JOSH EDELSON / Getty Images
Violence Will Only Hurt the
Trump Resistance
History
shows that civil disobedience and mass protests are more effective in the long
run than black-bloc tactics.
February
7, 2017
The week of President Donald Trump’s
inauguration, thousands of Americans used civil disobedience to disrupt events.
An LGBTQ dance party raged outside of Mike Pence’s house. Iraq Veterans Against
the War occupied John McCain’s office in opposition to Rex
Tillerson’s nomination. On Inauguration Day, Black Lives Matter activists
blockaded security checkpoints. Democracy Spring activists interrupted the swearing-in ceremony. Code Pink marched around the National Mall in a colorful pack. An
elderly Asian American woman gave a middle-finger salute. The day after inauguration, millions of people participated in the Women’s March on
Washington at its Sister Marches. Hundreds of thousands have remained active in
pro-immigration protests and other rallies in the weeks since then.
1.
At the same time, there’s been a reemergence
of “black bloc” tactics: Protesters who incite property
destruction and street fighting. The week of Trump’s victory, police in
Portland, Oregon, fired rubber bullets against largely peaceful demonstrators
after black bloc provocations. The more than 230 people arrested in D.C. over
inauguration weekend—most of them associated with black bloc actions,
which resulted in a burned limousine and vandalized
storefronts—drew the coverage away from thousands of people using civil
resistance. And at U.C.-Berkeley last week, 1,500 people peacefully
demonstrated against a planned speech by right-wing Breitbart writer Milo
Yiannopoulos, later to be joined by some 100 “masked agitators” who started a fire, hurled rocks, and attacked other protesters.
Defenders of black bloc tactics, which also include rioting
and “Nazi-punching,” argue that these
actions are necessary and legitimate against powerful opponents. They believe
such tactics help to protect nonviolent activists—particularly those from
marginalized communities—from militarized police. Property damage, street
fighting, and fires draw more media coverage, they argue, and participation in
violence can deepen activists’ commitments and embolden nonviolent protesters
to be more courageous. But they also believe that appeals for nonviolent action
are for the privileged and the sell-outs. Of calls for peaceful protest, one
defender of black bloc actions said, “That kind of argument can
devolve into ‘just sit on your hands and wait for it to pass.’ And it doesn’t.”
On balance, though, black bloc tactics often hurt the causes that these
activists claim to be fighting for. While violent flanks have sometimes
produced short-term tactical advantages, they often come with painful long-term
costs for movements seeking change—and the communities they purport to
represent. The historical evidence in support of this conclusion is worth
considering as the Trump resistance builds.
Expert practitioners of violence know that
to truly suppress dissent, they must win the larger political struggle for
legitimacy. One does not compete for legitimacy at the ideological extremes,
but rather, at the ideological center—an audience generally unpersuaded to take
up violent tactics to follow masked vigilantes into an unknown utopian future.
Leaders need a pretext to convince the center that a major crackdown of
dissidents is required. Historically, states have easily exploited the
appearance of violent flanks to re-assert their legitimacy and suppress larger
nonviolent dissent.
Hence the crucial paradox of resistance: The
more oppressive the adversary, the more the resistance must refuse to play his
game. The strategic cost of violent flanks is that they shift the struggle onto
a chessboard in which the regime has the clear advantage.
Fascist groups made use of the chaos to appeal to nationalist impulses,
soaring to power at the polls.
History provides ample proof of how fascists
respond to violent flanks in the midst of broader civil resistance movements.
The interwar period last century was characterized by pitched street battles
between communists, progressives, and fascists, while liberals tried to
maintain stability through electoral and judicial power. Although anti-fascist
street groups in Germany surely celebrated their Nazi-punching tactical
successes, the long-term political result was a fragmented left that collapsed
on itself. Fascist groups made use of the chaos to appeal to nationalist
impulses, soaring to power at the polls. In the meantime they vilified various
scapegoats for the unrest—Jews, leftist oppositionists, media, intellectuals,
homosexuals, gypsies, people with disabilities—singling them out for
deportation, scientific experiments, internment, and, ultimately,
extermination.
As the Nazis conquered Europe, they expressed an explicit preference
for fighting resistance movements that used guerrilla rather than civil
disobedience methods. British military theorist Basil Liddell Hart observed that “[the Nazis] were experts in violence, and
had been trained to deal with opponents who used that method. But other forms
of resistance baffled them—and all the more in proportion as the methods were
subtle and concealed. It was a relief to them when resistance became violent
and when nonviolent forms were mixed with guerrilla action, thus making it
easier to combine drastic repressive action against both at the same time.”
Once violent flanks appear, the size and diversity of otherwise
nonviolent mass movements declines.
Studies show that once violent flanks appear, the size and
diversity of participation in otherwise nonviolent mass movements
declines—particularly among women, children, the elderly, people with
disabilities, and marginalized or at-risk communities. This is important,
because movements that maintain large-scale, diverse participation are better
at eliciting sympathy from third-party observers and have the best track record of success. Regimes typically
accuse oppositionists of being thugs, murderers, and traitors regardless of
what they do. For instance, as Trump tweeted after the Berkeley incident, “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters
are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT
AGAIN!” But bystanders and would-be participants may view such statements as
more credible when they see some oppositionists using violence. One study finds that regimes tend to expand their repression
against all oppositionists after violent flanks arrive on the scene. Another recent study suggests that most Americans are
largely fine with that, although there are important racial differences.
In fact, Americans—particularly whites and
Hispanics—are generally quite hostile to public protest, although they are more
tolerant of nonviolent protests than violent ones. Nonviolent action seems to
disturb people without alienating them. For instance, Omar Wasow amassed a wealth of evidence showing how nonviolent
tactics increased public attention to, and sympathy for, the Civil Rights
movement. This support translated into voting behavior that empowered Democrats
to adopt the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts. In contrast, violent protests
distracted the public from civil rights and toward ending the unrest. This
alienation of whites was consequential in Richard Nixon’s election in 1968 on a
“law and order” platform, a decisive defeat for social justice causes.
Hence, violence from within movements can
reduce prospects for strategic success. In French labor disputes, Emiliano
Huet-Vaughn found, violence and property destruction tends to reduce the
probability that labor groups extract concessions. And larger, cross-national studies show that nonviolent resistance
campaigns are more likely to overthrow their own governments without violent
flanks than with them. Even when movements succeed in
spite of violent flanks, the political dynamics unleashed in the process are
difficult to control. Historically, maximalist campaigns with violent flanks
have been more likely to lead to civil war, even years after a conflict
has ostensibly subsided. And countries in which violent flanks have played a
prominent role in recent uprisings have been more likely to emerge from the
conflict with authoritarian institutions.
Given that violent flanks tend to reduce
participation, repel potential allies, increase widespread repression, and discourage defections from
those in the various pillars of support, it is no surprise that regimes attempt
to infiltrate social movements to encourage violent flanks to emerge. The FBI
did this during the Civil Rights movement, and more recently, during Occupy. Repeated efforts to plant agents
provocateurs who endorse violent flanks should send a clear signal: The
authorities want movements to play the game the state knows best.
Defenders of violent flanks often characterize
their approach as the only option other than peaceful protest or total submission.
Yet, history is rife with examples of disruptive, confrontational civil
disobedience campaigns that have harnessed the power of popular mobilization
for social and political change. Successful campaigns have gone beyond marches,
demonstrations, and protests, embracing many other nonviolent methods—including nonviolent
occupations, human barricades, strikes, interruptions, and many other
disruptive techniques—to achieve outcomes without the political downsides of
violent flanks.
But before agreeing on tactics, in a larger strategic sense, the
diverse coalition of actors involved in the Trump resistance must first agree
on what alternative vision of society they wish to see. They must then ensure
that their methods of resistance communicate that vision in a way that attracts
rather than repels adherents, while building capacity to continually maintain
resilience, project legitimacy to those in the center, and build power from
below. Hence, the key strategic question is not which tactics are more
immediately satisfying, or who has the right to decide whether violent flanks
are the best course to take. Instead, it is upon whose battlefield the
dissidents choose to meet their opponent. If any part of the resistance
sacrifices its strength in numbers to play to the opponent’s expertise in
violence, it won’t stand a fighting chance.
Erica Chenoweth is a professor at the
Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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