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A review by taicantfly
How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I have mixed feelings about this book. It's largely well researched, well reasoned and well written, explaining the author's proclivity towards militancy in a way that feels both emotionally justified and intellectually pragmatic. But Gelderloos' (self-admitted, as per the last chapter) vitriol towards pacifists sometimes makes this read more like a frustrated polemic than a genuine exploration of how nonviolence protects the state.
Some chapters ("nonviolence is statist", "nonviolence is tactically and strategically inferior", "nonviolence is delusional") do a fairly good job at providing evidence for the fairly assertive claim in the chapter name. Others feel like a bit of a stretch: e.g. "nonviolence is patriarchal" mainly being isolated examples of pacifist movements underrepresenting women or more gender essentialist feminist movements claiming that being violent is an inherently male act. This doesn't really extend to the conclusion given in the chapter name as easily (and I'd be willing to bet a good majority of pacifists would gladly discredit both the misogynistic exclusionism and the gender essentialism spouted by other pacifist movements).
The biggest strength of this book is, I feel, in how well-read its author is. Constant references to the history of organising and direct action, almost excessive quotation of Ward Churchill and Frantz Fanon, citations of random blog posts and newspaper articles, all littering the footnotes (of which there is, on average, more than 1 per short A5 page). As a springboard for further reading, this text is excellent, and I found myself highlighting so many things to add to my reading list to the point where if I were looking for a book to read I could just flip through my copy and look at the green highlighter.
I'm willing to cut Gelderloos some slack for his shortcomings given his self-awareness. Maybe there needs to be a militant text harshly critical of pacifism to counteract the many pacifist texts harshly critical of militancy. Maybe there need to be personal anecdotes from an author heavily experienced with direct action and organising (with an even wider web of contacts with even more personal anecdotes) that can document cultures of racism and misogyny in the pacifist organising of the intellectual white middle class. And he acknowledges his personal biases and the subjective nature of some of his supporting evidence - while lampshading all the book's flaws doesn't immediately dispel them, it's reassuring that Gelderloos doesn't believe himself to be making some objective and analytic bible but rather just giving some fairly authoritative perspectives that I hadn't had the chance to really explore before.
Overall this book was very interesting! I found myself agreeing with it by the end much more than I had expected to at the start, and I'm sure many others who are hesitant to abandon nonviolence will at least be convinced into a less dogmatic pacifism (if not to, as he puts it, reject the dichotomy of violence and nonviolence). I'm looking forward to reading more of his work - especially the more recent stuff, seeing as he wrote this when he was 24!
Some chapters ("nonviolence is statist", "nonviolence is tactically and strategically inferior", "nonviolence is delusional") do a fairly good job at providing evidence for the fairly assertive claim in the chapter name. Others feel like a bit of a stretch: e.g. "nonviolence is patriarchal" mainly being isolated examples of pacifist movements underrepresenting women or more gender essentialist feminist movements claiming that being violent is an inherently male act. This doesn't really extend to the conclusion given in the chapter name as easily (and I'd be willing to bet a good majority of pacifists would gladly discredit both the misogynistic exclusionism and the gender essentialism spouted by other pacifist movements).
The biggest strength of this book is, I feel, in how well-read its author is. Constant references to the history of organising and direct action, almost excessive quotation of Ward Churchill and Frantz Fanon, citations of random blog posts and newspaper articles, all littering the footnotes (of which there is, on average, more than 1 per short A5 page). As a springboard for further reading, this text is excellent, and I found myself highlighting so many things to add to my reading list to the point where if I were looking for a book to read I could just flip through my copy and look at the green highlighter.
I'm willing to cut Gelderloos some slack for his shortcomings given his self-awareness. Maybe there needs to be a militant text harshly critical of pacifism to counteract the many pacifist texts harshly critical of militancy. Maybe there need to be personal anecdotes from an author heavily experienced with direct action and organising (with an even wider web of contacts with even more personal anecdotes) that can document cultures of racism and misogyny in the pacifist organising of the intellectual white middle class. And he acknowledges his personal biases and the subjective nature of some of his supporting evidence - while lampshading all the book's flaws doesn't immediately dispel them, it's reassuring that Gelderloos doesn't believe himself to be making some objective and analytic bible but rather just giving some fairly authoritative perspectives that I hadn't had the chance to really explore before.
Overall this book was very interesting! I found myself agreeing with it by the end much more than I had expected to at the start, and I'm sure many others who are hesitant to abandon nonviolence will at least be convinced into a less dogmatic pacifism (if not to, as he puts it, reject the dichotomy of violence and nonviolence). I'm looking forward to reading more of his work - especially the more recent stuff, seeing as he wrote this when he was 24!