Introduction
This is a critical reading to “How nonviolence protects the State” by Peter Gelderloos. To go through Gelderloos’ takes i will expand on what i find are argumentative failures on his part. Even so, i will try and give in to his points anyway, accepting his analysis and requirements as correct, and see if nonviolence can be saved regardless. My take is that yes: nonviolence can survive Gelderloos’ critique, by means of accepting or rejecting his opinions the same.
1. Nonviolence is ineffective
The book opens with a broad critique of what could be considered the “historical claim in favor of pacifism”. The counter-argument can be summed up as such: “nonviolents claims victories in cases where they were not the only players; and the consequences of pacifist victories are pointless, or actually losses in the grand scheme of societies”.
Gelderloos’ critique is, of course, violent in its claims, or at least violent on the logics of reasoning and discourse.
The first thing i’d like to point out is that the book is dishonestly written, and read, as a critique on nonviolence in general. It should instead be considered a critique of a certain mid/upper class ideology of nonviolence that is specific to the context and experiences of the author.
The idea of not exerting violence upon others, it should be obvious, is probably as old and ubiquitous as human consciousness has been. Abstinence from exerting violence has emerged in virtually any culture as either law, religion, culture, philosophy, technique or just good advice, based on causes and considerations that go well beyond situational political strategisms. Imagining then to invalidate such an abstract, archetypical, geometrical idea by picking on more or less dubious groups in the neoliberal political landscape is as opportune as attacking the platonic idea of the square because, sometimes, salvador dali refused to draw them straight.
Let me first comment on the fact that a chapter called “nonviolence is ineffective” could use more arguments than the consideration that the world was, and remained, a bad place, both before and after some kind of pacifism has occurred in it. It seems, also, that our author is either in possession of the historiographical philosophers’ stone, or presumptious in attacking the “pacifist historiography” by means of cause-and-effect chains. He puts much effort in demonstrating how pacifist movements were either ineffective, or effective only when joined with violence, or actually against the masses’ interest altogether. This is called “putting the cart before the ox”: since the world remained violent, then “nonviolence” is to blame.
Could it be instead that pacifist movements have always been just rings on much larger chains of causes, in which rings of violence come both before and after them? Yes, of course: King’s nonviolence was followed by cases such as George Floyd’s. Is it King’s fault, or is there a longer, more complex chain of political happenings, violences and oppressions leading to today’s USA’s political landscape?
Gelderloos seems to say: “People wash their teeth all their lives, but still die of cancer. Toothpaste is instrumental to developing cancer”. My point being: you either employ determinism, or you don’t. The same claim, made through a lazy (but well worded) cherry-picking of causes and effects, could actually be moved against every single movement or happening in the history of mankind, violent revolutions included. Moreover, opting for 20th century cases doesn’t reduce the complexity of social history mechanics by a single bit.
The author’s line of reasoning consists quite often in this kind of historical cart-oxing. Another refrain that occurs pretty much everywhere in the book is the inductive turkeying of nonviolence: a lot of it boils down to “it always went down unfavorably, so it will always happen so”. In saying so, Gelderloos is deciding: what is pacifism, where it is to be found, how it works, what are its causes and what are its consequences on the world, and how they are all going to always be so. I won’t elaborate further than, again, calling it out for being the inductive turkey parable at its finest.
But the same author that so profoundly and generously gifts us the correct view of history also reminds us that “history is written by the winners”. Taking this in the most serious account i have no reason, then, to subscribe any one or the other historical interpretation of both violent and nonviolent movements in relation to their consequences, together with the very interpretation of the causes and consequences at places and times i was not even born, and in favour of which i could try and find as many facts and interpretations as i’d like. The limits of state-sponsored mechanical interpretations of history are the same of the anarchists’, and if this is the level of the historical analysis playground, that is, ox-carting, i’d rather quit the field.
Let us abandon quickly, then, the muddy waters of historical supremacy. To my anarchist eyes, there has not been a single victorious movement in history, if victory means the long-lasting end, or even the denting, of the rule of elite humans on common humans. I would actually make the opposite argument: i could blame all kingdoms, dictactorships, revolutionaries and parliaments in history for invalidating the never-ending pacifists’ work; then call it a day. In fact it would be violence, and not the state, the true constant of history, the omnipresent winner: the antipacifist, or the violentist, today much like always, should actually be very happy and proud, and unbothered by the “saints”, as they evidently consider us the perennial losers. Per Gelderloos’ analysis, violence in today’s world is, and should remain, an unshakeable given, both to be employed oppressively (against who’s labeled a facist, a process of identification bound to end up with innocents and ex-allies in jail or mass graves) and resistively (justified summairly by cart-oxing nonviolence).
In reality, the only historical pattern one could honestly infer is that the world is currently under the dominating power of a relatively limited share of elites, through state, corporate, religious, technnical and occultic power enterprises. To me, these elites seem to reproduce their dominating schemes both in their underlying strata (or whatever mental image you prefer), and in their inter-strata structures and dynamics, through all sorts of violent and nonviolents manoeuvres, and that they may very well come from a past i didn’t live firsthand. More peculiar considerations, i believe, would necessitate an interpretation that would systematically fail expectations and frameworks, whichever they might be. I won’t simplify the complexity of violence just for the sake of individuating nonviolence, nor the other way around.
Let’s surrender all aspects of a presumed historiographical supremacy. I would start by noticing that any moral or ethical framework can be independent from utilitaristic justifications. Anarchism, veganism, pacifism and any other nice idea can be justified without assuming them to be historically or futuristically proper, or presently world-changing. On the other hand, measuring scales of freedom in history such as poverty rates, hunger, access to medical facilities, enjoyment of political “rights” and so forth, are all too-contextual and too easily broken by the scrupulous methodologist. The presumed advancements in the commoners’ material conditions of certain areas of the world leave me all but convinced.
Hence, i will abstain from claiming victory or loss for neither conviviality nor violence. Did Gandhi achieve my dream? Seems not. Did Rosa Luxemburg? Feels like neither. Is the world today the result of both peaceful and violent happenings and movements? Most likely. As of now, it seems to me that i cannot defend nor attack violence nor nonviolence, nor opt for “both” or “whatever goes”, if to do so is to impose preferential scales of freedom measurements, or to resort to malafide historical accounting. I surrender then the playfield of time.
You will find that this claim is admissible for Peter Gelderloos, in the last chapter, too, admits that no victory can be assumed for any party in history, a consideration that should’ve prevented him from writing most of his arguments.
2. Nonviolence is racist
Gelderloos begins this chapter by stating that “besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class…”. Let’s briefly discuss how Gelderloos offends his readers’ intelligence. Firstly: if it’s besides, why point it out? Secondly: the claim is only backed up by the authors’ and readers’ possible shared ignorance: there are no data, no broader context, no precise definitions informing this statement. In response to such discourse manipulations, which fail to admit how this is a critique of a very specific conception of pacifism and not pacifism per-se, i would claim then that all those who don’t enact political violence are, by definition, at least political nonviolents.
The huge majority of any world population has been politically nonviolent, and such majority, i’d claim, has always been made up of non-white poors. We the nonviolent majority, being not bound by class, country or culture, should hence be regarded as eternal hostages of the violent minority of the dominators, in the midst of which it would very often be caught in the crossfire with the violentist rebels. The nonviolents as a broad concept would contain, to put it simply, most of the “civilians”.
On the matter of the precise individuation of pacifists we never get an explicit answer, so that such definition can’t be found, nor be critically evaluated, nor to be answered to directly. Most of his further central statements will ultimately lack in this aspect.
This considered, the claim that “Pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context” would be another deliberate misrepresentation. As we already noticed, pacifism as an ideology possibly comes before humans could talk, and ideological frameworks for it have appeared everywhere in the world at all times, under the shape of personal morals, common ethics, philosophy, religion, communal lifestyles and such. In any context, at any given point in time, there may very well be a background-agnostic mix of pacifist people that are so for a variety of different reasons, so that more than one sociological typology could be traced. In other words, you can have pacifist bougies and proles in the same violent transfemminist circle, and you can have two different pacifist, class-based transfemminist groups. Reducing the scope of mutualistic conviviality to a specific, USA-based white bougie pacifism misses both the points i have just made like a straight arrow narrowly fitting between two enormous targets.
The author goes on by noting, interchangeably, how nonviolence as a concept implies, and pacifists as white bougies ideology state, all sorts of idiotic historical considerations like the rebellious slaves and the colonized peoples being equally monstrous and responsible for genocidal history as their captors. First off: “pacifists say”, but who precisely, in God’s name? Gelderloos, in its extensive and scholarly use of citations, keeps avoiding calling out a specific author, always referring to some kind of personal experience and not to Gandhi or King, his otherwises frequent explicit targets. The critical reader should ask themselves why.
Given this omission in authorship, this claim shouldn’t survive beyond anedoctical experiences which are again a critique of some personal aquaintances and not of the nonviolent principle taken under a fair, respectable and serious consideration. Of course, i wouldn’t subscribe such misconceptions like the oppressed being despicable in their resistive violence, nor King and Gandhi have. Opposing violence, one can easily imagine, doesn’t automatically mean to hate or blame who resorts to violence in resistance and liberation, so this would-be aspect of pacifism can be easily surrendered as well.
A claim is then made that King and Gandhi, while both subscribing quite clearly the idea that violence is inherently sinful, “agreed it was necessary to support armed liberation movements”. When? How? Why? And most importantly: where’s the source? Between the hundreds he put, the one on this precise claim is also missing. These useful omissions, one can notice, are a trait to Gelderloos’ text that can be easily missed.
For good measure, then, i will provide a direct quote by King on Vietnam:
“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”
You choose what to make of it. On my part, i will admit i am questioning Gelderloos’ intellectual honesty, and that i am doing so precisely because i don’t seem to encounter it specifically in his main statements, which are the ones my tired ears are continuosly exposed to.
Another argument against pacifism here is that pacifists are systematically organized, diverted or infiltrated by elite actors with the goal of making them instrumental to the defense of a certain oppressive condition. Well then: i will surrender pacifist movements altogether.
This is because i subscribe to an idea of anarchism that endorses no personalisms and no leaderships: i regret both King’s, and Malcom X’s, also because both, for as much as i know, could have been instrumental to any number of explicit and covert political maneuvers we might as well take into consideration, when coming back to the (already irrelevant) historiographical argument. This is also in anticipation to a later claim noting that leaderless nonviolents get induced into getting one by the oppressor, for controlling reasons. Our pacifism will then be that of leaderlessness anyway: we have a right to try until success, or else the violentists, too, should be subject to the turkey induction of eternal failure.
The rest of the chapter is dedicated to this: historical assertions to feed the turkey (see all these failures in history? this proves pacifism will never work kinda reasonings), and to the critique of white pacifists patronizing the oppressed in their struggle. On the historical argument i have said enough and will inevitably repeat myself, as the only strictly logical response would be to invert Gelderloos’ destructive historical operation around, against violents, calling out the revolutionary movements in history that have failed, while perfectly knowing it’d be intellectual dishonest and not useful on the question of violence per-se, but just to specific situations of which there are infinite in the universe, with all possible outcomes. An infinite game of cherry-picking, turkey feeding and cart-oxing would just leave our discussions void, our fingers sore, and our diet compromised. On patronizing the rebels, we have seen a quote by King giving up doing so before us. We can design an antiviolence that is not centered around impeding, calling off, sabotaging or anyway being aprioristically unhelpful to violent resistant groups anywhere, at any time. One could situationally decide for themselves if any group, pacifist or not, case by case, deservers their attention, strength and solidarity, analyzing any of their practical and theorical aspects, and that will be their freedom. As i can only present nonviolence as a strong personal preference on how one wants to act, and only loosely in how one picks their fights, i can no less include patronizing the violent rebels as a kind of violence one may see fit to abstain from enacting.
On pacifists underlying the negative consequences of violent resistance, Gelderloos asks: “Why do nonviolent activists seek to change society’s morality in how it views oppression or war, but accept the morality of repression as natural and untouchable?”
Who, in the heavens, has been Gelderloos been talking to? The pacifist, by definition, rejects repression. What a pacifist might underline is that repression can follow an act of resistance, which would be a fact to be evaluated at all times: in its probability, scale, modality, victims, and so on. This much should be of great interest to the violent revolutionaries that, nonetheless, should plan their actions with great clarity on their consequences, as of at least not risking sabotaging their own movement.
Pacifism is just putting a lot of weight on this matter, for any variety of reasons, whereas a mindless revolutionary could very well think that some companion or civilians casualties can easily be well worth their revolution. Is this blaming the revolutionary? I will abstain from blaming the oppression on the resistance, that’s for sure: but not from preferring strategies that take into account the possible consequences of undertaking certain actions. Nor i should be asked to abstain from critically considering rebellious violence for a risk of degeneration can always be found. I think that the personal convictions on resistance of a person, or group, shouldn’t be acritically safeguarded from their consequences: (personal) responsibility and power are two sides of the same coin for the oppressor much like oppressed, and keeping the bar high might be instrumental in avoiding degeneracy of the oppressed in oppressor, a path not uncommon in the history of revolutions which will be more extensively discussed by Gelderloos later.
The author makes an example out of palestine and the necessity of supporting their resistance. It is now commonly accepted that hamas has been heavily funded by israel, and might have been an instrument to israel’s genocidal project. My nonviolence would then be to take this into account when thinking about which specific party in the resistance i want to directly support with my (scarce) resources and actions. Tactics, strategy, realism, degeneracy, responsibility, consequences: aspects that should be included, not ignored, both in violence and nonviolence. Nonviolence is, in this aspect, more like a line of questioning rather than a law: it’s the suggestion of not accepting any violence just because it is resistive.
Am i implying that repression is caused by armed resistance, that there is no western hypocrisy in world affairs, or that it’s the oppressed fault for the violence they experience? Far from that. I will repeat: personal responsibility is just a matter to be confronted with, in the specific cases and not abstractly, as scary as it might sound to ideological fanatists, who are too keenly relativistic on human life for the sake of their ideals. This is not just an individual plane, but also a tactical and strategical one that cannot be refuted by a river of anedoctal discourses had with equally superficial would-be pacifists.
Two last points are brought on safety and self-defense: Gelderloos’ likes the nonviolent that sacrifices the first and values the latter, especially in revolutionary circumstances. I do as well. I am not against self-defense as a concept. I am not, as he puts it, someone who prioritizes their own safety. For example, i attended the protests in response to the Askatasuna clearing out. I don’t even like the fellas: Askatasuna is definitely not nonviolent and i’ve never supported them directly nor walked their space. Violent the resistance was, and i was there with them, playing the tear gas tennis game. In my mind i was not adding violence to the situation, just giving it back, putting myself in danger and being not-so-kind to the pigs in doing so. Good enough for the people i were with, good enough for me, and good enough for the dynamics of the battleground, in which antigas runners have a noble, helpful and tactical purpose.
Being nonviolent, to me, means that i will put a lot of effort in the specifications of resistance: that is, on evaluating what kinds of violences are we confronting, and with what kind of instruments are to be confronted, and what role i should be playing in. I’d prefer no fighters, only medics and runners, but i won’t decide for others, and i will play my part regardless. I can surrender both my own safety, and the idea of sabotaging any other’s self-defense, exception made for the degeneracy that can be questioned even outside of a pacifist framework, and is taken into consideration that Gelderloos himself.
3. Nonviolence is statist
“Put quite plainly, nonviolence ensures a state monopoly on violence” one can’t possibly go around saying these things and be taken seriously. Ensures? Of course, if the nonviolent plays a role in the monopoly of violence of the state, it is through the infamous chain of causes of which the violents are a part and in which they may very well play the same role; and down the rabbit hole of social mechanics we go, once again.
This chapter will be mostly dedicated to showing how the “useful idiots” line of reasoning can be retorted.
First off: anyone knows as much as the intricate history, present and mechanics of USA-sponsored state control tactics as much as the next fella, which is nil.
The fact that anyone can agree with the FBI in thinking that preventing violent protests is useful to the state says nothing about nonviolence. It says a lot about circular reasoning: violence is key to revolution, because violence is feared, because violence is key to revolution. A revolution around its axis it is. The fact remains that if anyone knew precisely how to achieve freedom, and if either with or without violence, we would’ve done it already, or it’d be inevitably suppressed already. It’s either that you have a plan, or that you don’t, for both sides, before the other does. The pacifist way to revolution might just be as unknown to us as it is to the secret services. Resorting to violence on the basis that nation-states are keen to preventing it is, therefore, revolutionary cart-oxing. Why would the State, then, be so hell-bent on going after the pacifists as well, a fact that Gelderloos alternatively recognizes and dismisses? Why kill their leaders, infiltrate their ranks, arrest their militants for protesting non-violently? By the same logic of repression being a signal of potential success, then, convivialists are as capable of revolution as their violent siblings, and they find equal legitimation in their endeavors. We can either call it a draw, or avoid cart-oxing: you, the reader, choose, as i am fine with any. I renounce the idea of thinking that any particular pacifist movement can be recognized as proper for a certain, in the sense of sure, revolution, as long as we can observe for violent revolutions to be the same, for the same reasons.
The rest of this chapter is dedicated in showing just how violent USA society is. The argument goes as follows: in the states, it happens that nonviolents get killed by neonazis and KKK and policemen alike. I might add, with scales of violence that are only found in dictatorships, failed states, civil wars and regional/religious/cultural mass hatred. This is also the opposite of the claim that pacifist don’t get repressed as much as violents, because they are unproblematic. This left aside, i will never give in to the idea of the united states of america being central to any serious discourse, as USA centrality in any subject is just USA colonialism on our matters and thoughts. The USA can go fuck themselves as a general concept, with their own priorities and schools of thought that are so evidently incompatible with everyone else’s, they need to control the whole world with all their might in order to “promote” them and not be rejected, at any level. Peter Gelderloos’ book, in this sense, may very well just be another cog in the USA imperialist machine: how ironic, since he spends so much time thinking of nonviolents as such.
On a side note, let me stress again that in order to discuss nonviolence honestly we cannot take into account stories like those of Gelderloos being assaulted by pacifists, if not to exclude these schroedingers’ nonviolents from a fair discourse on pacifism. One cannot mix those and Gandhi together as much as one cannot mix Che Guevara and Bertinotti, since Gelderloos is so interested in italian history. This kind of chatter can surely be good for killing time, having fun debates and relieving stress, but it is not a proper reasoning for the refutation of complex nor simple ideological systems, as faulty as they are. I am starting to think that a more apt reply to this book would be a manual on using the brain in respect to political and philosophical matters, instead of a deconstructive dissertation in defense of conviviality.
Same goes for the obsessive recount of pacifists being brutally oppressed for being such. As if it were a sound logical deduction, and as if he didn’t argue for the opposite a little earlier, let us sadly remind of all those who, protesting with violence, underwent the same atrocities on the streets and in the prisons. What to make of the consideration that both parties get brutalized by the state? Are we just trying to scare the reader? Nonviolents get brutalized in prison, violents do as well: then what?
On cases such as the Albanian revolution of 1997, and others cited, where our author poses that pacifists were in the condition of actually subverting the state nonviolently, but got infiltrated with violence: isn’t this just proving our points, then? Here we have the violents ruining our peaceful and practical revolution. Should we ban all violent revolutionaries on the basis of such cases? Billions and billions of neurons in the world wasted by a single publication.
4. Nonviolence is patriarchal
This chapter is so putridly ill-meant, opening with the idea of pacifists being against women defending themselves during an act of rape, that i find it better for people to read it by themselves with this question in mind: why is Gelderloos making up this kind of hateable version of pacifism in his mind only to attack it? Couldn’t he consider the pacifism that is not against self-defense in the case of rape, for the case of his claims? Strawman at its finest, but ignorant the reader he supposes.
For my part, of course, i won’t waste myself in the critique of violent feminist movements, or at least, not at this very low level of analysis. I will always be sad in front of violence, that is a given. I will not, though, impose my pacifist views, i won’t “pacify” others if not by involving my life as an example of what i mean by nonviolence, an example anyone is free to ignore. I will not tell a woman, nor any person, not to defend themselves in a situation of domestic abuse, rape, verbal assault or any other violence. I will, though, be sad that it was necessary for them to do so in order to come out of the situation they were put in against their will. The two concepts can coexist, without blaming the victim for the violences they undergo, nor pacifying them into submission. Just a word and an act of support for the victim, a feeling of sadness for the state of the world, and a wish for it to never happen a gain.
On the contrary, i would pose myself some good old questions. Is violence patriarchal? Is violence machist, or male? Does patriarchy survive thanks to the prevalence of violent dynamics in society, which refrains cultural schemes of power, strength, incommunicability, difference and oppression? Egg or chicken? Questions any feminist would surely be open to discuss if asked, and better than i ever could. This is not the place to discuss feminism as a concept, anyway.
On the matter of the necessity of linking feminism to nonviolence, then: who am i to judge, anyway? I surrender as i’m not a feminist, i won’t tell feminists what to do with their thing; i will keep including a militant, self-defending, even pre-political nonviolent perspective in any framework that i’ll find compatible with my ideals, and this doesn’t need to come with a cost for any feminist struggle.
5. Nonviolence is tactically and strategically inferior
“Nonviolent activists attempting to appear strategic…” well, let’s not then, shall we? Surrender the strategical high-ground i will, eventually.
I want to quickly address what is the elephant in my room: that is, that Gelderloos is quite the unscrupulous thinker, ready to bring forth any line of logical discourse inconsistently with the others, depending on the subject he’s facing. Here he lets himself dream up a typological systematization of goals, tactics and stategy, together with perplexing quantifications. Methodologically, i don’t think there is much methodology going on. On quantifications, one example: “Clearly, the total pool of tactics available to nonviolent activists is inferior, as they can use only about half the options open to revolutionary activists”. Clearly? As if violents were not implicitly giving up the (infinite, thats the part he’s actually missing, that options are infinite for both parties) pacifist tactics that can’t be occasionally or pretextuously pacifist, as in they depend on their enactors having been, and keep on being, oriented to nonviolence before, during e after the action has taken place, for they are parts of broader “strategies”. Anyway, more wouldn’t necessairly mean better: i surrender the quantification of political possibilities but, if inferiority is the case, i don’t value quantity over quantity. This kind of classical free market perspective on political action is actually quite problematic to my mind.
Let’s get, then, back on the level of “clear and reasoned” (sic, and sigh) intellectualism by admitting that no quantifiers can be had in the infinite spectrum of possible actions for any party in the world, ever, period. The limit is the sky: arguing against the infinite freedom of humans and matters puts the cosmos, and so societies, in (reductionist) mechanical determinism, that is to say that nothing in the world will ever matter, and that the spectrum of possibilities beyond physical mechanics (whatever physics is) are limited by determinism, with dire consequences on political activism, and specifically on the need for people like Gelderloos to say they are correct on anything, as destiny will unfold towards its determined “end” (WW3, extinction, utopia, dystopia, or any) regardless of the existence of pacifists and violentists, and their respective ideas specifically, and anything in the world generally, alike. As things go, weird claims call for weird responses, and i do not believe in historical materialism for an (infinite) variety of reasons.
Gelderloos argues that no pacifist strategy can ever achieve anything, for the precise reason that pacifists wish to change people’s opinion, not coherce them under their own. An anarchist that implies the necessity of violence in order to coherce people into anarchism… better not think too much about this, right? He then adds that pacifists only work on the plane of morality and opinion, while not living radically in their acts, nor inciting people to change the material conditions of the world, and of their own lives, in order to achieve a greater, shared freedom. This much can be considered of little truth with no particular logics needed: just talk to people, read the news, know the movements. Pacifists come in all sorts and flavors, and i, for one, do all these, and more, or at least try to, with great effort. In my experience the opposite is true: pacifists are generally more radical in their lives. But who knows? And would it be a solid argument? I’m afraid it is not.
On pacifism being useless, again. First off, the author argues that mass propaganda is pretty much a behemoth that cannot be stopped. When it comes, then, to how violents are actually the only ones that can disrupt mass indoctrination, he does so by the claim that enough violence in TV will eventually pile up, and people will revolt. As if news of violence weren’t systematically engineered to support the State; as if people weren’t desensitized exactly through the continuous display of violence on the media; as if the years of lead in Italy he’s so affectionated to were not a good counterexample. Anyway, bombs until one destroys mass hypnosis and mass media and replaces them with “grassroot media”. Well, grassroots media are already ubiquitous, even if often repressed. The internet is an ocean of anti-estabilishment informational sources, also guaranteed by the world-wide hacker community, so that even in repressed countries, people can enjoy some of it. Libraries and bookshops are also full of all sorts of texts. A lot of eversive content is not censored. The only way to truly stop this is to turn off the internet for everyone, like it happened in iran, or burn down the books, like it happened in a lot of places. Anyway, when you get low enough in the freedom of expression scale, whatever that is, it’s not just mass media you’re fighting against, and it’s not evident to me that, at that point, they, or the system in general, can be highjacked with violence in the streets to induce millions of people to revolt, as controlled we are assuming them to already be. People in most of the world are just not aware of, or interested in, alternative sources, until they feel like they need them. The point on pacifism being useless in this regard is, anyway, totally lost, so nothing much is there to be surrendered.
On the recount of the SOAW movement against military schools in USA (literally: who cares?), Gelderloos underlines the parliamentary bill failure while not aknowledging all the other possible positive consequences of that, or any, campaign: mobilitization, politicization, networking, development, practice, etcetera. He compares the pacifists’ (i don’t claim them) action with an hypotetical gross programme of rebellious overthrowing of the military in the United States. Hard to imagine the United States government (which as 2026 is one with the military, the media, and the network technofeudalic systems, and sits mostly outside of public institutions) being boxed anywhere with violence. Maybe the macho bravado of US anarchists makes them actually believe than some molotovs and guns would go far in a perfectly fascist USA. Maybe that’s so. Anyway, a military that wouldn’t think twice before going chemical or biological on their own citizens even at times of peace, just for research, just for funsies, is a tough match. If even possible, Gelderloos would be possibly calling for the civil war of the greatest proportions, hypotetically ending with millions of causalties. Maybe not. This is the kind of priestly critique one should expect: that the answer to how come bloodsheds of such magnitude are possible in history is partly to be found in people like Gelderloos, that do not refrain from cynically playing with the lives of millions for the sake of their goals and ideals. Even so: saying that a reformist campaign failed to inspire a good bill and alternatively comparing it to the marvels of an hypotetical, total, victorious, violent revolution is hardly an argument. Moreso, any campaign can be useful in building up the revolutionary momentum, and surely its position in time, which is necessairly before the revolution and not after, cannot be used as reason to invalidate it. It’s a contraddiction, plain and simple.
Gelderloos seems also of the idea that the italian Red Brigades were eventually successful in pushing reforms in the italian state. Sadly, the effort required to precisely debunk such a shallow yet broad consideration is too much for a single book, let alone a pamphlet. For, you see, in order to say things like this credibly, one should study and understand a whole lot about italian history, which is as intricate as any other. Then one should study world history, and then the relations between the two so that they become one. Then, one should pick their favorite authors and drink up all their peculiar, often disingenuos, and certainly partly ignorant interpretations and, finally, boil them all down to such a simple sociomechanical statement as that the RBs were key in the divorce referendum. What about the PCI? What about the radical party? What about my grandmother? Surely, BRs had an influence in the chaotic mechanics of the country, though quantification either calls for better questions (given so, do we really consider constitutional reformism as a victory of violent struggle, in the grand scheme of things?) or for more intellectual honesty and argumentative rigour.
On a logical plane, then. Admitting the RBs did have some impact in the making of those policies: maybe positive, maybe negative; maybe it could be that a thousand other pacifist actors had a thousand more impacts on those, to any direction. Then what of the general superiority of violence upon pacifism? Where would the causal proof be? Where would the scale to measure its intensity be? Where would the causal chain be, and where would it stop, and where would the responsibilities? Is italy today a better place than it was before the red brigades? How? Also, why would we be rooting for communist revolutionaries? If people like that ever succeded, they would come after the anarchists next; but i understand that, in the anti-estabilishment religions, a lot of liturgies, in this case the chronicles of some miracolous saints, can get mixed together.
Most importantly why, in god’s name, people give up their own brain so easily when reading a book from the united states? Don’t people know that united states of americans are, well, the way they are, when it comes to understanding politics? How do you think they ended up where they are? By chance? I’m joking, but also not so much.
Point being, there are such intricacies to this discourse that are systematically ignored when such a lazy book is written, but especially read. I won’t fall for the trap by being another clown in the circus of historiography, and waste a thousand words to disprove a single, unsupported statement where disingenuity can be called out. The shallowness of one’s perspectives are one’s responsibilities, and people irresponsible with politics they seem. Why do insist? Because Gelderloos actually employs this line of reasoning against pacifists: that we are too eager to individuate victories in history, or envision victorious alternative or future scenarios.
Commenting on the strategy of “building now the future we want to see”, the author asks: “How are we supposed to build alternative institutions if we are powerless to protect them from repression?” That’s a good question, mr. Gelderloos. The answer can’t be found because there is no appropriate answer. As grassroots as we strive to be, it follows that this question is for real-world scenarios, in real-world situations, and only therein can be answered. I, as a nonviolent, am very affectionate to such endeavors, which are actually my main focus, and i am prone and keen to defend such experiences, as was the case with askatasuna. Nonviolence, again, doesn’t mean to forego self-defense or solidarity in all cases.
Anyway, he goes on underlying how any nonviolent strategy will inesorably end up failing, both by the power of imagination (he thinks up of a scenario and tells us how he imagines it would go down. Yes, really!) and historiographically. Repeat after me: if this world is a failure in terms of anarchism, it is both after pacifist and violent struggles both; given the world interpretation Gelderloos provides, either A) all failed, or B) the world is not under the dominion of superpowers; tertium non datur.
Candide by Voltaire all over again? We all know how the french revolution went down: in violence, and dictatorship, with consequences that can be seen still today, immesurable, uncriticable, only to be aknowledged, studied, suspected, doubted, integrated and finally let go.
Now for the main course: it’s the pacifist’s fault for violent revolutions failing. This is so because:
- pacifists don’t defend themselves, or others
- pacifists de-escalate possible insurretional moments
- pacifists do bad press by saying violentists “ruin” their protest
Can i give these up and still be nonviolent? Yes. I can:
- condone self-defense while being mindful of the hows and whens and whys,
- play the nonviolent in insurretional moments (eg. medic, caregiver, cook, antigas runner, etc.) and
- follow Gelderloos suggestion of not being enemy with the violentist rebellious, something that we even saw in King’s quotation before.
Can we be friends now? Apparently, not yet, for Peter Gelderloos has some more ramblings on the world being one big war, and violence being more effective by reason of it being more aptly repressed (isn’t the reader bored by repetition? Even sysphus is getting tired of pushing the cart instead of the ox).
He states again that pacifists are to blame. Let’s assume, like he poses, the world is a big, perennial war between oppressors and oppressed, which to me is an acceptable comparison in many ways. Don’t medics make sense even in this scenario? And why are they to blame for the ongoing war? Isn’t there a way for being on the same side of the conflic while trying to avoid harming or killing other human beings? Only a sadist would enforce this kind of reasoning onto the anarchic movement, and onto pacifists specifically, on the basis of a superficial comprehension of history and of specific movements, however salient to the author’s imagination.
A moment of self-awareness hits Gelderloos. He figures that violent rebellions work best when the general population is in support of such activities: on the question of why the general population doesn’t support your violence, are pacifists the first to blame? Apparently so. Suppose then that i’m a pacifist, but support the violent resistance. Am i safe from Peter’s anger now? Can we stop now and reflect that the rebellious are responsible for their own success as anyone else is, however impeded by other actors, since we all are?
Let’s stop and think. Maybe, the rebellious aren’t doing so well in convincing people of their reasons because their reasons are not convincing. Or maybe they are, but violence isn’t. Or maybe some violence is, but some consequences aren’t. Or maybe they are, but some people in the movement aren’t. Or maybe, any other number of reasons. Is this too much complexity? blame the pacifist (as a concept and not in the specific people and movements that could very well be against you), skip self-questioning, skip responsibility, and call it a day.
The prophecy will always be fulfilled, then: that if the violent rebellious fails, is because of the pacifists (which ones? any) who undermine their credibility, and if they win, it’s solely because of their own efforts, no pacifism involved in the causal chain of history. No in-between. A framework like such is surely enough to go by with, for a teenager. I don’t think i’m supposed to elaborate further on the subject.
Anyway, after quite some more ramblings, Gelderloos concludes: pacifists can’t defend themselves from the state. Proof? Somehow, he thinks he can put a scale between pacifist and violent survival rates by recalling a couple of specific stories, and expects such exercise to be of any value. Here we are, both pacifists and violents, both alive and uncountable. I definitely am unwilling to come up with further commentary on such shenanigans.
6. Nonviolence is deluded
The apex of Peter Gelderloos’ rethoric. Let’s bullet-hell this:
1) “while claiming pacifists can’t be victorious, i haven’t claimed victory through violence” yes that’s not a defense, that’s a point against the exercise. If one uses historical failure as a basis of judgement, violence should be judged as equally failing as pacifism, so that we’d be back at square one: to me, this is akin to confessing that most of the book is useless.
And actually, Gelderloos really goes on to admitting quite clearly that, while pacifists can’t claim any victory for themselves, the violents can’t either. A whole book on how pacifism is a failure, only to admit the same for violence? Where’s the reasoning that saves violence from the same historiographical and logical critiques we have discussed so far? Sad to announce, there is none to be found, for the final statements in favor of violent revolution, succintly kept at the very last pages of the book, are so weak and full of ingenuity the reader should be amazed.
What we get as a justification for violence are some tips. Some suggestions on the final revolution that marx and jesus prophetized the same. Gelderloos’ main point is that for the next revolution (?), if we will keep it “grassroots” enough, we will then succeed in using violence to eradicate violence, because, when we will remove the oppressors from their institutions, no one will take their place. Because we are keeping it grassroots, that will stop people on tanks, nuclear submarines, warplanes and so forth. Not convinced? We would be facing the might of a modern european military the capabilities of which we have witnessed in the tens of millions of victims in the last decades, but this time we will be victorious, thanks to a couple of ideas from mr. Peter Gelderloos. Do you believe in this nonsense? Is this any different from faith? Do you believe in this fairytail wherein the last violent, the one above all others, eventually ends violence for us all? Are you an adult? We will discuss this more precisely when we get to the very last two pages of the book.
2) “Pacifists prefer to characterize themselves as righterous than to logically defend their position” on the quality of the logics used by Gelderloos i have no more words to offer. On the commistions of logics and historiography, neither. Even if valid, we have Goedel’s theorems. If someone here is lagging behind a hundred years in the discourse on logic, scientific methods and such, it is not pacifism’s fault. Read better authors. We already briefly discussed how no principle can depend on logical or utilitaristic justifications, nor it can have them without being pretentious. A throwback to logical ethics, logical politics, logical morals, throws our philosophy back some 200 years. Formality as a concept has been killed enough times, and only seems to survive in the naive that thinks writing a book full of footnotes produces authority and truth. Anarchism shouldn’t serve the authority of anyone, not even logics, not even if it worked, and incidentally it does not. I repeat: get out of logics and formal western sciences, for that ship already sunk. Goedel is dead.
3) “Pacifists live a better life” says who? History proved we are evidently not bulletproof. We got genocided as much as the violent rebellious. Or along with them. Even if so, then what? Aren’t i allowed to freely choose how to live my fights? Maybe i’m just better than you at escaping repression. Maybe that’s “logical”, in the sense that a dead person can’t do any revolutionary activity. Maybe i am just waiting the right time. Anyway, what kind of argument is that? Why people take this book seriously?
4) “Pacifists pacify people more oppressed than them” i will abstain from doing so, then, and see if i can still call my lifestyle “nonviolence”. Of course, this wouldn’t mean i couldn’t still discourage, in practicality, any resort to violence that i see “illogical”, “useless” etc. on the grounds of the same reasonings Gelderloos’ put forward against pacifism; i’d abstain from that. What, then: am i supposed not to voice my feelings on violence for the sake of not pacifying? Can’t the violent cope with different opinions than their own? Should i expect repression from my own side, too? I will give up cohercion into pacifism, sabotaging my own side. In my life, i already give up being convincing in my statements, limiting myself in showing how others’ arguments are faulty without justifying mine beyond stirner, feyerabend and hermetism.
5) “Pacifists regard violence as brainless” i will abstain, o father of revolutions, from calling violence “brainless”.
6) “Do pacifists know what they are getting into?” yes. we frontline at protests among the fighters. we chain. we risk our freedom. Being peaceful doesn’t mean not breaking the law: very different concepts. Pacifism and legalism are two different thoughts, often held by two different people, and of their superimposition should be talked with similar precision, not by writing a book on nonviolence taken so.
7) “Nonviolents are vulnerable and surrendering” I keep for myself the right of choosing whether or not, at any give moment, i am feeling with no options left but resorting to violence. It’s actually easier, for a person like me, to enact violence in defense of others than in defense of the self. Not only: i do value my safety and liberty in the face of (il)legal represssion, so that i wouldn’t give them up peacefully. Of course, not all pacifists sit on the streets only to let themselves get arrested.
8) “Palestinians survive because of their resistance” as of 2026, after knowing of the hamas funding, of the 7/10 conspiracy, and of the scale of already planned genocidal violence that followed that day, this aged like raw milk. Did they survive the genocide in the best possible fashion? Were the palestinians just not violent enough in their resistance? Is it their fault for not doing enough? A violentist line of questioning calls the violent rebels out for their failures.
9) On the occupation of Tiananmen Square there is no reason to think that some students armed with rifles would’ve bested a government willing to deploy tanks on civilians. Of course, one can say whatever they want on anything. We’re at the bar.
10) “Pacifists do not make the distinction between” oppressive violence and resistive. I do, ok? Different they are, as much as i might regret both for same and different reasons.
11) “Blowing up the Litton Systems plant (where cruise components were made) would have been violent even if no one had been injuried.” I’d be ok with such an act. I don’t think production lines are people to be respected in nonviolence.
12) “People have different ideas of what is violent and what is not” yes, this may very well be the case. The guy actually holds masterclasses against pacifism where he makes this truth emerge through complex social experimentation (e.g. asking). As anarchists, aren’t we fine with people deciding what is violence, and what is not, or deciding on anything, by themselves? That no two people fully agree on everything is not a jaw-dropping truth.
13) Peter gets lost in trying to find a good definition for nonviolence that is logically consistent. I give up logical consistency again, because violence doesn’t seem to require it either.
14) “Violence is just a fact to societies” pacifism is, too.
15) “Both destructive and creative activities are necessary” violence, we established, is not in any of these inherently, or in anything but the eyes of the beholder. I can nonviolently destroy, i can violently create; i can do whatever, to be fucking honest with you.
16) “Revolutionaries will not need to use violence to convince everyone…” trust me, bro? The issue of violent revolutionaries becoming the oppressors is yet to be dealt with by Gelderloos. Also he said pacifists fail because they cannot use violence to convince people. Also he talks a LOT about violence as a convincing device. Another case of Gelderloos using any kind of statement inconsistently with the others, while also claiming logics for himself and inconsistency for the others. Feyerabend would be somewhat proud.
17) “Everything is violence (eating meat, driving a car) so nonviolence doesn’t exist” philosophy of this caliber deserves the recognition it doesn’t get. Yes we are aware that, to the eyes of the quantifying scientist dud, there would hypotetically be a 100% violence-free lifestyle we pacifists are not getting at. Even so: we could still just try our best and see how far we get.
Why not? We like our lives so: maybe vegan, maybe without a driving license, maybe with the least violence possible: cry me a fucking river? Why aren’t you doing the same, to be fair? By implication, is this an argument in favor of environmentally unconscious decisions, then? Since there are no perfect options, whatever goes? What’s the point of calling out pacifists for trying their best? Is this an argument at all?
7. The alternative: possibilities for revolutionary activism
After finally considering the existence of a kind of pacifist that is “useful” and “above the criticisms”, Gelderloos confronts the matter of russia’s revolution, or any, degenerating into a bloodshed and stabilizing into new oppression, framing it as a problem of hierarchy, not violence. Demonstrated through belief only, this attempt at moving the goalpost is vacuous. A little haiku will suffice: violence requires hierarchy, violence produces hierarchy, violence guarantees hierarchy. Does it not? How can one be sure? Tell us, Gelderloos, so that we may never sin again.
He advices: in revolution, just keep it grassroots. Is saying so enough? “In revolution, once acquired power, let’s hope the powerful let us keep it grassroots”. Sovietism became what it became even though “soviet” being in the name, and soviets being the goal.
So, after the revolution, if asking nicely won’t work, how do we stop the power-tripping revolutionaries? What would’ve stopped Lenin? Violence, of course. And what if they are stronger? Well, we should’ve thought before giving them such power. But that power was acquired through the violence necessary to the revolution, and down again we go, down into the drain of history, where examples of violent revolutionaries turning into priests of freedom are not to be found.
Just keep the cycle spinning, i guess: we are oppressed, we revolt, revolutionaries become oppressors, we revolt… Such wishful thinking on the next violent revolution going any different will not manifest itself onto reality thanks to the power of belief, much like pacifists can’t argue in their own favor by postulating that, if all done correctly and kept grassroots enough, world peace will be achieved.
This is to be expected: a liturgical way of thinking is on par with the one demonstrated by his adversaries, Ghandi and King. Of course he’s attracted by his opposite, but this only makes it clearer to the reader that Gelderloos is, indeed, reasoning like a priest. A priest for the violentist church: the implicit structure hiding behind a critique of pacifism made in this fashion. The next revolution is the one where violence ends, because we keep it grassroots, because we don’t ever stop doing violence until violence ends, and because, since the others are wrong in abstaining from violence, then we must be right to employ it.
We read that, to ensure antiauthoritarianism, “a culture of liberation must favor pluralism over monopoly” and that “It is impossible to get everyone to agree that one strategy for struggle is the best, and indeed this contention is probably wrong. After all, different people have different strengths and experiences and face different aspects of oppression: it only makes sense that there should be different paths of struggle on which we fight simultaneously toward liberation.” Do pacifists count? Can we join in this pluralism? If so, why spend a whole book invalidating our struggle, if we are then totally necessary for the pluralism of the movement, and part of the antidote to authoritarianism? And if we are to be excluded, how is then this plurality defined? How is it coherent, and wouldn’t it be harder for a movement of solely violents to produce the kind of nonviolent pluralism needed to get done with violence and repression once and for all?
“I hope that by now we can abandon the dichotomy between violence and nonviolence altogether” how? By the consideration that violence is what violence is decided it to be? Or by the consideration that violence and nonviolence, however defined, are both necessary? Both, apparently.
In fact, at the end, Gelderloos makes peace with at least the pacifist intent and some of their practices, given they are not in contrast or exclusion with violent practices. He outlines very good considerations on how to actually embark in the revolutionary struggle, starting off precisely by invoking unity between pacifists and violentists.
Education and promotion of revolutionary thought and practice are considered fundamental by the author, especially in the attempt to close the gap with the normal society which, controlled by the state, is always skeptical of our ways and intents. In the text: “If the only choice we can give is between bomb throwing and voting, almost all of our potential allies will choose voting. And though more cultural conditioning must be overcome before people can accept and practice more dangerous, deadly tactics, such tactics cannot be placed at the top of some hierarchy. Fetishizing violence neither improves a movement’s effectiveness nor preserves its anti-authoritarian qualities.” Quite so, mr. Gelderloos, especially when thinking about fetishizing violence.
He goes on by considering “very likely” that any liberation struggle will eventually end up in violence, at least in requiring violent self-defense, and by adding that it’d be unacceptable to forego domestic violence while death is being distributed abroad. Might be, but then he goes as far as saying that “People who continue to dehumanize themselves as agents of law and order must be defeated by whatever means necessary until they can no longer prevent people’s autonomous realization of their needs.”
We were so, so close. How do we justify “whatever means necessary”? This is the everything goes that the pacifist cannot take lightly. It gets worse:
“I hope that during this process we can build a culture of respect for our enemies (a number of non-Western cultures have shown it is indeed possible to respect a person or animal you must kill), which will help to prevent purges or a new authority when the present state has been defeated.”
I wonder how this book, namely the critique of some pacifist movements in USA, legitimizes such ideas. Of course, the author abstains from arguing in favor of these directly, relegating them to the last pages, undiscussed, dropped with no second-thoughts.
To be clear: in the end of the book there is the first time Gelderloos names this aspect to violence. The first time he spells out one of the most obvious and discussed issue in violence: the choice of the means. Means, targets, goals: these have been (poorly) evaluated in pacifism, while in violence they have not. And about these, violentists, not realists, should provide good alternative arguments. We find none.
Conclusions
I do not know if any good can emerge from such a critical reading. I am sure other authors have done a better job in attacking nonviolence. To me, this one particularly doesn’t seem precise and honest enough.
In case you haven’t, i hope that you take the time to take the nonviolent discourse into serious consideration before settling your opinions on the matter, at any level and context you may find it.