I was walking outside with my gf on a pedestrian crossing when a guy on a scooter didn’t feel like breaking and almost hit us when crossing the street. I’m a calm person but at the same time I can feel intense rage with stuff like this and my first thought is to kick the guy off his scooter and beat him to a pulp. This, of course, never happens and I can remain calm. I did a civil fuck you symbol to the guy to get my point across.
I was discussing my rage feelings with my girlfriend and we got into a rather heavy discussion about violence. So, I get called gay a lot because of the way I dress and act sometimes. Especially in my smaller hometown. I said to my gf that I could reach a point where I just beat the next guy calling me gay for being a homophobic shit. She could not agree with me on this and she got mad about it, and we had a debate on using violence (with gay people, minorities and Palestina vs Israel as examples being used). She could follow me on supporting armed resistance in Palestina but she could not accept gay people snapping and beating a homophobic guy, which I can totally understand. Eventually we agreed to disagree, sort of, and we let the topic rest.
Which made me wonder how you guys think about this. Is using violence against injustice acceptable? Is there a certain line for when you can use violence and when not? We socialists fight against injustice, and violence may be a part of that fight somewhere along the line. How should we view the use of violence?
The question lead me to a couple of thoughts.
First, that Jan-Luc Picard quote that “sometimes it’s possible to do everything right and still fail” applies where violence is considered a indication of some kind of failing. It could be a failure of diplomacy, a failure to educate, a failure of self-discipline, or all of the above, but there will be times where you do everything right and violence is where it ends up. Do the due self-criticism without ruling out the possibility that you didn’t make a mistake and move on.
Second, I think the acceptability of violence is a very subjective one. We all have very different experiences of violence both as victims of it and perpetrators of it, including times where we felt it justified and other times where we’ve regretted it. There’s so much nuance to the context of an act of violence.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. There’s just the problems you face and the tools you allow yourself to resolve them; not every problem will be solvable and sometimes the outcome that leads to the least harm being done will involve violence.
Very well worded, as per usual. Great work comrade!
Just wanna say I always appreciate your posts comrade.