It’s very rare for some blanket rule like “violence never works” or “non-violence never works” to be accurate about this kind of thing.
The easiest way to resist fascism is for the existing conservative party that it’s trying to hijack to vigorously reject it. It works well enough that you don’t really hear about examples when it happened, because they didn’t turn into fascism. Anyway, we already stumbled at that hurdle a long time ago, so it’s irrelevant.
The second-easiest way is nonviolent resistance, or what Robert Helvey called “political defiance.”. That stands a pretty good chance of undoing tyranny while also preserving the structures that will enable a decent society in the aftermath. It’s historically by far the most reliable path (which sure as shit doesn’t mean it is reliable.)
Violent revolution is the hardest way. There’s obviously a lot of bloodshed by innocents and the guilty alike, and it also makes it more difficult to galvanize a resistance from “undecided” participants because they may see the resistance as terroristic or dangerous. You have to already have a critical mass of support in order to embark on this path, because you will gain relatively few supporters along the way, and a large number of previously unaligned people may galvanize against you in a big way. And, worst or all, it carries the added risk that the society that comes after the revolution may be even worse than the fascism you just overthrew. Violence that destroys important structures of civil society tends to beget more violence that destroys important structures of civil society.
Sometimes, you need violent revolution, it’s definitely not “never” the answer. But it is a very hard and dangerous road.
Something people often miss, is that a violent revolution is extremely painful, and has no guarantees of ever actually fixing the problem.
You need to have a very progressive government come in to fix all of the problems caused by fascism, as fascism almost always relies on an ignorant, angry population, that should be angry at wealth disparity and societal problems, but have had that anger redirected at marginalized people.
The thing is, how do you go from violence, to a progressive, reasonable government.
Even in Germany, their nazi party continues to gain steam over time.
It seems that the core problem is that money people would prefer anything except making the world fairer/making them make less money through taxes, or having them have to follow the same laws as everyone else, or losing their corrupt socialism for the rich and rugged boot strapped individualism for the poor.
It seems universal that the rich would rather redirect anger at the marginalized groups than that any hits to their wealth.
The thing is, the wealth problem is inevitably going to go out of control, so the question really is, how can we stop people from having their warranted anger, redirected in an unwarranted fashion, and I have no idea how to do that.
I feel like 30% of the population is naturally filled with hate, 50% go whichever way they think the public opinion is going, and 20% who generally try to do good by others.
The rich owning media and social media means that they effectively can control what the public opinion appears to be, and therefore can with significant effectiveness control that middle 50%.
Its happened with the Nazis and while not the same style of thing, happens with China and is happening in the US.
We badly need people to get out of the billionaire controlled bubbles they’re in but places like where we are right now struggle to hit critical mass.
This kinda got rambly but I really don’t have a positive outlook, because it looks like people will be passive until people are dying en masse.
I mean, just look at the recent protests. Its nice so many people cared, but 7 million, lets say 10 to be generous is not even 1% of the population, and they can effectively ignore them.
Anything else, any suggestions of civil disobedience or anything that could be considered violent rhetoric cant even be discussed on most platforms.
People also no longer have third spaces and cant really assemble for this like they used to be able to.
Basically, I’m not sure its possible to have a modern day super pair like Malcom X and MLK where one is the stick, and the other is the notes.
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/126900/8008_FDTD.pdf
Book written by a guy who studied in detail how to solve this problem, how it has been attacked successfully and unsuccessfully in many different countries across the world.
Basically, if boiled down to its core, it is: Strengthen civil institutions separate from government. You need them to knit people together into an effective resistance, and they’ll be doing good work regardless even separate from the resistance, and then after the revolution they will make it a lot more likely that the new revolutionary society morphs into something humane and civil instead of just a new breed of violent dictatorship (which yes is a huge question and issue which a lot of revolutionaries don’t seem to give enough thought to.)
I don’t know much about the Political Defiance approach you linked. Could you summarize it (the link is a whole book).
Overall, I agree with you. I don’t like violence, and I think it’s one of the least effective tools for constructive change. But I also recognize that if you’re serious and honest about political theory you can’t really just write off violence as “never the answer”.
At the very least, folks need to think about approaches to defense when people with less compunction about violence come for them.
Also, I want to add that my personal theory is that combatting fascism requires a lot of separate approaches and distinct actors working in a way that is synergistic, even if people within that effort have strong ideological divisions.
My personal role is that I’m focused on efforts to demonstrate and promote the alternatives to fascism – socialism – locally through politics, labor and tenant organizing, and mutual aid. So I’m not picking up any guns any time soon. But I’m not going to tell the black bloc folks how to do their job and I expect they won’t tell me how to do mine.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=political+defiance&ia=web -> https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com/p/pursuing-political-defiance
But I’m not going to tell the black bloc folks how to do their job and I expect they won’t tell me how to do mine.
“I’m not going to tell the police-planted agitators how to do their job and I expect they won’t tell me how to do mine.”
Honestly, what you’re saying sounds pretty similar to what I’m saying (IDK why you felt the need to couch precisely what I am saying behind this phrasing of “But I also recognize…”). But this sentence in particular is precisely the opposite of both what Gene Sharp’s research recommends, and what I’ve heard of as the general practice in US protests. Maybe it’s different now (and, like both of us are saying, different situations are different), but from people I’ve spoken with the best practice when someone near you is getting violent is pretty much the exact opposite of letting them “do their job” unhindered.
Thanks for the link. I’m looking forward to reading through this after work.
At a glance, I think the kind of defiance that you’re talking about seems pretty close to my form of activism. My point was just that I don’t have an inclination to spend effort fighting against people who pursue other approaches to common goals unless I see them as directly in conflict with whatever specific task I’m trying to do.
unless I see them as directly in conflict with whatever specific task I’m trying to do.
In a whole lot of situations, protestors applying violence against government forces is very much directly in conflict with the protest succeeding.
Not always, but a lot of the time. That’s what I was saying.
Yeah… I think that’s a salient concern. However I think in the practical sense it’s still unclear to me how that should inform my approach.
Personally, I already try and spend more time and effort promoting what I want to create then I spend fighting against what I don’t want. I see a lot of stuff and wish I could be doing more to obstruct ICE, for instance. But I remind myself that I have a plans and projects and while I should be aware of what’s going on and available to help, I need to entrust a lot of that to others while I focus on a lot of other stuff. Providing childcare to a DSA meeting and trying to make sure our school boards and rent boards are comprised of folks who are providing for people is stuff that needs done.
So if I don’t have enough time to confront ICE, I definitely don’t have time to squabble with other leftists. Is going on Bluesky to bicker with people who smash the windows of banks that fund genocide and climate collapse going to help me do the stuff I’m working on? I don’t see how, so I’m comfortable staying neutral.
Is going on Bluesky to bicker with people who smash the windows of banks that fund genocide and climate collapse going to help me do the stuff I’m working on?
I mean, I don’t know about that, but preventing them from becoming violent against ICE (which is what we were talking about) when you come into contact with them in your specific area, and in general talking about the inadvisibility of it on the internet and elsewhere, seems like a good idea. It’s actually specifically the fact that being vigilant about this will help the stuff you’re working on (by making it possible for you to do it without maybe getting shot) that make it specifically important.
Gene Sharp actually talked about this: The absolute necessity of maintaining discipline about nonviolence if that’s what you’ve decided is tactically necessary at the moment, or completely separating in a visible and public-relations-understandable way from people who are doing that if you’re unable to prevent it. It is one of the a few key elements which is both vital and a lot harder than it might seem. A lot of random people tend to show up with all kinds of vigorous personal ideas about what might lead to the movement’s success, including actions which will fuck things up for the movement on a truly catastrophic scale. (Again - this is why police tend to plant agitators who will deliberately take things in that direction. They wouldn’t do that if it was fine for it to happen.) This kind of “live and let live” approach as to whether or not to get violent against state forces is very specifically dangerous in a very specific way.
(They actually talked about this on the Gaza flotilla, too: They did drills and training for how to react when the Israelis were approaching to avoid giving them any kind of impression of violence or resistance, because it’s very easy for them to just start shooting and that’s not what is wanted. Part of the qualification process for even being allowed to be physically present was that you had passed some tests as far as your physical ability to get mistreated without reacting.)
Does that make sense? I feel like I’ve said this 2-3 times now and you keep rebooting back to square 1 of your side of the conversation, as if I hadn’t said it.
It makes sense. However I’m ambivalent on the matter. If I’m repeating myself it’s because I’m not debating, I’m just telling you how I think. But I appreciate greatly that you’ve given me some literature that I can digest. I try and pride myself on being responsive to new info and adjusting my position, and I think we’re already pretty close on this, so it wouldn’t exactly be a huge pivot.
It’s very rare for some blanket rule … to be accurate
That’s one of the few blanket rules that is accurate.
Almost every human situation has exceptions and edge cases that make strict binary rules a poor fit.
