Once more, because it is necessary.
Considerations on violence in the context of mass mobilization against
globalization

In the past months, many anti-globalization demonstrations have taken
place. We took part in the Quebec City demo against FTAA and we
followed other similar events on the corporate and independent media.
In each case we could see a common pattern. Roughly, protest
activities were divided into two categories: on the one hand,
discussion forums and big rallies, often organized by unions and
non-governmental organizations, on the other hand various protests
(some spontaneous, other organized by anti-capitalist movements)
involving a diversity of tactics. In some cases, these tactics were
so-called violent e.g. breaking windows, throwing stones, tearing down
security fences.

These actions have prompted everywhere the same reactions from the
media and even from some of the activists themselves. Protesters
taking part in the latter category of events have been labeled
\"hooligans\" or `thugs\' and have been righteously criticized for being
\"violent\" whereas protesters taking part in the mainstream events were
praised for being pacific and showing their discontent in a democratic
way.

It seems to us that the situation deserves an analysis that goes
beyond this simplistic dichotomy.

The main objection we hear from representatives of the State against
\"violent\" actions is that they are counterproductive and that they
shed discredit on all the protesters and on the anti-globalization
movement on the basis that they would not constitute a
democratic way to express dissent. We seldom hear
objections against mainstream protests, rallies, discussion forums,
but the fact is that they are often ineffective and, what\'s worst,
they are cynically used by the political class who is craving for some
democratic legitimacy: protesters \"democratically\" take part in a
march against globalization, authorities \"democratically\" let them
protest and when the protest is over (even when tens of thousands have
participated) not much as changed. On a public television debate
(Counterspin, CBC, May 2001) aired after the Quebec protest, this
revealing comment was made by Lynn Myers, parliamentary secretary of
the General solicitor of Canada: \"in a great democracy like Canada we
have the ability to allow peaceful protests as part of the process\".
This comment deserves our attention: peaceful protests are \"part of
the process\", therefore proving how great a democracy Canada is, but
as \"part of the process\" the protests will not stop or even alter the
\"process\" which is not the \"process\" of democracy but the process of
imposing what has already been decided. Needless to say that the
\"process\" in question has nothing to do with the agenda of the
protesters. It seems that playing by the rules does not
have much chance of making an impact, no matter how many demonstrators
are involved and how much they are convinced that they demonstrate for
a just cause.

In this context, we think that the debate commonly heard over the
means - violent or non-violent - of expressing opposition is flawed
from the start. Among other things, activists should not loose their
energy in a moral debate over what constitutes violent and non-violent
actions and what is acceptable and what is not. Unfortunately, a lot
of activists positioning themselves as pacifists enter this debate
with the conviction that their pacifist view is the morally superior
position. They oppose the \"good\" civil disobedience, viewed as a form
of respectable illegality, with the \"bad\" violence leading to
apocalypse. In so doing, they play into the hands of the State by
contributing to its propaganda, which aims at making us believe that
all those who perform violent actions are hooligans, all those
approving them are irresponsible voyeurs and that this radical
resistance is not politically motivated. In our view, the violence/
non-violence debate is sterile; the real dichotomy lies rather in the
opposition between the legitimate, just and measured political
violence on the one hand and the terrorist violence of the State on
the other hand. Pacifist activists should abandon their editorial line
condemning all forms of violence and realize instead that there are
different kinds of violence.

On this subject, we would like to propose some elements of reflection
likely to enlarge the discussion about violence. In the violence
summoned up by the State we can find, in embryo, the excessiveness of
the subjective effort that brutalizes, which every pacifist fears.
Through calculation and \"technicization\", the violence of the State
turns inevitably into terror, that is, calculation and
\"technicization\" anaesthetize the subjective effort that brutalizes,
leading to excessiveness. This being said, an appropriate and just
form of political violence really does exist and its sole purpose is
the expression of anger. It is the expression of a pure impulsive
force which, owing to the punctuality of its impulsiveness, can set
limits to the effects of its strikes - the Black Bloc and its program
are exemplary in this respect. This form of violence finds its measure
in its own impulsiveness, an incandescent expression of an imperative
call to the other who has become a terrorist. Terror irrepressibly
tends toward absolute control of the suffering essence of the
subjectivity - terror finds its clearest expression in torture -
whereas impulsive violence, for its part, fades immediately as the
suffering essence of the other is revealed to itself. We hope that
these ideas on political violence we just expressed here will
titillate the metaphysical minds of the dogmatic mystical enthusiasts
of non-violence. While they\'re chewing on this conceptual bone, let\'s
see the main reasons why, in the dialectics of political struggles, a
certain resort to violent expression of opposition can be efficient
and almost necessary.

As we have said, the fact that thousands of demonstrators peacefully
take the streets or that passive resistants chain themselves to fences
does not have much resonance in the media and has practically no
political impact. That explains partially why the actions of the
protesters have become more radical. In our view, these radical
actions, along with other actions, can be successful at least in
getting the message across that there is a political conflict. The
sheer asymmetry of means between the militants and the police force
has in itself a political meaning. Actions performed by militants can
be judged successful each time they explicitly give evidence of this
asymmetry, each time they demonstrate the intimidation tactics of the
police, the calculating power of terror conferred to the police by its
monopoly on the use of violence. The sit-ins, the breaking of windows,
the throwing of stones to a policeman in protective gear, all these
actions have a political meaning when the police contributes in
return, by its actions, to show explicitly that there really is a
political conflict, a conflict that tends to be denied by the state of
our democracies. The interpretation of this police
repression goes deeper than just saying that it is overall a healthy
institution perverted by the reprehensible tendencies of some
individuals. In this case, police violence is a symptom of the
barbarous cynicism of those who constantly talk to us about democracy
while at the same time ordering the teargasing or the clubbing of
demonstrators.

Pacific resistance and the dialectics of political arrest

Moreover, what pacifists willing to be arrested should understand is
that their moral conscience has nothing to do a priori with the
political meaning of their eventual arrest. What gives a political
meaning to an arrest is due to a complex array of circumstances
depending among other things on the aims of the legal and police
machinery. Choreographies of civil disobedience culminating in the
arms of the police, as in a well rehearsed ballet, have a political
meaning mainly in the minds of those performing it. Of course these
actions were not always sterile, but this had nothing to do with the
virtue of the protesters. When these actions proved to be effective,
it could be attributed to the fact that the society, which views
itself as a pacified body, was surprised by the fact that people could
be arrested for defending their ideas.

Another criticism that we often hear, coming from the pacifist
militants, against \"violent\" actions is that many demonstrators who
did not take part in the active confrontation with the police were
nevertheless arrested. The perpetrators of these violent actions would
therefore be guilty of lacking solidarity with the protesters as a
whole. To this, we answer that these arrests are not the result of a
few active protesters: the police should always be held responsible
when it decides to arbitrarily assault the protesters. The strategy of
directing protesters towards different zones according to the risk of
arrest they are willing to encounter has been put forward - for
example in Prague and Quebec - precisely to counter the arbitrariness
of police action seen as political repression. Incidentally, it is
interesting to observe that many protesters have chosen the risk of
being arrested not by doing violent or illegal acts but simply by
being present in a zone where radical resistance is expressed and by
approving it. Among these people, those arrested are not arrested
because they choose it (in the same way passive resistants would
\"choose\" to be arrested) but because they choose radical resistance.
Usually, the people arrested do not condemn the fact that they have
been arrested while others directly responsible for the actions have
not. The people arrested are on the whole convinced of the political
meaning of their arrest and they have previously accepted the risk. To
summarize, it is the fact that an arrest is arbitrary that makes it a
political arrest and protesters accept the risk of a political arrest
knowing that it is never just. In the aftermath of the Quebec
demonstration, a lot of people have understood that the best way to
give a political meaning to the trials of those arrested is to show
the systematic intent of overstepping the limits of the law by those
who have been entrusted with the exclusive use of violence in our
democracies.

This said, the reason the State represses these demonstrations has
little to do with actions which, when we think of it, are nothing more
then the taunting of the police. What is it that the police and the
political class really fear? It is the spontaneous approval, by all of
those taking part in the protest, of these actions and their
perpetrators. They are afraid that the mass of protesters will endorse
the just and measured violence against the property of big capitalist
corporations, mass media equipment, security perimeters or policemen
in protective gear. That is what really worries the State the most
because that would be a real and massive demonstration of solidarity
from all those who oppose and resist. The State knows very well that
this solidarity has nothing to do with the common sense that is
supposed to emerge from the confusion of the voters and the volatility
of the opinion polls. Contrary to what it says, the State knows that
this show of solidarity with those who taunt the police is not a sort
of basic enthusiasm for hooliganism. In fact, it is a pure expression
of political solidarity, founded in reason; whereas the State itself
can only falsely pretend to be the result of such a solidarity.

From Quebec to Genoa: a development?

The events in Quebec and Genoa prompted many people to say that we
have witnessed an \"escalation of violence\". We heard the spokespersons
of the institutional left repeat spontaneously and without any
critical distance this cliché, obviously tainted by the propaganda of
the political class and the media. Let\'s straighten the facts. The
legitimate political violence was not greater in Genoa than in Quebec.
Generally speaking, (there may have been exceptions, especially and
understandably so after the murder of a protester) radical groups kept
to their usual confrontation with the police and to the symbolical
destruction of the properties of big corporations. There has not been
a significant qualitative change in the tactics of the Black Bloc and
other radical groups. This said, there is no doubt that the simple
fact that there is more and more protesters, and consequently more and
more protesters willing to engage in confrontation with the police,
contributes to exacerbate the paradox that faces the policemen who
have to preserve their status of peace officers while at the same time
performing military duties which are imposed on them. In Quebec as
well as in Genoa, the police has created an exceptional territorial
zone specifically excluding the protesters, i.e. those who would
precisely like to go into this zone and who think that their huge
number constitutes in itself the legitimacy that should open the doors
to them. The police force has then to protect this territory from the
invaders (the protesters), a task it was never meant for. We cannot
blame those who have a minimum of political analysis for trying to
confront the police in a way that would reveal how it has become a
military force.

One word about \"crowd control\". We are appalled to hear from some
representatives of the institutional left (ATTAC-France for instance)
that because it could not neutralize the radical protesters in Genoa,
the police failed in its crowd control duty. In so doing, these
spokespersons illegitimately marginalize some militants and encourage
police terrorism. What\'s more, by urging the police to fulfill its
duty - that is, police duty which it could not do because it was
engaged in military tactics against the whole manifestation - these
spokespersons collaborate with the media and the authorities to give
the impression that the protesters as a whole constitute a simple
\"crowd\", in the same way football fans coming out of a stadium form a
crowd. But the militants do not need the police as a force that can
protect individuals in a crowd against the crowd itself. Everyone who
took part or witnessed these demonstrations knows that there is a rare
solidarity between all attendants and that violent protesters
constitute in no way a threat to other protesters.

Spokespersons for the institutional left are not as straightforward as
they would like to appear about the question of violence. At crucial
times, they can show an appalling ambivalence verging on opportunism.
Whenever they can, they say how thrilled they are at the importance of
the mobilization and at the great determination of those mobilized. At
the same time, they point out violence coming from some groups of
radical and anonymous protesters as a possible demobilization factor
- which, by the way, cannot be verified in reality. They condemn
radical protesters like the Black Bloc as coward and irresponsible
hooligans whose aim is to turn the demonstration into a riot. But as
soon as one of these radical and anonymous protesters is killed, an
obscene \"recuperation\" takes place: they use him as the indispensable
martyr of police brutality who was led to violent action by social
misery. We condemn this condescension toward a militant who was
unjustifiably killed while acting for his political conviction: the
courageous politically motivated actions of Carlo Giuliani cannot
simply be assimilated to socio-pathological violence. But we can say
without a doubt that the ones who are willing to defend this kind of
idea - and we have to include even the father of this militant -
constitute the real danger facing the growing mobilization.

Collectif de réflexion sur l\'air des lampions



The objective of this collective is to reflect upon the new expressive
forms of popular demands that reclaim the streets. \"L\'air des
lampions\" (literally The Chinese lanterns\' tune) is a French
expression that designates slogans that express popular claims and
which evokes a famous one from 1848 that demanded better lighting of
Paris\' streets.