Those of you who have known me (particularly my family and friends who have known me since I was a child) know that I am for non-violence.
This country has endorsed and perpetrated every sort of violence imaginable against those we oppress. When justice is demanded in peaceful protests the oppressed are told that such is too radical, that equality, justice and liberty are not pragmatic.
There's an old tee shirt that LGBT people would occasionally wear to gay bars back in the 1990s that read "Stonewall was a riot." It is both meant tongue-in-cheek and literally. It was a riot, a mass violent act that lit aflame the gay liberation movement. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr, “a riot is the language of the” oppressed.
I was born less than two months before those riots broke out at the Stonewall Inn on June 27th of 1969. I didn't learn about them until I was 18 years old when I found a very brief mention in the Encyclopedia Britannica. That was when I first realized that sometimes when things are bad enough for the oppressed, violence will be inevitable. Not that I supported violence, mind you. But if no one's listens to your pleas to end subjugating them, the frustration will boil over eventually.
I think it would be more productive if we stopped wetting our pants every time a fascist gets punched in the head by Antifa, and, instead, we should use that violent moment to explore and publicize the greater and more brutal violence brought down by governments we white people keep electing. And that oppression persists, because as the benefactors of oppression, we insist on "moderation,” “incrementalism,” and "pragmatism."
We give incrementalism to the oppressed, and free reign to police brutality.
We give nuance to the demands for justice, and clear cut impunity to the violence of prisons, poverty, and wage slavery.
We give pragmatism to those suffering of multigenerational injustice, and extremism of open-ended wars on drugs that are really wars on the oppressed.
I used to be a message board rat. After the passage of Proposition 8 in California back in 2008, on a message board I frequented, I expressed my enthusiasm for boycotts of businesses who gave money to the "Yes" on Prop 8 campaign. It appeared to be a rather excellent non-violent means to achieve justice. But as I quickly found out THAT was also “the wrong way to go about this.” Trick advice: there is no right way to resist oppression, there are only wrong ways.
But a straight woman at that message board threatened me with withdrawal of support for gay rights if I was going to continue to support the boycotts, but she assured me "I am on your side." Trick explanation: I don’t get to choose what constitutes “being on my side.”
She was on my side, but not if she and heterosexual homophobes were inconvenienced by the steps that had to be taken in the cause of LGBT liberation. And God forbid if a homophobe lost a job or something: “you got someone fired just because your side lost the election! That’s taking it too far!” Trick election: my side never was going to win the election.
This is the way oppressors defend their privilege. They insist that non-violent resistance is too extreme, and see violent resistance uncivilized. This is how some “allies” keep the subjugated in their place.
The United States is perpetually trapped in a perpetual struggle between its original sin of slavery, and its original fear of slave rebellions. Slavery and subjugation may not be ideal, but don’t let the perfect of your liberation be the enemy of the good of your more humane subjugation.
So, my criticisms of violence will be against the governments and supporters of those governments who engage in systemic violence against the oppressed. Because, really, the governments of these United States are the most violent entities in this country. If you don't want violence from the oppressed, then give them no reason to riot. In the meantime, I am not going to cry over a fascist propagandist getting punched in the nose.