Nonviolent Tactics and the Fascist Threat — By Ted Glick

By Ted Glick –

“Anger against injustice and oppression is not just legitimate; it is necessary to successfully build a movement for real change. But anger needs to be used in a disciplined way. Those who are quick to call cops “pigs” or throw bricks or otherwise display anger negatively are either government agents attempting to discredit the movement or people who need an intervention. They need to be taken aside and spoken with in a direct, to the point, and loving way about the counter-productiveness of what they are doing. Some will keep doing it, but others will change, maybe not right away but over time.” Future Hope column, June 11, 2021

When violence, against cops or property, takes place during an action organized by progressive groups, who, in general, is such violence likely to come from? From my experience I’d say there are three sources:

-Government or corporate agents who are consciously using violence to try to discredit the cause people are demonstrating about.

-People at the demonstration who are very upset and pissed off, for good reason, about something the government, oppressive corporations and/or the police are doing and who lash out in response.

-Dedicated activists and organizers whose theory of change supports firebombings or other destruction of property, like police cars or, in LA recently, Tesla cars—in other words, targeted destruction to express outrage and do damage. Also in this category would be those who are quick to engage in street fighting with police.

I come to this discussion as someone who is not across-the-board against any destruction of property. During the Vietnam War I was part of the Catholic Left, initiated and led by Catholic priests Phil and Dan Berrigan, which went into Selective Service draft boards and destroyed files of potential draftees as a way to obstruct that war and build resistance to it. I spent 11 months in prison for one such action in Rochester, NY.

These actions were controversial within the peace movement back then. More moderate groups and individuals, including even some individuals who had burned their draft cards publicly, felt this was too provocative, could hurt the cause.

I didn’t think so at the time. For me as a 20 year old deeply outraged about the war in Vietnam, it met my need for action at the scale of the urgency of that situation. And since all of our actions were always done in a way that no one could ever be hurt or killed by what we did, with the possible exception of us if caught and arrested, I was good with this type of property destruction, especially as we became more effective at destroying files, for some actions in the thousands of them.

There were others of my generation who felt the same urgency I did who came together into the Weather Underground, which then carried out bombings of war-related targets. Three WU members were killed while making bombs; no one else was, but these actions were used by the Nixon Administration to prolong the war, just as Trump is now using the relativity small-scale property destruction and some fighting with police to try to ramp up military occupations not just in LA but possibly elsewhere.

Times are too serious for us to avoid movement-wide discussion about this issue.

It’s probably the case that some of those into street fighting or performative property violence are well aware that their actions will be used to increase repression on the part of the Trump regime and similarly-inclined state and local governments. They think that such repression is going to hasten “the revolution.”

It’s possible, probably likely, that some German Communists in the 20’s and 30’s who were more critical of the Social Democrats than the Nazis had this view. Here’s how AI describes this:

“During the 1930s in Germany, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) adopted a strategy of attacking the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as ‘social fascists,’ viewing them as allies of the capitalist system and thus an enemy of the revolution. This ‘social fascism’ theory, promoted by the Comintern (Communist International), led the KPD to actively oppose the SPD and even align with the Nazis in some instances. The KPD’s rejection of cooperation with the SPD is seen by some historians as a significant factor in the rise of the Nazi Party.”

Very fortunately, those on the Left espousing similar views as the KPD in Germany back then are in a very small minority. The vast majority of Leftists, as well as those who would have been called Social Democrats back then and the many who are more issue-oriented than ideological in their day-to-day work for progressive social change, systemic change, get it that what is absolutely the task of the moment right now is to build a very broad, massive, united movement against the attacks on US democracy, the efforts to create 21^st century fascism in the United States.

This Saturday, on June 14^th, we all must come out wherever we are to make the almost 2,000 No Kings! nonviolent actions taking place in every state on that day as massive as possible. Trump Must Go!

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

Featured image: Brödbaron, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons