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Peter Gelderloos

How Nonviolence Protects the State Paperback – May 1, 2007

by Peter Gelderloos (Author)

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Since the civil rights era, the doctrine of nonviolence has enjoyed near-universal acceptance by the US Left. Today protest is often shaped by cooperation with state authorities—even organizers of rallies against police brutality apply for police permits, and anti-imperialists usually stop short of supporting self-defense and armed resistance. How Nonviolence Protects the State challenges the belief that nonviolence is the only way to fight for a better world. In a call bound to stir controversy and lively debate, Peter Gelderloos invites activists to consider diverse tactics, passionately arguing that exclusive nonviolence often acts to reinforce the same structures of oppression that activists seek to overthrow.

Contemporary movements for social change face plenty of difficult questions, but sometimes matters of strategy and tactics receive low priority. Many North American activists fail to scrutinize the role of nonviolence, never posing essential questions:

• Is nonviolence effective at ending systems of oppression?

• Does nonviolence intersect with white privilege and the dominance of North over South?

• How does pacifism reinforce the same power dynamic as patriarchy?

• Ultimately, does nonviolence protect the state?

Peter Gelderloos is a radical community organizer. He is the author of Consensus: A New Handbook for Grassroots Political, Social, and Environmental Groups and a contributor to Letters From Young Activists. He is the co-facilitator of a workshop on the prison system, and is also involved in independent media, copwatching, anti-oppression work, and anarchist organizing.

Print length

128 pages
Language

English
Publisher

South End Press
Publication date

May 1, 2007
Dimensions

5 x 0.3 x 7 inches
ISBN-10

0896087727
ISBN-13

978-0896087729
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Peter Gelderloos
25
Paperback
43 offers from $10.22

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As a nonviolent activist, perhaps I should have been offended by the title of Peter Gelderloos' new book, How Nonviolence Protects the State, or by chapter headings like 'Nonviolence is Deluded.' And yet upon finishing this book, which attempts to systematically tear down many of the values and strategies to which I've devoted the last 20 years of my life, I found myself strangely exhilarated: the revolution is alive." -- Sue Frankel-Streit, review on Richmond IMC

"Instead of always assuming that a particular choice is morally superior, activists have to constantly reevaluate their tactics and critically examine how they act, a process that could be aided by a reading of How Nonviolence Protects the State." -- Grand Rapids IMC

"Peter Gelderloos's How Nonviolence Protects the State, finishes off where Ward Churchill's classic, Pacifism as Pathology, began. In this indictment, he makes a strong argument for the diversity of tactics, while illuminating how the ideology of pacifism leads us not to social justice, but rather, the peace one finds in cemeteries. A 'must read' for revolutionaries struggling to be effective against the government's 'War on Terror,' in which one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist." -- Ann Hansen, Author, Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla

"Peter's exploration of how power is upheld by the privileged through ideological nonviolence challenges white middle class activists to question if they are truly committed to solidarity with oppressed peoples." -- Jason Lydon, Congregational Director, Community Church of Boston

"Thoroughly-researched and extremely well-argued, How Nonviolence Protects the State is a potent antidote to the insufferably self-serving sanctimony which has for far too long been able to pass itself off as a 'principled opposition' in the United States. Essential reading for anyone seriously committed to the attainment of constructive change." -- Ward Churchill, Author, Pacifism as Pathology

About the Author

Peter Gelderloos is a radical community organizer. He is the author of Consensus: A New Handbook for Grassroots Political, Social, and Environmental Groups and a contributor to Letters From Young Activists. He is the co-facilitator of a workshop on the prison system, and is also involved in independent media, copwatching, anti-oppression work, and anarchist organizing.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ South End Press (May 1, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0896087727
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0896087729
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.3 x 7 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #992,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #342 in War & Peace (Books)
- #388 in Radical Political Thought
- #57,590 in Education & Teaching (Books)

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Peter Gelderloos: Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist writer originally from Virginia. He is author of How Nonviolence Protects the State, Consensus, and Anarchy Works.

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Paul J. Poposky

Gelderloos hit the nail on the head!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 23, 2013

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It strikes one upon reading criticisms of this book that those who have so many negative words to say about Gelderloos, his thought and the concept suggested by the title of the book apparently have no answer for the very specific arguments made in How Nonviolence Protects The State. Among those specific arguments (laid out as chapter headings) are: "Nonviolence is Ineffective", "Nonviolence is Racist", "Nonviolence is Statist", "Nonviolence is Patriarchal", "Nonviolence is Tactically and Stategically Inferior" and "Nonviolence is Deluded". The nice thing about Gelderloos' approach is that - despite his clear disagreement with the concept of nonviolent-only resistance - he goes out of his way to detail the ways in which the historic "successes" of nonviolent civil disobedience came about, namely, that these successes did not come about in a vaccume, and were complimented by a diverse array of tactics -- including many characterized by pacifists as "violent" -- from which nonviolent resisters benefited. This is a great little handbook that reverses the commonly parroted argument "people who have diverged from nonviolence never affect change" and turns it on it's head, showing how - in fact - it is the pacifists who never seem to affect any change, and the change they do achieve -- via The State -- is nothing to be emulated.

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komboa

Tells the truth about the fraud of nonviolence.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 4, 2015

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I love this book. Exposes the racist and opportunist nature of non-profit social justice organizations, many of which are just fronts for the government and corporations. As the author points out, The government itself engages in war and statist violence all over the world to maintain its rule, and uses domestic police terror against Blacks and peoples of color to keep them from obtaining their full human fights. The NPO social justice non-violent groups are just "peace police" upholding law and order at the expense of the poor/poc.

4 people found this helpful

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ronald

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 16, 2016

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an outstanding book.

2 people found this helpful

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Kenneth Kraska

What to Do Then?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 17, 2007

"Not believing in violence," Leon Trotsky famously said, "is like not believing in gravity." Trotsky's observation could also be the thesis statement of Peter Gelderloos' book, How Non-Violence Protects the State, as well.

If there is one feature of modern radical political thought that seems to transcend all the various radical movements it is that violence is immoral, impractical, and counterproductive in nearly every case, and most certainly in liberal democracies where political activity to effect change, however restricted or rigged in favor of the ruling elites, is possible.

What caused Gelderloos to renounce non-violence in favor of "a diversity of tactics" [page 3] was his experience with the School of the Americas Watch group and his frustration at the group's failure to obtain the closure of this facility as well as his subsequent arrest, trial, and six-month long imprisonment for participation in actions against the the SOA. Gelderloos refers to this continually throughout his book.

Advocates of exclusively non-violent tactics are usually privileged whites, say Gelderloos, who have the temerity to tell those those under assault (i.e., at war with state) to tough it out and try to make do with appeals to the consciences of the immoral and sociopathetic elites who benefit from this condition of war. [page 134] Gelderloos also condemns "reformism" as being too easy for the powers-that-be to crush, co-opt, discredit or repress.[page 96]

Gelderloos uses an example of what he recommends for direct action against the state rather than non-violence. First, Gelderloos condemns a non-violent action by a pacifist nun who infiltrated a missile factory and hit the missiles with a hammer but causing them no damage. Why not use a bomb instead of a hand tool asks Gelderloos?

"A bomb," say Gelderloos, "ensure that a factory will not be able to produce missiles far better than a hammer does, and missiles in the possession of imperialist states kill far more people than bombs (or hammers) in the possession of urban guerrilla groups. But this consideration is so far from minds of pacifists that the nuns to whom I allude based much of their trial defense on the contention that they had not caused any real damage, only symbolic damage, to the missile factory..." [page 124]

I am not entirely sure what he would propose as a effective alternative though; Gelderloos never comprehensively addresses the issue of specific tactics. But isn't going head-to-head with a violent and ruthless state in effect committing suicide? People who have tried what Gelderloos suggests in his book have not really changed conditions for the better and have usually come to a bad end themselves. Ruby Ridge, the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, and the Waco Massacre all come to mind here.

However, Gelderloos' scholarship is very credible, his writing style is very easy to absorb and understand, and his views on the failure of the current menu of tactics for societal change are quite refreshing and necessary for militants to read and discuss. I recommend this book.

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How Nonviolence Protects the State Paperback – May 1, 2007

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