The Illegitimacy of Violence, the Violence of Legitimacy
▻https://crimethinc.com/2012/03/27/the-illegitimacy-of-violence-the-violence-of-legitimacy
What is violence? Who gets to define it? Does it have a place in the pursuit of liberation? These age-old questions have returned to the fore during the Occupy movement. But this discussion never takes place on a level playing field; while some delegitimize violence, the language of legitimacy itself paves the way for the authorities to employ it. [You can listen to an audio version of this text here.]
“Though lines of police on horses, and with dogs, charged the main street outside the police station to push rioters back, there were significant pockets of violence which they could not reach.”
– The New York Times, on the UK riots of August 2011
During the 2001 FTAA summit in Quebec City, one newspaper famously reported that violence erupted when protesters began throwing tear gas canisters back at the lines of riot police. When the authorities are perceived to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, “violence” is often used to denote illegitimate use of force—anything that interrupts or escapes their control. This makes the term something of a floating signifier, since it is also understood to mean “harm or threat that violates consent.”
This is further complicated by the ways our society is based on and permeated by harm or threat that violates consent. In this sense, isn’t it violent to live on colonized territory, destroying ecosystems through our daily consumption and benefitting from economic relations that are forced on others at gunpoint? Isn’t it violent for armed guards to keep food and land, once a commons shared by all, from those who need them? Is it more violent to resist the police who evict people from their homes, or to stand aside while people are made homeless? Is it more violent to throw tear gas canisters back at police, or to denounce those who throw them back as “violent,” giving police a free hand to do worse?
The Illegitimacy of Violence, the Violence of Legitimacy – AudioZine.
▻https://resonanceaudiodistro.org/2018/01/21/the-illegitimacy-of-violence-the-violence-of-legitimacy-audioz
▻https://archive.org/download/TheIllegitimacyOfViolenceTheViolenceOfLegitimacy_201801/The%20Illegitimacy%20of%20Violence%2C%20the%20Violence%20of%20Legitimacy.mp
Coming out of the context of the debates within Occupy Wall Street as it spread across the United States, The Illegitimacy of Violence, the Violence of Legitimacy is an essay by Crimethinc that explores questions of “legitimacy” in social movements. What does it mean to be “legitimate”? What does it mean to be “illegitimate”? How are these terms related to the discourse around violence and non-violence? In exploring the topic, they conclude that the quest for “legitimacy” strengthens the state and weakens resistance movements.
“It’s important to have strategic debates: shifting away from the discourse of nonviolence doesn’t mean we have to endorse every single broken window as a good idea.. But it only obstructs these debates when dogmatists insist that all who do not share their goals and assumptions—not to say their class interests!—have no strategic sense. It’s also not strategic to focus on delegitimizing each other’s efforts rather than coordinating to act together where we overlap. That’s the point of affirming a diversity of tactics: to build a movement that has space for all of us, yet leaves no space for domination and silencing—a “people power” that can both expand and intensify.”
