a lot of talk about violence is premised on the belief that we have a natural, inherent ability to recognise certain actions and events as violent (and thus, morally wrong) – and to some extent, this is true; but our understanding of violence is always socially constructed in part
to be specific, our understanding of violence, particularly in the West, is one heavily informed by capitalism and the ‘moral’ tenets that underpin capitalism (namely humanism and individualism, stemming from the Enlightenment tradition)
additionally, violence isn’t a single, all-encompassing concept – a concept of violence is dependent on concepts of what is considered harmful, who is considered a person, who is considered deserving or undeserving of violence, whose violence is considered justifiable or unjustifiable, and more (and, in the West, all of these concepts derive in part from the same philosophies I listed)
capitalism and hegemony are dependent on us conceiving of certain actions, events, and people as violent, and certain other actions, events, and people as not – in the former category goes nearly anything and anyone that threatens or hinders them, and in the latter category goes anything and anyone that allows them to persist – and then, making us believe that these associations are objectively true, natural, and inevitable, such that we won’t question their origins or ends
so, when U say things like “violence is not the answer!” and “we should never resort to violence”, note that not only your concept of violence but what U recognise as violence has been constructed in terms of capitalist and hegemonic ends – and this is how we arrive at “punching Nazis is morally wrong because violence is wrong!”, but being unable to recognise the extermination, disenfranchisement, persecution, theft, imprisonment, exploitation, and coercion that make yr life as a capitalist and hegemonic subject possible as violence – because these violations are made invisible, because U believe these violations are justifiable, because U believe that the people who are the subject of these violations are deserving of violence, and/or because U believe the people who are subject to these violations aren’t people at all
(in fact, in these same ways, capitalism and hegemony make it impossible to recognise the violence the state regularly inflicts on U as violence)
your beliefs and moral attitudes do not exist in isolation – they should all be subject to scrutiny, especially when they lead U to sympathise with Nazis
something that I’ve been meaning to add to this post is a clarification/elaboration:
the conceptualization of violence I’m describing here (i.e., for which direct, physical, legible violence with a clear [human/empathizable] target is the exemplar) conveniently marks the kinds of resistance and action that individuals/groups with little to no political power can partake in as violent and thus reprehensible (e.g., rioting/violent protest, punching a Nazi in the face), and makes invisible/non-violent/illegible the kinds of dehumanizing actions and processes the state enacts (e.g., ‘legislative/bureaucratic’ violence in which dehumanization becomes permissible/necessary through law; imperialism, where the people being victimized/exploited/exterminated are both ‘far away’ and not understood as fully human/’like us’)
