Hannah Arendt on power vs. violence

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.  Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.  This implies that it is not correct to think of the opposite of violence as non-violence; to speak of non-violent power is actually redundant.  Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

~ Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1970)

(Explained in "Hannah Arendt On Violence: The Opposite of Power," Great Books Prof, March 16, 2021.)

Hannah Arendt on bureaucracy

The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence.  In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted.  Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant. 

~ Hannah Arendt

Margherita Stancati on Israeli settler violence in the West Bank

Since Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, the building of Israeli settlements—considered illegal by most countries—has undermined efforts to create a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Settler groups and Israeli authorities say many Palestinian hamlets in the West Bank were built without permits and are illegal.  Some of them were established in areas later declared military zones, archaeological sites or nature reserves and demolished. Israeli and Palestinian rights groups say the overarching aim is to forcibly expel Palestinian residents from parts of the West Bank.

Pro-settler groups and some far-right Israeli politicians are pushing for the formal annexation of settlements in the West Bank to Israel.

Settlers have attacked Palestinians in the past, but the current level of violence is unprecedented in frequency and intensity, rights groups say.  “The moment the war in Gaza started, settlers knew they had an opportunity because no one was looking,” said Dror Sadot, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem.

Settler attacks have nearly doubled since Oct. 7 to an average of five a day, resulting in the killing of eight Palestinians, the U.N. said.  In nearly half of the attacks, Israeli forces accompanied or supported the settlers, it added.  A spokesman for Israel’s military said soldiers were required to intervene to stop violations by Israelis against Palestinians or their property and that, should soldiers fail to adhere to orders, they would be disciplined.

~ Margherita Stancati, "Palestinians in West Bank Flee After Settler Violence: ‘We Were Forced to Leave’Since the start of the war in Gaza, around 1,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank have left their homes," The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2023

Bonnie Kristian on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza

As the Palestinian Christian writer mentioned above observed, "The poisonous plant of Hamas has been able to take root in our soil." And why? Significantly "because of conditions fostered by a flawed approach to Palestinians from the Israeli government." 

That phrase—a "flawed approach"—will almost certainly be an understatement about the Israeli military retaliation for Hamas's monstrous attack. Heading into this past weekend, 1 million civilian Palestinians in Gaza were warned to flee ahead of an Israeli ground incursion. But how can they flee? Where will they go? Borders are sealed. Gaza is small. Again, about half the population is children. People are moving, but their options are limited. 

A Reuters report published Thursday told the story of a 31-year-old Palestinian man named Ala al-Kafarneh. He fled his home "with his pregnant wife, his father, brothers, cousins, and in-laws," first to a coastal refugee camp, then elsewhere, after Israeli airstrikes hit around the camp. "On Tuesday night, an airstrike hit the building where Kafarneh and his family were sheltering, killing all of them except him." 

Kafarneh's position is unfathomable—a pregnant wife and unborn child, dead and recorded, nameless, in the list of family casualties. Would it surprise anyone if he turns to violence now?

That is not to say he would be justified in seeking a violent revenge. To say that is to take a step toward moral madness, toward a cycle of escalation and chaos, not justice, mercy, or any other good. But it is to say that violence, by its nature, tends to spread. Once loose, it overruns moral boundaries and bends our souls into grotesque shapes. We are each responsible for the violence we commit, each to blame for the wrong we do, each apt to respond to evil with evil. Blood is on the hands that shed it, but it tends to spill all over.

~ Bonnie Kristian, "Blaming Hamas Shouldn't Mean Ignoring the Palestinians' Plight Terrorism does not thrive on peace and normalcy. It thrives on war and chaos and overbroad revenge projects.," Reason.com, October 16, 2023

Hans Hermann-Hoppe on the myth of the "noble savage"

In the literature, primitive man has been frequently described as peaceful and living in harmony with nature.  Most popular in this regard is Rousseau's portrayal of the "noble savage."  Aggression and war, it has been frequently held, were the result of civilization built upon the institution of private property.  In fact, matters are almost exactly the reverse.  True, the savagery of modern wars has produced unparelled carnage.  Both World War I and World War II, for instance, resulted in tens of millions of deaths and left entire countries in ruins.  And yet, as anthropological evidence has in the meantime made abundantly clear, primitive man has been considerably more warlike than contemporary man.  It has been estimated that on the average some 30 percent of all males in primitive, hunter-gatherer societies died from unnatural - violent - causes, far exceeding anything experienced in this regard in modern societies...  Of course, primitive warfare was very different from modern warfare.  It was not conducted by regular troops on battlefields, but by raids, ambushes, and surprise attacks.  However, every attack was characterized by utmost brutalilty, carried out without mercy and always with deadly results; and while the number of people killed in each attack might have been small, the incessant nature of these aggressive encounters made violent death an ever-present danger for  every man (and abduction and rape for every woman).

~ Hans Hermann-Hoppe, A Short History of Man: Progress and Decline, pp. 27-28

Kevin Duffy on the battle of ideas

Ideas matter.  Progressivism, which began in the late 1800s, routed other ideologies in the 1900s. It's not even close. The Old Right died (including neutrality in foreign affairs).  Classical liberalism (aka limited government or more recently "libertarianism") was nearly snuffed out right after WWII, but a committed remnant remains and is making a comeback. 

We're on the losing side.  We're in the minority.  In a winner-take-all political system, we lose.  Our only weapon is our words.  Violence (as Wednesday's idiotic Capitol breach proved) will only backfire. 

The other side doesn't need to use reason. They have the numbers. And they know it. 

That's what we're up against.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, January 8, 2021

Capitol breach - January 6, 2021

Paul Gottried on the use of riots for political gain

Riots by what Tucker Carlson aptly characterized as the “Biden voters” did not happen by chance. The Democratic Party and the overwhelmingly Democratic media condoned and even incited these “peaceful protests,” and former Vice President Biden’s staff labored mightily to bail out apprehended perpetrators of violence in order to put them back onto the streets. This is standard operating procedure for political movements trying to seize power. After World War II, the Soviets arranged for mob violence in Hungary, Poland, and other countries they occupied as preparation for the imposition of a Communist dictatorship. This violence, authorities claimed, proved the need for a new order. 

The Nazi Brown Shirts wrought havoc in Weimar Germany that Hitler then insisted only his rule would end. While Brown Shirts battled with real Communists on the streets of German cities, our media have less credible street enemies. The best they can come up with is the mostly powerless, racially integrated Proud Boys, policemen who killed or wounded several black men with long criminal records, and President Trump’s indelicate phraseology. Apparently, these troublemakers, not the Democratic-friendly BLM and Antifa, were behind the mayhem and looting during the “Summer of Violence.”

~ Paul Gottried, "What an American One-Party System Would Really Look Like," American Greatness, October 25, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on the violent nature of the woke generation

Most woke snowflakes are not some gentle caring beings they pretend to be. This is only a mask. This kind of deception and pretense is pervasive among Leftists and has, in fact, been the Left’s modus operandi since the French Revolution. Underneath their posture of fragility, the snowflakes are ruthless hooligans who through various forms of activism and online thuggery have destroyed the reputations and lives of many good and innocent people. Cancel-happy, politically correct, intolerant in their attitudes and merciless when dealing with dissenters, today’s snowflakes are the scions of tyrants.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "Ideological Kin: The Progressive Left Hold The Same Values As Tyrants and Oppressors," LewRockwell.com, September 5, 2020

Harold Cameron on the killing of two protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin in self defense

He may not have known it, but Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t simply take on a few violent criminals with a cheap, ubiquitous rifle. He took on the entire system that enabled them. And — at least for one brief and inexplicable moment — he won. Rittenhouse may not a role model, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t an American hero.

~ Harold Cameron, "Kyle Rittenhouse May Not Be a Role Model, But Is He Still an American Hero?," Revolver News, August 28, 2020

Allan Stevo on taking an ax to the state

In Kozani, Greece on Thursday, July 16, 2020, a 45-year-old man walked into the government tax office on Aristotle Street with an ax and started swinging away at people working there.

The dramatic retelling of the story ends with the reporter saying “Authorities are still looking for any clear motives for the attack…”

Really?

Clear motives to want to do harm to thieves?

Clear motives to want to do harm to thieves who not only enslave you, threaten your home and steal from you, but also now use their ill gotten gains to lock you into your home, pump the airwaves with fear, refuse to let you visit the sick, divide families, close playgrounds, close beaches, make beloved childhood activities illegal, foment societal division, put the elderly in group homes to die neglected and alone, close stadiums, bring the recovered alcoholic back to the bottle, cancel lifesaving surgeries for those on the brink of death, push the depressive over the edge, stop therapy for those with cancer creeping through their body, make life so unnecessarily challenging for the marginalized who were just starting to get things together, deny families a funeral, close down the churches, and destroy the economizing human cooperation that we call our civilization?

And then if you don’t go along with their destructionism they say you are so dishonorable that you hate people and are anti-science.

Clear motives for the attack? Is that really a serious question?

The Greek man with the ax might be more sane than anyone I know. He’s one in a billion. The real question isn’t “What’s wrong with him?” The real question is “What’s wrong with the rest of us?”

~ Allan Stevo, "Authorities Are Still Looking for Any Clear Motives for the Attack," LewRockwell.com, July 18, 2020

45-Year Old Man Attacks Greek Tax Office Employees with Axe

Mao Zedong on the violence behind socialism

Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

~ Mao Zedong, 1938 speech

Herbert Marcuse on the "natural right" to violent resistance

I believe that there is a "natural right" of resistance for oppressed and overpowered minorities to use extralegal means if the legal ones have proved to be inadequate. Law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy; it is nonsensical to invoke the absolute authority of this law and this order against those who suffer from it and struggle against it--not for personal advantages and revenge, but for their share of humanity. There is no other judge over them than the constituted authorities, the police, and their own conscience. If they use violence, they do not start a new chain of violence but try to break an established one. Since they will be punished, they know the risk, and when they are willing to take it, no third person, and least of all the educator and intellectual, has the right to preach them abstention.

~ Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," 1965

Max Stirner on the difference between crime and the law

The State calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.

~ Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own [1845]

Victor Hugo on ideas and violence

No army can stop an idea who’s time has come.

~ Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables

Gandhi on the difference between the individual and the state

The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.

~ Mahatma Gandhi