Submitted by Tequila_Wolf in Anarchism (edited )
I don’t know how many people who have engaged the question of indiscriminate attack that is the main contentious bit of eco-extremism, have also done it in another context, that of antiracist rebellion. I’ve never come across the comparison in eco-extremist work, but recently have engaged a few texts which talk about indiscriminate attack against white people in the US and I thought it would be interesting to say some things.
It’s not unheard of for white people to be attacked indiscriminately in riots erupting in response to perpetual police violence in the US.
The most notable example can be read about in Kristian Williams’ Our Enemies in Blue and also the recent American On Fire by Elizabeth Hinton.
Black people attacked white civilians during the rebellions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in later rebellions, including Los Angeles in 1992 and Cincinnati in 2001. But none of this violence approached the level seen in Miami in 1980, when harming white people was a primary objective from the start of the uprising. After the rebellion, the Ford Foundation produced a report titled “Miami, 1980: A Different Kind of Riot,” which called the indiscriminate attacks “unprecedented in this century.” The nation had not witnessed this kind of anti-white violence since Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831; as the historian Manning Marable wrote “shortly after the uprising, Miami’s violence was a “twentieth century slave revolt.”4 In all, two hundred fifty white people across Dade County sought medical attention due to the attacks, suffering injuries ranging from cuts and bruises to severe head trauma. All told, eight white civilians were killed. (Hinton)
This is especially interesting for me because of how some responded to this:
Among those injured in the riots was an elderly White man named Martin Weinstock. Weinstock was hit in the head with a piece of concrete and suffered a fractured skull. He was hospitalized for six days. Still, he told an interviewer:
They should only know that I agree with their anger.… If the people who threw the concrete were brought before me in handcuffs, I would insist that the handcuffs be removed, and I’d try to talk to them. I would say that I understand and that I’m on their side. I have no anger at all. But they’ll never solve their problems by sending people like me to the hospital. (Williams)
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that there are cases outside of eco-extremism that involve indiscriminate attack. I think it’s interesting to think about how we might feel differently about the two different kinds of indiscriminate attack and why.
Kinshavo wrote
I think they are different, maybe my argument is weak.
Indiscriminate attack in the racial context is somehow tied with extreme oppression, I like to use the example of how Palestinians in Gaza support the use of widespread violence despite of the harsh consequences. In other contexts, violence and propaganda by the deed are alienating in others of extreme lack of hope they are cherished.
Now, for eco-extremism the "oppression" is usually not experienced firsthand, it comes from a empathetic feeling towards something abstract as "Nature". There's a severe level of ideology involved, when racial revolts or anticolonial uprisings are drives by the general experience of oppression.