resonanceaudiodistro:

Check out our latest recording, The Illegitimacy of Violence, the Violence of Legitimacy, by Crimethinc.

This piece discusses the role of violence - what it is, and who gets to define it - as discussed in debates sparked during the Occupy movement.

The piece strays from the “violent vs. nonviolent tactics” part of the discussion we’ve all probably heard before, and instead opts for questioning why so-called violent tactics are written off as illegitimate forms of protest, while “nonviolent” tactics and state-sanctioned acts of violence are deemed legitimate.

“It’s important to have strategic debates: shifting away from the discourse of nonviolence doesn’t mean we have to endorse every single broken window as a good idea.. But it only obstructs these debates when dogmatists insist that all who do not share their goals and assumptions—not to say their class interests!—have no strategic sense. It’s also not strategic to focus on delegitimizing each other’s efforts rather than coordinating to act together where we overlap. That’s the point of affirming a diversity of tactics: to build a movement that has space for all of us, yet leaves no space for domination and silencing—a ‘people power’ that can both expand and intensify.”