You can't be "violent" against property. Property is an inert thing with no feelings. The idea that one can do violence against property is a tacit admission that capitalism is correct when it equates people with property. It also cheapens the real nasty effects of violence against people.
"Peaceful" protest rarely accomplishes much. I think we have plenty of evidence that decades of "peaceful" protest, i.e. non-confrontational rallies, marches and pickets, accomplished very little. I don't consider nonviolent civil disobedience to be "peaceful," since the authorities don't see it that way.
Property destruction accomplishes alot. The most important thing about property destruction is that it is a direct attack on capitalism that is hard to recuperate by the capitalist spectacle. It's very unlikley that McDonalds will start selling Happy Meals with little plastic riot figurines. Property destructions is also a form of direct action that say that we don't want corporations and that we will start dismantling them now. Property destruction is also a message sent to the corporations that we reject piecemiel reform of their practices. A McDonalds selling veggie burgers is still an exploitative corporation that fucks up the environment and communities. It's a message to the Body Shop that green consumerism is a fraud--buying politically correct body lotion is not going to fundamentally challenge the social relations that cause hierarchy, alienation, and planetary destruction.
Of course, on shouldn't use p-d all the time.
The p-d committed by the anti-glob movement has already damaged Monsanto and McDonalds' bottom line. That's a small victory.
<< Chuck0 >>
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INTERNATIONALISM IN PRACTICE
An American soldier in a hospital explained how he was wounded: He said, "I was told that the way to tell a hostile Vietnamese from a friendly Vietnamese was to shout ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ If he shoots, he’s unfriendly. So I saw this dude and yelled ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ and he yelled back, ‘To hell with President Johnson!’ We were shaking hands when a truck hit us."
(from 1,001 Ways to Beat the Draft, by Tuli Kupferburg).