q: are anarchists violent or nonviolent?
note: some people say “violence” and mean “modification of or damage to inanimate objects.” other people say “violence” and mean “physical harm to a human or animal.” people’s philosophical views on sabotage are a whole other question and outside the scope of this piece, which will deal exclusively with whether anarchists support physical harm to living beings (we do not). if you’re interested in anarchist ideas about sabotage, i’d suggest emma goldman’s essay “the psychology of political violence.” or you could read Queer Ultraviolence and have a gay awakening. or you could, theoretically, submit a question about it…
a: no. we’re nonbinary.
ok, now for a serious answer…”violent” usually means thinking it’s ok to harm human beings, and “nonviolent” (in the purist-pacifist sense of the word) usually means thinking it’s ok to let violent situations take place. anarchists are a secret third thing. DEVIOLENT.
wtf does that mean? it basically means a kind of consequentialism—the idea that our goal should be to reduce harm as much as possible, and meet and match the situation rather than exacting revenge. so if Brad from your affinity group is saying homophobic slurs, you would engage in transformative justice and/or provide care to the queer people targeted—an organization i’m in deals with homophobia exclusively by declaiming at the people perpetuating it, which is (at least in my opinion) kind of awesome. but if Brad is queerbashing your friend, you could (under a deviolent framework) physically stop that from happening.
deviolence means self-defense and community defense, including against state-sanctioned violence. and it doesn’t have to be physical; it can be any support of living beings being harmed. so physical defense of people being harmed is deviolent, but so is teaching others about self-defense. and so is helping people who are facing the systemic violence of statism—jail support, copwatch and Know Your Rights programs, helping people who have been denied healthcare by the state (abortion, transition, etc). and so is working to counteract the systemic violence of capitalism—solidarity with unhoused communities, food and resource distros, and basically all mutual aid. and so is resisting the violence of bigotry—QTPOC collectives, revolutionary trans art, neurodivergent-positive peer respites, political education, you name it. and so is all anarchist organizing.
is everything here Nonviolent? no, deviolence can mean physical confrontation that aims to end a violent situation. is statism Nonviolent? um…not really. and unlike deviolence, statism is actively punitive. rather than trying to reduce harm, it attempts to control a population, rendering every statist society unsafe for marginalized communities (and everyone).
i’d like to close out with an emma goldman quote:
The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,–a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.
Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature's forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.