What is "Direct Action" and Why Does it Matter?
In 2018, my friends at the publishing house Editions Libre asked me to write an introduction to their French-language translation of the Earth First! Direct Action Manual. This is a revised version, published in English for the first time.
Most political action is indirect. Voting, for example. First, your chosen candidate must be elected. Then they must argue for policies you support, and win votes to enact policy. Even after being passed, these policies may face court challenge, be rolled back, or fail to be enforced.
Another example is submitting public comments to a regulatory agency. This requires faith that these agencies actually take our comments into account when making decisions. More often than not, they don’t. As I have written here before, “the fundamental purpose of [the mining] permitting process is to bureaucratically organize and legalize the destruction of the planet.” Jane Anne Morris said it better, writing: “What Regulatory Law regulates is citizen input, not corporate behavior.”
Lobbying and education are similar: a long chain of events is required before change actually takes place. There are good things about this approach to power; in theory, western-style democracy is wonderful. In practice, we live in a corporate dominated state which political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, in his book Democracy Incorporated, called “inverted totalitarianism.” Wolin wrote:
Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.
If you’re new here, I’m Max Wilbert, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass and co-author of ‘Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It.’ This is Biocentric, a newsletter focused on sustainability, greenwashing, and building a resistance movement to defend the planet. Welcome!
Direct action is an approach to political activism that is closer to the decentralized and diffuse organization that Wolin believed was our “first best hope.” It aims to bypass corrupt, deadlocked government and achieve results without intermediaries.
The term “direct action” was first widely used by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) starting in 1910. It refers to political activism aimed at directly achieving a goal using tactics like strikes, occupations, sit-ins, squatting, demonstrations, or even sabotage and guerrilla warfare.
Direct action often comes after the formal political process fails, and gains legitimacy in the eyes of the public when corruption is undeniable.
People’s history is a long chronicle of direct action, much of it militant. For example, after facing decades of rallies, strikes, and other forms of legal action from opponents, the apartheid government of South Africa killed 69 protesters in the 1960 Sharpesville Massacre. In response, Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) took up arms to sabotage mines and power stations.
As Mandela, who was listed on the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008, wrote in Long Walk to Freedom:
“I argued [to fellow activists] that the state had given us no alternative to violence. I said it was wrong and immoral to subject our people to armed attacks by the state without offering them some kind of alternative. I mentioned again that people on their own had taken up arms. Violence would begin whether we initiated it or not. Would it not be better to guide this violence ourselves, according to principles where we save lives by attacking symbols of oppression, and not people?”
Another similar examples comes from the Civil Rights Movement, where a little-known group of Black military veterans called The Deacons for Defense and Justice took up weapons to defend non-violent activists in the southern United States against deadly attacks from the KKK, racist vigilantes, and local police. In this case, non-violent resistance was made possible and more effective through the Deacons’ defensive use of force.
People’s movements are defined by direct action
From the bus boycotts that launched Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement to prominence, to the occupations at La Zad, Hambach Forest and Zuccotti Park, to the Zapatistas and the revolution in Rojava, people’s movements are defined by direct action.
The power of direct action is its effectiveness at bypassing stalled political logjams and upending conventional political dynamics. But one of the true secrets of direct action lies in its ability to empower people. Modern society is profoundly alienating. The United States is ruled by the wealthy, not the majority. As a result, our sense of individual and collective power has been systematically destroyed. Without money or political access, what can people do?
We can take action. In direct action, we find a sense of our power again, as the angry Black youth who rose up in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 did.
Direct action gets the goods… sometimes
There is a common saying among radical activists: “direct action gets the goods.” But this is an oversimplification; effective strategy is always contextual.
Be cautious with direct action. Thoughtless extremism often backfires, and spontaneity has limited utility. Social movements and revolutions generally succeed because people and organizations plan for them, then take principled and strategic action when fractures in normality provide opportunities for transformative change.
To rely on direct action as a superior tactic, without considering when, where, and how it will be applied, and for what goal, is to waste time. We must consider lawyers, legal fees, and fundraising. It's also hard to organize from jail; when action results in deliberately getting arrested, it sometimes gives up the initiative that is so critical to winning any conflict. But sometimes, being arrested could be the best possible outcome. Context is everything. Effective direct action rests on a foundation of education, community organizing, and discipline.
Modern direct action movements sometimes fall into reification of direct action for its own sake. In general, our movements don’t have a clear revolutionary strategy and instead rely too much on defensive, reactionary strategies.
With that said, direct action can also be at its strongest when applied spontaneously. The 2011 documentary film Just Do It: A Tale of Modern Day Outlaws, represents an argument for value this approach has for building movement capacity and individual bravery.
As you can tell, there is a range of methods, philosophies, and tactical approaches that fall under the umbrella of direct action. I emphasize the militant and revolutionary side of direct action because this is often ignored or buried. Society glorifies non-violent resistance, while ignoring movements that use force. Non-violence is beautiful, and at times incredibly effective. But not always.
How corporations and the state undermine radical movements
These questions of strategy and morality are nuanced, and the disagreements these topics cause will also be exploited. We know this for certain.
In 2013, documents from the mercenary corporation STRATFOR, which has worked to provide “threat intelligence” to the American Petroleum Institute, Dow Chemical, Northrup Grumman, Coca Cola, and other large companies, were leaked to the public. The files revealed one part of STRATFOR’s divide-and-conquer strategy for fighting social movements:
“Radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists [are the four categories]. 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 [Anyone who has followed my work over the last few years knows the truth of that].”
Even beyond this type of active disruption, popular mass movements are usually shaped by the wealthy, often through the subtle influence of foundation funding. When radicalism is punished and moderation is rewarded, a sort of natural selection takes place. Organizations that are willing to push the boundaries struggle and disappear, while those that thrive and grow tend towards non-confrontational strategies and tactics.
This is very beneficial to powerful institutions and individuals. Another quote from the STRATFOR leaks underlines this:
“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 glorification of non-violence and the complexity of social change
Among the many dozens of strategies used by police, state agencies, and corporate mercenaries to undermine peoples movements, two represent a mirror image.
The first is to infiltrate non-violent movements with people who suggest or instigate violent action to delegitimize those movements. This agent provocateur approach has been well-documented through declassified documents and investigative journalism.
The second strategy — which is less well-known — is to promote dogmatic non-violence. This is best illustrated through the influence of Srdja Popovic and Erica Chenowith.
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 beautiful example of a non-violent social movement. Ironically, Srdja Popovic has worked closely with STRATFOR (his wife even had a paid role with the company for a year), including helping STRATFOR to draft a plan for the non-violent overthrow of then Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who was regarded as an opponent of the United States during his tenure due to his socialist nationalism, especially regarding Venezuela’s oil.
In part, this explains Popovic’s popularity and access to TED talks and Harvard faculty positions: institutional support follows support for U.S. hegemony.
Popovic often collaborates with Erica Chenoweth, another Harvard University faculty member and leading researcher on non-violent resistance movements. Chenoweth has become prominent in social movement circles for co-publishing (with Maria J. Stephan of the U.S. State Department) a study 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.
[Editor’s note: I recently interviewed Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, for The Green Flame podcast. Despite our disagreements on some topics — or perhaps, because of it — I found the conversation quite interesting. I was able to ask him about violence and non-violence. I’ll share that conversation here when our team finishes production].
Chenoweth’s study is simplistic. It does not define violence clearly, and doesn’t differentiate between different contexts; for example, fighting colonial occupation vs. a homegrown dictator. It also fails to account for pre-revolutionary conditions, arguing instead that non-violence and mass participation are the main determinant of success. This is a correlation vs. causation fallacy, and crucially, it doesn’t account for the vast majority of movements which incorporate both violent and non-violent elements. Instead, it flattens this complexity to a simple binary 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.”
To make a clear distinction between non-violence and violence is to miss the point. Social movements succeed or fail partially through moral persuasion, but also through their ability to mobilize power, resist repression and co-optation, and strike effectively at strategic targets — whether using violence or non-violence. There’s a major difference between defensive and offensive force. Methods matter, but so does choosing strategy and tactics appropriate for the circumstances, good leadership, organization, and determination.
My friend Sakej Ward, from the wolf clan of the Mi’kmaq Nation, has written extensively on this topic from his position as a military veteran turned trainer for indigenous warrior societies. He writes that it is important to:
“[not] 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 — only 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 was speaking of.
Empires understand force, even if we do not. In 1948, U.S. State Department Director of Policy Planning George Kennan wrote that “[The United States has] about 50 percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.”
In the 76 years since then, that pattern of relationships has indeed been maintained, but only through vast application of violence. From Iraq to Vietnam, from so-called “free trade agreements” to economic sanctions, the United States — and all imperial powers — cause vast suffering to maintain and expand their power.
We must be equally determined if we are to stand a chance of stopping the destruction of the planet and the exploitation of our communities.
The Earth First! direct action manual is a starting point for this process. Study this book and learn its methods. Test them, as I have done. And be prepared to escalate. Time is short, and by every measure, the health of Mother Earth is heading in the wrong direction. Our future depends on our ability to take matters into our own hands.
Solidarity, Brother
This is so insightful. In trying to be of support for Humboldt Cal Poly folks, the nuances and complexities you underpin here I’m also seeing unfold in real time. So much to chew on. Especially enlightening is the way you dismantle and pick apart the false dichotomy of violent/non-violent action. Thank you