The Dangers of Non-Violence

from GAF Does Lockdown

Interview with Peter Gelderloos on The Dangers of Non-Violence - GAF does Lockdown Ep. 11

The recording from yesterday's talk with PeterGelderloos is now available! We talked about the history of militant resistance, diversity of tactics, the role of non-violence on counter-insurgency and a lot more. Give it a watch!

Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist activist and writer who for years has been talking about the dangers of the non-violent doctrine in social movements and advocating for a diversity of tactics as necessary for achieving meaningful social change. Today many movements around the world have learnt this lesson and, despise the eventual recuperation of most of them, uprisings and protests in places like Chile, Hong-Kong and Minneapolis have shown the importance of allowing multiple strategies to be used and rejecting the narratives used by the media and the elites to separate us. Still new generations in the environmentalist movement have been convinced that a rigid adherence to non-violence is the only way forward. That’s why we are gonna talk with Peter to challenge these ideas and offer an alternative perspective on the discussion between non-violence and diversity of tactics.

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There are 3 Comments

More like "The dangers of addressing non-violence as a separate topic and then subsequently be invited to talk to liberals about the same topic over and over again becoming a caricature of your own arguments at the expense of neglecting anarchy" at this point.

Is it above Peter Gelderloos to start an interview by saying "kill people, burn shit, fuck school" or the Bonanno "Hurry comrade!..." quote? I liked that time in that other lefty covid-themed podcast interview (https://anarchistnews.org/content/looting-wealth-re-distribution so many at this point!) where he said bluntly "Yeah, looting's great!"

that always saying the same thing to everyone is the best thing, or even sane.
you imply that it's not worth talking to mainstream audiences, which is an easy position to take (i generally do myself), but does no favors to the people who don't already know things or have access...

i don't know, but being against easy answers makes sense to me too.

i think what he does is great, i got a weak spot for him, but i fear that it does take it’s toll, and PG might end up pandering to and speaking more like a liberal, in that slope we’ve seen so many other people and projects slide towards. the liberals end up winning, incorporating lessons, perspectives, people and projects.

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