10 Dec On Violence

The use of “violence” has come up a number of times in the past few years, but again, particularly in the past few weeks. By “violence”, i mean, by extension, the use of violent terms to describe actions. But more on this in a moment.

I come to this today after reading Stuart Elden’s blog post, Thoughts on the Fees Issue. At the end of his post, he asks:

Am I the only one to find politicians’ use of the term ‘violence’ to condemn protests inappropriate given the systematic violence being done to higher education and social mobility? Or the violence of the wars initiated or supported by those doing the condemning?

No, you are not alone. Unfortunately, the ones trying to point out the very irony of it all are precisely the ones being crushed. That violence may only be meted out by the government – as intervention, suppression, humanitarian aid – is one side of that coin – a kind of ownership over violence and death that Max Weber so elegantly called Gewaltmonopol des Staates (it just doesn’t sound as sexy in English: state monopoly on violence). And while this is as much about the legitimization of violence within the purview of the state, as in the right to defend one’s own property, it somehow fails to extend to our rights to protect our…well…for lack of a better word: rights.


But that’s getting ahead of myself. I really wanted to start with violence, precisely- not what has brought Britain to this point of disruption. 


The same thing happened at the WTO protests in 1999. I watched my friends get dragged off rather brutally by police, another was shot at point blank range with a rubber bullet – all as we sat peacefully in the road attempting to enact our right to protest against the other kinds of economic and political violences against all of us that were being decided behind closed doors that week-end. We stand in the middle because it is terms of violence that are used against those who would stand up not just for our own rights but for the rights of others – of our future, of our fellow human beings, terms like: riots, clashes, attacks.

This isn’t just happening in Britain (well, the underlying cause of protest is fairly enclosed). I wrote about this earlier in the week in regard to Haiti – protesters referred to as violent, rioters. We saw the same thing here in Seattle – peaceful protesters being goaded, ringed in, shot at, driven into, beaten. That the protests continue is testament to the strength of people’s convictions, i think. 


What this brings to mind, then (and i’m no political theorist, so please forgive my crude take on all of this) is Habermas’ assertion that the state must ensure both legitimate law making and enforcement. Legitimate law making. At what point do we view the violence of the state against its own people, exercising their rights within the frame of the law as deligitimization of the state? That the state works so furiously to delegitimize any protest through the use of terms of violence speaks, i think, to their fears of being delegitimized themselves. Is that what it’s come down to, then?

I want to leave off today with the words of Thich Nhat Hanh which i keep over my desk – a reminder of all that resistance is:

Resistance at root must mean more than resistance against war. And there are so many things like that in modern life that make you lose yourself. So perhaps resistance means opposition to being invaded, occupied, assaulted and destroyed, by the system. The purpose of resistance, here, is to seek the healing of yourself in order to be able to see clearly…. I think that communities of resistance should be places where people can return to themselves more easily, where the conditions are such that they can heal themselves and recover their wholeness.