The American Revolution didn’t go from 0 to 100 with a single violent act, nor was the violence of the Patriots unprovoked - it was caused by the violence of a repressive state apparatus.
Likewise, the Civil Rights Movement never went to the level of civil war - yet violence was still widely used in it. As even the great pacifist MLK Jr. said, and not as an abstract statement divorced from the circumstances of the time, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
Violence is not a boolean. And disregarding it as a potential tool is foolishness.
The American Revolution didn’t go from 0 to 100 with a single violent act, nor was the violence of the Patriots unprovoked - it was caused by the violence of a repressive state apparatus.
Likewise, the Civil Rights Movement never went to the level of civil war - yet violence was still widely used in it. As even the great pacifist MLK Jr. said, and not as an abstract statement divorced from the circumstances of the time, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
Violence is not a boolean. And disregarding it as a potential tool is foolishness.
True, true. Violence has all kinds of interpretations.