violence / revolution

Fantasies of political violence are a mistake, in the sense that they are not even advantageous from the perspective of those who hold them. They reflect a likely evolutionary mismatch between our psychological architecture and the modern environment in which we live.

Regimes don’t fall by themselves, and bullies never respond to reason. They can only be defeated by people, events and circumstances they have lost control over.

Once physical elimination is off the table, you still have to share the society you live in with the people you committed violence against. Political violence is typically not the end of a conflict but the start of more tension and violence.

The time to call for nonviolence is when the violence is systemic: when it is slow, quiet, and legal. Waiting until people riot or take up arms to demand “peace” is a luxury of those who were never being harmed in the first place.

We can't change the world by focusing only on dismantling, we have to really build up the alternative and show that it can work in a different way, and radicalize people, not through convincing them of the rightness of an ideology, but through their lived experience of true participation, of the collective power of livelihood in a non-capitalist... See more

While disagreements can be deep and fierce, looking for a minimal common ground and peaceful ways to settle conflicts is likely more valuable in the long term.

To say “violence has no place in politics” while ignoring systemic harm is to defend the status quo, not peace. True nonviolence would mean dismantling the conditions that make desperate, explosive violence seem like the only option left.