invaded Britain, yes? Then the Normans? Those people did very well out of killing the locals and wiped them almost entirely from the most fertile parts of what is today England.

Europeans conquered most of the world and Europeans today (and their descendants) are powerful and relatively rich compared to almost everyone they conquered. Many economic historians believe that imperialism and colonialism were required for the industrial revolution to really take off; and definitely for capitalism to find sufficient markets. Violence worked very nicely for Europe and especially for England and the United States.

Of course, history marches on, and eventually everyone will get their turn at the curb, their face stomped on. But history can take a long time, and multiple generations can enjoy the fruits of violence–theirs or their ancestors. Violence only doesn’t solve anything in the sense that nothing solves anything—extend history enough in any direction and all peoples eventually have a really bad day (or really bad hundreds of years or millennia). Heck, eventually, all species will go extinct.

I don’t know if violence is ever justified. But I do know that violence often does “solve” problems and I do know that peoples who insist on being entirely non-violent or bad at violence eventually discover that everything they have they hold at the sufferance of those who are good at violence.


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54 Comments

  1. markfromireland

    I do not have respect for the “violence is never justified” position although I agree with you that “The hard-core pacifist, who always opposes violence, is a person of great bravery. So what? There is no law of nature that states that being courageous and being correct are coexistent in the same person. The soldiers of the Waffen SS were renowned for being exceptionally courageous, fierce, and effective fighters to give but one example.

    To repeat myself I do not have respect for the “violence is never justified” position. The “violence is justified when it is the least bad alternative” position seems to me to be far more tenable.

    mfi

  2. Paul

    We are a violent species. To say that we can somehow abstain from it, as a species, would be wrong.
    What are right and wrong anyway? Who says so? The strongest, most powerful, or the gentlest of us?
    We have no rights, no right to not be killed anymore than any other animal.
    We are what we are and cannot change, so we need to just accept it.
    Stay safe!

  3. V. Arnold

    @ markfromireland
    April 28, 2015
    The “violence is justified when it is the least bad alternative” position seems to me to be far more tenable.

    My experience, working on factory floors, would support that position; at least 3 times in my working life.
    Fortunately, the promise (by me) was enough to stop the aggression.
    I think it’s enough to understand violence is part of our nature…

  4. Brian

    My Facebook feed is full of comments like “Why can’t the rioters in Baltimore protest non-violently, like MLK jr did?”

    Leaving aside the fact that plenty of people ARE protesting non-violently, I think these people have forgotten what happened to MLK in the end.

    Power doesn’t care if your methods are peaceful or violent: if you want to change the existing order you’re a threat and they will deal with you one way or another.

  5. Not only do I disagree with “violence never solves anything,” I advocate that there is a point at which ONLY violence will change an intolerable situation. Are we there yet? Perhaps we are. “Occupy” tried nonviolence and was violently disbanded. Nonviolence has not prevented the police from continuing to murder the people they are supposed to be protecting.

    People in power will hold on to that power until they are removed. When political means and reason can no longer remove them then violence or the visible and immediate threat of violence is fully justified and is, in fact, required by the basic needs of human dignity.

  6. mike

    Reading the speeches in Congress before passage of the 18-year-olds can vote amendment shows legislators invoking the threat of youth violence as a major reason for supporting a means to tamp it down.

  7. Monster from the Id

    My distrust of violence is as much pragmatic as moral.

    I have noticed that violence is a sucker’s game for the rank-and-file fighters on all sides.

    “Successful” revolution merely replaces the existing oligarchy of glorified gangsters with a new oligarchy of glorified gangsters.

    The elite, whether old or new, still gets the gold mine while everyone else gets the shaft, including the surviving rank-and-file fighters of the winning side.

    So, if you’re a young man of fighting age (which I’m not; I turn 52 next month), why risk your life just to replace one pack of gangsters with another?

    Especially if the religions are correct, and all you have to do is sit out your time in this worthless Hell called the natural universe, and then you go to a much better world? (You do have to wait, though–the Proprietor of the afterlife is said to disapprove keenly of checking oneself in early.)

  8. The elites have learned too use violence slowly… That is the lesson…

  9. I don’t know how else to say it other than the way I’ve already said it, at my blog, at other blogs, at news sites, all over the blabbosphere: when you loot and burn and riot, you’re handing the National Security State a gift on a silver platter. Congratulations.

  10. Monster from the Id

    @SN: The old “boil the frog slowly” trick, eh?

    @Lisa: Thanx. I neglected that pragmatic objection.

  11. ekstase

    Violence as a plan is never good. But if people are kept miserable, trapped and unendingly provoked, how are they supposed to put up with that forever? I have a feeling that a lot of us can’t even imagine what it must feel like to live in a tough neighborhood in Baltimore. I admire the patience of people who endure these problems and retain their desire to be non-violent. I think that takes some courage.

  12. hvd

    Responding to Lisa

    Do you think that lives for black males particularly in the inner city will suffer much more because the slow, constant, unbearable and largely invisible (to white America) hand of the national security state will suddenly become more visible but only marginally (at most) more brutal in their communities? Whether you like it or not this is their battle and if we poor little liberals are forced to deal a little more with an oppressive security state because they choose to heighten the visibility maybe but not likely we will be moved to actually join them in their struggle and put an end to this long term occupation.

  13. mike

    As much as I enjoy the Chicago symphony broadcasts and that she still has a job introducing them, I wonder what Lisa would nominate for the alternative to violence or at least the credible threat of it to the National Security State and if the Galactic Empire wouldn’t have fully approved of her response on this thread.

  14. sanctimonious purist

    don’t think lisa is disagreeing. The looting and car burnings seem to have no purpose vis-a-vis the cause for protest. So I sort of agree with everyone. Violence for the wrongs of capitalism and the security state are justified, but breaking into CVS and smashing car windows in Baltimore isn’t the smartest way to air your grievances. Excused perhaps, but maybe not justified.

  15. JustPlainDave

    The central issue isn’t whether violence is justified – it’s whether violence has an achievable end. In this domain more than any other, the ends justify the means.

  16. Dana

    This Twitter exchange between a Baltimore radio guy and a Baltimore Oriole exec is worth including in the mix.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/baltimore-unrest/baltimore-protests-orioles-executive-offers-perspective-lives-dreams-cut-short-n349526

  17. Monster from the Id

    I think the only achievable end for violence is for the elites.

    The members of the elite gang of criminals currently holding power achieve their goal if they maintain the status quo.

    The members of the revolutionary wannabe-elite gang of criminals achieve their goal if they overthrow and replace the currently regnant gang of criminals.

    Either way, we peasants who survive the chaos end up being ruled by criminals.

    “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss”

    Not to mention that anyone who struggles to achieve power, wealth, prestige, and other “goodies” of this life is, by definition, an idiot, because he (or she) fails to see that even if s/he achieves them, s/he must surrender them eventually, to the Reaper, if no one else.

    “He who dies with the most toys wins”?

    He who dies with the most toys IS STILL PURINA WORM CHOW, DUMBASS!

  18. Sam Adams

    The elites have forgotten the important lessons of violence: oppression always leads to a scaffold. I believe we are starting to see the beginnings of the oppressed building their scaffold.

  19. Dana

    You might be living in a Constitutional Monarchy today, as we are in the country formerly known as Canada, if your forebears believed there was nothing to be gained by violence. I’m not saying that would be worse or better, you understand. Just ‘other’ than what is. Messrs. Franklin, Adams, Jefferson et al might not have bothered to pen that magnificent political clarion call had they believed there was nothing to be gained by violence. Or at the very least the overt, believable threat of it.

    This facsimile of a culture within which we currently live and have our being preaches a lot of bromides that are not even honoured in the breech. “Life is sacred” is one – there is nothing except lip service that anyone can point to that would make me believe this cultural cliche has any meaning beyond sanctimonious platitude.

    “Violence achieves nothing” is another. It’s an empty bromide intended to mollify and tamp down the rage of the people , even if only briefly enough for the cannons to be aimed at them accurately.

  20. Welcome Lisa.

    Yes, killing slow is the main thing that the rich have learned. What are you going to do?

  21. CMike

    Former professional journalist says [LINK]

    Former professional revolutionary says [LINK]:

    The swift changes of mass views and moods in an epoch of revolution thus derive, not from the flexibility and mobility of man’s mind, but just the opposite, from its deep conservatism. The chronic lag of ideas and relations behind new objective conditions, right up to the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe, is what creates in a period of revolution that leaping movement of ideas and passions which seems to the police mind a mere result of the activities of “demagogues.”

    The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old régime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events, and the approval of the masses. The fundamental political process of the revolution thus consists in the gradual comprehension by a class of the problems arising from the social crisis – the active orientation of the masses by a method of successive approximations. The different stages of a revolutionary process, certified by a change of parties in which the more extreme always supersedes the less, express the growing pressure to the left of the masses – so long as the swing of the movement does not run into objective obstacles. When it does, there begins a reaction: disappointments of the different layers of the revolutionary class, growth of indifferentism, and therewith a strengthening of the position of the counter-revolutionary forces. Such, at least, is the general outline of the old revolutions.

    Only on the basis of a study of political processes in the masses themselves, can we understand the rôle of parties and leaders, whom we least of all are inclined to ignore. They constitute not an independent, but nevertheless a very important, element in the process. Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam.

    The difficulties which stand in the way of studying the changes of mass consciousness in a revolutionary epoch are quite obvious. The oppressed classes make history in the factories, in the barracks, in the villages, on the streets of the cities. Moreover, they are least of all accustomed to write things down. Periods of high tension in social passions leave little room for contemplation and reflection. All the muses – even the plebeian muse of journalism, in spite of her sturdy hips – have hard sledding in times of revolution. Still the historian’s situation is by no means hopeless. The records are incomplete, scattered, accidental. But in the light of the events themselves these fragments often permit a guess as to the direction and rhythm of the hidden process. For better or worse, a revolutionary party bases its tactics upon a calculation of the changes of mass consciousness. The historic course of Bolshevism demonstrates that such a calculation, at least in its rough features, can be made. If it can be made by a revolutionary leader in the whirlpool of the struggle, why not by the historian afterwards?

    However, the processes taking place in the consciousness of the masses are not unrelated and independent. No matter how the idealists and the eclectics rage, consciousness is nevertheless determined by conditions. In the historic conditions which formed Russia, her economy, her classes, her State, in the action upon her of other states, we ought to be able to find the premises both of the February revolution and of the October revolution which replaced it. Since the greatest enigma is the fact that a backward country was the first to place the proletariat in power, it behooves us to seek the solution of that enigma in the peculiarities of that backward country – that is, in its differences from other countries.

  22. compound f

    two comments:

    thanks for Ian and Stirling; commenters; two blackbirds & three minds.

  23. DMC

    A Modest Proposal to address urban violence: Stop hiring men to be cops in urban areas. They’re too emotional for the job. They get their dicks involved and people wind up dead. Women would just do the job without turning into oppressive monsters. They’d be reluctant to go to “deadly force” and much more inclined to everything in their power to NOT have to shoot someone. It would change the whole us/them dynamic with the cops actually serving the community rather than merely protecting the assets of the oppressing class.

  24. fidelio

    Ian, what do you think about David Simon’s recent comments on Baltimore?

  25. DMC, you have no idea of the amount of anger and fear women suppress. Did you see the mother of the young rioter on tv, who beat her son for risking his life by attacking police?

    Violence is a tool that should only be used for gain. Using it to inspire fear in the oppressors instead of random destruction would be more effective.

  26. DMC

    Do tell me Susan how if it had been women arresting the late Mr. Grey, they’d have stomped on his windpipe and fractured his spine just the same. Or even arrested him in the first place. What women supress ain’t the issue, it’s what they’d do. I know I’d rather have a women officer pull a gun on me than a man, simply because with a woman I could be resonably certain there was some kind of provacation on my part and it wasn’t that I’d inadvertanly cast aspersions on somebody’s penile dimensions. If we were allowed to keep statistics on police shootings of civilians, I would bet serious cash that they showed a heavy gender preponderance of males, even accounting for the relative dearth of police women. It’s that whole testosterone and guns and authority power trip that, coupled with a culture of impunity, leads to this kind of thing.

    Or we could just demand that police act like professionals, like they seem to in most of the rest of the industrialised world. But that seems like a REAL pipe dream these days.

  27. I would not trust a person in a position of authority just because she is a woman.

  28. Brian Reed

    BTW, I would point to https://futurebrief.wordpress.com/ as another thinker that is pointing to new global elite as, well, being global. That they are separating themselves from countries, and leading a very different life then the middle class and below that cannot afford those opportunities to move around. Just pointing out that this is no longer confined to the ‘USA’ or any other country.

  29. jump

    This is hard to respond to in a comment. It would take a post.
    Fundamentally, violence resolves nothing. I only postpones a resolution. There is a winner and a loser, and the loser holds resentments that will resurface. The winner is temporary. The violence will continue.
    Is it ever justified? No.
    That we have a history of violence, and that there are winners, does not justify violence. Violence is not power. It may be seen as power but it is not. Control, yes. Power, no.
    Do I think that my succumbing to a violent encounter changes any equation? Well, it does from my point of view. The one inflicting violence will think the same.
    I like my choice.

  30. jump

    @Dana
    Rage does not necessitate violence. Rage may mean revolt and protests. Revolt and protests do not require violence.

  31. Montanamaven

    I heard a woman caller on a radio sho say that she was tired of hearing the word “riot “. She said it was an uprising. Up….is positive. Rising….is positive. and let us remember and reflect that a young man was killed. A life brutally beaten to death. On the other hand, A CVS -HELLO! – was trashed.
    Not a mom and pop store. Sounds like throwing tea in the harbor. Tea!
    Violence against humans are okay? Violence against precious property isn’t?

  32. Bruce Wilder

    Trying to argue about popular will and/or democracy is a slippery road, mind. For example, the numbers on the American revolution with which I’m familiar don’t show the majority of the population being for leaving British rule. . . and the French revolution was made by the Paris mob, while most people living in rural areas of France (the vast majority of the population) would have preferred to keep the Ancien Regime.

    Popular support for the American Revolution was built up over a decade of political activism and ideological struggle through committees of correspondence. It varied regionally of course, but no where in the established 13 colonies could the British hold territory they did not occupy and garrison, while the Continental Army never had to do much more than keep itself in being. The British left Boston in March 1776 never to return. Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga to a mass uprising of local farmers, coalesced around a very small force of regulars and a modest militia army. The Second Continental Congress assumed powers of civil administration previously reserved to the Empire and the individual colonies transformed themselves into states with few incidents. No where did a colonial civil administration loyal to the crown survive on its own motion. This is not random polling data, but it is indicative of a breadth and depth of popular support.

    I think you are wrong about peasant support for the French Revolution of 1789, though arguments could be made about later developments. In 1789, the Great Fear swept rural France manifesting revulsion against a relict feudalism that marked out deep support for a new social order.

    The American Revolution and the French Revolution had elite leadership and years of preparation of the public mind and opinion. The ability of both leaders and polity to settle on a new order and social contract turned out to be greater in the American case. If violence is negotiation by other means, the capacity to come back to order would seem to be critical.

  33. Ian Welsh

    I stand corrected on the American revolution. It seems that about 15 to 20% of the population was Loyalist. 40 to 45% supported the rebellion The 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 is an outdated estimate, apparently.

    http://allthingsliberty.com/2013/02/john-adamss-rule-of-thirds/

    The numbers were significant in certain areas though, especially New York, and to a lesser extent Pennsylvania.

  34. DMC

    I recall Aleister Cooke citing the 1/3 for, 1/3 against and 1/3 “didn’t give damn” statistic in his documentary series “America”.

  35. montanamaven

    In “The Lost Science of Money” by Stephen Zarlenga , he writes about the monetary cause of the American Revolution. The Lords of Trade passed “Currency Acts” in 1751 and one with more bite in 1764. They were enacted to suppress the paper currency of colonies especially Pennsylvania. The colonies had come up with their own money system rather than borrow from the English banks and so go into debt. (Like what goes on with the IMF and WTO etc today.) Ben Franklin went to London to lobby against the act of 1764. In London he saw the slums and squalor which he told Londoners he did not see in the American colonies. He told Parliament that one reason for the impatience and disrespect which the colonies were manifesting towards Parliamentary authority was “the prohibition of making money.” The historian Charles Bullock writes, “In colony after colony, party lines came to be drawn upon this sole issue.
    “There can be no doubt that the bitterness engendered by this conflict was one great cause of the Revolution, ” writes another commodity historian, William Sumner.
    Everybody needed “money” to run their businesses whether it was small farms or shoe making, so everybody debated this. Draconian money measures from far away in England led to debt and poverty. Hence the comparison to uprisings now and uprisings then.

  36. BlizzardOfOz

    Whose agenda does this kind of black underclass violence serve? The mealy-mouthed support for the rioters is mostly coming from elite media and the state, including Obama — they apparently think they can use it to help push through their agenda. Vocal opposition to the rioters is coming from people with an actual connection to the city, like Lisa here, David Simon, actors from the Wire, Carmelo Anthony.

    Blacks overall have an average IQ of 85, and the black urban underclass is significantly lower. Note that an IQ of 70 is the threshold for not allowing execution due to mental incapacity. The rioters are just dumb, violent criminals, easily manipulated by the state and its media. The idea that these people can form some kind of vanguard of your anti-elite revolution is laughable.

    If anything they’re the vanguard of state repression — reference the push to bring all local police departments under the feds’ control.

  37. cripes

    Again with the “blacks have an overall average IQ of 85” routine? Whats the average IQ of police? of George Bush? Your family tree?
    Better yet, just be quiet.

  38. BlizzardOfOz

    @cripes, ah, the old “because shut up” line of argument. By any chance are you a frequent commenter over at Salon?

  39. CMike

    Certain ironies here [LINK]:

    [36:34]

    BEGIN QUOTE…Historians estimate that roughly fifteen to twenty percent of white males were Loyalist by the war’s end, and in this sense, when I’m using the word “Loyalist” here, I’m actually meaning people who did something overt to support the Crown during the Revolution, like signing addresses, bearing arms against the continental troops, doing business with the British army, seeking military protection from the British army or going into exile. So just people who were doing those activities: fifteen to twenty percent of white males.

    When you add to that percentage those who just wanted to avoid involving themselves in the struggle you end up with roughly half of the white male colonists not falling into the category of “Patriot” or, if you use a term that the Loyalists would have used, “rebel.” So all in all, only about half of the white male population actively supported colonial resistance, and at different times of the war, depending on the immediate circumstances, obviously people changed their views.

    Now there were any number of reasons to stay loyal to the Crown, and I’m guessing — certainly if I hadn’t studied this time period I would assume that there is this stereotypical image of the Tory who one would assume is this sort of aristocratic person, this really rich person in a very fancy wig with very fancy clothes, taking snuff and doing a variety of other aristocratic eighteenth-century gentry kind of things and sort of sneering at the rebels. I think there’s sort of some stereotype we have in our brain about who Tories are, but as a matter of fact they were — some Tories fit into that category but certainly not all.

    Wealth and poverty, high status and low, every kind of ethnicity could be found on both sides of the crisis, and from colony to colony different kinds of people chose different sides depending on regional circumstances. So for example: In New York a lot of the landed gentry tended to be Loyalist. In Virginia, the landed gentry tended to not be Loyalist. In Massachusetts, small farmers tended to be Patriots. In New York and North Carolina the — or at least the up-country of North Carolina — small farmers did not necessarily tend to be Patriots. So it obviously varied region by region, depending on local circumstances.

    In general terms — In very general terms, you could say that Loyalism was stronger in the middle states than in New England and stronger in the lower South than in the upper South, and very strong particularly in New York, which the British ended up holding throughout most of the war, and weakest in Massachusetts, Virginia and Connecticut. Connecticut stood up. But there’s a reason for that because those are among the oldest colonies with a very long tradition of self-government, aggressive self-government.

    Scholars who have studied Loyalists have noted that there seemed to be several types of people who ended up being more likely to become Loyalists. One likely Loyalist — and this won’t be surprising — would have been people who were connected with the British government by some kind of an official appointment, or were related to somebody who had an official royal appointment. For these people remaining loyal was not necessarily due to self-interested reasons, although certainly self-interest could have played a part, but as important loyal officeholders or people related to them had closer contact with the British government than most others, and thus they were better able to see the logic of politics in England, so they had more reason to be skeptical of claims about a conspiracy afoot in England to destroy colonial rights.

    …A second kind of person who tended to become a Loyalist was — again logically enough — people who were in a religious or cultural minority, and who thus already felt a little defensive and not necessarily trusting in the whim of the majority — or the whim of the angry, resistant majority. And I’m going to go into this in more detail in a future lecture, but for logical reasons a good many African-American slaves ended up becoming Loyalists for good reason having to do with the chance of earning their freedom. So that’s a second kind.

    A third kind of Loyalist consisted of people who lived out in the hinterlands in the backcountry away from the eastern seaboard. And this is for a couple of reasons, but one of the main ones is, if you think about it the main vehicle or one of the main vehicles for radical ideas would have been newspapers. And newspapers largely circulated in large port cities. And I’ve quoted already a number of times from the Boston Gazette, which would have been hard to get out in the hinterland somewhere. Tories called the Boston Gazette — That’s where Samuel Adams wrote a lot of his things — Tories called the Boston Gazette the “Weekly Dung Barge.” [laughs] I think everybody just wins here in the propaganda game. It’s equally impressive on all sides in the propaganda game.

    People out in the frontier in Virginia or the Carolinas who didn’t have a lot of access to newspapers might have been harder to convince of a great plot against their liberties. As one historian wrote, “Not having been exposed to the ‘disease,’ how could they catch it?” None of these people had a particular reason to be swept up in the resistance movement, and they had reasons to resist it.

    By 1774, all of these people — royal officeholders, cultural or religious minorities, people living out on the frontier — were conscious minorities, people who felt either weak or threatened, particularly considering raging events in cities along the seaboard. So in a way, you could say that many Loyalists were simply more afraid of the rebelling colonies than they were of the Crown. Almost all of them had interests that they felt needed protection from a raging American majority.

    …Many of these Loyalists did not part with the colonial majority until well into the imperial crisis, and for many, as we’ll see, it’s not until independence becomes probable, and when real, actual separation from the mother country is at hand, that they felt compelled to declare their loyalty to the Crown and actually break away.

    This was actually part of the agony of the Revolution, the fact that many people just weren’t sure of what they should do. They weren’t sure how they felt about the crisis. They weren’t sure what side to take. They weren’t sure that they wanted to take a side. They weren’t sure what would happen if they did. And on all sides people still cared about the colonies.
    END QUOTE

  40. JustPlainDave

    People who advocate disorganized, ineffectual violence like this are not friends of the oppressed. In the main, they are people who get secret hind-brain woodies over violence but who will never, ever, ever pay the butcher’s bill.

    I’ve seen and been part of a fairly goodly number of middle-class based protest movements. Haven’t yet seen one that actually used violence itself, yet somehow the middle class “class warriors” prowling the Internet frequently seem almost pantingly eager for folks down the food chain from them to use it. Curious.

    It’s a tool. One that is very, very difficult to use effectively and that is far, far outclassed by others readily available. Fight smart, not stupid.

  41. V. Arnold

    JustPlainDave
    May 1, 2015

    In high-school (once) and on factory floors (three times) my promise of violence, if the bullying/harassment didn’t stop, netted me freedom from the bullying and, ultimately, acceptance.
    Philosophise till the cows come home; I live in the reality of what works in given situations.
    This whole violence thing just leaves me shaking my head (walks away shaking head).
    I live in the real world; not some made up lala land…

  42. ks

    JustPlainDave,

    You’re being disingenuous. Your line – “People who advocate disorganized, ineffectual violence like this are not friends of the oppressed.” – deliberately misses the point. What’s being said is that a violent reaction to oppression is neither surprising nor unjustified.

    This whole airy “game theory” approach of yours is almost amusing. Yeah all they need is a better strategy so they can use their tool more effectively. Fight smart, not stupid! Uh huh. And you have the nerve to lambaste what you call “middle class class warriors” especially since all you’re offering is indifferent advice and a slogan.

  43. ks

    BlizzardofOz,

    I see you’re as charming as ever. Of course the minor riots aren’t “really” about what actually happened. It’s all in service to “their” (Obama, elites, media, Illuminati, etc.) agenda. Since we all know that due to their low IQs, innercity blacks can’t possibly have any aintelligent agency of their own, they are just easily manipulated violent sheep being used to push “Da Man’s” agenda.

    You’re a hoot. It’s no wonder they’re laughing at you over at Salon as well.

  44. JustPlainDave

    As it happens ks I’ve spent the last 14 years helping advocacy and social justice organizations build their capacity to drive change. Bottom line: a) I think I’ve got a very, very good idea what works and what doesn’t, and b) I think that’s a lot further from sloganeering than anyone else here can say.

  45. Hvd

    At least in Baltimore there are charges. Might the tactics of the mindless black masses, otherwise known as thugs, of that city have some positive effect? Not saying there is necessarily a singular cause and effect here but it is at least reasonable to suggest that this provides a possible answer to the questions posed by Ian.

  46. BlizzardOfOz

    ks,
    Personally I don’t comment at Salon, but the sneering ad-hominem there is the worst I’ve seen.

    I do wish you would note that the liberals who describe riots as a “conflagration” or try to justify them are advocating paternalism towards the black underclass by removing its agency. I actually agree that this paternalism is correct, which was the point I wanted to make by bringing up IQ. I do think that egging them on is irresponsible, and will not benefit the black underclass in any way (the opposite if anything).

  47. JustPlainDave

    Blizzard, there is quite an interesting body of theory and evidence supporting the notion that when there are pervasive, long-enduring differences in IQ between groups, they are due to high levels of structural inequality and reduced opportunity for the lower IQ group. In short, if the difference exists, it is manufactured rather than innate.

    I would take from your derisive use of liberal that you would self-identify as some form of conservative. You aren’t.

  48. V. Arnold

    BoOz

    Blacks overall have an average IQ of 85, and the black urban underclass is significantly lower. Note that an IQ of 70 is the threshold for not allowing execution due to mental incapacity. The rioters are just dumb, violent criminals, easily manipulated by the state and its media. The idea that these people can form some kind of vanguard of your anti-elite revolution is laughable.

    Wow, just wow.
    The IQ gambit again eh?
    That’s the most abused/misused weapon of the bigoted, ignorant, and intellectually challenged racists extant.
    That it’s used here at Ian’s is truly disappointing, if not an outrage.
    Please crawl back under that familiar rock from which you slimed.

  49. ks

    JustPlainDave,

    Great! Keep up the good work. So at least you know that tsk tsking them is not helpful.

    Overall, this situation is as predictable as it is grimly insane. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, blacks have such negative interactions with cops and do all the “right” things in response and barely protest at all. Even when the straw occasionally breaks the camels back, they mostly engage in peaceful protests but occasionally those protests turn violent in spots and gasp! a CVS drug store might get burned and looted horror! Then on one side you have the handwringing tsk tisk brigade and on the other is just a question of how quickly they get dismissed as thugs. Wash, rinse, repeat.

  50. ks

    Of course “the Onion” nails it in their usual humorous manner:

    “BALTIMORE—Calling it an emergency measure designed to ensure public safety and order, Baltimore officials held a press conference Wednesday urging all residents to stay indoors until the natural evolution of social progress takes shape over the next century. “Given the ongoing situation in our city, we ask that everyone remain within their homes for the next 10 or 12 decades while the various barriers to equality and opportunity for all people are slowly chipped away,” said Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, adding that, in addition to shutting down public schools and the transportation system, the city had canceled work for all nonessential government employees while they wait for the arrival of fully protected civil rights and liberties expected sometime in the 22nd century. “As we continue to incrementally evolve into a completely free and fair society over the next 100 years, please do not venture outside unless it is absolutely necessary. Those who go out onto our streets before our social, economic, and political structures have undergone gradual reform over the course of several generations are doing so at their own risk.” Rawlings-Blake then encouraged residents to visit the city’s website for further information regarding what to do as they await the year 2115.”

  51. NotForgotten

    At times the use of violence is necessary. Especially when it comes to defending yourself or another from great bodily harm. The world would be a great place if we all loved one another but unfortunately this is not the case. Love is the better way.

  52. Roman Berry

    Brings to mind this old article (April, 2000) in Mother Jones, “Smashing Windows for a Better World.” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/04/smashing-windows-better-world

    Lefties just don’t seem to get this fundamental truth of politics: Not only has there never been a revolution without violence, but there’s never been meaningful social change without violence or at least the threat thereof. Mahatma Gandhi helped get the British out, but India remains as desperately poor and burdened by caste issues as ever. And the civil rights movement’s nonviolent marches took place against a backdrop of urban riots that helped force terrified white politicians to address racial discrimination.

    The bottom line is that peaceful protest either gets ignored entirely or at best gets passing mention. If you want the power structure to actually pay attention and effect change, violence (whether on the part of protesters or authorities — see Selma and the beatdown of peaceful protestors in the 60’s for an example of the latter) galvanizes attention.

    MLK Jr’s non-violence was laudable and necessary. But without the riots in Detroit, the beatdown of peaceful protestors for all the world to see in Selma and so on, I doubt very much that we’d have gotten to the point that necessary for the passage of Civil Rights near so quickly as we did.

    The non-violence hypocrisy of Americans is pretty danged clear. We as a nation massively approve of violence in many cases. From Iraq and Libya to “enhanced interrogation” and assassinations, violence of all types** is just fine with a great many as long as it is committed with “pure intentions” in the name of the state. Very difficult to get people to step back and see it, or even if they do see it, to get them to stop clinging to all the reasons it’s perfectly OK for an “exceptional” nation which only ever commits violence for “good” to go on and do it anyway.

    **Check the comments at places like Yahoo News and you come away knowing that for many (I assume white) Americans, the problem in places like Baltimore is that the police aren’t “tough enough” on all the “low life thugs” (read “not white people”) living in these urban areas. They want more busted heads, not fewer, so they’re pretty fine with violence as long as it’s violence they approve of.

  53. Francoise

    An ex of mine who claimed to be a pacifist (mainly because he was a wimp) was somewhat wrongfooted when I put it to him: “What if I was being attacked by a mugger? Or your mother was being attacked? What then – would you still be a pacifist?” Violence is certainly justified when innocent people are in danger. Would apartheid have been overthrown in South Africa without violence? You have to stand up against the bully.

  54. Lisa

    Of course violence is justified under many circumstances, but there are caveats attached.

    The most obvious is self defence or defence of a loved one or an innocent.
    At a group or societal level that extends to defence by those who who are being attacked as a group.
    As a last resort to physical/economic/etc oppression.
    And so on….

    The main caveat is ‘appropriateness’, the violence should be a minimal as possible to achieve the result desired. The simplest example of that would be a 5 year old child hitting an adult, after failure of using words to stop it then the adult can simply restrain the child without causing any harm. The adult should not take a baseball bat to the child.

    The propensity of a society towards using violence (internally or externally) comes from cultural attitudes. If you take the US it is clear that it has a ‘culture of bullying’, where using direct or indirect (such as financial) violence against those perceived as weaker than yourself is a norm. You see that in all areas and levels of US society. Sadly this has spread to other nations as well.

    Bullying can take many forms, if the society also has a ‘violence culture’ (again like the US) then bullying often takes the form of violence. If it doesn’t then it takes the form of things like economic attacks, prejudices, barriers, psychological bullying and so on (like England).

    In the case of a bully/violence culture the ‘bullied’ have no recourse except violence themselves to install fear as a deterrent to those who would ‘bully’. Bullies never respond to reason, only to fear of harm to themselves.

    A key determination of a bully is that they initiate attacks (including violence), when it happens they use inappropriate levels and it is low risk for the bully (they target someone weaker). You see this particularly in the policing and judicial systems in the US, which are dominated by a bully/violence culture. It also describe US foreign policy to a ‘T’.

    This is another caveat: In this case, if you are a potential ‘bullied’ then preemptive or not directly responsive violence can be justified, because you have a 100% certainty that if you don’t do that to install fear as a deterrent then you will be attacked. Also your defence must use inappropriate levels too, as it is the only thing a bully will understand, a proportionate response will not have the psychological impact to stop future bullying.

    This is the ‘Catch 22’ if you live in a bully/violence dominated culture, you have to do many of the things those bullies do, just to protect yourself. When a society descends to that level you end up, in the end, with certain ‘weak’ groups exterminated or cleared out and an uneasy balance of terror between the stronger groups. This can continue for a very, very long time. This is the trajectory the US (and a lot of other places) is on, with the elites, who could reduce/stop this, cheering things on from the sideline and creating large scale organised bullying (economic, surveillance, arming sides, culture of fear, etc).

    Why do people, mostly males, do this? Because it is fun and makes bullies feel good, it is fun for them to see someone else suffer and even die. That’s a little secret no one want to acknowledge. Young males are the worst at this, they have a greater propensity to violence anyway and within a permissive culture will keep escalating as far as they can. Trouble is they don’t get better as they get older, they just get more cunning about it (eg by picking on the lowest risk victims, becoming more sophisticated at non violent bullying and so on).

    I will bet a far amount of money that after someone has been violently attacked/murdered by a US policeman, that back at the station it will be high fives all around and when they get together over drinks they will swap war stories about how they ‘smashed x person’. In a unconstrained bullying/violence culture your social standing depends on your bullying ‘score’, the more you do it the higher you are regarded. Group bullying (where a large number pick on a single person) is a way of bonding with each other, every kick in the guts by each of the group to that person who is down and bleeding is a way of bonding wihtin the group…another little nasty secret.

    In a toxic male culture (synonymous in a bullying/violence culture) your very manliness and masculinity are intimately tied up with how often and how successfully you bully others.

    Another little secret, a lot of those bullied (or are on the sidelines) are wannbe bullies and will if they get the opportunity (toxic ‘nerd’ culture anyone?).

    Lisa’s (the other one) suggestion to replace all police officers with women actually makes a lot of sense if you want to stop this sort of thing within the police. Yes women can be violent and even bullies as well, but they have a lower level of easily triggered ‘explosive’ violence and that long term underlying anger that so many males have, that testosterone thing is a very real phenomena.
    They have higher average levels of empathy (as consistently measured) and seem more immune to poor socialisation, which so often permanently damages young males, who are, by virtually every measure far more psychologically vulnerable, especially growing up, to becoming damaged.
    Given that a bullying/violence/toxic masculinity culture seems designed to bring out the very worst and suppress the best in males, it is not surprising to see so many them becoming bullies (or aspiring to be ones, like so many ‘nerds’ do).

    Note that you can have a high violence culture without much bullying if the culture induces shame and punishment on those who attack those who are weaker. Violence is a male monopoly in this case and perceived masculinity is tied up with violence against peers and protection of the weak. Note that some people in the US aspire to this as a model (or pretend to about it), sadly they are nearly always bullies in reality.

    So if you are lucky to live in a low bullying/violence culture then your personal need to use violence is very low (maybe never in your life). If you live in a high one then you have to use it often just to survive, either as an individual or as a group.

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