Violence
Questioning societal dogmas around the moral way to resist
Like all good propaganda, the idea that the state should hold a monopoly on violence has become profoundly embedded in our consciousness. And like all effective lies, it is based on a germ of truth and a shared desire for benevolent, non-partisan authorities to protect all of us equally from violent individuals by holding everyone to a high standard of behavior. It is, some would say, the primary purpose of government to reserve for itself the legitimate use of violence to protect its people.
But in the political context of the United States, the idea that state violence is only used for justifiable purposes is laughable. Rather than a sacred responsibility only sanctioned in the most extreme circumstances and circumscribed by clear and democratically enacted laws, the United States government is, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
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Violence is the key policy instrument of the United States government. From Iran to Iraq to Libya to Guantanamo Bay to Arizona drone bases to the streets of Minneapolis, unrestrained violence is the calling card of American empire.
None of this is new. This nation was built on a foundation of ethnic cleansing and land theft from Native Americans, and built with enslaved labor. The United States government is currently waging a war of aggression against Iran, and along with its attack dog, Israel, has killed thousands of innocent Iranian civilians. The U.S. is largely responsible for the genocide in Gaza, where civilians, journalists, and children were murdered on a scale, relative to population, not seen in the modern era. Bombing of so-called drug boats in the Caribbean, the prison-industrial complex, overseas assassinations and coups, a sanctions regime (read: modern siege warfare) that kills over half a million people per year (most of them children) — the examples could go on and on.
Beyond the wars, genocides, sanctions, and police abuses, ecological violence is rampant today on a scale that is nearly unimaginable. Water, soil, and air pollution are responsible for about 40 percent of human deaths. That’s roughly 22 million people, or the equivalent of two Holocausts, each year. It’s equals the number of people killed during the colonization of the western hemisphere, a centuries long process, every 3-5 years.
There is incredible violence inherent in the everyday products of modernity. Plastics, by their very nature, condemn future generations to millennia of toxicity. The burning of fossil fuels will lead to the progressive immiseration and deaths of billions of people and the extinction of millions of species. Deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, aquifer drawdowns — these are direct violence against non-humans, and indirect violence towards people. Those who die from pollution and global warming are just as dead as if someone put a gun to their head and pulled the trigger.
Violence is also inherent in the colonial nature of modern economies. As I wrote in my piece “Green Jobs or Greenwashing?” in 2024, international supply chains remain dependent upon brutal exploitation of labor, sweatshops, virtual slave conditions in mines, and the direct and untrammeled exploitation of working people. Mining, for example, is linked to “land theft, violence, assassinations, sexual abuse, and pollution” around the world. In his 2023 book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, global slavery researcher Siddharth Kara writes of the brutal working conditions, child labor, slavery, and environmental devastation in the DRC’s cobalt industry:
“The depravity and indifference unleashed on the children working at Tilwezembe is a direct consequence of a global economic order that preys on the poverty, vulnerability, and devalued humanity of the people who toil at the bottom of global supply chains. Declarations by multinational corporations that the rights and dignity of every worker in their supply chains are protected and preserved seem more disingenuous than ever.
The translator for my interviews, Augustin, was distraught after several days of trying to find the words in English that captured the grief being described in Swahili. He would at times drop his head and sob before attempting to translate what was said. As we parted ways, Augustin had this to say, ‘Please tell the people in your country, a child in the Congo dies every day so that they can plug in their phones.’”
This violence is not circumscribed by democratic norms as we would like to believe. Instead, it is expanded and directed by a system that Sheldon Wolin describes as “inverted totalitarianism,” a supposedly democratic government that is controlled by a small class of elites and their corporations. As Wolin writes in his book Democracy Incorporated, under this system “the citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more than a spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling.” This is reflected in peer-reviewed political science research which has found that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
In other words, democracy is dead. There are no checks and balances, and there is no democratic process; there is only the battleground on which elected emperors like Trump and Biden and Obama squabble for supremacy.
Social movements to end foreign wars, violence and exploitation at home, and the destruction of our planet ultimately seek to overturn these violent imperial systems. And yet inside the United States and across the west, most activists reject the use of violence as a political strategy, arguing that prefigurative methods of change, which model the non-violent society we wish to create in the future, will help pave the way for social change, and that if we use the tactics of violent revolution, we will only beget more violence in a downward spiral of bloodshed. “We don’t want to become like those we oppose” is a consistent refrain.
Is this true, or is this the result of a sophisticated campaign of pacification?
It is a little known fact that the CIA, State Department, and captured universities have played a key role in promoting non-violence as a strategy across the west. This is best illustrated through the influence of Srdja Popovic, Erica Chenowith, and their ilk — the professional advocates of nonviolence.
Popovic first rose to prominence as a leader of the Optor movement against Serbian autocrat Slobodan Milošević in the late 1990’s. Optor is often held up as a successful example of non-violent revolution, but less often reported is the backing the CIA provided to Optor, giving it the intelligence and resources necessary to succeed. After the fall of Milošević, Popovic worked closely with the Houston-based private defense contractor known as STRATFOR, which provides so-called “threat research” to major corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, and the American Petroleum Institute, and which monitored the Occupy Movement and activists fighting for compensation after the Bhopal disaster.
In 2013, documents from STRATFOR were leaked to the public which revealed one part of STRATFOR’s divide-and-conquer strategy for fighting social movements:
“Radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists [are the four categories of activists]. The Opportunists are in it for themselves and can be pulled away for their own self-interest. The Realists can be convinced that transformative change is not possible and we must settle for what is possible. Idealists can be convinced they have the facts wrong and pulled to the Realist camp. Radicals, who see the system as corrupt and needing transformation, need to be isolated and discredited, using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic.”
STRATFOR is describing a process of movement pacification, and their links as well as the CIA support for Optor imply a useful tool — both for facilitation of grassroots uprisings in targeted overseas nations, and for spreading the doctrine of pacification inside the United States. Popovic’s wife worked for STRATFOR for a year, and the leaked documents outline the pair helping STRATFOR to draft a plan for the non-violent overthrow of then Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, an opponent of the United States due to his socialist nationalism.
Popovic has collaborated extensively with Erica Chenoweth, another Harvard University faculty member. Chenoweth has become prominent in social movement circles for co-publishing (with Maria J. Stephan of the U.S. State Department) multiple studies on the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. Her research has been championed by countless NGOs and forms the basis of strategic doctrine at organizations like Extinction Rebellion and 350.org.
The problem, critics argue, is that Chenoweth’s study is simplistic. It fails to define violence clearly — nearly an impossible task, since we use the same word to refer to political assassinations, mass terrorism, fighting back against police violence, sabotage campaigns, battles against riot police, and insurgent warfare — and doesn’t differentiate between different contexts; for example, fighting colonial occupation vs. a homegrown dictator. Chenowith’s work fundamentally fails to account for the vast majority of movements which incorporate both violent and non-violent elements. Instead, it flattens this complexity and ignores the radical flank effect.
If you’re wondering what the radical flank effect is, one study defines it like this:
“Social movements are critical agents of social change, but are rarely monolithic. Instead, movements are often made up of distinct factions with unique agendas and tactics, and there is little scientific consensus on when these factions may complement—or impede—one another’s influence. One central debate concerns whether radical flanks within a movement increase support for more moderate factions within the same movement by making the moderate faction seem more reasonable—or reduce support for moderate factions by making the entire movement seem unreasonable.
Results of two online experiments conducted with diverse samples (N = 2,772), including a study of the animal rights movement and a preregistered study of the climate movement, show that the presence of a radical flank increases support for a moderate faction within the same movement. Further, it is the use of radical tactics, such as property destruction or violence, rather than a radical agenda, that drives this effect. Results indicate the effect owes to a contrast effect: Use of radical tactics by one flank led the more moderate faction to appear less radical, even though all characteristics of the moderate faction were held constant. This perception led participants to identify more with and, in turn, express greater support for the more moderate faction.
These results suggest that activist groups that employ unpopular tactics can increase support for other groups within the same movement, pointing to a hidden way in which movement factions are complementary, despite pursuing divergent approaches to social change.”
This research, promoted heavily by thought leaders across the west, has led the majority of liberals and progressives to adopt the strategy of civil resistance promoted by Popovic and Chenowith.
This is leading our movements astray. As historian Tad Stoermer breaks down, the preconditions necessary for civil resistance strategies to succeed in our context simply don’t exist, and the naiveté of those promoting these ineffective methods is dangerous:
“The non-violence framework,” Stoermer says," “as it’s currently being marketed, does something very specific and very harmful: it defines the ceiling of permissible action for the people challenging power — never for the people wielding it. The state’s violence is ‘governance.’ Your violence is the thing that has to be debated. The state’s violations of international law are ‘complications to be managed through diplomacy.’ Your violations of the state’s laws are criminal acts that de-legitimize your cause. The asymmetry is total, and it’s baked into the theory.”
It’s well worth watching his video in full.
To make a clear distinction between non-violence and violence is to miss the point. Social movements succeed or fail through moral persuasion, but also through their ability to mobilize power, resist repression and co-optation, strike effectively at strategic targets, and disrupt business as usual. Whether using violence or non-violence, movements must be adaptable and prepared to abandon methods that have failed. The specific tactics matter less than the underlying revolutionary character of the movement — the commitment to winning, no matter the cost, and it is this that is undermined by the whitewashing of resistance.
Sakej Ward, a military veteran turned indigenous warrior society leader, who is from the wolf clan of the Mi’kmaq Nation, has written extensively on this topic:
“Don’t confuse the non-violent peaceful warrior with the wise warrior. The non-violent peaceful warrior detests violence and conflict to the point of rejecting the teachings of war. The wise warrior knows conflict exists on a much broader spectrum than simply two ideas of peace and war. The wise warrior sees the vast ground between the two. That warrior understands conflict on multiple levels and can utilize many different paradigms, strategies, tactics, and tools that exist between peace and war, but is also wise enough to know that he or she must still master the ways of war.”
Even if your moral compass leads you to non-violence, don’t operate under any illusions. Gene Sharp, the CIA-funded non-violent theorist who Popovic learned from, describes non-violent resistance as a form of warfare waged without weapons. Similarly, Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote one of the most influential books on warfare published in 1832, called war a “continuation of politics by other means.” This is the spectrum that Ward is speaking of.
Violence is no silver bullet. The downward spiral of bloodshed that we all fear is all too real. Backlash is inevitable. Unintended consequences are rampant. Non-violence can be highly effective, yet if it fails in halting a greater harm, it isn’t a moral path. As a document leaked from STRATFOR states, “Most authorities will tolerate a certain amount of activism because it is seen as a way to let off steam. They appease the protesters by letting them think that they are making a difference — as long as the protesters do not pose a threat. But as protest movements grow, authorities will act more aggressively to neutralize the organizers.”
The world is not non-violent simply because our movements for change do not use force. In fact, quite the opposite is true. It is precisely because we are unable to be effective — in part because we have been pacified by the mythos of democratic, civil change — that mass violence continues. We live in a profoundly violent time.
The question of violence has been grappled with by many who came before.
In South Africa, Nelson Mandela and elements within the ANC, after the organization was outlawed, went underground and became a clandestine military force, targeting agents and industrial arteries of apartheid.
In the American South, facing violence and murder of civil rights workers, black veterans formed the Deacons for Defense, carrying guns defensively to protect the ability for non-violent community organizing to take place.
The home of Martin Luther King Jr. was so full of guns it was described as “an arsenal” after white supremacists attempted to bomb his family. As MLK wrote in 1958, “I do not condemn violence in all circumstances. I cannot say that a man who is being attacked by a mob and who is being lynched should not defend himself.”
In Nigeria, after the leaders of the non-violent movement MOSOP including the poet Ken Saro-Wiwa were murdered by the military government and the Shell oil corporation, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta took up arms and began sabotaging oil facilities.
The brilliant Arundhati Roy, writing soon after emerging from the jungles of central India, where Naxalite rebels have for decades fought an insurgent war against corporate-state transgressions on the territories of Adivasi and other low-caste communities, said it this way:
“Fighting people will choose their own weapons. For me, the question of armed struggle versus passive resistance is a tactical one, not an ideological one. For example, how do indigenous people who live deep inside the forest passively resist armed vigilantes and thousands of paramilitary forces who surround their villages at night and burn them to the ground? Passive resistance is political theater. It requires a sympathetic audience. There isn’t one inside the forest. And how do starving people go on a hunger strike?
In certain situations, preaching nonviolence can be a kind of violence. Also, it is the kind of terminology that dovetails beautifully with the ‘human rights’ discourse in which, from an exalted position of faux neutrality, politics, morality, and justice can be airbrushed out of the picture, all parties can be declared human rights offenders, and the status quo can be maintained.”
A friend of mine wrote years ago that “the modern environmental movement is a bunch of middle-class white men shouting that we have five years before the Earth is a lifeless burning husk and then recommending we resist with tactics that would seem underwhelming in a mildly contested small-town school board election.”
It’s past time that changed.
I encourage deep thinking related to this material. Stop scrolling. Take notes. Go for a walk. Discuss this with a friend. Consider how to change your actions based on what you have read.
In service of deeper thinking, I’m no longer on social media. I rely entirely on readers to share this content. Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.
Questions:
In what ways are the tactics and strategies that we choose shaped via criminalization and repression versus being shaped by our innate morality? In other words, how is movement morality and strategic doctrine socially constructed and molded by the ruling class?
What does it mean that many activists support militant resistance to imperialism and colonialism in the global south, yet reject such tactics in the global north?
Is this a form of allegiance to existing global north political structures? Is it a form of psychological colonization?
Does it reflect our idealism about non-violent and democratic forms of political change? Is this idealism grounded in reality?
I find the idea that if we use their tactics against them that we we will become them laughable.
As an example, a woman who fights of an attacker and saves herself will not become a violent predator because of her actions, she will, perhaps, save other women from the same attacker. Thanks for this article.
I agree that much of what passes for normalcy is violence, built into our culture and endemic at multiple "hidden" levels. Fast food is an example, violence against the Amazon Rainforest and the cultures of the people who live there, ending in violence against the body of the person eating the "food," resulting in health problems creating prey for the diet industry and pharma companies. There is little we do in industrial society that isn't interconnected this way.
The essential problem with resistance in any form is it comes far too late. That is not to say I don't favor resistance, it's in every word I write.
Like the formative years of childhood, early indoctrination into society is key. The household that reads to their children is healthier than the one that plunks them in front of a TV. Our society at large is the second one. Overcoming the brainwashing and ignorance is for the most part an impossible task.
My last article focused on the inevitable and likely soon collapse of the basin states of the near dead Colorado River. The social and economic chaos of that alone is enough to break the US. Anger and disorganized resistance are likely as well as climate migration and deaths from crashed agriculture, supply chains, wet-bulb temperature and more. At that point it's too late for an organized, effective response.
Ultimately what we have here is a species that became too successful in manipulating its environment, 8 billion plus of us that live and die by fossil fuels. The oil men, bankers and oligarchs are all manifestations of the survival instinct made lethal at global scale by technology.
All that said, I do appreciate this knowledgeable article. Even as our odds of survival diminish every day, calling out the insanity gets me out of bed. Good, thoughtful work, Max.