Essay

The
of
nonviolent protest
The political landscape needs rewilding too, argues
Mark Boyle in this essay opposing mindless nonviolence.
a spectacle that is becoming

all too familiar. Captured on the
ubiquitous smartphone, intimidated protesters
scurry away from a scene of unprovoked police
violence. This is a peaceful protest, they
declare words uttered as much in anxious
defence as they are in defiance of the batons,
rubber bullets, pepper spray and teargas that
come their way.1
Admirable as the words seem, the protesters
are mistaken: by way of its fundamentalist
approach to nonviolence, protest today is
anything but peaceful.
When activists remind police of their right
to assemble without being assaulted with
impunity, they are correct to ask: If were not
being violent, why are you?
Correct, that is, up to a point. While I
dont doubt the integrity of people who fight
for the betterment of others, few ponder an
uncomfortable possibility: when
nonviolent methods prove ineffectual,
time and again, at preventing
industrial-scale systemic violence,
those who dogmatically persist with
them may inadvertently be acting
more violently than a balaclava-clad
revolutionary.

The eradication
of the political
wolf has
diminished our
potential to
combat merciless
systemic violence

Progress and normality

Let me explain. Violence and
nonviolence are urbane concepts. If
the abstract ethics of nonviolence
were imposed on the natural world,
ecological systems would collapse and wed all
be dead within weeks. Much of what passes
as progress and normality is actually imbued
with a hyper-violence that most of us remain
blissfully unaware of. For the sake of cheap
furniture, games consoles and fizzy drinks, we
have reduced complex woodlands to lumber
yards; people to cogs in the machine; animals

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to generic product; oceans to depleted fish

farms; and paradise into parking lots.
Which of us considers the act of buying
factory-farmed meat produced from animals
reared in concentration camps to be more
violent than destroying the property of those
who produce it? Who amongst us thinks that
the industrial-scale processes causing the sixth
mass extinction of species are as violent as
forcefully attacking the headquarters of those
most responsible for it? Few, if any. Yet the
violence the corporate-state coalition who
control the narrative and own the monopoly
on violence inflicts upon the great web of
life is astronomical in comparison to anything
victims and activists could dream of doing in
response.
The modern mind does not like such talk.
Violence is bad all violence or so we have
been led to believe. From most angles it appears
a laudable belief. But there is one angle that we
keep missing. And in our current climate, it is a
crucial one.
This is not an argument for mindless
violence. It is an argument against mindless
nonviolence. It should be obvious that tackling
the major social and ecological injustices of
our age in ways that are legal and nonviolent
is the first port of call. Which of us wants
more violence in a world already riddled by it?
What we must understand, however, is that
in persisting with ineffectual tactics we are
failing those we seek to help. Inasmuch as it is
ineffective, nonviolent protest in spite of its
best intentions cannot help but end up as yet
more violence, albeit concealed, removed and
sanitized. Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson
Mandela (who led a militant sabotage campaign
against the apartheid government) once said:
For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle
but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in
using an ineffective weapon.

Diversity in action
Instead of acrimony and division over tactical
issues, what activists and protest movements
need more than anything right now is unity
and importantly, a unity that is founded upon
an acceptance of diversity. While big business
is admirably single-minded in converting the
splendour and majesty of the world into cash,
those who want a fairer, more ecologically
harmonious world often find themselves split
over how best to achieve it.
We need only look to the natural world
for evidence of the importance of diversity
in contemporary activism. George Monbiot
has done more than anyone to highlight
how crucial wolves are to the health of our
ecological landscapes. For, as conservation
pioneer Aldo Leopold once said, just as a deer
herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does
a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.2
He recognized, sooner than most, that the
fierceness of the wolf has its own unique place
amongst the diverse cast of creatures that share
its environment: the gentleness of the doe; the
beavers enterprise; the salmons indomitable
will; the herons grace; and the foxs cunning.
These animals opposed in nature as they may
be strike a balance with one another, but only
if they are allowed to express their nature, and
to give what it is they are here to give.
Movements for ecological and social justice
would do well to observe natures example.
The political landscape needs rewilding just
as much as our ecological landscapes. The
eradication of the political wolf has diminished
our potential to combat merciless systemic
violence. Our ecological crisis became critical
a long time ago, and is only getting worse.
Around 21,000 people a day are dying for the
want of food that changes in political policies
could provide, given the will.3 Billions of
animals are sentenced to cruel existences in
prisons, for a crime no worse than being born
into a world of human supremacy. Our efforts
of the past 20 years well intentioned, creative
and determined as they are have simply not
succeeded. We have a responsibility to be
honest with ourselves about this.
Activism that phenomenon whose role
is to hold power to account when democratic
processes clearly fail is becoming so
ineffectual it is now almost irrelevant. Look at
the largest protests of the last decade. Despite
millions peacefully protesting, we went and
created havoc in Iraq. Look at Occupy. The
largest mobilization and politicization of people
since the 1980s, yet what did it achieve? It may
have raised awareness of the huge disparity in
wealth that is inevitable with capitalism, but

what use is awareness-raising if it does not lead

to meaningful change?
The colour revolutions in central and
eastern Europe worked to some extent, but only
within their own very narrow terms. Nonviolent
campaigns to stop factory farming or ecocide have
gone on for as long as these injustices have existed
yet still they exist. While many good people
are doing everything they feel they can, most
are straitjacketed by cultural narratives around
violence and nonviolence that are so simplistic
it beggars belief. Emma Goldman once said
that if voting changed anything, theyd make it
illegal. The same could be said of nonviolence.
The fact that it is the Establishments preferred
form of protest speaks volumes.

Upgrading the 3 rs
Unless we address the major
ecological and social challenges of
our age with an honest approach
no matter how unpalatable the
truth may be our best efforts will
be in vain. The Machine, owned
and run by the Establishment for
its own ends, must be resisted and
revolted against, before it kills us all.
The three rs of the climate-change
generation need a serious upgrade.
Instead of reduce, reuse, recycle,
I suggest we keep the following in
mind: resist, revolt, rewild.
This isnt to say that violence is always a
safe bet for success or that there arent times
when it has been used just as atrociously as the
Establishment wields it. Yet, just as there are
times when nonviolent means are appropriate,
there will also be times when it is not. It is in
these moments when we must decide how far
we are willing to go in order to protect what
needs protecting. And if we are not willing
to go that far perhaps it simply is not in
our nature to do so then how will we judge
those who are willing? Do we condemn, or
do we support? We live in a time of tough
choices, when there is often no prescriptively
right or wrong solution. Wise discernment is
as important as it always has been.
If much of the beauty of the world is to be
not only preserved but enhanced, we might do
well to concern ourselves a little less about our
protests being peaceful, and a little more about
our actions being effective. n

Emma Goldman
once said that if
voting changed
anything, theyd
make it illegal.
The same could be
said of nonviolence

Mark Boyles latest book, Drinking Molotov Cocktails with

Gandhi (New Society Publishers) is out now.
1 nin.tl/occupy-police-brutality 2 Aldo Leopold, A Sand Country
Almanac and Sketches Here and There, OUP 1968. 3 poverty.com

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