I’ve run across a couple of pieces written from within the antifa movement, roughly speaking. First, Kyle Chapman’s experience in Berkley, California, via Medium:
A friend of mine is constantly reminding me that 2017, rather than being a relief from horror-saturated 2016, has spiraled down some rabbit hole of political absurdity and surrealism. My mother, a long-naturalized immigrant from Zimbabwe, responded to the election of Donald Trump with a panic and fear that I had never seen from her before. She was born in Zimbabwe while it was still under colonial administration: growing up in Rhodesia meant subjugation by white settlers, fear and humiliation as second class non-white people (even as native people), suppressive violence by the state. Trump reminded her of Ian Smith, she confessed to me, the Rhodesian prime minister and terroristic white nationalist (a redundancy) of her formative years. Her fear should have been a foreshadowing of the absurdities that would follow, but while I comforted her, I still dismissed her. Nine months later, I am on the street protesting against neo-Nazis.
After some description of the event, Kyle continues:
Media commentary has forced me to understand our collective [mis]definition of violence as we constantly grapple with “well-reasoned” responses to far-right politics and urgently reinscribe the state’s monopoly on legitimate forms of force to undermine the legitimacy of self-defense. Community members were implored to stay away from the spaces where fascistic forces assemble, while the media actively normalizes their politics by positioning functionally genocidal politics as “controversial” albeit legitimate opinions within a robust marketplace of ideas. Violence is the state’s white supremacist militarization, like Urban Shield, in the name of “community safety”; it is my constant articulation that, as a black anarchist and member of the left more broadly, my defense of self and community (and other communities) in the face of existential threats, is not “violence.” Antifa (anti-fascism), a coalescence of left politics in resistance to fascist creepings, is not violence because this kind of community self-defense cannot be violent.
For a community that has striven and suffered for two centuries in the American nation, these are richly understandable and reasonable attitudes. But that last phrase caught my eye – good writing so often contains apparent contradictions which lead to better understanding – so I followed the link to an article on Truthout, by William C. Anderson, where I ran across some factual inaccuracies which troubled me, although I’m not sure they really affect Anderson’s final conclusion. Here’s the first three paragraphs:
“Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky., and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” — Ida B. Wells
“The stranglehold of oppression cannot be loosened by a plea to the oppressor’s conscience.” — Robert F. Williams
In order to self-defend, groups targeted for violence by white supremacists have to first acknowledge in ourselves that we are worthy of defending. Those of us who experience the daily damages of white supremacy and desire its end deserve a world without it.
In response to the Williams quote, I believe we should have an interview with Mr. Gandhi, who led a non-violent war against the colonialist England, and won by using the English conscience against the English – or so I understand. But, as a colleague from 35 years ago once asked, What if, instead of the British, Gandhi had gone up against the Nazis? He wouldn’t have succeeded, now would he? Thus, my own niggling concern about Mr. Williams’ ignorance (or deliberate omission), is, perhaps, not of great concern. After all, what of the conscience of today’s right-wing fringe? Do the white supremacists have consciences? Well, probably – but sharply demarcated in racial terms. Thus, the damage, and the loss of instruction through the omission of the Indian example, are compartmentalized.
Similarly, some might categorize my second objection in much the same way. Anderson writes “… Those of us who experience the daily damages of white supremacy and desire its end deserve a world without it.” I’ve developed a strong mistrust of the word deserve and its insistent use in an individualistic context wherein the Universe, it seems, owes a debt of gratitude and concern to the inhabitants of this small world we call Earth, merely because we exist. Sadly, such claims on the Universe are generally rejected in a violent manner, and while some will claim this is merely a rhetorical device, I will soundly disagree, for the spirit of entitlement often continues in the same vein throughout such pieces of communication without regard to the effects on the greater societal context – as I’ve noted before.
Not that I think this is a reason to condemn this piece, but I should like to see a better line of reasoning than merely assuming that some group, because of abuse, has some claim on societal assistance. Through careful use of detail, I could make the noxious, yet plausible, case that white nationalist groups also have some claim simply because they’ve been forced to the edges of society. It’s a ridiculous claim which makes me ill, but given the rhetorical setting of Anderson’s writing, it’s certainly a possibility.
And then this:
Our beings and our bodies are not empty things intended to labor in service to a nation that refuses to protect us. A rejection of liberal mythology — the untruth that those who have fallen victim to the atrocities of this nation’s past and present were simply necessary fodder — is an act of preservation and protection for anyone who chooses to strive for liberation. It’s an act that has been increasingly necessary for some time in an increasingly hostile United States. Our future depends on our understanding of self-defense and how it’s applied to the constant crises unfolding around us.
Wait, excuse me for a moment. As a white male of liberal leanings, I can’t say I’ve ever run across this necessary fodder thing. Am I isolated enough – which I wouldn’t doubt – that I’ve missed out on this meme? If true, it’s certainly execrable – but if I haven’t heard of it, I have to wonder if this is something Mr. Anderson invented.
On the other hand, it’s simple to agree with this:
Those who oppose white supremacy and the violences it distributes out in the world should begin arming themselves if they are not already. Kind words, liberal idealism and the state are not guaranteed to protect you. In an escalating bigoted environment where the president refuses to denounce white supremacists, because he is one of them and encourages their violence, many of us are prepared to protect our lives with the same weapons that aggressors would use to attack us. Those who seek to do us harm (regularly including the police) will do so whether we’re unarmed or armed, even with gun permits.
And I do. If our society is going to encourage gun ownership for the citizenry, then that ought to apply to everyone. And then we have to be willing to pay the inevitable price in gun accidents, domestic violence increase, and a decrease in rational discourse. It’s a fine line to balance on, but a later, compelling quote provides a good rationalization:
Ida B. Wells once wrote:
A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.
I am not familiar with Ms Wells, but I’ve known enough bullies and bigots to understand her line of reasoning.
While I’d like to end this post on a positive note, I cannot, as Anderson appears to disapprove of one of the most valuable long-term tools of civilization – rational discourse.
Many liberal nonprofits, academic institutions and politicians tell us to engage in civil debate with extremists who want us dead. But for a process like this to work, our opponents would have to see us as humans worth debating in the first place, which they do not. Therefore, pleas for us to depend on the courts and the logics of white society, like prisons, police and prosecutors — institutions that oppress us — means more dying. Yet again, we’re supposed to continue being human sacrifices for the sake of “progress.” However, many of us know that we are more than readymade martyrs who should be willingly brutalized and murdered so that, in the future, self-satisfied people in power can look back and feel all right about taking their time to possibly implement change. We are not logs to be thrown on the fire whenever the US needs to soul search.
No idea may rest of its laurels; our intellectual foundations should always be questioned, just as Newton and, later, Einstein’s ideas in science were and are subjected to constant questioning and testing; eventually, some of Newton’s seminal contributions were overturned in favor of Einstein’s explanations, and now Einstein’s ideas are tested and verified over and over and over, looking for a chink here or there in order to explain one of the great ongoing mysteries of physics, such as the connection between gravity and quantum physics.
Similarly, civil debate over all of our ideas of what makes for a just, prosperous, and civil society is a necessity. This practice serves a number of purposes.
- It inculcates those ideas in the participants. You can’t defend or attack an idea without really knowing it.
- The energy of the presenters will impress the less accomplished members of society.
- We may find flaws or ways to improve these ideas.
- The extremists have friends and family who will see these debates – and be persuaded.
- Sometimes even extremists change their spots, oddly enough.
Without civil debate, you can be armed and then be part of a partitioned, armed society, constantly on the edge of civil war. Without those civil exchanges in which superior ideas are advanced and the inferior ideas of the right-wing extremists are shown to be nothing more than the belchings of the inferior power-hungry narcissists, our society will become far more unstable.
But self-defense as this pus-filled wound on our hide is lanced and cleaned out is a sensible idea.
