‘All Political Violence is Wrong’

George Rebane

That is a thesis put forward in the comment stream of ‘Rightwing Extremism in Action: Tea Party Houston’.  And I believe this strong and important statement deserves an examination in its own right.  First, let us understand political violence to be the use of force in the pursuit of a political end.  What’s a political end?  In this case it is clearly a political environment that does not exist at the time that the violence is perpetrated.  Else why even give the matter thought, let alone start using force?

Politics (from Greek πολιτικός, "of, for, or relating to citizens"), is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs (an excellent definition from Wikipedia).

So a political end is usually one that specifies a state of governance ranging all the way from the structure of government itself, to one or more policies of such a government that are codified in anything from its constituting documents, through its laws, to regulations made by its departments in pursuit of executing certain laws.

With this groundwork laid, we may profitably contemplate the truth value of the thesis ‘All political violence is wrong.’

To begin, can anyone think of any kind of violence (excluding naked criminality committed within a system of governance) which would not be considered political violence?  Political violence is throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window of an abortion clinic; it is blowing up a big government office building; it is also using billy clubs to determine who can or not enter a polling place, to attack commercial establishments in protesting certain meetings or government actions, to commit a suicide bombing, to cause harm to someone for not joining, and so on.

Political violence is also the marshalling of a population to raise an army, and fight for independence from a legally constituted and recognized government that rules the land – this is called a revolution.  Political violence is also when one nation decides that its interests are best served through the use of force to weaken another country, sanction it, coerce it into certain concessions, or to invade it and annex it into its sphere of influence either by absorption or installing a new government that serves its needs.  In short, it all seems to be political violence.

Do we now condemn some of the above, but not all of it?  It seems that most people would not condone an individual deciding to blow up a random group of innocent people in pursuit of political ends.  Yet if a group of people fill a city square to overturn cars, set fires, and make barricades to protest against their government, then we (in the large) don’t instantly condemn such political violence.  Instead, we will take into consideration many factors, and may even go to the aid of those people and abet their violence.  This is something that we will most likely not do if the perpetrator of such violence acted alone, or with a comrade, or maybe a cohort of less than ten, or … .

Unavoidably, it seems that numbers have something to do with whether we admit and condone political violence or condemn and resist it.  The principles that motivate the ‘lone wolf’ and the mob of thousands may be identical, but somehow here principle is overshadowed by plurality.

If that is true, how do we assign an a priori threshold or rule set (algorithm) to separate ‘good’ political violence from ‘bad’ political violence?  Many will immediately respond by saying, ‘Well, that depends on many things.’  And that is point here, what are those many things?  How are we – or better, how am I - to judge the acceptability of political violence given that it is one of the most common and enduring expressions of human desperation?

Comments

[Mikey McD]

George, great post. Are we not 'obligated' to carry out 'political violence' should our God given unalienable rights be destructed.

Sound familiar?:

"...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/

[Mike Thornton]

Mikey D writes:
"Are we not 'obligated' to carry out 'political violence' should our God given unalienable rights be destructed"

Told you so!

[Todd Juvinall]

Mikeyy, the Declaration is only as good, and Jefferson's words only as good, as the socialist dejour thinks they are for that day.

[Scott Obermuller]

Mike - What, exactly have you told us?
I notice that the term "violence" has many differing meanings according to various differing groups. Some of the uses of the word are quite far a field from it's usual connotations. It does seem that it's usually the left-leaning folks that are the most creative in finding new ways to employ the term.

[George Rebane]

With this brief comment stream, and the notable absence of the original proponents of the thesis, can we conclude that at least some political violence is warranted?

[Paul Emery]

Some think it's warranted.

Timothy McVeigh went to the chair (actually the needle) believing what he did was justified political violence.

"I am sorry these people had to lose their lives. But that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be."

"If there is a hell, then I'll be in good company with a lot of fighter pilots who also had to bomb innocents to win the war."

[George Rebane]

Many think that political violence is warranted.

When we contrast the justification of Timothy McVey and bomber pilots for killing innocents (as a much bombed and strafed kid in Estonia and Germany during WW2, I was innocent close to death countless times), I am reminded today of what the militant Muslims preach, train, execute, and justify in the killing of innocents. The ragheads specifically seek out and target the innocents who don't hew to their theology and political philosophy.

To the perpetrator political violence is a most just holy grail.

[Paul Emery]

The massacre of 6000 Muslim men and boys in Bosnia is thought to be the largest individual slaughter in Europe since the end of World War II. It was interpreted by some as a Holy War of Christian revenge and ethnic, meaning religious, cleansing. It was defiantly a religious war of genocide. I don't know why you never mention it in the same tone as you do Islamic extremism.

[George Rebane]

Paul, the answer to Bosnia is easy. It was a horrible aberration which launched, and now terminated, one of the longest standing manhunts in history to bring the guilty Christians to justice. We of the western culture did it on our own and to our own, because we know it was wrong, and we don't teach it to our children.

On the other hand, Islam openly teaches jihad against the west, children's programs abound on Islamic TV which have children extolling the virtues of becoming martyrs and killing infidels, especially Jews, in the most gruesome of ways. There is no hew and cry in trans-national Islam to remove such programming. (And only Fox News reports and shows these videos - the liberal lamestream is silent.)

Religious schools (madrasahs) openly enlist young people to join various raghead units and organizations in order to more effectively kill and maim westerners. There is no hew and cry in Islam to stop such education and recruitments. On the contrary, they are funded from the highest levels of their governments and spiritual organizations (in addition from their terrorist legions).

Innocents of the wrong Islamic sect and westerners wholesale have and are being killed in an unending war that Islam proclaims will continue and grow until their socio-theological goals are reached. There is no hew and cry in Islam to stop this.

And there is also nothing surprising about any of this for a well-read westerner. Perhaps we had a similar past, but today we are different. The only surprising thing in the west is how those of the progressive persuasion are staunchly blind to the asymmetry of how the two cultures compete.

[Paul Emery]

George, the 6000 Muslims were slaughtered not directly by Ratko Mladic but by his legions who must have individually shared the same belief in the religious crusade of ethnic cleansing. I don't think the fervor from the West against the Serbs, who were Christians is the same as that against the Muslims.

Under the same rules of engagement that justified our invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in search of Bin Laden and his legions wouldn't the Islamic nations have bee justified in invading Bosnia to seek out Mladic and his followers, most of which returned home and were never prosecuted or even pursued?

[George Rebane]

Of course Mladic's troops shared his views, but he was the CO and didn't have to give the order to slaughter the Muslims. And of course, all else given equal, people have a greater dislike of people who are less like themselves. This is not rocket science, except in politically correct USA.

And for sure the Islamic nations would have had equivalent justification for invading Bosnia. But they didn't because they couldn't win a frontal confrontation. So Islam uses terrorism.

Now we get to go back and argue who started it all. My answer doesn't match yours, so I don't want to do that. It's a mess - they don't want to compromise their scriptual commission, and we don't want to become medieval Muslims. Where do you want to go with this?