Monday, November 19, 2007

Leftist disses white privilege, urges violence at Portland protests

Hard to believe, isn't it? An anonymous (of course) poster at Portland Indymedia analyzes peace groups' attempts to block military shipments there, and finds that the pacifist approach (even the nonpacifist pacifist approach Michelle Malkin and others have been noting) fails because of the racism, sexism and classism inherent in the movement:
When we look at how issues of sexism [for example] are handled within [the "Port Militarization Resistance"], it's important to look at who is missing from the group's constituency as a whole. PMR is primarily white, and the values of the group reflect this fact. Because of this, often times the deeper, structural roots of sexism and other kinds of oppression are ignored within PMR. Instead, "feel-good" actions that focus on personal "empowerment" but fail to threaten the dominant capitalist, white, patriarchal, heterosexual, able-bodied paradigm become the norm.
Pacifism, the poster quotes Peter Gelderloos in How Nonviolence Protects the State:

"is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. [B]esides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context; it ignores that violence is already here, that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy and that it is people of color worst affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, of whom people of color are a major part, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement's demands, or the pacifists achieve that legendary "critical mass". People of color in the internal colonies of the US cannot defend themselves against police brutality or expropriate the means of survival to free themselves from economic servitude. They must wait for middle class people of color and conscientious whites to gather enough people to hold hands and sing songs, than [sic] change will surely come.". . .

Well, if (incredibly) singing songs and holding hands doesn't work, what will? Guess:

Taking all of this into consideration, perhaps it would be wise for PMR to reconsider its Code of Nonviolence and adopt a new code such as: "We, the members of Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), believe that the ideology of nonviolence is an inherently privileged position that only acts to reinforce systems of domination and oppression and does absolutely nothing to undermine these said systems. We recognize the right of people to self-defense and community defense and encourage people to dismantle the real violence, that is structural violence, of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism by any means necessary.

Straight from the Ward Churchill playbook (though he rates only a cite at the end of the piece). Only violence is effective--or, more succinctly, "ya got a trigger finger, don't ya?"

No comments: