State Violence Is The Norm

Rewilding is the solution

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about centralisation as a violent force. In short: state violence. It’s hard not to think about at the moment, given Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, backed by America’s imperialist agenda who, along with their British allies, have been dropping bombs on Yemen because the Houthis dared destabilise shipping in the red sea as protest against genocide. It’s hard not to think about state violence when one state is taken to international court by another who knows first hand the bloody scars of apartheid only for that genocidal state to decry the court as discriminating against them—only to launch a series of attacks on neighbouring countries. It’s hard not to think about state violence when one of those countries responds in violence. 

It’s hard not to think about state violence when environmental defenders are being killed, locked up and branded ‘terrorists’ in an obvious move to mobilise intensifying criminalisation of civil protest. It’s hard not to think about state violence when children are going hungry in wealthy nations, energy companies are raking in mind-boggling, record-breaking profits at the expense of a stable society, and police are murdering women. 

These are particularly awful examples, but state violence is the norm. In his phenomenal essay on legal interpretation, Violence and the Word, Robert Cover astutely pointed out the law’s fundamental violence as “commitments that place bodies on the line.” The state only upholds its alleged order with a willingness to commit violence against its civilians—to lock them up. Of course, all this is done in the name of protecting citizens, supposedly (although a cursory exploration of past legal cases shows the courts’ main priority has long been the protection of private property). This logical fallacy reminds of when European bankers, in a patronising tone, told me we had to increase fossil fuel production in order to finance the green transition. When I challenged them they merely repeated it, as if I was the person failing to grasp something fundamental. 

Using violence to create peace is nonsense. That’s why the environmental movement practises nonviolence, a political strategy which involves walking, chanting, singing, dancing, and occasionally breaking a window. Most importantly, protestors let the police arrest them, revealing a willingness for accountability and, to my eyes, a willingness on the state’s part to commit violence against them. It’s a noble strategy, and one I applaud. However, nonviolence has its limits in a violent world. The question I ask myself and my collaborators is this: When are we going to engage in self-defence?

Understanding violence as the driving force of centralisation helps me understand the Goliath we’re up against, and why I think I have every right to face him with a sling. Simone Weil in The Need For Roots explained how the creation of France was nothing less than a violent uprooting of decentralised communities who had a relationship with the land, their own cultures and their own languages, all of which were wiped out as they were dragged under the banner of the French king. Most people do not take well to rule, especially by some distant, foreign commander. Most resist. To create a central state, communities had to be defeated. 

We see this same force with industry: more land given to less people for industrial agriculture; more subsidies given to less organisations for energy extraction; more contracts given to a tiny subset of peers to do whatever they like and rake in the profits. When you rip people away from the land, the forest is no longer a home to protect but a product to exploit, especially if you, the state, don’t give them enough services upon which they can survive. Private property is a terrible thing: so many people would have gained so much more from the land than the state could have ever provided, but they couldn’t make it past the soldiers and over the fence.

Religious crusades, globalisation, debt, currencies: all forms of centralised nation-building and economic growth that are violent by nature, severing a people’s relationship from their land, rituals, language, culture, autonomy. The only way to combat it is also the only way to create a sustainable global culture: decentralise, regroup, rebuild, rewild together. We need to build relationships with one another. We need anti-violence.

I see this anti-violence as a form of self-defence, just as I see a sling as a form of self-defence. We have been linguistically colonised as much as we have been physically colonised, and part of our exit strategy should be a rewilding of the linguistic commons. Do not let the violent state dictate the words we use for peace, violence, love and sabotage. Do not let the violent state redefine its violence as maintaining order. Do not let the energy companies redefine their violence as providing security. Do not let the think tanks redefine their violence as economic policy. Do not let the World Bank redefine its violence as development. Do not let Silicon Valley redefine its violence as progress. 

We need to define our own self-defence. We relied on state definition, trusting in the continuity of our institutions only for them to begin stripping us—violently—of historical precedent. 

They are dragging us into a war we cannot win if we fight on their terms. Let us return to the wild. 

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