[lbo-talk] Violence Begets Defeat or Too Much Pacifism? by Michael Albert

[shag carpet bomb]

Albert's article is interesting. One thing that the events at Seattle did 
was make me aware of anarchism as an option and take it much more 
seriously. This is *mostly* because people I admired -- Doug, Angela, and 
Erica -- defended the smashy smashy by pointing to facts and clearing up 
media lies. So, I'm gonna guess the results of smashy smashy are nearly 
always a draw in terms of attracting adherents or opening up discussion in 
such a way that people who didn't know of the existence of this alternative 
or who once may have knee jerk opposed it, listen to arguments in its favor 
and are more supportive of it than may have otherwise been. (This also 
reminds me of a letter that circulated back then, posted by Doug, in which 
a union guy pointed out that the smashy smashy didn't put off any of his 
union friends and family members.)

so, for every person who says, "i'm out of here, I no longer support 
anti-capitalist movement" there's another person who is persuaded because 
the question of militancy became a debate point among people on the left. 
For me personally, it was that the debate exposed an unfortunate tendency 
to treat comrades precisely as Graeber complained Hedges did: not as people 
who have reasons for what they are doing but as people who are beyond reason.

I find that approach intolerable; it was the core of debates in feminist 
bloglandia. Is Twisty Faster Fucking Insane (as one blog used to put it) or 
does she simply have a different theory as to why women are oppressed and 
how to go about changing that situation.

It's not unrelated to a reaction I have to people who used to work in my 
community when I was growing up. I think they were from some sect in the 
60s. They believed their job was to come to our town, get jobs in the 
factories, and agitate from within. Some of them had the view that the 
people who were from this town were kind of icky, backward, what have you. 
I could never understand why they subjected themselves to the pain of 
having to interact with us. Alas, it was apparently because they 
believed  their job to bring us along to enlightenment, etc. People felt 
demeaned and condescended to. They didn't feel as equals because activists 
came there, ostensibly, as our saviors.

It is, as Carrol said, not a position from which anyone assumes *mutual 
learning* from one another. They exhibited no sense that maybe their views 
were limited, that they might have something to learn, etc. Similarly, it 
irritated me when I saw academics do the same: use that community to make 
their academic bones. We weren't people who had anything valuable to 
contribute, just bodies and opinions to be used for someone's career. If 
they had any other attitude, it was, again, as saviors.

At 04:18 PM 2/13/2012, c b wrote:
>Michael Alpert of Z Mag has a fair analysis and stance: Violence Begets 
>Defeat or Too Much Pacifism? 
>http://www.zcommunications.org/violence-begets-defeat-or-too-much-pacifism-by-michael-albert 
>ZCommunications | Violence Begets Defeat or Too Much Pacifism? by Michael 
>Albert | ZNet Article zcommunications.org ‎"But remember that if the 
>struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and 
>imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually 
>victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the 
>heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggl... 
>___________________________________ 
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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