"The new undeniable glorification of violence by the
student movement has a curious peculiarity. While the rhetoric of the new
militants is clearly inspired by Fanon, their theoretical arguments contain
usually nothing but a hodgepodge of all kinds of Marxist leftovers."
Arendt, 19-20
The quote is from the book On Violence by Hannah Arendt. We are reading it as a part of one of my Global Studies courses, and I'm finding it very interesting. A quick thought I have here.
The preceding quote seems especially true
today; we have so many student "activist" and "social
justice" movements that are springing up every year - Occupy Wall Street,
Black Lives Matter, even Whose Diversity here on campus. They all claim to be
fighting injustices, usually those perpetuated at the hands of the authorities,
and vow to bring attention to the issue. With Occupy Wall Street, the most
common videos circulated were those of tense and often-violent confrontations
with the police, and where almost always a couple of students were dragged away
by heavily armed police in riot gear; some felt they got what they deserved (as
they were often breaking the law), while some others felt the police response
was too heavy-handed.
With Black Lives
Matter, the issue of police killings was so big this year that we still are
feeling the effects. Massive protests, Twitter hashtags and trends,
"die-ins", and many more ways of protesting were utilized, but when
BLM was most in the media was when there were riots - namely, Ferguson. When
the protests are peaceful and relatively uneventful, we all shake our
collective heads at the movement and move on. Disrupting the state fair, light
rail service, and a marathon are really inconvenient and piss a lot of people
off, but the lack of violence doesn’t draw the attention, and people quickly
lose interest.
Lastly, here on
campus, Whose Diversity pulled their little stunt in Kaler's office, causing a
ruckus among student and local opinion. But post that - who has heard from
them? Their Facebook page hasn't even been updated for months! They pretty much had two months of publicity, a few "events", and then they dissipated. Without the
videos circulating on Facebook and Twitter of tense situations with the
authorities, not everyone really bothers to watch, and those that do usually
already have their mind made up about the issue. Our lack of sensitivity to
violence in everyday life has truly made us addicted to the point where
ever-increasing acts of violence are being perpetuated, each one seemingly more
violent than the last, to feed our crippling addiction to violence.
Regardless on how you feel on the issues, it should be a little concerning that one has to shoot someone (or many), issue terroristic threats, or unnecessarily act like an ass in front of authorities to get us, the moderate middle, to pay attention. No matter how asinine their cause (I'm looking at you, Occupy Wallstreet), everyone should be able to have their voice/platform heard. Then, after we've all heard it, we can either collectively ignore them into oblivion, or, if we find it worthy, elevate their cause to a new level and actually work for productive, peaceful, meaningful change.
