This book is anti-copyrighted. Any and all parts may be republished, reappropriated, taken out of context, desecrated, defiled, or whatever else you feel like doing with it with no intellectual property rights held by the author whatsoever, because intellectual property is a stupid idea, anyways.

To Mark Seis, thanks for the computer,

and for believing in me.

Acknowledgements

As an independent autodidactic scholar and writer, it is an especially nerve-wracking experience to write and publish a book, as I don’t have many standards to measure myself against other than my own limited, self-directed experience, and I am constantly looking to others to provide feedback and outside perspective on my academic work and theory. Thus, this book would not be possible without a host of people who have guided me and helped with this project. Even with all the help I’ve received, I am sure that there are angles I overlooked and stories I missed. Any errors in the research and historical data are mine own, as I am still relatively young and inexperienced as a writer and researcher. I make no claims to any academic standards except my own quest for truth and beauty in this strange and sick world of ours. Any feedback on my work is greatly appreciated; I always welcome critiques and intelligent discourse.

As to the cast of characters who helped me out with this project, first and foremost I must thank Mark Seis, to whom this book is dedicated, for letting me to audit his classes, for taking interest in me, for believing in my ability to write and encouraging me to put my thoughts down on paper, for giving me the computer with which I typed this book, and for providing invaluable advice, encouragement, and feedback to me along the way. Angie, thanks for supporting me in numerous ways, for helping me throughout numerous edits and revisions, and for patiently listening to my endless verbal processing sessions while I worked through these ideas. I would also like to thank Colin Jenkins and the rest of the Hampton team for taking a chance on me and supporting me through my first year of being a writer, as I cut my teeth on awkward articles and gradually found my place as a writer and author. I probably wouldn’t be writing today if the Hampton team hadn’t taken me under their wing. Many thanks to all of my friends who have edited the numerous drafts of the book and given me insightful feedback - Mark, Colin, Ben, Stephen, Jordan, Johanna, Marea, Aaron, Willie, and Mick. Thanks to Dylan and your project Evergreen Refuge, for your hauntingly beautiful music which provided the soundtrack for this book. One of these days I’ll actually buy your albums rather than just streaming them through bandcamp.

Although published through the Hampton Institute, I dedicate this manuscript to the public domain and retain no intellectual property rights over it whatsoever. Please feel free to reuse or republish any part of it that you wish. The full book can also be downloaded for free at hamptoninstitution.org, as I want this to be available to as many people as possible. Please feel free to print several copies of it (preferably on the corporate dime while you are at work) and pass them out or leave them in weird places. If you enjoyed this book and would like to contribute to me financially so that I can buy more books, feed my cats expensive cat food, and keep researching and writing, there is also an area to donate to me on the Hampton Institute website.

Introduction

“STOP! Please!!! Please stop!! What the fuck are you doing to my arm!?! HELP!! Somebody fucking help me! Get these mother-fuckers off of me!! You’re breaking my arm! Oh God please stop, ok ok I’m sorry I called you a mother-fucker... just fucking STOP you goddamn mother-fucking sadist! Oh God please stop, I can’t take it anymore, let go of my fucking arm!!! PLEASE!!! Somebody get them off of me!!!!”

Brandon was screaming for me, I knew it. I was his friend, and we had sworn to watch each other’s backs if shit was going down, but I backed down. I couldn’t, I was too scared that I would be beat too, and I was still healing and limping from my last brawl with the guards. There was no point in fighting back, who were we kidding? Two scrawny suburban white kids against eight coked-out, 200-pound, angry Jamaican guards didn’t stand a chance. Brandon’s screams went on for hours. They ended up dislocating his arm and breaking several ribs, not to mention the excruciating pain that they extracted from him by grinding his limbs into the concrete floor and rubbing his face against the ground until it was raw and bleeding. I didn’t get up and fight the guards that night. I didn’t even try to distract them by breaking a light or throwing a chair. No, I rolled over in my bed, stuffed toilet paper into my ears to drown out the horrible sounds, and cried all night long while his screams echoed up and down the hallway and around my head until they finally spilled out into the open air, being gradually absorbed by the slow crashing of the waves on the beautiful Caribbean beach that lay just a few feet away from our concrete enclosure that we would often look longingly at, yet never actually sink our feet into.

I cried because I didn’t understand. My 15 year-old self couldn’t possibly conceptualize the complexities of thousands of years of injustice and oppression that had culminated in Brandon being tortured thousands of miles away from home by strangers while I and dozens of other kids sat cowardly nearby. I didn’t know about the long dark history of the island of Jamaica - rife with genocide, racism, and slavery - which created an atmosphere of unrestricted brutality from the Jamaican guards who saw these snotty American white kids as perfect targets of aggression as they worked through their own issues of oppression and power. I didn’t know about the background of the American private for-profit juvenile prison system that I was currently incarcerated in. I didn’t understand that the sickness of my own family dynamics which had led me to this facility was the result of thousands of years of religious fundamentalism, Patriarchal dominance, and authoritarianism. I didn’t understand the dynamics of fear and power, resistance and hegemony, colonialism and conquest; I didn’t even know what any of those words meant. I simply knew that something was deeply, deeply wrong with the world, I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do about it. And so I cried.

Many years after that experience, I am just now beginning to understand what happened that night in a dark corner of the tiny island of Jamaica. I am beginning to understand what is wrong with the world. I have developed some language to describe my experiences. After many years of therapy I am now able to articulate my deepest, darkest memories and emotions and see that they are, unfortunately, a shared experience with many other living creatures that I share this planet with. I am beginning to understand the power of ideas that created a system that allowed Brandon to be tortured that night and numerous other nights, and that allow similar and worse atrocities to be carried out today all over the world. I am starting to realize that what Brandon and I experienced that night is what billions of other living beings experience every day, as ideas about the way the world should be create situations that allow for an incalculable level of violence and suffering to be inflicted on the world.

As I begin to understand all of this, I realize that I have a responsibility to act on what I have experienced and what I know. As I look around at the world and see terrible acts of violence and injustice happening all around me, I realize that I also have a voice. I have a voice that must speak to its experiences, or I will go insane trying to internalize the chaos that I observe around myself. This book is my voice. It is my experience with resisting destructive ideas, systems, and people, nothing more.

I therefore dedicate this book to those who resist: to Brandon, to every child who resisted Tranquility Bay or any other WWASPS program or boot camp, to every child who has resisted oppression in any form, to every human who has ever resisted human ignorance and destruction, to every non-human animal, tree, river, forest, or coral reef that struggles to survive in a world bent on killing you, and to the spirits of all those who have died in the struggle. As long as there exists those who believe in destructive and oppressive ideas and systems, there will be those few who resist those ideas in large and small ways, some known but mostly unknown. May this book serve your struggle.

Chapter 1: A Common Language, A Common Goal

Every living being on this planet has experienced injustice and oppression at some point or another and in some form or another. As humans, our lives are shaped by blatantly violent and subtly coercive forces that compel us to act in certain ways and to not act in other ways. It is, unfortunately, an unavoidable part of the very fabric of our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not. For some, this oppression is obvious and terrible, as they regularly experience assault, rape, arrest, murder, starvation, and theft in their families and communities. Others experience it to a slightly lesser degree as they are openly mocked, discriminated against, and treated with lesser value than other members of their culture due to their gender, sexual orientation, age, health, class, or race. Still others might not see these forces in their lives at all, as their experience with oppression is on the receiving end when they receive wealth and power at the expense of those underneath them on the pyramid of social inequality.

There is a reason why it is normal and acceptable for living creatures to treat each other with hatred and disrespect. The reason is that a lot of people believe in certain ideas. There are many ideas out there, but unfortunately the most popular ideas are also the most destructive ones. For example, there is a very popular idea out there that if you take the sexual organs of a cotton plant, flatten it into a piece of paper, dye it green, and make figures and pictures of dead royalty on it, you can then use this piece of paper to have power and control over other living creatures. If someone has a lot of these pieces of paper, they can purchase whatever they want and kill billions of humans, cows, fish, forests, streams, or whatever else they can come up with. The question of whether somebody should do these things is never brought into question, because the fact of the matter is that they can. This is a very bad idea.

Another popular idea is that certain humans can own other animals and areas of our planet. When certain humans are allowed to own other animals, human or otherwise, they often do very bad things to them. When certain humans own parts of our planet, they often like to create imaginary lines called borders and kill other people who also want to live in that part of the Earth, as well as doing great damage to the Earth as they take trees, water, plants, minerals, and other parts of the Earth away in order to make lots of money. Someone who owns another animal or a part of the Earth can do almost whatever they want to them, even very horrible things, just because they can. This is also a very bad idea.

There is also the idea that certain people have less value because of their skin color, their gender, their sexual orientation, their age, their education, their religion, their cultural values, how much green paper their family has acquired through the generations, or various other reasons. This is another very bad idea that has caused incalculable levels of suffering in our world, and continues to do so every day.

There are also some good ideas, though. There is an idea that all living creatures should be treated with respect and dignity. There is an idea that all humans are of equal value and that nobody should be able to hurt or oppress someone else regardless of how much money or power they have. There is an idea that everybody should have the freedom to live how they choose as long as they don’t hurt or oppress anybody else. These ideas are often called ‘radical’, ‘revolutionary’, and ‘dangerous’, because they are a threat to those who have a lot of green paper and imaginary lines on the Earth. These radical ideas, although they seem like good ideas to most people who take the time to think about them, are unfortunately not the ideas that run the world. Therefore, those who believe these radical, dangerous ideas and believe that they are worth fighting for must resist the dominant and powerful bad ideas and those who enforce them. This is called ‘resistance.’

Those who engage in resistance have acquired a very large arsenal of tactics and strategies for engaging in resistance over the past several thousand years, and resistors today have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon. On the other hand, many resistors are also struggling with the challenges of living in a new era. The old ideas don’t always work in this age of expanding technology, Orwellian surveillance, and increasingly militarized police forces.

Within the world of resistance, there are many different ideas for what ideas we should be fighting for and how we should fight. This book will aim to address the latter question: how should we resist? Although I have many of my own ideas about what we should be fighting for and some of those ideas will become clear throughout the book, my focus is really on the second question, as we will explore many different ideas of resistance with the hope of coming to a more complete understanding of the history of resistance, why it is necessary, and how you can increase the effectiveness of your resistance.

When someone asks the question, “How should we resist?” there are two big ideas that immediately jump up and loudly answer, “Resist this way!” Idea one says that you should resist using violent tactics, and idea two says that you should use nonviolent tactics. Both of these ideas have their heroes, success stories, philosophies, and various arguments for their legitimacy and supremacy. Both of these ideas have a long history of successful resistance, and both ideas have produced many incredible thinkers, writers, activists, radicals, and revolutionaries who have left a legacy that is admirable and inspirational.

Here is where I think there is a problem. Amidst the shouting match between these two big ideas of violence and nonviolence there is also an idea that I think has not received much attention, yet it is very important. This idea says that both methods of resistance are good ideas. This idea says that there are not just two main ways of resisting, but rather there is one bigger idea that includes both of the other ideas within it. This idea attempts to dissolve the rigidly polarized worlds of violent and nonviolent resistance by introducing a model that, by introducing a concept called colonization into the dialogue, encompasses the whole spectrum of resistance. This idea honors the experiences and beliefs of all people so that that any individual or group of people can effectively resist bad ideas until they no longer exist.

This book is about that idea. This book is not abstract theory or an attempt at stirring up more in-fighting and drama, but rather a guidebook for effective social change. Whether your resistance takes place on the level of your family dynamics, your community, your government, or your biosphere, this book is meant to help you resist oppressive violence wherever you find it and wish to end it. This book is also meant to be taken as whole. Please read the whole book before you make any judgments or decisions. I realize that many individuals will not agree with all of my assertions, my politics, my logic, or the narrative of history I present, and that is totally fine. I am not attempting to ‘win’ anybody to my ideological camp; I am simply trying to empower you to resist oppressive violence wherever and whenever you encounter it.

Lexicon

As we begin, I would like to present a simple lexicon of the definitions I am using in this book, as I realize that all words have at least two meanings- their definition and their connotation. I have chosen these definitions based on the connotations I am trying to convey with them, therefore they may not retain their original definition nor even the connotations that you associate with them. I would ask for some understanding and leniency as we struggle to find common vocabulary on this topic.

Violence: Violence is any physical, emotional, verbal, institutional, structural or spiritual behavior, attitude, policy or condition that diminishes, dominates or destroys others and ourselves. Violence consists of actions, words, attitudes, structures or systems that cause physical, psychological, social or environmental damage and/or prevent people from reaching their full human potential. Johan Galtung, one of the founders of Peace and Conflict Studies and creator of the Violence Triangle, posited that violence generally falls into three categories: direct violence, structural violence, and cultural violence.

Direct Violence can take many forms, but its most obvious form involves the use of physical force, as in assault, rape, a murder, a mugging, etc. Verbal violence is also a form of direct violence, as in hateful and derogatory speech intended to do harm to another.

Structural Violence exists when some groups, classes, genders, nationalities, etc. are assumed to have, and in fact do have, more access to goods, resources, and opportunities than other groups, classes, genders, nationalities, etc., and this unequal advantage is built into the very social, political and economic systems that govern societies, states and the world. These tendencies may be overt such as Apartheid or more subtle such as traditions or tendency to award some groups privileges over another.

Cultural violence is the prevailing attitudes and beliefs that we have been taught since childhood and that surround us in daily life regarding power and the necessity of violence. We can consider, for example, dominant narratives of history which glorify genocide, rape, and theft and present them as necessary evils in the face of cultural progression. Almost all cultures recognize that killing a person is murder, but killing tens, hundreds or thousands during a declared conflict is called ‘war’ or ‘colonizing a country,’ and the casual killing of civilians by the State is declared ‘collateral damage.’

It is important to realize that there is interplay between the components of the triangle. Cultural and Structural Violence cause Direct Violence, while Direct Violence reinforces Structural and Cultural Violence. Direct Violence is visible as behavior in the triangle, however this violence does not come out of nowhere; its roots are Cultural and Structural. For the purposes of this book, property destruction is not considered violent unless it directly jeopardizes another living creature’s ability to support and sustain their existence.

The State: By the State, I mean any hierarchical political organization which holds a monopoly on violence within its defined territorial boundaries and serves to ‘legitimize’ the use of violence on other States, on its own citizens, and on the Earth with the purpose of increasing the wealth, power, and oppressive capacity of the ruling class of that State.

Pacifism: Pacifism is a broad ideology which encompasses many schools of thought and attitudes of resistance. There are two beliefs which unite all pacifists - being anti-war and against oppressive violence. Within that spectrum are many approaches to resistance, ranging from non-resistance to active resistance. For the purposes of this book, I need to create an ideological distinction between ineffective, disengaged non-resistance and active, engaged, effective resistance, and although the term pacifism is not completely accurate, it will serve the purposes of this book. Therefore, I will use the term pacifism to denote nonresistance and active nonviolence to denote resistance, although not all who identify as pacifists are nonresistors. I realize this may be a troubling choice of definitions to some, but due to the poverty of language I could not find a better way to distinguish the two ideologies. Thus, when I use the term pacifism, I am describing an ideology of nonviolent nonresistance; a philosophy which forbids an individual to engage in direct oppressive violence, but does not allow for effective resistance to oppressive violence. The writings of Martin Buber, Leo Tolstoy, John Howard Yoder, Adin Ballou, The Buddha, and Greg Boyd are good examples of pacifist ideology.

Active Nonviolence: Also known as Satyagraha, the third way, nonviolent resistance, and nonviolent direct action, this philosophy distinguishes itself from pacifism in many important and often misunderstood ways. Active nonviolence posits that through offensive, yet loving and creative action, violence can be overthrown with a dedication to and willingness to suffer for one’s cause. Adherents to this philosophy often put themselves in physical danger and engage in direct action, property destruction, and civil disobedience to the State, but their actions are carefully planned as to never harm or assault another living being. Active nonviolence as a form of resistance has gained great popularity in social change movements over the past century. The writings/actions of Mohandas Gandhi, MLK Jr., Dorothy Day, Shane Claiborne, Walter Wink, Yeshua, and many others are representative of active nonviolence.

Violent Resistance: Any action taken that intentionally harms another living beings life, health, or well-being for the purpose of resisting oppression will be understood to be violent resistance or violent direct action. Advocates of violent resistance believe that violence is a powerful, effective weapon that the State uses to legitimize itself everyday, and those that resist the State are therefore entitled to also use violence to defend themselves against oppression. Almost all revolutions and resistance movements throughout human history have been violent, and many nonviolent movements have been bolstered by their violent counterparts, as we’ll explore later on in the book. Advocates of violent resistance include Huey Newton, Malcolm X, Ernesto Guevara, Derrick Jensen, Ward Churchill, Peter Gelderloos, Ted Kaczynski, John Brown, Johann Most, Luigi Galleani, Emma Goldman, Victor Serge, Severino Di Giovanni, and Naomi Jaffe.

Colonization: Colonization is the illegitimate economic exploitation and political domination of a people by a violent oppressor, as well as the separation of colonized peoples from their individuality and culture. Frantz Fanon, one of the greatest theorists of colonization and decolonization, has explored this concept exhaustively, and we will borrow heavily from his writings as we continue throughout this book. Fanon believed that the rich history, culture, and wisdom of oppressed peoples are physically and symbolically destroyed, and in their place the colonizer creates a people who deserve only to be ruled and exploited. The colonizer reconstructs colonized peoples as ‘lazy’ and ‘unproductive,’ thereby justifying low wages or coercive systems of labor. He also reconstructs them as ‘stupid,’ thereby justifying the imposition of the colonial power’s institutions and practices - boarding schools, religious training centers, and plantations/factories. Finally, he constructs them as ‘savage’ and ‘dangerous,’ thereby justifying military conquest, police repression, and coercive forms of social control. The result is a people “in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality. ” Fanon believed it was important to realize that colonialism, “hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of underdevelopment and poverty, or at all events sinks into it more deeply. ”

Decolonization: Decolonization is both the act of physically freeing a territory from the external control of settlers and the psychological act of freeing the consciousness of the native from the effects of colonization: the states of alienation and dehumanization. Fanon posits three premises in his theory of decolonization:

a.) the act of colonization is never legitimate, as it is rooted in exploitation and oppressive violence;

b.) due to the illegitimacy of colonization, the oppressed (the colonized) are entitled to two actions: the reclamation of physical liberation and sovereignty as well reclamation from the psychological suffering of colonization;

c.) almost no nonviolent options are available which serve the ends of both physical and psychological liberation.

Due to this reasoning, Fanon concludes that violent resistance is not only justified, but required in order for the oppressed to fully decolonize themselves and resist oppressive violence. While there are some critiques of Fanon’s theory, I believe it a helpful model to help us understand the complexities of and requirements for effective decolonization .

Civil Disobedience: Henry Thoreau, a mid-18th century American philosopher, coined the term Civil Disobedience in his essay of the same name, written in 1849. He defined civil disobedience as willful disobedience to laws which one considers unjust or hypocritical, as he wrote, “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? ” as well as, “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” Thoreau laid the theoretical groundwork for many resistance leaders and groups who followed him, including Gandhi and MLK Jr. Civil disobedience is an essential facet of any resistance movement, and can look like occupying a public space, tax resisting, draft resisting, sabotage and property destruction, or armed insurrection.

Chapter 2: Business As Usual

Before we begin discussing methods of resistance, let’s establish a baseline of why resistance is necessary. As humans living on the planet Earth, we have a long history of treating each other, non-human animals, and all other living beings on this planet with violence, disrespect, and hate. There are perhaps millions of ways that we have invented to harm and kill each other and an exhaustive list of every act of violence that is happening against the Earth and all of her inhabitants would take much more room than this book could hold and a much better scholar than I. There are, however, a few statistics and a general level of awareness of the daily ways that those in power (that is, those who have lots of green paper and imaginary Earth lines) perpetuate violence against us and all that we all need to face and accept as we move forward with this discussion of social change.

One very common and almost invisible way that violence happens all around us every day is through economic disparity, also known as social stratification or wealth inequality. Due to a long history of the reign of bad ideas (the commodification of all living things, the creation of interest-bearing currency, and the inherent selfishness, competition, and violence associated with capitalism) we currently are witnessing the greatest disparity of wealth and resources in the history of humanity. Most of the humans living on this planet do not have access to the basic resources to survive and live a healthy, meaningful life, while a very small number of humans hoard the vast majority of the resources of the planet in order to spend them in foolish, extravagant, and wasteful ways. In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption and the world’s middle 60% accounted for 21.9% of total consumption, leaving the poorest 20% consuming just 1.5% of the world’s total resources. To further highlight the gross inequality, the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all consumption, while the poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% of all consumption of resources .

Despite the rhetoric of ‘trickle down’ theories, the economic gap is increasing exponentially. The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world rose 8.2% to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control to nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets. In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets in 2004. A 2010 study found that at least a third of all private financial wealth, and nearly half of all offshore wealth, is owned by world’s richest 91,000 people – just 0.001% of the world’s population. The next 51 percent of all wealth is owned by the next 8.4 million — just 0.14% of the world’s population .

Another way to look at this would be to line up ten people and put ten bowls of soup in front of them. One person would eat six bowls of soup, another would eat two bowls, and another person would eat one bowl; leaving the remaining seven people to fight over the remaining one bowl of soup. This analogy may make it easier to understand why, according to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty and easily preventable causes, and they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death. ”

Seven people fighting over one bowl of soup explains why over half of the world's human population- over three and a half billion people- live on less than $2.50 a day, why 1.1 billion people in developing countries (aka the neoliberal colonies) have inadequate access to water, 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation, and why 790 million people are chronically malnourished. Seven people fighting for one bowl of soup allows 12% of the world’s population to use 85% of the available water, and means that over a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their name .

The fact that this is all normal and perfectly acceptable partially explains why the amount of money the US spent on cosmetics last year (approximately 8 billion dollars) could provide water and sanitation to every human in the world, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. This disparity means that the US government to spend almost a trillion dollars a year on the military (that is, on instruments of violence and death) while that same amount of money could, in one year, send every child in the world to school and provide them with school materials . The amount of money the world spends on their militaries in one year (around one and a half trillion dollars) could provide potable water, adequate nutrition, appropriate healthcare, and education to every one of the world’s inhabitants. But we’d rather invent and create expensive machines for hurting and killing each other. Business As Usual.

Speaking of killing each other, around 180 million people died in the 20th century due to war, genocide, massacres, and other State functions . That is a far larger number than in any other century of human existence, partly due to the fact that there were more people alive in the 20th century than ever before, and partly due to the fact that the State is becoming more violent and destructive as it continuously evolves and assumes it true intent and purpose- to eradicate life on this planet by systematically turning all of life into a commodity, and then into dead capital. Every single one of those 180 million deaths is the direct result of State violence, and yet we are on course to break that record in the 21st century due to the continued proliferation of war, genocide, and other human atrocities. Why do we continue to kill our own species at a historically unprecedented rate? Because that is just the way it is, because that is Business As Usual.

We harm our own species in many other ways as well. One out of every four women is raped in her life, and another 19% fend off rape attempts . Over 64 million girls worldwide are child-brides, while another 140 million have undergone female genital mutilation. There are at least 12 million women in forced labor worldwide, and 4.5 million of those women are forced into sex-slavery. Rape as a tactic of war is a common practice, as conservative estimates suggest that 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while approximately 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped in the 1994 Rwandan genocide . This is nothing to be alarmed at, however, it is simply Business As Usual

Religious and sectarian violence has claimed the lives of at least 10 million people since 1900, and is on the rise in almost every region of the world. At least 76% of the world’s population faces some sort of formal or informal restriction on their faith . No worries, Business As Usual.

Violence against individuals due to sexual orientation and gender identity bias claims at least 5000 human lives every year, although the real number is probably much higher, due to lack of reporting in most countries. Seventy-six countries still criminalize same-sex relationships, and five countries enforce the death penalty against homosexuals . Again, nothing to see here, merely Business As Usual.

Racialized violence, domestic violence, honor killings, judicial violence (death penalty, assassinations, and mass incarceration), slavery, genocide of indigenous peoples, the list goes on and on. The longer one looks at the facts, the clearer it becomes that oppressive violence surrounds us and is integrated into the very fabric of our culture. Business As Usual.

Humans are not the only recipients of violence in our world, in many ways we actually have it pretty good compared to what most non-human animals experience on a daily basis, as more than 150 billion non-human animals are killed by humans every year by the meat, egg, and dairy industry. This doesn’t include the additional billions of animals killed for fur, feathers, leather, hunting, medical testing, cosmetics and cosmetic testing, blood-sports, shelters, zoos, rodeos, amusement parks, or any of the various reasons that humans kill other animals for every day . The show must go on, Business As Usual!

Our planet itself is dying due to our cultures insatiable appetite for more and more ‘natural resources’ to consume and turn into piles of money. Over 90% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. Between 150 to 200 species of flora and fauna become extinct every day, almost 10,000 times the acceptable ‘background’ rate, with predictions of 30-50% of all known species becoming extinct by 2050 . Over 95% of the standing forests in the US are gone, the soils of the once-fertile breadbasket of the Midwest are extremely depleted, and over 37% of the rivers in the US are declared "unusable" due to pollution and contamination. The impacts of climate change are only beginning to be felt. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are at their highest in 650,000 years, oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic, and the population of zooplankton, the basis of the marine food chain, has dropped 73 percent since 1960. The largest insect infestation in the history of North America destroyed millions of miles of forest in the western United States, and is now spreading north, through Canada into the boreal forests of the subarctic . This is all necessary, because it is Business As Usual.

The increase in the amount of heat in the oceans over the last thirty years amounts to 17 x 1022 Joules. That measure of heat is equal to exploding a Hiroshima bomb in the ocean every second for the same thirty years . Averaging over all land and ocean surfaces across the Earth during the past 134 years, global temperatures have increased roughly 1.53°F (0.85ºC) , and are still increasing at an ever-alarming rate. Rising global temperatures are speeding the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps, many of which feed the world's greatest rivers. The thickness of the Arctic ice cap has decreased 40% since the late 1960s . The great Himalayan glaciers which feed such mighty rivers as the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, and the Ganges, are rapidly melting and could cease to maintain an annual flow as early as 2035. The percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s due to increased evaporation caused by rising temperatures . These must all be perfectly acceptable statistics, for they are Business As Usual .

To put it simply, Business As Usual, through its various incarnations as States, international banks, and corporations, is killing us, is killing the planet, and isn’t about to stop anytime soon. The daily level of systemic violence which is being perpetuated by the current order of things is often presented as ‘just the way things are’ and ‘it may not be perfect but it’s the best we have.’ Reformers, revolutionaries, and resistors of all types reject that argument, and demand that Business As Usual is totally unacceptable and must end immediately. The violence that is being enacted on planet Earth and all her inhabitants every day is the highest it has ever been in human history, and there are individuals and ideas that are directly responsible for this. No matter what your personal opinions, philosophies, beliefs, or convictions are, this is a truth that we must accept and realize. No matter if you spend your day watching TV, campaigning for a social change movement, or actively engaging in armed struggle against your local State entity, the maximum level of global violence possible is still happening every single day until we, collectively as a species, stop it.

It must be understood that any action taken to stop this insane cycle of violence, no matter how violent, could not possibly be more violent than the daily level of violence that is happening every single day of every single week of every single month of every single year that we don’t stop it. No direct action, no bomb, no armed struggle, no method of revolution could ever possibly hope to meet or exceed the level of systemic violence that is being executed by the continued existence of these very bad ideas. Even all-out nuclear war, as catastrophic and violent as that would be, would ultimately mean the cessation of this oppressive system and thus the ending of this culture which necessitates violence at every turn to maintain its existence, and would ultimately be less violent than the continuation of Business As Usual.

For many of my readers, this summation of Business As Usual must come as a shock and gross exaggeration, as they look outside their windows and see no such violence in their world. If this describes you, then I would challenge you to look beyond the facade of normalcy and to try to see and understand the daily, often invisible and subtle ways that oppressive violence is happening around you. As inheritors of the fruits of thousands of years of colonization, theft, and slavery, it is often painful and difficult to see and acknowledge the violence that is hidden away in other regions of the world, other neighborhoods, other families, other people, and during different time periods but I assure you, violence has and will continue to take place.

This understanding should not be seen as an immediate ‘call to arms’, but as a simple reality check that the maximum level of oppressive violence that the world has ever seen is happening everyday due to the continuation of Business As Usual. The most violent act we can possibly do is sit there and do nothing. No-one is innocent of this violence, no-ones hands are clean, and we cannot claim pacifism as long as we continue allowing this system to perpetuate itself on the planet and all of her inhabitants. We are all complicit. Pacifism cannot truly exist in today’s globalized, post-modern world. Even a simple act of purchasing a sandwich, a pair of jeans, or a tank of gas is participating in war, theft, rape, genocide, ecocide, ethnocide, and colonization. Even for those rare few who actually manage to divest themselves from industrial society, those individuals who find creative ways to avoid paying taxes, using currency, or working at jobs that facilitate destruction, the violence is still not slowing due to those positive and thoughtful actions.

We must face this horrible, uncomfortable reality if we are to see the world accurately and engage in it effectively. No matter the path we choose or our personal beliefs, this system cannot be allowed to continue destroying life on this planet. Our survival as a species depends on this. The continued ability of our planet to support and sustain life depends on it. There are no bystanders or observers in this cosmic struggle, you are either complicitly participating in our collective demise or you are actively resisting. Whether you like it or not, whether you are aware of it or not, whether you are willing to admit it or not, every action you take is either working towards oppression or liberation.

As Howard Zinn said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

Chapter 3: Nihilism and Resistance

Facing the terrible totality of humanity’s destructive acts on each other and our environment can be a deeply depressing and disempowering experience. In the face of such horror and overwhelming violence, it can be easy to adopt a nihilist perspective, to think that one person can’t possibly do anything to stop all this, so why even try?

This is an extremely important question, and one that I believe many people secretly ask themselves every day as they face news headlines declaring yet more wars, famines, terrorist attacks, environmental destruction, disease outbreaks, and mass shootings. The globalized connectedness of the internet, although having many positive qualities, also contains an increased measure of overwhelming disempowerment to those who are actively concerned with the current state of our world. No longer can one concern themselves with just their immediate community, but we must now face the enormous amount of globalized atrocities happening everyday, with live feeds and instant updates giving us a front-row seat to war, genocide, starvation, and oppression. This experience can be very disempowering to many people who feel that they cannot possibly stop the amount of violence they see in the world, and even if they tried they know that they would be quickly arrested and forced to spend the rest of their lives in the care of the State, in prisons or mental hospitals.

Facing Business As Usual is an overwhelmingly terrifying experience for those who dare to actually look at it and allow themselves to feel the horror of it all. The challenge now is to break through the nihilism of such an experience and to find ways that you can effectively resist oppressive violence in a way that empowers you and those around you.

There is a very simple activity you can do to examine your own relationship with nihilism and resistance. Picture somebody you love deeply: your mother, your father, a spouse, a sibling, your child, maybe a non-human animal friend like a cat or dog. Next, picture that person being viciously beaten to death by a gang of heavily armed policemen and soldiers, who have the full weight of the law of the State on their side and who are virtually undefeatable, due to their weapons and capacity for violence. What would you do?

The voice of nihilism, the cry of fear says, “It’s hopeless, you could never stop the beating, they all have guns and weapons and you only have your fists. Besides, stopping the beating is illegal, and you don’t want to break the law, do you? Just stand there, try not to look, and be grateful that it isn’t you.”

The voice of resistance, the cry of love says, “I don’t care what the odds are or who says what is illegal, I have to do everything in my power to fight this, even if it means death or imprisonment. I have to fight to defend what I love. I must spend all my energy and effort attempting to stop this horrible thing, even if it’s the last thing I do. I must fight to resist this atrocity, or I am not worthy of this persons love.”

What would you do?

I would venture to guess (and hope) that the vast majority of people, when faced with that situation, would sacrifice their life and their freedom in the name of resistance, regardless of the odds or possible ramifications of their action. Why? Because we fight to defend what we love.

Some individuals, granted, are so wounded, deranged, and sick from being victims of this violent culture for so long that they would rather preserve their own pitiful existence for a few more years than listen to the voice of love. This deeply sick view of the world is exemplified in the actions of those who are in charge of running the States, corporations, and banks which are currently destroying the world around us. This sociopathic attitude does exist, but for the most part those who exhibit it will never read this book nor face the realities of Business As Usual, for their jobs are to maintain the current level of oppressive violence around the world.

Assuming that you have not been so destroyed by this culture that you would listen to the voice of love, assuming that you would resist in order defend what you love - that which is sacred to you - the next step is to discover what it is that you love and what you are willing to fight for. A very quick and easy way to turn your revolutionary zeal into an ineffective desk job is to try to jump into a struggle that isn’t yours. Many “career activists” who work for nonprofits and NGO’s have found themselves working for a cause that they don’t love, simply because they wanted to “be an activist,” and they have not yet found what it is they truly love and want to fight for. Nobody can fight it all, it’s too big. We must find that which we love the most, that which we cannot live without, and fight to defend it from those who are destroying it because the odds are that whatever it is that you love is being destroyed by someone in some capacity in today’s world. Find what you love, discover what makes you come alive, what makes you feel connected to other beings and to the planet, and then decide to fight to defend that.

Another way to find out what you love is to find out what makes you angry. And not just angry in the everyday sense of the word, but a deep, primal rage that rises from your soul, an anger that comes from a profound feeling of injustice, a righteous indignation that surges from a dark, violent part of you that knows, “This is wrong, this is evil, and it needs to stop immediately.” Does child sex-slavery make you angry? Primate extinction? Women being forced to abort their children so that they can continue working in industrial factories? Ocean acidification? Indigenous peoples being evicted from their ancestral lands? Climate change? Fur-farms? Toxic waste being intentionally dumped in poor communities and countries? War? Vivisection? LGBTQ discrimination? Genocide? Starvation? Rape? Racism? Fascism? Capitalism? What makes you angry enough that you are willing to sacrifice your freedom and possibly even your life in order to resist?

Resistance doesn’t always require violence, but it always requires a deep commitment to the cause, whatever that cause may be. Your resistance may look like divesting yourself from Western Culture by tax-resisting and transitioning to a gift economy , it may look like a lot of studying to try to figure out why the world is the way it is and what ideas are the ones you want to fight for, it may look like moving to another country to join a resistance movement that you feel echoes your beliefs, it may look like freeing non-human animals from captivity or disabling instruments of death such as whaling ships and traps, it may look like blowing up dams, ski resorts, and horse corrals, it may look like protesting and marching in demonstrations, it may look like educating and organizing other people in your community, it may look like quitting your job when you realize that you are contributing to oppressive violence, it may look like armed insurrection. When you are fighting for what you love, resistance will arise naturally from within you, you merely need to honor the feeling and allow the process to happen.

For some, simply the process of discovering what you love and what you are willing to fight for may be a daunting and incredible task, as our culture has so effectively disconnected us from ourselves that we can no longer feel our own deep love or anger. A good test for this is if you can read the previous chapter without feeling either a seething anger or a deep depression at the amount of violence, oppression, and injustice your world is experiencing right now. If this describes you, then I recommend an immediate and intensive detoxification from our culture, for you have been effectively colonized by the State and your capacity to engage effectively with yourself and the world around you is in serious jeopardy.

To not act in the face of such blatant violence is to further your own disconnection, to deepen your removal from the web of relationship which you are an integral part of, and ultimately to be complicit in the destruction which is taking place in front of you. Nihilism, although an incredibly pervasive facet of our culture, can be overcome by learning to feel your own emotions and then learning to act on what you feel. In the world of therapy, this is known as “honoring your senses.” Every day we have senses to do things and to not do other things. This is also known as our conscience or our superego. When we honor our senses, we become more connected with ourselves and the world around us. When we betray our senses, we become disconnected from ourselves and the world around us, leading us to develop mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, drug addiction, and sociopathy. Learning to honor your senses is a good first step towards healing yourself, your community, and ultimately your planet .

Once you have learned to honor your senses and you have discovered what you love, that which you are willing to fight for and defend, then you are ready to begin engaging in effective resistance.

Chapter 4: Understanding the Other

Part of the motivation for me writing this book is the incredible amount of misunderstanding, narrow-minded dogmatism, and animosity that I observe within many resistance communities. No matter what the social issue at hand, I have almost always found the parties involved to be rigidly polarized on the issue of violence: is it an acceptable tool to use for resisting oppression or not? I believe both camps have much to offer the other, but we must first look at ourselves and examine our own positions critically, seeing the ways in which we might limit our own cause through hypocrisy, ignorance, privilege, personal fears and insecurities, and a misunderstanding of historical events. Then we can begin to understand the other side of the position, see the reasons that many people have chosen the alternative option, and ultimately try to find truths within their position that we can echo and sympathize with. To fail to consider and understand the other is to consciously remain ignorant.

Critiques of nonviolence

Let’s start with some common critiques of nonviolence, both passive and active. There have been many excellent critiques of nonviolent ideology and culture (namely by Ward Churchill, Peter Gelderloos, and Derrick Jensen ), and I will try to summarize the most common and relevant critiques: Privilege, State Complicity, and Historical Narratives.

Privilege

Many pacifists are privileged individuals, in that they are fortunate enough to have been born into the dominant culture. People in the dominant culture, by definition, have never experienced brutal and violent oppression and therefore come by pacifism quite easily, as it doesn’t take much convincing for someone to see that violence is destructive and should be avoided at all costs. There is nothing wrong with being privileged or being a pacifist, but when one loses sight of their privilege and lacks the context for their privileged position - expecting other, less privileged people to adopt their privileged position easily - nonviolence quickly becomes a chic fashion stance, a cool, progressive button to put on your thrift-store jean jacket instead of a radical theory of liberation which is available to all. If you realize that you fall into this category, you should seek to understand why others believe the things that they do and begin to dissect the systems of power which afforded you your privilege. Reflecting on this, you will begin to notice the daily ways in which your privilege manifests itself, as you will begin to recognize the way that our culture reinforces the aspects of your identity which allow the culture to exist and discourages those aspects of your identity on whose backs this culture is built .

Very few people are born into all the facets of privilege, as most of us will have a mixture of privileged and disadvantaged aspects of our identity. For example, I was born a homo-sapiens (privilege), white (privilege), heterosexual (privilege), able-bodied (privilege), cis-male (privilege), into a Christian (privilege), working-class family (disadvantaged) with settler ancestry (privilege), into the most oppressive, wealthy, and powerful country in the world (privilege), and I never received a high-school or college education (disadvantaged). In my daily interactions, I must seek to understand the ways that my privilege and power manifests itself as I interact with others and seek to work towards a world free of privilege, in which all forms of life will be treated with respect and dignity. Expecting others who are not as privileged as you (and are therefore subject to more violence than you) to abandon their violent resistance instincts is arrogant, ignorant, ineffective, and ultimately destructive to your cause.

State Complicity

Another critique of nonviolence is that it is complicit with State violence, in that it doesn’t actually challenge the existing power structures but instead actually empowers them by ‘playing the role’ of dissent, without the danger of real dissent. This mistake arises from a misunderstanding of the true nature and function of the State, which is to violently control and manipulate a populace for the interests of the ruling class. Nonviolent activists who do not understand this are often grossly misled in their understanding of the effectiveness of their actions, although well-intentioned. Resistors must understand that the end result of any action towards social change must be kept in focus. If you are nonviolently working towards a goal and your movement is being ignored or co-opted, you need to have the courage to examine why and be willing to face the reality of the effectiveness of your tactics. Ineffective actions only strengthen State power and weaken your movement.

A prime example of this would be the actions taken by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg in anticipation of the 2004 Republican National Convention (a hotspot for embarrassing public displays of accountability and disdain). Bloomberg, appealing to the cash-strapped protesters (many of whom traveled long distances to be there), the many small business owners of the city, the delegates and politicians that disliked being held responsible for their actions, and of course to the ever watchful eye of the media, decided to give out shiny buttons that bore the phrase, “Peaceful Political Activist” to all protesters who would agree to remain calm, peaceful, and follow all orders given by police and other agents of the State throughout the week. The button entitled the ‘peaceful activist’ to various hotel, restaurant, and entertainment discounts during the week of the convention.

Unfortunately, the blatantly manipulative offer worked- tens of thousands of protesters swapped their right to free speech and their right to assemble for a $5 off coupon to Applebee’s, and remained in the designated ‘protest areas’ throughout the convention - which were far away from anywhere that might have actually attracted attention to their issues and concerns. Bloomberg got praise from the Left for being progressive and ‘welcoming’ protesters to the city, as well as from the Right for keeping ‘business as usual’ and subverting any protests that might bring unwanted attention to the various illegal, illegitimate, and immoral activities of the Republican party. The protesters who accepted the button were, unknowingly, being complicit in this grand spectacle of State theatre. As long as they have a few people peacefully protesting and waving some signs in a designated protest zone, the State is made to appear lenient, democratic, and attentive to the needs of its citizens, when in fact none of that is true.

Another way that nonviolence is complicit is that it ignores the reality of State violence that is happening every day due to the continued existence of the State. The examples of this are numerous, but for now I will give you a simple scenario. Let’s say that you are a walking down the street of any American city and you happen across a scene where an agent of the State (a police officer) is brutally beating a nonresistant young black man. Let’s say that there are several people recording this incident on their phones, and the agent is clearly not dissuaded by their cameras. Let’s say that the incident escalates to a point where the agent draws his gun and is about to execute this young man for the crime of being black. Let’s say that you have access to a firearm as well, whether it is yours or a companions, and you feel comfortable using it. What would you do in this situation? Would you shoot the agent in order to save the young boy?

Obviously, a believer in active nonviolence would put themselves in harm’s way and do everything possible in order to stop the atrocity, but let’s say that in this scenario you don’t have that option. It is either shoot the agent or be witness to judicial murder. I would venture to say that most people would not shoot the agent, due to fear for their own safety and well-being and an unconscious, implicit belief in the legitimacy of State violence. To not shoot the agent in that moment is to make a judgment call: that the life of an oppressor is worth more than that of his intended victims. But this story is purely hypothetical, ridiculous, and not applicable to your everyday life, correct?

Absolutely not. Every 26 hours, a black man is executed in the US by an agent of the State or a private security guard, often times with a crowd of witnesses present and recording the incident on their phones and cameras, yet no-one steps in and intervenes. Dozens of people every day in the US witness judicial murder and do nothing about it. In addition to killing humans within our own political borders, the US military is also actively engaged in killing other humans in at least nine other countries (the actual number is probably much higher, but the point is the same) through drone strikes, ground forces, economic sanctions, bombings, political assassinations, and various other military tactics. I may not be on the scene of the actual murders, but they are happening nonetheless. I know they are happening. I know that all humans have an equal right to live on this planet, regardless of their skin color, religious belief, age, sex, or their birthplace in a country that happens to have a lot of oil underneath it. By not actively engaging in stopping these actions, I am complicit in them. By paying taxes, purchasing products, and using gas in my vehicle, I am funding and contributing to the murder of other humans. Of course, I am not as complicit as the one piloting the drone or pulling the trigger, but I am directly contributing and funding those who do fly drones and pull triggers. There would be no US military drone strikes without willing US taxpayers to pay for the drone and a naïve, patriotic young American man to fly the drone. There would be no executions of black men on the streets of America without willing US taxpayers to fund the training and employment of police forces and naïve, patriotic young American men to carry out the execution.

To refuse to consider engaging in violence with agents of the US State in order to stop the murder of other humans is ultimately to say that the life of a black man or an Iraqi child is worth less than the life of an agent of the State. That is a very uncomfortable reality and not one that many people want to talk about, but I cannot see how it is false. This is the underlying motivation behind the slogan of, “Bring the War Home” that was popular among anti-war groups in the US in the 1960’s. To allow the State to continue killing others without engaging in violence against it is to unconsciously (or consciously) decide that the life of the perpetrator is worth more than the life of its intended victim. Ideally there is a way to stop the destruction of life on this planet without creating more violence, but no anti-war effort in the history of the US has been remotely successful, as war is deeply woven into the very DNA of our country. Over the past 238 years of American Imperialism, we have spent only 21 of those not at war with another country. Every war that has ended has done so due to economic reasons, not because of any anti-war movement. Clearly, whatever tactics we have been using are not working, and to refuse to consider the tool of violence in our resistance is to unconsciously manifest our privilege as the benefiters of those 238 years of war, theft, slavery, and genocide.

The issue of complicity can be more clearly illustrated by understanding the dynamics of abusive and codependent relationships, and understanding the parallels between abusive relationships with partners and abusive relationships with society. As any marriage and family counselor knows all too well, it takes two people (or more) to make an abusive relationship. If the victim of abuse is unwilling to tolerate the abuse and is able to draw and hold clear boundaries, the abuser will not be able to continue their abusive behaviors. Once the victim of abuse no longer accepts the terms of the relationship on the abusers level and refuses to continue fulfilling the role of victim, the cycle of abuse ends. Of course, this is only true to a point, as many abusive relationships end in death when the victim attempts to resist or hold clear boundaries with their abuser. This is true on an interpersonal level as well as a social level, as many revolutionaries and activists are directly targeted by the State for assassination. In light of this unfortunate reality, the victim must eventually ask themselves, “Do I want to keep living in this abusive, oppressive relationship? Or do I want to take my chances with freedom?” Only you can answer that for yourself.

As citizens (victims) of an abusive culture, we were born in an abusive, codependent relationship with the State. The State is the perpetrator, yet it must have participants in order to continue the abuse. By refusing to draw and enforce boundaries with the State, we are allowing the State to continue abusing us and anybody else it feels like. Of course, as victims of the culture we are not entirely responsible for the actions it engages in, but we must understand the role and power we have in the relationship. By not seeing the State for what it is and by not resisting it, we are complicit in the actions it engages in.

Historical Narratives

The third and final critique of nonviolent ideology is the chosen narrative of history that many proponents of nonviolence view their ‘victories’ through. This narrative often ignores the contributions to their perceived success made by their violent counterparts and the limitations of the actual social change that have taken place as a result of their movement. We will devote a whole chapter to this concept later on, but for now let’s briefly look at one example of this: the ‘Satyagraha’ narrative of Indian independence.

The Satyagraha movement, Gandhi’s Indian independence movement, was indeed a remarkable social movement that improved the social conditions of India and no doubt contributed to the eventual liberation of India from British rule in 1947. Gandhi’s group was not the only group working towards independence, however, nor was it even the largest group. Bhagat Singh, Rani Laxmi Bai, Chandrashekhar Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose, Nana Saheb, Bal Gangadar Tilak, Ram Prasad Bismil, Lala Lajpat Rai, and Jawaharlal Nehru were all leaders of various social, revolutionary, religious, and political parties in India who were fighting for independence alongside the Satyagraha campaign. These groups and leaders all contributed to the eventual independence of India, and many of these groups were much larger and in many ways more successful than the Satyagraha campaign. So why do we only ever hear about Gandhi?

The answer to this lies within the power of historical narratives and the need for the British Empire to maintain its illusion of power, control, and noble character to the rest of the world. At a certain point, the British government realized that Indian independence was inevitable, and they had several choices as to how they would make their departure. They could go fighting with the radical socialist forces of Bhagat Singh, they could go fighting with the fascist movement behind Subhas Chandra Bose, or they could go peacefully and diplomatically with Gandhi, the little old man who pledged to never fight, resist, coerce, or in any way violate the sensibilities of the British Empire. Naturally, they went with Gandhi, as in many ways he was the perfect poster child of revolution: a revolutionary who held the utmost respect for his oppressors and was willing to engage in any number of inconveniences or hardships in order to win his opponents hearts and minds. Thus, the British nobility made friends with Gandhi and his consort and claimed that it was his struggle, the Satyagraha struggle, which had done the trick and successfully secured independence for India . George Orwell, a young British police officer during the Indian Independence Movement, observed, “Gandhi made it easier for the British to rule India, because his influence was always against taking any action that would make any difference. ”

Think of the repercussions if the violent resistors Bhagat Singh or Subhas Chandra Bose would have been hailed as successful revolutionaries, if the dozens of colonized nations held by European nations around the world at the time would have seen a violent revolution as the key to their freedom, as well. No, that would never do. Gandhi was the perfect role-model for national liberation, as he never truly threatened the British Empire’s ability to dominate and exploit in any way and he allowed them to make a graceful departure from their colony. Not only did they make a graceful departure, but they never actually left. In many ways India simply switched from direct colonial rule to indirect neocolonial rule, as the economic disparity, poverty, public health issues, religious violence, women's rights, lack of democratic process, government corruption, and access to education that were so lacking in British India are in many ways worse today than ever before. As Gandhi himself said, “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

In no way am I condemning or renouncing Gandhi, his teachings, or his life’s work, but I think it is important to realize that there are many narratives of history, and when we only see and believe one narrative, we severely limit our ability to understand and implement effective social change. Trading one oppressor for another is not progress, it is being duped.

Gandhi’s and Bhagat’s methods of revolution were both effective, valid, and successful. Neither one was ‘better’ than the other; they each played their role in the struggle. The point is that we only know about Gandhi because that is the only story that was deemed suitable for history lessons by the British Empire. We are presented with a very narrow and sanitized version of history because that is the version that is least threatening to Business As Usual. As resistors, we must be willing to see history accurately and in doing so, to see that there are many different approaches and tools for social change that have been effectively used, and must continue to be used. To limit ourselves to only one tool of resistance – nonviolence - is to ignore history, to be ignorant of social progress, and to blindly accept the State narrative of safe, nonthreatening resistance that has been presented to us.

Critiques of Violence

Those who advocate for violence as an effective tool of resistance need to understand and acknowledge a few common critiques of violence as we move forward into this discussion. These critiques are: the important difference between Pacifism and Active Nonviolence, the never-ending struggle between the Ends vs. Means, and the Pandora’s Box of violence that, once opened, is nearly impossible to control or stop.

Pacifism and Active Nonviolence

I have found that there are few individuals who truly understand the difference between Pacifism and Active Nonviolence. These two philosophies, although seemingly similar, are very different, and their differences are important to understand. Pacifism is built on a platform of idealism, disengagement, and subservience that, although noble, is not an effective tool of resistance. Active Nonviolence is built on a platform of empowerment, courage, civil disobedience, historical success, and love. If an action effectively resists the dominant culture and thus the systems of power which are responsible for oppressive violence through offensive, loving, and creative acts of nonviolence, then it is active nonviolence. If an action engages the dominant culture in a manner which does not threaten the oppressor’s ability to oppress and does so in an attitude of disempowerment and meekness, then it is pacifism.

A practitioner of active nonviolence is willing to sacrifice their safety, dignity, and even their life in order to resist oppressive violence. A practitioner of pacifism prefers to not get involved in violent situations, and will not interfere or engage with State activities of oppression.

Active Nonviolent actions will almost always include civil disobedience of some sort, and will require the resistors to be wholly dedicated to the success of their action, a dedication that arises from a deep feeling of anger and love, the urge to fight for what you love. Pacifist actions will most likely act within the bounds of the law (except for draft resisting, which pacifists have a long history of), will be ineffective in actually challenging existing power structures, and comes from a mentality of fear and colonization, as the participants do not truly believe that oppression can be challenged or overthrown.

Examples of Active Nonviolent actions include: industrial sabotage, roadblocks, tree sits, black bloc marches, body shields (in front of tanks, bulldozers, civilians, etc.), sit-ins, labor strikes, general strikes, occupations of public and private spaces, etc. Examples of Pacifist actions include: legislative reform, petitions, sanctions, divestments, marches and demonstrations that comply with State restrictions, filming atrocities committed by agents of the State without actually intervening on behalf of the victim, or any action that complies with the requests and existing power structures of the State

It is also important to note that Pacifist actions can be somewhat effective, as many pacifist actions have played important contributing roles to resistance movements, but by themselves they rarely actually challenge oppression dynamics. Legislative reform, petitions, marches, boycotts, etc. are absolutely positive actions and I am in no means arguing against them, but it is critical to realize that without actions that actually challenge power structures, these actions are ultimately ineffective.

In addition to the well-known teachings of Gandhi and Tolstoy, the Christian Anabaptist tradition has produced a host of incredible theologians and social theorists who have explored this distinction through closely examining and studying the life and teachings of Yeshua (the Rabbi whom the religion of Christianity is loosely based off of). Walter Wink, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne have explored this thoroughly and exhaustively, but perhaps one of the greatest illustrations of this concept comes from Martin Luther King, Jr.,

“To our most bitter enemies we say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send in your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

From that quote, it is clear that MLK is not advocating for ‘lay down and submit’ style tactics. He is arguing for an aggressive, militant, relentless attack against the State policy of racism using the vehicle of active nonviolence. For a clear and simple example illustrating the difference between pacifism and active nonviolence, let us explore a situation in which MLK’s followers eloquently demonstrated this principle.

One method of resistance used by nonviolent resistors during the civil rights era was the use of ‘sit-ins’ at certain segregated businesses and public places, where black men and women would intentionally occupy a designated area for whites, thus breaking the law and causing a public nuisance. Many sit-ins took place throughout the civil rights struggle at libraries, restaurants, swimming pools, and other locations, but perhaps the most well-known example of this is the Woolworth’s, Walgreens, and McClellan store sit-ins on February 27, 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee. This well-publicized event was the culmination of several weeks of sit-ins and protests which culminated in several violent confrontations of white teenagers from local high schools attacking the nonviolent black protesters. With police approval (they left the scene to not interfere with or witness the beatings), white teenage boys viciously beat several of the black protesters for almost an hour before the police showed up to arrest the victims of the violence- the black demonstrators- while ignoring the actions of the perpetrators- the white teenagers.

During the whole event, not one violent action was taken towards the white attackers. To the contrary, the young black boys and girls who were being punched, kicked, spat upon, insulted, and thrown down flights of stairs were consistent in their message of love and forgiveness to their attackers, even as they were hauled off to jail for their criminal behavior. Those brave young men and women willingly and consciously put their emotional, physical, and mental health in jeopardy for the sake of subverting the State’s policy of violence towards the black community, and in so doing demonstrated to the world that they were willing to endure great hardship in order to fight injustice .

The mayor of Nashville at the time of the protests, Ben West, credited the sit-ins as instrumental in his decision to finally desegregate the city. Far from disengaged pacifism, these students of active nonviolence spent months in prison and suffered much violence upon themselves in order to expose a corrupt and evil system.

Now, what if those students who sat in the lunch counters and faced violence had not been highly trained and dedicated nonviolent resistors? What if they had not been driven by courage and love, but by fear? What if they were still colonized pacifists and not decolonized practitioners of active nonviolence? What would have been different?

We can only speculate, but I guess that one of three things would have happened: they would have a.) left the counters when ordered to by the police officers, thus rendering their protest ineffective; b.) attempted to remain passive in the face of violence- ultimately culminating in either a further crushing of their spirit and a reinforcement of fear, colonization, and oppression or c.) they would have snapped in the face of fear and physical harm, acting out in reactionary violence to the violence which was being perpetrated on them and creating justification for further racial brutality on the black community and on black resistors.

When violence is used as a method of resistance, it is much more effective when used intentionally and with preparation. Reactive violence that arises out of fear is rarely as effective as intentional violence that arises out of a dedication to ending oppression, a violence that comes from a place of love.

The young resistors who sat at the tables at Woolworths were not disengaged pacifists but were engaged, determined, and were fighting for what they loved, and thus were able to create a successful nonviolent act of civil disobedience.

Understanding this difference is enormously important. At the risk of repeating myself, the pacifist position says that, although they wish for peace in all situations, they are not willing or able to actively engage or put themselves at risk in order to create peace. The active nonviolent position says that they are willing to do whatever necessary to defuse a violent situation, even taking violence upon themselves in order to do so. Active nonviolence comes from a position of power, love, and decolonization, while pacifism comes from a position of disempowerment, fear, and colonization. Lumping these two ideologies into one and not understanding the differences is an important mistake that many have made, and hopefully this distinction can become more understood and recognized.

It should also be noted that just because many groups, individuals, and actions are self-labeled as active nonviolence does not mean that they actually are. Due to the confusion of terms and the lack of understanding of this important ideological difference, many pacifist actions and groups, such as much of the current environmental movement in the US, mistakenly labels many of their campaigns as nonviolent direct action, when in fact this is not true. This creates much confusion amongst resistance communities working towards effective social change, and ultimately has led to the rejection of nonviolent tactics by some leaders and organizations who have lumped both philosophies into one category. I believe that a resurgence of effective nonviolent action is needed within resistance groups, as well as an understanding of what actually constitutes nonviolent direct action vs. ineffective pacifism.

Ends vs. Means

Another critique of violent tactics that has been hotly debated for centuries, and will probably continue to be debated for many more, is that the end never justifies the means, the end is the means. The tactics used to acquire any social gains will become the tactics used to maintain the new dominant culture. To put it simply, if one uses violence to overcome oppression, the new ruling power will have to use the same level of violence to maintain the level of rule. Conversely, if a battle is won using nonviolent tactics, the end result will likely be one of nonviolence for all parties involved. This argument appeals to a very basic level of logic, as it argues that the means used to acquire a goal will eventually become the goal itself. This can be seen quite plainly in the scope of history, as so many violent revolutions have simply replaced one oppressive State for another, and the cycle of violence continues. Although this may also be seen as an argument against the existence of a State, it serves as an argument that the means used to work towards a result will likely determine the end result. According to this logic, it is easy to see why nonviolent resistance is always preferable to violent resistance, and why many resistors are hesitant to use violent tactics.

Pandora’s Box

A final critique of violent resistance, and one that I must constantly wrestle with while writing this book, is that nonviolence is always the most democratic and egalitarian route towards social change. By egalitarian, I mean that everyone has the option to engage in nonviolent protest, while not everyone has the ability to effectively engage in violence. By opening the door to violent resistance, there is no telling who will decide what to engage in violence for and for what reasons.

I might deem violence necessary in stopping an assault, rape, or murder, but what if someone else deems violence necessary in defending their right to engage in assault, rape or murder? What if someone who does not share my political and social values of egalitarianism for all species and types of humans deems it necessary to engage in violence to further their agendas of racism, sexism, or speciesism? To put it plainly, to argue that violence is an acceptable means of social change is to say that any social, religious, or political group can use violence to further their own ends. That is a very scary statement, and one that ultimately says that the group or ideology which is the most violent is the most correct, which is how the world is run right now. Fanon understood this problem well when he wrote, “Violence used in specific ways at the moment of struggle does not magically disappear after the ceremony of trooping the national colors… When will violence stop? The atmosphere of violence, after having coloured all the colonial phase, continues to dominate national life.”

To create an atmosphere of nonviolent dissent is to create a safe, democratic, egalitarian atmosphere where crippled old women have just as much to say as young, strong men. When you open Pandora’s Box of violence, there is no way to determine who will use violence for what ends, except to use more violence to control who has the right to use violence, and then more violence on top of that to punish those who use violence in the wrong way, and then more violence to legitimize the use of violence on those who use violence wrong, until you realize that you just created your own monopoly of violence, also known as a State. It quickly becomes messy and unmanageable, which is why nonviolent protest has evolved as a preferable form of protest. Violence begets violence, and nonviolence begets nonviolence.

Summarizing the critiques of violent and nonviolent ideologies, there is much that each camp has to learn from the other, and much that each ideology has to ask themselves and look critically at. Once we have looked honestly and critically at ourselves and humbly and openly at the other, we can then move forward to a common understanding, language, and model of resistance.

Chapter 5: A Peoples History of Violence

Oppressive violence is often presented as an unavoidable facet of living on this planet, a reality that we just have to accept, an unavoidable facet of human nature. This narrative of normalized oppressive violence can be very hard to see past, as our entire civilization is built on this belief. It is extremely important to understand that this is simply not true, that oppressive violence is a relatively recent phenomena in the history of our planet and our species, and that a world free of oppressive violence is possible, and within reach. To begin to understand this alternative narrative, we need to take a quick journey back through time, back to the beginnings of civilization itself, around 12,000 years ago, to an event known to anthropologists and archeologists as the Neolithic revolution.

The Neolithic revolution, also known as the agricultural revolution, was perhaps the most significant event that has happened to our planet in the past two million years. This event marked the end of a several hundred thousand year period in which the genus homo was organized in small bands of nomadic gatherer-hunters. Up to this point, human development had been limited to simple tool-making, fire-making, and a very basic form of language. Simply put, the Neolithic revolution consisted of a tribe of people in the Near East experimenting with a new form of agriculture called totalitarian agriculture. This type of agriculture was a complete departure from anything the Earth had ever seen, as it was the first time that any species on the planet had ever broken the most important law of Ecology: the law of limited competition.

The law of limited competition states that you may compete for food and other resources to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war on your competitors. You may gather as much food as you like, but you cannot kill others which are also gathering food. You may work your hardest at propagating your species, but you may not destroy others efforts to propagate their species.

Although this may seem like a relatively simple and obvious law, it is the observation of this law which has allowed the surface of this planet to support life for millions of years, and the breaking of this law which has allowed our species to dominate and exploit all other forms of life on this planet to the benefit of a select few members of our species and to the great detriment of all other forms of life and the vast majority of our own species. The breaking of this fundamental law of Ecology, this law of life, gave rise to the first instances of oppressive violence in the history of our planet, as it allowed humans to begin subduing the planet for the purposes of exponentially increasing its own species.

Ignoring the law of limited competition unlocked vast reserves of bounty for the tribe that began this experiment, and the immediate success of it allowed them to gradually begin conquering and assimilating other tribes in the area. Thus this event was not only important to the history of our planet, but it was also the most decisive turning point in human history. As the tribe (we don’t know what they called themselves) which had first broken the law by engaging in totalitarian agriculture began expanding and influencing the surrounding areas, it signified a shift in the species as a whole. Homo-sapiens moved away from their nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyles and began engaging in sedentary agricultural practices.

This may not seem like much of a revolutionary shift until you understand the implications associated with this. Totalitarian agriculture required people to abandon their nomadic lifestyles and settle down in one location, forming towns, cities, and nations. The vast amount of organization and labor required to feed a large, sedentary population necessitated the division of labor, which means that certain people now had specific "roles" or "jobs." No longer could you spend a leisurely day doing whatever you wanted, you now had to take part in a certain aspect of the agricultural process. This ultimately led to class divisions and the concepts of hierarchy, social stratification, and wealth inequality, as the more powerful members of the community were given roles of overseeing labor and maintaining the agricultural process whilst the weaker members were relegated to more labor-intensive roles. Gender specializations and the concept of Patriarchy emerged during this era as well, as women now were assigned certain tasks such as child-rearing, textile manufacturing, and food preparation, as opposed to their earlier status as equal members and contributors to the community .

Not surprisingly, early humans didn’t like to be bossed around and told what to do by the ruling class, so in order to maintain the agricultural process a level of enforcement had to be introduced - and thus militaries, laws and law enforcement, and a religious class had to be invented in order to maintain the organization of humans into this new social order based on hierarchy, inequality, laws, and violence. Very early on in the process, it was clear to the individuals involved in this experiment that this was not a sustainable way to live, as the land which was first subjugated to intensive totalitarian agriculture rapidly became salinized and desertified (first picture a tropical rainforest, then picture modern-day Kalahari desert.)

Unfortunately, these early humans had unknowingly started a process that was nearly impossible to stop, as a sedentary lifestyle and the increased fruits of agriculture allowed for more children to be born, which required more food to feed the increased population, which required more humans to work the expanding land-base, which required more food to feed the ever-increasing workforce, until the business of totalitarian agriculture and civilization was no longer a simple experiment but a full-on cultural revolution.

A people with no land-base to protect, no private property, and no foodstuffs to guard has no need for an army or law enforcement to defend it with, and thus has no need for structural violence. A sedentary people with a designated land-base, foodstuffs and private property to guard, and resources to stockpile has a great need to build an army, government, religious order, economic disparity, and various other forms of structural violence in order to maintain the strict hierarchical stratification that is integral to the function of the State.

From the birth of the first State (probably the Sumerians 4000-3500 BCE), structural violence has been integral to the function of the State. Private property necessitates structural violence. As long as private property is held as more sacred than life, oppressive violence will be a continued reality for all creatures living on this planet.

This concept has been explored and illustrated quite elegantly by many scholars, historians, and anthropologists, and I will attempt to briefly summarize their findings. The State exists to organize, control, and consolidate power over a certain set of individuals in a set geographic area. In almost every circumstance, the interests of the State are directly opposed to the interests of its citizens, in that the State requires labor, money, obedience to arbitrary laws, young men to fight and die for the State, young women to birth more warriors, and submission to an entity that cares nothing of you as an individual.

Who would voluntarily give up a third (or more) of their labor, their safety and security, and their very life to an impersonal organization with a long history of oppressive violence and exploitation? No one. This is why the State must use coercion and violence at every level in order to maintain its function. If the State is smart, they will make the use of violence normal, hidden, and part of Business As Usual, as we all experience every day when our labor is taken from us via taxes and capitalist exploitation, our privacy is seen as an obstruction to National Security, our land-base is destroyed without our consultation or permission, and we are subject to incarceration or death at any time an agent of the State (Police, Military, Judge, etc.) deems it expedient.

At this point in the book, we must make it explicitly clear that the State and oppressive violence are synonymous and inextricable. If the State ceased to employ violence, it would cease to exist, as it would then become a voluntary organization of interested individuals, which is where we started at the beginning of this chapter. The State must continue to use coercion and violence to maintain its function at every level, which is why we say that the State is structurally, or inherently, violent.

Back to the history lesson. As States rose and fell and as Civilizations were created and then destroyed, each incarnation became necessarily more violent than the last. The level of coercion/violence needed to control 1000 humans is obviously more than it takes to control 100 humans. Each new State became larger, more hierarchical, more stratified, and more violent. The masks have changed, but the same monster was/is running the whole show. As States grew and encountered indigenous peoples (aka those who had not broken the law of limited competition), they conquered and assimilated every one of them. There is not a single recorded instance of a more violent culture encountering a less violent one and the less-violent one conquering/assimilating the former. Gradually, the peaceful peoples of the world became consumed by their violent neighbors, and the reach of violent civilization grew and grew. There are many accounts of small groups of humans striving to remain nonviolent in the face of this growing cultural shift, such as the tragic story of the Moriori peoples of the Chatham Islands, near New Zealand.

The Moriori people were a rigidly pacifist culture due to the ancient teachings of the great chief Nunuka-whenua who, after seeing the tragic effects of inter-tribal conflict and killing, declared that there was to be no more killing, fighting, or cannibalism in his tribe. His law, which came to be known as Nunuka’s law, was accompanied with a somber curse, “may your bowels rot on the day you disobey!” The Moriori thrived under the wisdom of Nunuka’s law, growing large in population and innovating incredible methods of living with the sea and islands where they lived. The Moriori would probably still be living peaceably and happily on their islands had they not encountered European culture. In 1791 a British ship, the Chatham, was blown off course to Rēkohu, a small island inhabited by a Moriori family. Lieutenant William Broughton planted the British flag and, claiming Rēkohu in the name of King George III, named it Chatham Island. During an interaction with the sailors, a Moriori man named Tamakoro was shot while collecting his fishing nets. He was the first Moriori to be killed by the Europeans. The Moriori elders believed that Tamakaro must have been partly responsible for the tragic misunderstanding and devised an appropriate ritual for greeting visitors in future.

The next interaction with outsiders was in 1835, when a group of 900 Maori warriors, equipped with British guns and trained in the ways of British conquest, arrived on Moriori shores. The Moriori, trusting and generous, gave food, medicine, and shelter to the new arrivals. Very quickly, the Maori visitors revealed their true intentions, as they began slaughtering, raping, torturing, and cannibalizing the Moriori. The Moriori held a meeting to discuss the situation. The Moriori had much greater numbers, and could easily kill and defeat the invaders, but they did not want to break Nunuka’s law and hoped to reconcile the differences with their neighbors peacefully. Sadly, the Maori had no intentions of peace, and either killed or enslaved every last member of the Moriori people. The last living Moriori, Tommy Solomon, died in 1933 .

The story of the Moriori is the story of tens of thousands of indigenous peoples all over the world who were killed, enslaved, and assimilated into the larger, more violent cultures whenever the two met. Cultures that were built on nonviolence, egalitarianism, and mutual aid were simply no match for the powerful war machines that swept through their cultures, and the few dissenting voices for nonviolence were drowned in a sea of State violence.

With the European conquest of North and South America around 500 years ago, the last few remaining peaceful peoples of the world were annihilated in the face of British guns, French diseases, and Spanish steel. It would seem at this point in the narrative that a peaceful existence had become a relic of the past, buried in the ground alongside the Moriori and the passenger pigeon. Yet it is important to note that there have always been dissenters, those who have rejected the State narrative of violence and conquest, and who have instead sought for a life free of oppressive violence. The great teachings of the Buddha, the sage Lao-Tzu, the rabbi Yeshua, the ancient teachers Rishabha and Guru Nanak, the authors of the Vedas, and the prophet Muhammad have all given birth to pacifist traditions: the Gnostics, the Mohists, the Anabaptists, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Cathars, the Jains, the Taoists, the Ahmadiyyas, the Sikhs, the Sufis, the Essenes, and the Buddhists.

Despite these brave few dissenters, a quick survey of the scope of history will reveal that oppressive violence is the path that the vast majority of our species has taken over the past several thousand years, and will continue to take until we either stop the dominant culture by destroying bad ideas or we drive ourselves into extinction by fulfilling the ultimate destiny of Capitalism- to turn every living thing into piles of money. Only then will we realize, as Chief Seattle warned us, that we can’t eat, breathe, or drink money.

Chapter 6: Warriors of Peace

There have always been individuals who have sought to understand the root cause of oppressive violence and injustice, and who have tried, some successfully and some not, to counteract the violence of their culture with a nonviolent alternative. Three such individuals stand out in the past few centuries as great leaders of resistance movements, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Each of these men and the struggles they led are commonly held up as examples of nonviolent resistance at work. They are often brought up in conversations about nonviolent vs. violent tactics as proof that “Nonviolence works, right! I mean, India is independent, South Africa is no longer under Apartheid rule, and Black people in the US no longer have their own water fountains! How can you argue with that logic?”

As we mentioned earlier, there are two major ways that we are duped into seeing ‘the changing of the masks’ as social progress; a.) by not understanding that every successful nonviolent movement had a violent counterpart that was crucial to the success of the overall struggle; and b.) by not understanding the way that oppression simply changes forms, methods, and definitions while maintaining or increasing the actual level of oppressive violence. We w