Stop Peacewashing
Recently, while cycling to my parents who live outside of the city, I was listening to a Dutch podcast called Verzetje1 about keeping up hope as an activist. I stopped multiple times along the way to write down some of my thoughts and issues I had with what they were saying, but there was one point where I had to step on the brake and check something. I felt cognitive dissonance between what I thought I knew and what I was hearing from a progressive and seemingly intellectually serious podcast. They claimed that the Suffragette movement was completely peaceful and only targeted property. But, as it turns out, this is demonstrably false. It maybe wasn't broadly supported, but some groups within the movement did target people, burning homes, planting bombs and planning assassinations.
A few weeks later the British courts upheld the proscription of Palestine Action2, stating that "It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes operating transparently in the open." To which George Monbiot, rightfully, exclaimed: "What???" and continued "Did the suffragettes plan their bombings, arson and assassination attempts – far more extreme than anything Palestine Action has contemplated – in open meetings in Parliament Square?"
Revisionism or ignorance?
How come, and why, are presumably very reasonable and serious people, like judges and podcasters, historically revisionist about past protest movements? Why do even progressives feel the need to distance themselves, not only from their contemporary allies, but also from their historical forebears? We see this phenomenon play out with all kinds of liberation, resistance and protest movements.
I want to propose here the concept of 'peacewashing', in analogy with 'greenwashing': laundering a reputation to appear more benign. In this case specifically, retroactively declaring a resistance or protest movement as ideally peaceful and undisruptive, in contrast with the historical facts.
The hope that these people have is obviously to appear reasonable and moderate in their demands. That they are part of a group that should be included in shaping society and in the sharing of power. But what actually happens is that they divide the movement and cut them of from their (radical) power base.
Historical movements and the modern peaceful-turn
Who in the US now dares to disparage the rebel revolutionaries that founded their dear republic? But let us not forget that it took armed insurrection and open war to get it, and only for the wealthy land (and slave) owners. Ghandi is universally lauded and a symbol of the Indian independence movement, but the decades long struggle against British colonialism goes conveniently unmentioned. These, and many other liberation and anti-colonial movements were, by necessity, violent.
Martin Luther King has his own US holiday these days, but we forget his own statements on the uselessness of the white liberals, his appreciation for his more radical compatriots like Malcolm X, or the centuries old violence that has been perpetrated against non-white folk.
Another pivotal moment, in European society this time, are the events of May '68. Many so-called soixante-huitards, who fought the police on the streets and joined factory occupations, became leading establishment figures in the decades after. It was a mark of prestige to be able to claim you were part of it, even if, ultimately, you were just studying for your exams at that time.
As Andreas Malm argued in his How to Blow Up a Pipeline, the environmentalist movement is actually an exception to the rule, being intimately entangled with the pacifist movement in its origins. He claims this is a mistake. But one that, apparently, has been accepted by our larger civil society as a truism for all forms of protest.
Let us not forget that many of the social, democratic and other political achievements we enjoy today, are the result of struggles. Struggle takes many forms, from non-violent protests, to strikes and clashes with police and state forces. Usually, these are retroactively sanctioned by society in some way or another. There is no shame in acknowledging our shared historical trajectory and no need to peacewash it either. On the contrary: it only makes current movements vulnerable to division.
What divides us makes us weak
By forgetting or ignoring historical facts about social movement, which peacewashing ultimately is, these movement open themselves up to division. It's a weakness easily exploited by the establishment forces: by only giving moderates a platform and demanding them to disavow the radical allies, the whole movement loses in power. It's a tried and tested tactic, that is helped by a lack of political consciousness, even within the allied political castes on the left(ish) flank that. As long as objective allies keep falling for the trap, they won't be getting substantial change done. I hope that by giving this tactic a name, we can more easily expose it.