Your Anger is a Gift

The following dialogue is in response to Jeremy of Eidetic Illuminations, who commented on a recent post regarding the G8/G20 protests. I respect Jeremy and his position, but having just arrived home from what could generously be called the total clusterfuck in Toronto, I wanted to bring the comments and issues raised here to the main stage. Please share your thoughts.

JEREMY: M., I agree with your distinction between random violence and strategic violence - I, too, am not opposed to the latter. But I haven't yet thought of a situation where a violent approach would be better than a non-violent approach. I've read Jensen and other eco-social-militants, but in most cases, a lot more can be accomplished without destruction of property or life.

MICHAEL: Derrick Jensen is a bit naïve when it comes to what would be required for our species to carry on after a major collapse, in my opinion - but I like his relentless attitude and tend to agree with his general analysis of "civilization".

As for destruction – or might we say ‘deconstruction’ – I think there is definitely a time and place for it. Some buildings need to go (but without harm to others), and some dams need to be destroyed, and some technic-material systems need to be dismantled. Murder is never justifiable - but the deconstruction of “property” I have no problem with (who really owns the earth anyway?).

I’ll give you a scenario: say a corporation is knowingly pumping toxic industrial chemical into a local water supply in order to cut costs, effectively contributing to the scientifically proven poisoning of an aboriginal community. And say that corporation hides behind political connections and pandering politicians avoiding legal and institutional challenges to their practices. [note: this is exactly the case with the Alberta Tar Sands] Would we be justified in jumping the fence of said factory and sabotaging or blowing-up their facilities – halting production and the subsequent generation of toxic waste? If even once child was prevented from developing cancer as a result would such ‘violence’ be justified? Or should that community continue to drink the water while non-violently holding up signs and protesting outside corporate headquarters?

When is violence better than non-violence? When there are no other options.

I think many people in the so-called West have been pacified into thinking that there actually is a “civil society” out there somewhere. We are told to keep the peace, stay calm and trust in the systems. Meanwhile bankers and corporate elites accumulate transcendent amounts of wealth, destroy every known ecosystem on the planet, collaborate with dictators and global elites to extract resources and exploit people, and continually ignore human rights and international law. “Stay calm. Stay complacent. Stay distracted. Stay controlled. Everything will be ok if you just follow the rules that we set up for you.” Fuck that! Smash stores, blow up dams, ruin factories, confront managers, occupy buildings, vandalize corporate property and tear down every other structure or method of dominance and control. Enough is enough. Our species has run out of time.

"You cannot change the past but you can make the future, and anyone who tells you different is a fucking lethargic devil." - Immortal Technique

I cannot, truly, find any reason why not to destroy the "property" of corporations who willfully and knowingly treat people and ecologies as disposable. Why not blow-up the factories and sabotage the production systems of private organizations who deploy sweatshops or/and collaborate to murder community organizers (e.g., Shell) and commit massive human rights violations? Why should we respect their “property” when they are killing and poisoning and destroying our children spiritually and biologically? What will it take for it to be 'ok' to fight back?

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

JEREMY: I also warn you against the use of the term "sheeple." It's a popular term in the radical subculture (and a way of positioning oneself as "radicaler than thou" - though I realize that's not what you're doing here), but it doesn't help us reach out to "average folks" and build the collectivities that you speak of. It also obscures the fact that the decisions and actions of most of these average folks cannot be reduced to mindlessly following corporate will. People are complex and have complex relations with corporate culture - sometimes they happily follow, sometimes they grudgingly accept, sometimes they actively resist (however small those activities may seem to us).

MICHAEL: With all due respect Jeremy, I live in a place where the majority of people drive the largest vehicles they can buy, openly advocate for unrestricted gun use, argue for French-Canadians to be "deported" to France and consider “climate change” a communist plot of world domination. So despite my desire to acknowledge the complexity of the “average person’s” views, I have little faith in the capacities of under-involved consumerist citizens.

But, to be sure, I’m not talking about those people who grudgingly suffer the machinations of exploitation. Not all “average people” are sheeple – but many are. If there are those who do ‘resist’ in small ways, as you say, and feel that we live in an unhealthy social system, then why do they still flock to the shopping malls and drive SUVs? Why do more people watch American Idol than vote during an election? Why do they “grudgingly accept” or rationalize their role in this maladaptive ‘game’? Why are they NOT rising up for a better more human world?

Could they not choose otherwise?