Indulge a naive idealist such as myself. How is killing bankers part of creating a better world?
“Massive corporate investment banking is incompatible with the world I (or i think many of us) want to live in. Bankers killing themselves, being killed, having shitty lives deters others from doing that job. Bankers participate in and pull the strings on massive massive economic violence. They steal people’s homes, prey on the poor, refuse to invest in anything that doesn’t give them a maximum profit margin, which means the only things getting invested in are prisons and extractive industries that kill people. Justice means stopping them. They protect themselves with ultra-violent armies of police, they will not be stopped until those armies are overcome, you cannot overcome or circumvent those armies without violence. Bankers believe that the only value rural ohioans have is as sponges to absorb radioactive frack waste or as overseers in their slave factories (prisons). Bankers have the power to impose these values on everyday reality. Killing the people who structure our society, it’s values and identity is a way to re-establish dignity and humanity.
The logic of Frantz Fanon’s ‘for the colonized, liberation springs only from the corpse of the colonizer.’ applied to the treatment of rural Ohioans.”
It sounds like you see it as a matter of ‘self-defense’ but on a societal scale, right ? —- A lot of people accept violence when (1 ) there seems no alternative as it pertains to individual and family self-defense, but (2 ) don’t accept it, at least not as a part of their philosophy, in ways that apply the concept of ‘self-defense’ to a societal scale as you seem to be in your response above. (3) An exception to (2) is the general acceptance in the populace of state violence such as wars, unjust imprisonment, capital punishment, and so on. (4) Thinking in terms of when intending to harm human and nonhuman others is morally right makes more sense than thinking in terms of violence-vs- nonviolence. As you and others have pointed out, unnecessary/unjust harm often occurs in systemic ways that don’t grab our attention in a sort of Hollywood action film and dramatic way. One example is the systemic wrongs that lead to unnecessary deprivation ( ie, lack of food, lack of adequate housing, lack of clean water, lack of good schools, lack of harmonious communities…) Hence, Gandhi’s claim that ‘poverty is the worst form of violence.’
“Non-violence is a silly fiction. Our world and our lives are hopelessly steeped in violence.
I think it’s not even a question of when is it morally okay to use violence (ie self-defense) it’s that violence as a concept has no real meaning, and it’s operational meaning (for most people using it) is force employed by someone other than the state and ruling class.
I think the choice is do we participate in the violence that flows down the hierarchy (by paying taxes, buying things, driving cars, voting, obeying cops) or do we participate in violence that flows up the hierarchy (by scamming the government, shoplifting, rioting, assassinations, etc). There’s no nonviolence, because there is no neutral ground, all of our actions (or inactions) can hurt people. It’s our responsibility to choose who we’re going to hurt, and how. Investment bankers are detestable abhorrent people. I think it’s fine to wish them harm for no reason other than how fucking gross they are.”
Do you hate investment bankers ?
“I hope they cease to exist and i recognize that it’s going to happen unless harm comes to them. It’s more logical than hatred.”
But if the injustices you intend to correct are systemic, wouldn’t it then follow that if you harm or kill individual investment bankers, more will take their place ? In other words, what do you think of the claim that, generally, individual human beings are neither good or bad, but that institutions and other social systems are ?
“Systems and institutions are made up of people. We cannot meaningfully talk about destroying systems or institutions without destroying some of the people who create, maintain, protect and depend on them.”
Sorry if I’m piling on questions before you get the chance to respond, but (1 ) how does the approach you describe differ from the rationale of various people throughout history who have committed atrocities because, in their minds, they thought it was a way to deter their enemies or otherwise motivate the type of behavioral change they sought ? In others words, (2 ) people have not only killed each other, but human beings have inflicted unspeakable suffering on each other with the rationale that it was a way to demoralize the enemy’s will to fight. (3 ) In that process, there seems a sort of vortex of cruelty with trans-generational revenge, lingering hostility, and countless innocent victims to the point where most people have forgotten what started all the fighting in the first place. (4) How might the approach you describe exacerbate political repression as the ruling class seeks to avenge their casualties and preempt them ?
“1) I am not proposing that we create a program that everyone must conform to. I am describing things that seem logically necessary for liberation.
2) people continue to commit atrocities, investment bankers pick the atrocities and fund them. It troubles me that you seem more concerned about the hypothetical atrocities from below that may come from acting according to the rationale i describe, than the daily atrocities from above that ARE actually occuring. Having any concern for the life of an investment banker dismisses the lives of the many many people chewed up to feed that investment banker’s voracious appetite.
3) Maybe. That’s a worse case scenario. I suspect that once the 1% were strung up and their position in the political economy eliminated, folks would breathe a sigh of relief and continue to live their lives with deeper vigilance against emergent hierarchies. But, if i’m wrong, if your worst case scenario were the actual result, such a situation is more just and humane that the current arrangement of our society.
4) The ruling class represses us to the greatest extent we allow and tolerate. Right now that means property damage and some forms of organizing are considered terrorism, the “nonviolent” occupy movement was repressed with much violence, it wasn’t until folks got dangerous that the ruling class conceded anything to trayvon martin (police cars got shot at) attica (numerous riots) or the civil rights movement (half the cities in america burned after MLKs death). The ruling class fears us, and when we act terrifying, they concede to those of us who’re willing to negotiate.”
Ok, I stand dinged, regarding your statement, ” It troubles me that you seem more concerned about the hypothetical atrocities from below that may come from acting according to the rationale i describe, than the daily atrocities from above that ARE actually occuring.” I got to this about this some more.
Right now, I can’t agree or disagree with you, Ben. What I can say is that thru talking with you, my assumptions have been challenged. To be honest, I’m not sure what frame of mind I will at arrive at from here.
What I can say right now, is that I have no illusion that somehow my nonviolent approach will be safer for me. Instead, it’s a matter of being able to live with myself. My guess is that the private hell a human being can experience is ultimately not a matter of enduring physical or mental pain at the hand of adversaries as well as circumstances gone awry. Rather, that private hell results from betraying one’s ‘soul’. I mean that nonreligiously. That betrayal would involve losing some sort of bond with what we regard as the best parts of our selves. And for me, a sort of slippery slope into hatred that violence can involve seems to present FOR ME at least that sort of hell within my own mind. So, it’s not a matter of what’s the best approach for all of us to take. More likely, it’s a matter of knowing ourselves well enough to pursue what works best for us.
“I’m glad to have shared some ideas with you. I hope that the frame of mind you come to is beneficial, and i don’t want you to think i’m advocating any particular action.
What i come away with from this perspective is recognizing that we live in an authoritarian society, that things are the way they are not because they are just or we believe in them, they are the way they are because acting against the way things are will result in our incarceration or murder. We live in fear. It is a rational, well reasoned fear, because our opponents are ruthless and powerful.
Building strength to overcome what we fear is a process that, taken too hastily will involve serious risks and carry serious consequences. Winning has to start with creating ruptures, and defending ourselves within those ruptures. Holding them.”
Also, I acknowledge that there is a huge risk that for many activists, ‘advocating nonviolence’ is actually a mater of doing nothing to seriously challenge the abuse of power. My experience with protests so far has shown me that those engaged in nonviolent resistance exert considerable intelligence and courage. I’m not saying that to try to sway you. Instead, I am saying that because watching them made me realize that I myself, so far, am doing very little to correct abuses of power. So, again, this is my acknowledgement that—in addition to the debate about nonviolence vs violence—-there is the risk of advocacy for nonviolence is actually a way of making oneself comfortable with doing nothing.
“I very much agree with your statement that we should start with doing what we’re good at and comfortable with, while challenging ourselves to practice and get better at the other things that we recognize as necessary.
” I think that the tactics employed by people seriously engaged in what they call “nonviolent civil disobedience” are legit tactics. They require discipline and commitment and are a needed part of struggle. I support people who engage in them.
“I do not support people who vilify or obstruct other tactics they consider violent. Oftentimes the people doing the latter are not actually engaged in the former. For many people during the occupy movement any tactic that was not obedient and lawful was considered violent, including stepping into the street, tresspassing, holding space, putting your body or voice in harms way.”
For what it’s worth, I attribute my ability to more open-mindedly engage you regarding this issue to my ongoing meditations on love, whereby I’ve loosened the hold that my own ideology and egotism has had on my psyche.
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