On the question of political non-violence

On politics and the question of non-violence

ML King was certainly wrong, and Malcolm right, on the question of making a radical politics dependent on an ethics. Malcolm was only wrong in failing to note that the means for achieving change should meet the criterion not only of necessity, but of possibility. There probably will not soon be a mass uprising that ends our police state capitalism and replaces it with something else. That may not be possible for several reasons, one of which is that the capitalist rulers of our police state would not hesitate to engage in massacres that involve mass killings, in order to preserve their power. If you know how to recognize this when you see it, it is possible to notice that just about everything in the institutional life of this country is oriented partly towards what is ultimately political repression.

Since they could massacres us if we just gathered in the streets, and can pick us off one by one if we just express what we think -- they did this to me already, and one reason I have chosen to speak up, that is, write, about it is that I think if I don't, when they do it again there will be insufficient record of what I really did and do think, and I wouldn't like giving them the ideological victory of that. If I live the quiet life of a contended citizen, then if and when they decide to take me out, it will look like nothing happened, or maybe I just went mad.

I think that over the long term there is a left wing political movement, even if not much embodied in practical political organizations, in the world over the last century or so and even in this country, and it continues. Do I think we will ultimately be victorious? I don't know.

The sole reason, compelling and true, for the radical left to not engage in political violence is not that violence is immoral but that it would not work. It is simply the calculation that there are other things one can do that are much more likely to be effective in opposing, and changing, the way things are, and the people and forces that keep things the way they are, which of course is most of the society and its institutions. It is not that we are afraid to hate those who hate, and would kill or destroy, us. Of course, we do, and we should and must. This is the true path of art and theory.

The state apparatus in this country is overwhelmingly violent, and there is almost no real opposition to it, apart from complaints about race, which are easily diverted into the politics of politeness and other inconsequential matters. There is obviously no way of combatting it directly on its terms.

The middle-classes mostly support it, of course. But the main ideological ballast is thin, actually. Because mostly it just consists of a psychologizing morality, which targets, ultimately, little more than the possibility or fear of "violence," which is to say, crime.

Violence itself is not a concern of our police state, which has no interest whatsoever in causing there to be less of it. People in this country are more likely to go to jail for insulting a boss than they are for owning or using guns. The police, the mafias and criminal enterprises, and gun-toting white supremacists are on the same side. The police are not interested in stopping violence, but using it as an excuse to try to control the country by making into "violence" all resistance, dissent, and opposition. The middle class majority thinks it is "violence" if you raise your voice, and I have noticed that even in the Bronx where most people are poor, social workers and people with jobs working for some department of The Man, will say that. The American capitalist police state has never had any problem with violence; they are organized to prevent something very different, which is effective opposition. Since they send out whole squads of cop cars for the smallest complaints or violations, it is easy to conclude that the society is largely organized to stifle opposition in the cradle, long before it starts to gel and materialize.

The official position in this country, shared by most liberals, is not that violence is immoral, but that opposition to the state is not possible morally (meaning that it cannot be said or thought), because the state has a monopoly on the supposedly 'legitimate' use of violence. In other words, the question of violence as most people including liberals understand it is only the question of "patriotism," which is whether you support our fascist state against its enemies (the people of this country and the world insofar as they are liabilities to the system because they could resist) or not.

Hence, the mostly phony "War on Terror," which was and is actually a war of the police state agains the left. A war partly designed to smother it in its cradle. Many of the targets were Arab Muslims; very few had any connection whatsoever to the 'terrorist' threat. That threat was real, but the targeting of people by our police agencies and, internationally, our now mostly mercenary, or mechanized, armed forces, was mostly a displacement. Indeed, it provided an opportunity.

I am not an Arab Muslim but a European-American who is part Jewish and other things, and was targeted for other reasons, because of the political sympathies I have cultivated since my youth when this was part of my education.

Moreover, the police want people to hate them, hoping that they will react violently. That then justifies in their thinking their own will to violence, which is what they start out with.

People who will kick and brutalize you, or kill or imprison you, there is certainly no option of liking that or stating your approval of it, which would obviously be a lie.

The question is how to fight fascism.

At the top of our agenda should be destroying the mental health system as we know it. It is essentially a tool of oppression.

Because the DSA does not hold this position, but the contrary one (they want more of it to give people what they "need"), I basically have broken with them. I remain a dues-paying member because I support some of the other things they favor. It seems to me there is no real left-wing political organization in this country at all.

People side with their country's government both to avoid cognitive dissonance and because identification with the society through its government and the latter in all its aggression, is rooted for most people in their unconscious via family complexes. These family complexes are largely patriarchal, though of course a shift from masculine to feminine styles of authority and domination would provide no real solution, even if it might affectively liberalize some relationships and situations. This means that one may need to learn a certain de-solidarization. If you think about all the figures of authority, including those associated with nationalism like the flag and the forms of worship around it, ask yourself what makes people, maybe even you yourself, want to affirm these things without questioning? Are they a basis of your identity? If so, should they be?

As I see it, because of such affirmations, and their ultimately irrational character, liberalism is conservative, and I should have nothing to do with it.