For starters, “violence” is an incredibly vague category. It inevitably has an ethical or even moralistic connotation, and yet more than any other institution mass media defines what “violence” means. That’s not the case with, say, “solidarity” or “sabotage,” which for some odd reason the media don’t talk about as much. (Eventually I’ll have another article out on word slippage and in which cases it makes sense to resist.)

..

Here’s the rebuttal. Self-defense works to protect what you already have. Those who are lucky enough to have food, a house, bodily autonomy, healthcare, a good relationship with the land—they can use self-defense to protect what they have against any person or institution trying to take it away, and this is legitimate.

But what happens when you wake up in a world that has already been entirely invaded by colonial powers, by capitalism and the State? What happens when there’s already a gigantic economic machinery in place, slowly poisoning and killing everyone? What happens when you’ve been forced into dependence on that Machine? In that situation, no liberation, no survival, is possible without the Attack. And we’ve learned, generation after generation, that a struggle cannot be effective, it cannot thrive or succeed, if it limits itself to defense.