On June 27, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French boy of North African descent was murdered by a white police officer in a Parisian suburb. Since then, anger has erupted almost everywhere in the country, especially in poor neighborhoods. Young people are taking to the streets to protest against police violence and state racism. Their anger is eruptive.
Recently, I helped organize support and solidarity for another uprising in France: Soulèvements de la terre, or Earth Uprising. This movement, created in 2021, is fighting against large and useless infrastructure (like highways and giant tunnels under the Alps), transnational corporations and other sources of pollution and environmental destruction. At one recent action against a giant water-reservoir designed to support industrial farming, two protesters ended up in comas — the result of explosions from police grenades banned in most European countries, but not France.
Since then, several spokespersons and coordinators of Soulèvements de la terre have been arrested and interrogated by the counter-terrorism service. A couple of weeks ago, the government decided to outlaw the group. Now, anyone claiming to be a member of the movement is committing a criminal offense.
The near simultaneous occurrence of these two uprisings is more than a coincidence. It begs the question: Are these not actually two sides of the same coin, two moments in one larger uprising?
As an activist trained in nonviolent direct action, I’m obviously partly unsettled by the eruptive protests following Nahel’s murder. Burning public libraries, crashing a car into a mayor’s house and trying to set it on fire, looting shops, and destroying buses and tramways doesn’t belong to the action repertoire I follow. If someone would mention these as potential tactics for a protest I would organize, I would vehemently counter-argue or simply not take part in such a protest. I feel more comfortable pushing through police lines to block a coal mine or disrupt a meeting of executives from the fossil fuel industry.
But my preferences don’t matter at all here, for several reasons.
First, alliances are not built upon tactical discussions. Debates and disputes over tactics tend to steal the whole conversation when we’re strategically lost. There’s always plenty of time later to agree to disagree. Alliances emerge from something else: a shared experience (or a shared anger); a set of demands that can be articulated in a way that makes them stronger; a common horizon; or a shared political project.
As for the second, and most important, reason why arguing over tactics is a bad idea: Just like Soulèvements de la terre, the ongoing uprising is about habitability and land.
French activist Fatima Ouassak explains that people living in poor neighborhoods are “landless.” People who originally migrated from Africa to France are, according to her, “deprived of land.” Henceforth, what is at stake when they organize is to claim the right to land. Interestingly enough, the French language offers only one word for both land and Earth: “terre.” The Earth Uprising would as well be the Land Uprising.
At a protest to support the Soulèvements de la terre, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial activist Françoise Verges explained that the system that the Earth Uprising is fighting against (a vision of nature as a bottomless pit of resources one can indefinitely extract) started in the colonies, under the slavery-plantation system. Indeed, the “system” change that we’ve been demanding for many years is, first and foremost, about achieving full decolonization. Those facing, on a day-to-day basis, state racism and police brutality are therefore on the frontline of this fight.
The fact that I feel unsettled when I see people burn a library or a public transport infrastructure is as much a disagreement over tactics as it is a manifestation of my own background: I had the privilege to be trained in nonviolent direct action. I was taught how to channel my anger into a strategic plan, whose horizon shall remain the famous Gandhian “constructive program.” I feel privileged to experience the current state of the world without erupting and bursting out in rage — and to instead think about strategies, alliances and campaign goals.
This is precisely why the current manifestation of anger shouldn’t be dismissed as illegitimate, or as something not smart or disciplined enough for a good campaign. After all, the climate movement is currently debating whether or not we should “blow up pipelines.” We would therefore be hypocrites to criticize those setting fire to the very French institutions oppressing them.
Ultimately, we are not facing two consecutive uprisings, but rather one, two-sided uprising. One side is about the habitability of the Earth, the other is about the habitability of France for Black, Indigenous and people of color. With this understanding comes quite a few strategic consequences.
For starters, we should demand full amnesty for anyone who has recently been (or will be) arrested, whether they were taking part in the popular neighborhood uprising or in a protest organized by the Soulèvements de la terre. This is key: Since this is about dismantling the existing colonial matrix of power, we won’t return to an appeased situation without breaking with the cycle of violence. It has to begin where the cycle of violence has started: police brutality and repression.
Yes, there’s a lot of anger and rage, and some of it is expressed in ways that are, to say the least, challenging. This is precisely why the cycle of violence has to stop — and it won’t stop in a sustainable and fair way unless the state does its part. It would be unfair and short-sighted to put the responsibility of breaking with the current cycle of violence on those who are protesting, expressing their anger and desire to not be victims of state racism any more.
People are rising up to defend a habitable world — some from the countryside, on the frontline of the extraction of natural resources, and others in dense urban areas, on the frontline of the extraction of the lives of oppressed and colonized people.
We should then try and seek inspiration from movements that have tried to connect similar dynamics. One obvious example is the Breathe Act, developed by the Movement for Black Lives. This visionary bill aims to defund the police, develop community-owned ways of ensuring safety, and promote environmental and climate justice. In the words of one of its creators, Gina Clayton Johnson, “We know the solution has to be as big as the 400-year-old problem itself.”
This visionary proposal combines the necessity of dismantling the institutions that are making the world inhabitable and the vision of what needs to be done in order to restore the conditions for justice. In other words, it seeks to preserve the habitability of the world. This could be a way for the French left to finally address the issue of structural racism and break with its color-blindness. Opening eyes to the reasons behind this side of the ongoing uprising is a first step toward supporting the fight for a habitable world for everyone.
I have several, deep issues with this article.
Firstly, framing nonviolence as a mere matter of preference is quite far from what nonviolence is. It’s not just a style or a method, it’s also and above all a value and a critique of power. With a nonviolence mindset you notice how violence is self-perpetuating, and a trap for those seeking social change, as states are better at doling it out (ten times over), and it requires inside our groups a quasi-military organization to work well enough. Violence is also at the heart of many forms of oppression, if not all. A nonviolent mindset would also look at violence as something contingent, non-necessary to human life.
Secondly, the author seems to treat being poor and racialized as leading to violence, mechanically. Ah but it is wrapped into pseudo-humility about being privileged! That makes this very dubious assumption all the more insidious. Violence is taught. It’s a phenomenon among others, that could be abolished. What we are seeing from the police, rioters, fascist groups, etc., is not what young children do when they fight for a toy. It is way more structured. It is a self-reproducing social phenomenon, probably taught by the police and by gangs. Why someone who merely doesn’t know nonviolence would be carrying a gun, like we’ve seen in several videos from the riots? This is more than a lack of knowledge.
Thirdly and finally, this is yet another form of those lazy calls for the “convergence of struggles”, an old meme in french leftist politics. Every single time anything happens, there’s a bunch of luminaries calling for it. It very rarely works. Afterwards, same luminaries endlessly theorize as to why it again failed. And the cycle starts all over again. What those luminaries always say is not “let’s find a synthesis of our struggles together, that i do not know the final shape of”, but “align with my agenda, or else you’re dividing us/bourgeois/naive”. Said agenda is often good old class reductionism, but here we’ve got another meme, that English-speakers probably already know of: “diversity of tactics”. To refute it, I recommend Steve Chase’s post on the ICNC: https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/blog_post/marketing-violence-closer-look-diversity-tactics-slogan/
I believe rioters could be doing better. I don’t want to further infantilize them by speaking of them in terms of “affects”, mere “reactions”, “anger”, and assuming they have zero moral responsibility nor any rationality. They have all of those, and could be doing better. At the same time, their actions can be understood with empathy. It does not come from nowhere. Recurring violence in their environment is not good for anyone’s psychological development, nor for building a sense of being a political subject with means and long term goals. Yet, this is not a reason to simply treat them as automatons responding to inputs in an easily predictable way, like a technocratic social scientist would.
Hi, Nicolas!
I must say that I disagree with a lot of what you have written here. It is perfectly acceptable to call out and criticize violent action, even among leftists. History has shown us that even peaceful protests have resulted in state violence, so I don’t think it’s wrong to point out how ineffective, dangerous and utterly solidarity shattering violence truly is. Which is disappointing, considering how much you want to push the idea of solidarity!
Where is the solidarity in burning libraries? Where is the love of community in damaging mass transit? Mistakes were made, innocent people will pay, and all you can say is “don’t get in their way!”?
Also, alliances are absolutely based on tactics and ideas. Isn’t it why this publication even exists? Isn’t it why you have many famous leftists leaving their old groups out of disagreements of what is acceptable or not? I refuse to protest with people who think it’s acceptable to potentially harm innocent people in what is a protest against violence. While I’m glad you think the same, it’s disappointing that you don’t recommend the same to others.
As someone who also fears police violence, the violence in these riots were a mistake on so many levels and the states around the world will harm us more for it. Which also hurts solidarity too, since the states can just blame the rioters and their (valid) anger for their increased violence.
@Evelyne
Thanks for your long response – I think you’re interpreting a lot what I’ve written here.
I would for instance love to understand what makes you think that “the author seems to treat being poor and racialized as leading to violence, mechanically”?
I’ve never written anything like that. I would even say that I’m written pretty much the opposite: I was trained to non-violence, because precisely, non-violence is something that you have to be trained to. I was trained because I could, because I had the chance to be trained.
The fact that I was trained to non-violence (and yes, I agree, it goes beyond a preference) doesn’t mean that I should dismiss others’ strategies and tactics I’m talking about strategies and tactics throughout the piece, so i’m struggling to understand why you’re saying that I’m “infantilizing” rioters. I wouldn’t opt for their tactics. We need to treat them as allies, not consider that we know better, or tell them from a overhang that they “could do better”.
An amnesty has nothing to do with moral – it is political. 16-18 years old kids with no criminal record at all are being sentenced to 6 months of jail time these days because they’ve stolen shoes or eye-liner / lipstick in a shop that had been looting. This is the reality we’re talking about, not some abstract consideration about violence and non-violence.
@kaysi: most certainly, we can criticize and discuss everyone’s strategies and tactics.
But I don’t think that now is the moment to do so. Now is the moment to be united against the repression that they’re facing.
To say that you have to be trained into nonviolence, and that the riots are explained by lacking access to such training, logically implies that you see violence as the default reaction. This is in line with an old myth in western political thought, that of an imaginary state of nature in which there is a war of all against all, before some mysterious socializing force descends from the skies and creates order.
Rigorously speaking, the implication is not present if we guess that you actually think that the default is to be socialized into violence. If you thought so though, your article should have taken a very different direction, away from the “diversity of tactics”. It is not the case, therefore the best hypothesis left is that you are influenced by seeing violence as the default. This would be in line with how we’re made to see the youth in those suburbs as undersocialized animals, from the background radiation of racism and colonialism of course, but also the collective memory of 2005, and what basically the whole political spectrum says today.
I did not know we were speaking of amnesty for the rioters; this wasn’t part of your original article. As an abolitionist and a promoter of transformative justice, I’m obviously not for throwing in prisons as fast as possible those the police caught, as it has been going on for a few days already.
Instead here I’m worried about the public discourses on those riots: they all fail, save for Yazid Kherfi’s, to promote nonviolence as a legitimate answer that the rioters could have used. There is a worrying trend about casting nonviolence as naive and useless, or reserved only to an elite. This is in my opinion not unlike what Phillipe Corcuff denounces about the french intellectuals, even on the left, participating into a *discursive formation* (basically, a trend in public discourses) that bears neofascist traits.
If I may add, abstract does not mean removed from reality. Abstraction is just what allows for networks of neurons to be activated under a very large number of contexts. This is quite concrete. Our experienced reality is full of abstractions; just take language for example, or how you know someone is a cop, or what is a friend. Emotions even appraise abstractions, like when you feel anger because of an injustice. To tell people off because they try to modify the abstractions we currently hold as a society as going without saying is hugely disempowering.
@Evelyne – this discussion is becoming strange.
I’m writing a few things very clearly (e.g. “we should demand full amnesty for anyone who has recently been (or will be) arrested, whether they were taking part in the popular neighborhood uprising or in a protest organized by the Soulèvements de la terre”) yet you’re saying “know we were speaking of amnesty for the rioters”.
I’m not writing anything about a state of nature or a natural tendency to violence yet you’re pretending that this is what I’m writing.
I don’t know anything about big categories and abstract notions such as the state of nature, and I’m not discussing this at all here.
What I’m saying is that
– non-violent direct action requires training (that would apply to guerrilla or warfare as well, actually)
– eruptive protests are, by nature, lead by people who aren’t trained / haven’t planned anything (that’s pretty much the definition of an eruption: it is not something that happens according to plan).
– the fact that an uprising is eruptive doesn’t mean that it isn’t political, that is should only been seen as nihilists burning stuff for the sake of burning stuff
– what is happening is as much political as the Soulèvements de la terre are (so again, I don’t know where i’m being patronizing or infantilizing).
There’s a big misconception about the diversity of tactics, a misconception that is widely shared, unfortunately, in non-violent groups, and I hope to be able to discuss this in another piece as soon as possible.
This is obviously pointless, as you’re using every trick in the book to avoid a frank discussion.
Your favorite trick seems to recast *descriptions* of what you say as claims about what you actually wrote. I know full well you didn’t actually write “state of nature” or anything like that! It is unbelievably patronizing to think that such sophistry could work.
Your other favorite fallacy is to recast any form of thinking that isn’t yours as “big concepts” and “abstract notions”. As if you weren’t yourself using big concepts and abstract notions! Do you even realize that by using this fallacy you’re riding an anti-intellectualist wave? Now you are fully participating in the neofascist discursive formation of the french left.
Your last strategy is to simply repeat what you said, ignoring what your interlocutors say. Everything besides misinterpreted details, so as to deflect everything onto discussing that, and wasting everyone’s time. A classic move by people who feel like they have some power over others to preserve. This is not only extremely patronizing, but a willful break in the basic mutual social recognition in dialogues. And when one isn’t heard, what is left to do? You already know the answer. Try to apply the principles of nonviolence you supposedly champion in your everyday interactions, that would be a good start.
Dear Evelyne,
Allow me to summarize the discussion so far:
– your first criticize my piece for framing nonviolence as a « preference ».
– you then added that i’m considering that « being poor and racialized » means being prone to « violence, mechanically »
– you’re claiming that my piece is another lazy call for the convergence of struggle and that the only argument is « either you’re in favor of this convergence of struggles or you’re bourgeois »
– you’re accusing me of infantilizing the rioters
– you saying that in my opinion violence is the default reaction and that non violence is to me either naive & useless or elitist
– i’m a discursive neofascist
It is very true that I’m writing the word « preference » and it might be misleading here. What I mean is that my strategic analysis of why nonviolence is efficient doesn’t apply here, in the sense that it shouldn’t lead me/anyone to dismiss what is happening. And this is where the big misunderstanding starts.
The rest of my analysis has little to do with violence/non-violence (you’ll not that there are only 5 occurrences of « violence » – including a heavy repetition of « cycle of violence » 4 times in 2 consecutive paragraphs.
My point is to discuss and eruptive mobilisation. As mentioned in one of my answers to your messages (answers that you don’t discuss at all, except at the meta level), the eruption could be violence or non-violent, it doesn’t really matter here. And conversely: whether we’re talking about a violent or non-violent effort, trainings is required. No one starts a guerrilla out of the blue, nor a non-violent campaign. State of nature has nothing to do with it (and yes, humbly, I don’t feel qualified to discuss these notions – which doesn’t mean I dismiss them, I just reckon that this is not my field).
My whole point is to say that remaining at the level of « these guys are nihilist, they have no political sense » is patronizing, whereby they’re actually leading a fight, a protest, that is as much as the Soulèvements de la terre about habitability.
And I’m trying (very poorly it seems, according to your messages) to argue that we should start from there – how can we fight together to defend the habitability (of the Earth and of France), rather than dividing ourselves over tactical preferences (sorry over tactical choices).
So yes, indeed, your answers and critiques look very much like a « procès d’intention » (i’m guessing that you’re francophone so you’ll likely understand me here), since you’re claiming that I’m writing things that I didn’t write, and then also acknowledge that you didn’t really read my piece (‘I did not know we were speaking of amnesty for the rioters’ whereas I wrote « we should demand full amnesty for anyone who has (…) tak[en] part in the popular neighborhood uprising »).
I’m very open to any discussion, even if it starts poorly (even if you think I’m lazy, anti-intellectual protofascist, I think you can grant me that – this is the 3rd time that I’m trying to reply to your messages).
I’ll however stop here, unless we can find a healthier ground – and either start with what I wrote or what you think; but not start from what you pretend that I wrote or claim that I think.
Again – you haven’t really replied to any single argument I’m trying to make (and I’m writing “trying” to make on purpose – I’m not pretending that I’m the wisest guy around), even though our discussion is now probably longer than the original piece. You’re using my piece to make your points. Which is totally fine but please do so without telling me that I’m an anti-intellectual fascist.