You argue that as our governments and their policies are violent, that it is the only language they understand and therefore we are justified in using violence. What happened to your aspirations to rise above what we are offered by the mainstream?

Letter to an "anarchist" friend

The violence and tension increases with each summit and the condoned violence of your actions grabs the spotlight from those whom you are proporting to support. You justify your use of violence as necessary against the police. Yet similar to the government propaganda you depise, you too resort to depersonifying them, as "dogs", "tools of capitalists", "pigs", "thugs". You have become your enemy by stealing their tactics. You fall back into the thousands in Seatle, Quebec, Genoa, who have chosen to accept the "diversity of tactics" belief. Through excessive violence, you leave everyone else without a voice, forced into being attacked by a pumped-up military and police force ready for a fight, or else remaining well away from the action, unable to participate due to their physical conditions, such as asthma or pregnancy, or due to their moral beliefs of confrontation but without violence. Across the mainstream and even independent media, the violence sells. You have gagged your supposed allies.

You argue that as our governments and their policies are violent, that it is the only language they understand and therefore we are justified in using violence. What happened to your aspirations to rise above what we are offered by the mainstream? Why should I accept your violence as better than the state-sponsored violence? You are disgusted by the Machiavellian attitudes of capitalists, yet then accept that the ends justify the means when you support anarchist violence?

Anarchism is liberty. Liberty is freedom. And freedom engenders responsibility. The political leaders you despise so much have taken the liberties of global capitalism without the responsibility of rights, environmental stability, respect for diversity. You cheer your violence but are appalled when others are violent unto you. You support and martyr those who willingly chose, without external constraints, to be violent and to choose to injure a person, policeperson or otherwise. They die and you are appalled. You have become your enemy by refusing to carry your personal burden of responsibility. You then label those who suggest that you think of the wider implications of your actions as "police infiltrators", "sell-outs", "cowards".

Anarchism is diversity. Why are the stone-throwers and those setting fires, destroying property, and attacking police for the majority men? Why do men dominate the indymedia discussions and justification of anarchy and violent means? Where are the female voices you espouse to uphold? When we were tear-gassed in Quebec City when we took down the wall, the crowds were 50-50 men and women. Those who initially challenged the police were both men and women. Yet, in the hours and days that followed, the men took over confronting the police with Molotovs and rocks and bottles. I ask you why is this so if anarchism is to see the end of machismo.

When the streets of Quebec City were again quiet, a spokescouncil was held in the part of the town where the protests were held. The residents, despite the amount of tear-gas used remained in solidarity with those against the Summit of the Americas. However, most were sharply critical, angry at "les casseurs", those who descended on this part of the city.

You then argue that those who are the real violent protesters are not true anarchists. You suggest that they are there for the show, to be violent for their own ends. I ask you where is your responsibility for creating the tension, the police response. The police will be violent, they are trained for this. You seem blind to non-violent ideas of confrontation. When the wall was taken down in Quebec City, everyone from across the spectrum was pumped. We advanced through the fence. Then the rock throwing began then the expected police response, including tear-gassed lobbed into the crowd in the back, unprepared and unprotected. The police response was not a surprise. Imagine, my friend, if we sat down, inside the perimeter. If we occupied it and did not move. The police would have been forced to reconsider their tactics, as a tear-gas assault could not have been justified. They may have done it but it would have been politically stupid. The resulting take home message would have been greater. But no. With our violence, the police were able to justify the excessive use of tear gas, were then able to launch tear-gas into the non-violent confrontations in other parts of the city, and the stage was set for political and social messages to be lost. Naïve, perhaps, as non-violent, original means of confrontation is always more difficult than a violent one.

Our movement is extremely diverse. It is our strength, yet if abused is our weakness. We have tolerated the diversity of tactics, including yours. I ask you to tolerate everyone else. You take anarchism at half, and we have to deal with the consequences of the other.

i personally would not engage in violemt activity, but some imes i believe that it is inescapable...protests in south africa in the late eighties were frequently violent, both on the part of the protesters and police. these protesters were condemned within south africa by the establishment media , and anyone who chose to believe them, but they were the ones to spak the fire of liberation.

yeah, you're right, violence is the end of dialogue, the end of democracy, the end of difference between man and beast.

Here we've got a whole lot of people suporting violence.
May they die by the violence of someone like them.

We are at war right now in Genoa, also in many other places. It would do you and all others well if you would not draw lines in division of ranks. We are one team. You want to carry some flowers and stick em in gun barrels? Do it at home, and while your at it, stay there! Its nice and soft away from the bad men who try to hurt you. Cant handle the streets? Dont go! We still love you. O.K... Bye.

"A true revolutionary will only consent to take up arms for those institutions which seek to limit violence, not to codify it."

Thus, taking up arms against the military, against the government, to replace it with a system of worker's collectives and cooperative federations with no monetary stake, no military existence to justify (the true anarchist position) is justified. Except that we speak of revolution, the only hope for change. You speaking of rhetoric and posturing.

Carlo Giuliani is everyone of us: next time it may be us.

In a movement without leaders,
we are all brothers and sisters.
And an injury to one is an injury to all!

Ah yes, mb hay, isn't is strange how the modern world is such an evil and complex set of social arrangements that both sides of this argument can seem morally correct at the same time.

Your point of view is very compelling. How can we possibly condone violence when what we are protesting is the violence of the existing social order? How can we claim the moral high ground if we gain it using same means as the elites that we despise so much?

As you acknowledge, your anarchist friend has some equally compelling arguments to make. Does the protestor initiated 'violence' at these protests amount to anything more than a tiny drop in the ocean of violence people suffer under capitalism, authoritarian regimes, colonialism, patriarchy, etc, every minute? Is not sitting down in the face of this obviously overwhelming and vicious system and allowing it to beat you senseless--or shoot you dead--in the name of peaceful civil disobedience a kind of pathology--and a luxurious kind of pathology at that, given the privileges we have that even allow us to entertain this as a form of protest?

As arguments, removed from historical context, these seem about equally convincing to me. (And this is an old debate: it was happening in the time of Christ among the resistance movements in Roman occupied territories, and I'm sure it long pre-dates that.)

The question of historical context, which is often ignored in this 'debate', raises the possibility that one argument might be more applicable in some historical circumstances than in others. Passive resistance in NAZI Germany or Stalinist Russia lead only to death, and brought no change in the system. On the other hand, passive resistance has been pretty succesful in certain periods of history in certain circumstances--the modern environmental movement is a good example of this. It may be losing overall, but the destroyers have been slowed down some by means of non-violent direct action.

On the other end of the spectrum, where we come to the question of violence, the conclusion seems similar.
I couldn't really justify shooting my neighbors when they make too mucy noise, or because I don't like their political views, while shooting Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot seems easily justified on moral grounds.

To me this makes the issue of historical circumstances important in this discussion. What is is about the particular time we live in that makes this debate so alive? Why am I hearing this debate everywhere these days: in my union, in community organizing groups, over beers with friends? How is it that at this particular time in history you and your anarchist friend come to be engaged in this discussion? Here, I believe, more than in any re-rehearsal of a centuries old debate is where the answers lie, not in the logic of violence vs non-violence, but in an examination of why this is even a question for us at this moment in history.

this whole idea of "lets be completely nonviolent and knowingly get our asses kicked by the police, so we can try and garnish some sympathy from the unparticipating public" is a bunch of shit, noone cares now if nonviolent protesters are attacked by police. the public does not get outraged over teargas, pepper spray, and water cannons anymore, they just dont think its a big deal. i know and alot of people who are reading this know that being pepper sprayed and tear gassed are quite painful, and no matter how nonviolent we are, the pigs will keep using these tactics, and not a person will care.
we are fighting for freedom we are fighting against the largest most powerful enemy any movement of the people has had to face. the capitalist use institutionalized violence and oppression for the sake of money and power , how dare you compare us just because we wont lie down and take police harassment.
we need a diversity of tactics if we are ever to win this.
staying bound to a utopian ideology of absolute nonviolence is fine for the individual but as a movement we will get nowhere with it.
RIP carlo giuliani