Civil and Revolutionary

ViolenceRob Johnson

                                             

Madrid

                                             

Iraq

                                             

                                                                                                                                         

Istanbul 20.11.2003

                                             

New York

                                      

                                             

London

                                                                                           

Jakarta, 9.9.04

                                             

Beslan

                                             

German peasants rebellion, 1525

Tsar Nicholas II, c.1900

Types of Violence

State Violence (‘Legitimate’)• Capital punishment• Corporal punishment• Imprisonment, exile, transportation• Police, judges, the law• Terror.

Anti-state or intra-state violence• Civil War• Revolutionary/Guerrilla War (illegitimate)• Terrorism(illegitimate)• Racial/ethnic/religious/sectarian violence• Criminal (personal) violence against property or

the body (gangs & banditry, muggers, hooliganism, murder, rape)

The Romanticism of Revolution

Lord Byron

Ernesto Che Guevara

Michael Collins

Kashmir

Michael Collins

Casualties of the revolution in Russia

Victims of the fighting between Peruvian government and Shining Path

Other forms of violence

Violence of Nature• Wild animals• Climatic hazards• Geological hazards• Disease

Small pox

‘Economic’ Violence• Famine• Death by blockade• Death by ‘interest rates’ (laws of competition and

economic structures)• Death by product (tobacco, food scares, untested

drugs)• ‘Accidents’• … Disease

Arno Mayer

Revolutionary Violence:The French Revolution

September Massacres, 1792

The Terror

• Retarded economic growthRetarded economic growth• FamineFamine• Political murders, and massacresPolitical murders, and massacres• Ideological coercionIdeological coercion• Foreign interventionForeign intervention• Civil unrest leading to dictatorshipCivil unrest leading to dictatorship• Eclipsed by Britain, USA and Germany (The Eclipsed by Britain, USA and Germany (The

‘Anglo-Saxons’).‘Anglo-Saxons’).

                                                 

The Russian Revolution

Overthrow of the monarchy by popular unrest and court coup, Feb 1917

Overthrow of a democratic provisional government by coup d’etat, Oct 1917

Civil War, 1918-1922, state repression, famine

Casualties from the World War, 1914-1917

DiseasesMostly cholera, typhus, influenza Starvation

AtrocitiesGrain requisition and violence against peasants, peasant reaction, political murder

Social dislocationUrban depopulation (‘deindustrialisation’): Petrograd fell from 2m to 750,000 – violence over resources

Religious violence Conventional/Guerrilla fightingAnti-Semitic massacres by Whites ‘Greens’, Whites and Reds Murder of priests and imams

Themes in violence since 1919 (The global view)

The Spanish Civil War

Druze Rebellion, 1925

China’s Civil War

Angola Civil WarAlgeria, War of Independence

Mau Mau Emergency

Northern Ireland

Palestinian Intifada

Warlordism

NankingNazi death camp, Hungary

Jihadist execution

Interpreting Violence

• Edmund Burke• Thomas Carlyle

Making Sense of Violence

• Albert Soboul• E.P. Thompson

Justification and Popularity?

Revolutionary Violence as a Response to State Violence

• Michel Foucault• Peter Linebaugh

Destruction of villages in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia

East Timorese children

Muslims in Soviet Central Asia

Contemporary Violence

Iranian woman being prepared for stoning

Cliterodectomy

Execution in Afghanistan

Lockerbie, December 1988

Hamas Member: ‘You don’t choose to be a shaheed. Allah chooses you. It’s a long road to shahada. I don’t know whether my operation will involve a settlement or a bus. The leadership takes care of that. My family does not know I’m involved. Of course, separation will be difficult for them, but in the afterlife I will be their saviour. I will take them to paradise with me. Knowing that will give them solace. The goal of any operation is to kill as many people as possible. We don’t differentiate – soldiers or civilians. The Israelis don’t make distinctions when they kill Palestinians, so why should we? I’d be happy to kill Israeli women and children.’

Trainer of shaheeds, Al Aqsa Brigade

‘We only work with people we trust. A lot of people offer themselves and are not accepted. Its important to us that a person is thoroughly ready. Having your photo taken and making a video for the family, that only takes an hour. But a shaheed has to be ready at all times. …

The hardest part is leaving to go on the mission. Seeing your family for the last time. Some who wish to become a shaheed go on a mission and are captured or only injured. Not everyone succeeds.

A lot of fighters who are in charge have themselves gone on to become shaheeds. We are all equal. We are all willing. There is always someone to take your place.

• Law• Accountability• Rules of Engagement• Light footprint• Rapport• Reconstruction