We are doing our best to try to understand the pacifist’s position on violence, but we are definitely not there yet. In general, the ethical and practical opposition to violence seems to us to be a non-sequitur coming from anyone that is participating in American society. The fact of the matter is that there is violence; violence exists. In most cases, physical neutrality (i.e., pacifism) in the face of violence allows the violence to win. Nonviolence works better as a strategy to prevent violence, but very poorly as a way to address violence that is happening now.
These, as far as I can tell, are the pacifist assumptions regarding the narrative around violence:
First, the state already has a monopoly on violence, and nothing we can do individually can change that;
Second, the state might use the threat of violence to force compliance, but will never commit murder on a scale that would be of concern;
Third, no other violent actors exist other than the state, so we should only consider whether we should use violence in relation to state violence;
Fourth, when we are choosing whether to use violence, the only the choice is between “victim of intimidation” and “violent actor”. Deterrence isn’t a thing that exists and neither is one’s personal destruction. Moreover, initiating violence is just as violent as either defensive violence or making oneself ready to perform defensive violence, and yet, benefiting from the violence of the state somehow doesn’t count as violence.
My opinion would be that every part of that narrative is false.
THE STATE’S MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE
Political arguments frequently take an amalgamation of people, assign it some characteristic and then pretend that the amalgamation has that characteristic, while the individual people do not. The point of this pattern of logic appears to be to let the individual people get away with bad behavior and to pretend that there’s just nothing that we can do about the amalgamation’s bad behavior. The most common example I see of this is the idea that corporations are somehow independent of the wealthy people who run them, having motives and even logic that are distinct from one another. It’s a lie.
Similarly, the idea that “the state” has a monopoly on violence ignores the fact that the state is made up of a whole bunch of people, and those agents of the state who are also agents of violence are individuals with free will. Even in a hypothetical nation where the state has a complete monopoly on violence, the state doesn’t really have any such thing because agents of violence are (for the time being) people.
As I said, a state with a monopoly on violence is hypothetical; there is no state that has a complete monopoly on violence. A state typically has a goal of monopolizing violence, and the state is threatened by anyone who presents a plausible threat to that monopoly (even on a very small scale). Most states have overwhelming force at their disposal, but may not be able to employ it based on social factors — including opposition by some other state (which is, again, an amalgamation of people).
In the US, gun owners vastly outnumber the military. There are approximately 22 million gun owners in the US, but only 3 million active duty military and fewer than a million police. Yet, even unarmed people are sufficiently effective to challenge a government’s monopoly on violence if there are enough of them and they are organized.
What’s interesting is that the phrase “state monopoly on violence” comes from the social sciences, where it meant “the concept that the state alone has the right to use or authorize the use of physical force” or “the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (emphasis mine). It did not mean that the state factually has a monopoly on violence. Our opinion is that the state’s use of violence is only legitimate if that state is truly democratic, and that the US does not count as democratic with its competing teams of psychotic elites manipulating the electoral process.
The state monopoly on violence is an illusion that the ruling class would like us to accept. The state’s use of violence is not legitimate.
STATE VIOLENCE IN PRACTICE
If we are talking about the US, the threat of state violence is ever-present and so is the actual application of that violence. Police kill about 1000 people per year, shoot far more than that, and Black Americans are killed much more often by the police than other groups, giving police killings the flavor of a slow-motion genocide. Incarceration is a form of violence and though incarceration rates for Black men are dropping, they are still roughly three times that of white males.
Things get a lot more bloody when you try to figure out how many people the US military kills per year. I say “try” because good luck finding those figures; you can find “civilians” killed or US military deaths, but what is the total number of non-Americans killed by America each year? I can tell you that, for example, over 300k Iraqi civilians have been killed by the US military since 2001, but I cannot tell you how many other people were killed; the implication is that people who fought against the western invaders were not people at all.
If we look to the past behavior of American governments, we can see:
– Concentration camps for immigrants coming to our southern border, distribution of stolen immigrant children to American families;
– Fabrication of the “War on Drugs” with the intent of destroying the lives of Black civil rights activists and anti-war leftists;
– The placement of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War 2;
– Local law enforcement participation in extrajudicial murder of Black people;
– The enslavement of Black people spanned the period from 1619 to 1865 (the idea that Britain might encourage slave revolts in the colonies was one of the arguments used in the Declaration of Independence);
– The genocide of North American natives began in the late 1400’s and continues to this day.
In conclusion, the idea that the state might use the threat of violence to force compliance, but will never commit murder on a scale that would be of concern is completely outlandish — particularly in the context of the United States of America. To be clear, US governments (including state and local governments) are at all times actively killing marginalized people and are entirely capable of participating in genocidal activities at any time.
OTHER VIOLENT ACTORS
There are many groups of far-right maniacs in the United States and any one of them could attack a civilian target at any time. In addition, there’s an even more likely scenario involving a single far-right maniac that happens on a regular basis (virtually all mass shooters are proponents of far-right politics or at the very least acting out a far-right narrative). To suggest that we only need to think about state violence when we are considering whether or not to prepare to defend against violence is absurd.
To be fair, even though far-right violence is frequent at the national level, the probability of any individual in the US experiencing far-right violence remains low. However, it is a long-standing goal of the far right (which means at least 1 in 10 Americans, and more than that in a state like Missouri) to destabilize the country, murder all their enemies, and then re-make the country as a fascist dystopia. I don’t mind conversing about how likely they might be to actually do that, and I certainly appreciate the fact that only a couple thousand of these loons showed up for the insurrection on January 6, 2021; however, I also believe it would be foolish not to prepare for an attack that is more generalized, organized and sustained.
I can only guess that this part of the narrative assumes that government law enforcement will take care of the problem. We’ve just seen quite clearly that they are likely to fail. The majority of law enforcement officers are proponents of far-right politics (based on who they choose to leader the unions) and do not see far-right mobs as their enemies; they sometimes even assist the far-right mob — they will definitely protect them. In contrast, we have clearly seen how law enforcement will violently attack a demonstration that leans left (Occupy movement) or even just to the center (BLM) and allow far-right attackers to commit violence against such a demonstration.
Related: White Supremacist Links to Law Enforcement Are an Urgent Concern The author of this piece says that the number of white supremacists in law enforcement is “small” yet seems to be using an extremely strict definition of white supremacist (self-identification as such), when we should understand that nearly all Republicans are technically white supremacists.
When we consider that law enforcement in the US has a history of breaking the law to uphold white supremacy, it then becomes very hard to discern the difference between law enforcement and a right-wing mob. Even when the police intend to succeed in resisting a right-wing mob, they often fail because those above them also do not interpret such a mob as a threat and don’t provide adequate resources.
If the far-right succeeded in starting the second civil war that they’ve been promoting for decades now, would the US government even stage an organized defense? Or would they instead just make a bunch of speeches about how this disorder needs to stop for the sake of the economy? These aren’t really rhetorical questions because we can see right now that the Republicans are actively denying that their people sacked the US capitol.
OUR CHOICES REGARDING VIOLENCE
Our choices regarding violence are not nearly as clear-cut as they might seem at first.
If a violent person threatens you, and you comply because you are fearful, you are a victim of intimidation, and that’s a choice you can make — to be a victim.
If you decide to initiate violence, you are a “violent actor” and that’s a choice you can make. Obviously, initiating violence against another person is wrong.
If you decide to make a sincere stand, clearly indicating that a violent attack will be defended with violence, that’s another choice you can make — and it works. It works because fascists are narcissistic cowards, and they don’t want to be hurt or die — but most of all they don’t want to be humiliated. Intense aversion to humiliation is a trait that spans across different types of fascists; for example, the oft-cited fear that ISIS has of facing women in combat.
If you fail to implement some kind of defense, then it is entirely possible that you will be permanently injured or killed. Fascists get more excited about hurting someone who they perceive as weak, and refusing to defend yourself will be interpreted by them as weakness. Letting them destroy you just lets them continue on to attack another person. The easier it was, the more excited they will be about doing it again. Allowing them to hurt you does not make them hurt you less.
Moreover, there are a lot of systems in American life that at first glance are not violent, but upon closer inspection are definitely a form of violence. Examples include keeping the hungry from getting adequate food, keeping housing empty when there are people living on the streets, and borders that abuse and incarcerate people who try to cross them.
When we get into the details, things get even more muddy. For one thing, we are all participating in the violence of the state because we benefit from it and fund it. The state is our paid hitman out there executing innocent people to maintain a society that benefits us. Even most of us who are victims of state violence are also benefiting from it. To extract yourself from responsibility for state violence would require that you radically change your lifestyle, or actively work to destroy the state’s capacity for violence.
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.
Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
The pacifist narrative indicates that even defending oneself against direct violence is unethical. I would make the opposite argument. If we are allowing violence to work (in the sense that the violence results in the violent person attaining something they want, even if it is just satisfaction), then we are increasing the probability of future violence from that person. (It is true that we should always use the least amount of violence that is effective.) Martyrdom sometimes works as a strategy but only because the people are so enraged by the martyr’s death, that they destroy the responsible party with violence (though such violence may be indirect).
If we aren’t preparing to defend ourselves against violence, we are, again, emboldening violent people to use violence to get their way.
CONCLUSION
Violence exists. The state monopoly on violence is an illusion that the ruling class would like us to accept. The state’s use of violence is ongoing and not legitimate. State violence is extreme and always has the potential to become more genocidal in nature. In addition to the state, there are many other violent actors, and the state is likely to choose to either ignore or support their violence. We have the choice to either defend our communities or embolden violent actors by allowing their violence to be effective.