On Protests, On Violence and on Hannah Arendt

05-16-2024

Two Arendtian scholars at Indiana Universirity in Bloomington have turned to Hannah Arendt to make sense of an incredibly tense situation on the University of Indiana Campus. In recent weeks, police have twice cleared encampments in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. Elite police forces were arrayed around the students with assault weapons loaded with live ammunition. While there has been no violence, there have been moments at which a misplaced fist or a sweaty trigger finger could have led to a disaster. 

In the midst of such a standoff, Jeff Isaac, a Professor of Political science, published an Open Letter to the students in Dissent Magazine, the journal that once published Hannah Arendt’s “Reflections on Little Rock.” Isaac sought to speak to the protesters as comrades in a common struggle, but also to explain to them why he was not joining the protests and why he was made uncomfortable by some of their actions and their rhetoric. Isaac spoke about how some of the slogans used could be seen as aggressive and non-inclusive for both Jewish students as well as non-Jewish students who don’t fully embrace the use of revolutionary violence to establish a Palestinian state where Israel now exists. For Isaac,

“Outrage-generating slogans are effective. But often they mobilize some people by framing others as beyond the pale and make it more difficult to imagine real solutions to the problems at hand. Israel is a problem, but it is not going away and it cannot be eradicated in a way that is consistent with human rights or any real justice.” 

A second moment of discomfort came when Isaac’s friend and colleague Michael Weinman (also a friend and colleague of mine) got up to address the protesters. Weinman was cheered when he spoke of his support for free speech. But after Weinman bravely said,  “I am speaking here as an American citizen and as a citizen of the state of Israel,” the crowd grew silent. Weinman asked the students to listen to him and asked for a favor: ”For the next few minutes, if you bear with me—I see the signs about ‘liberation,’ I see the Palestinian flags . . . just as long as I speak, I’d appreciate it if you’d put the signs down. Then you can lift them again.” This led to boos. As Weinman sought to continue and articulate what a coalition that included people like him might look like, his speech was met with boos and and chants of “Free Palestine.”  Isaac writes of the protesters actions: 

It was foolish because [Weinman] was making an important argument about the difference between activism and coalition-building, and linking it to an important distinction (made long ago by the philosopher Hannah Arendt) between violence and power. Distinctions matter in politics. Violence, he tried to explain, instrumentalizes politics and treats others as means to a defined end. It is monological. Power recognizes the plurality of opinion that exists within every serious movement, and works to sustain dialogue. Citizens building power together listen to each other.

Michael was trying to perform dialogue with you, to listen but also to share, and he continued this effort, affably, even in the face of the jeers and the chants.

But he was present, by his own choosing and at real professional risk, to articulate his experience and his perspective, as a fellow citizen and a free human being. He opposes the Israeli war and the Israeli policies behind it, and he supports a peace process based on real justice. He does not think that justice can be achieved, anywhere, “by any means necessary,” considering certain violent means to be both immoral and practically inconsistent with real justice—because they threaten potential allies and they poison the hearts and minds of their perpetrators.

Most importantly, he supports your right to protest, and even to publicly say the things with which he strongly disagrees. And he further insists—with a moral credibility and potential influence that only a Jewish American can insist—that whatever his opinions, you are not preaching hatred of Jews or genocide of Jews and it is wrong to denounce you as “antisemites” who are motivated by hate.

This perspective, grounded in an experience very different from your own, is indispensable right now, precisely because it is a perspective shared by others with whom you are aligned and, honestly, whose support you need.

Weinman himself published the speech he gave at the encampment in Indiana. Weinman writes that Hannah Arendt distinguishes power and violence. For Arendt, 

“Power springs up whenever people get together and act in concert, but it derives its legitimacy from the initial getting together rather than from any action that then may follow. Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future.” 

This means power is not the tool of those who rule, used to repress or cow those who are ruled; rather, it is that which makes action and freedom possible. When we use “power” in this erroneous way, we mistake violence and power for synonyms. This is important because while power is always justified but needs legitimacy, “violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.” Power and violence are entwined in this chiasmic way: the one (power) needs legitimacy but is always justified; the other (violence) will never be legitimate, but can be justified. 

In On Violence (Originally published in 1969 in the New York Review of Books as Reflections on Violence), Arendt writes that “The common treatment of these two words [power and violence] as synonyms is no less misleading and confusing than the current equation of obedience and support.”  She helps us to understand that while rule can be based on violence, no legitimate and democratic politics can be based in violence. To the extent a university employs violence to clear the protesters, they may be justified in doing so, but they will lose their legitimacy. And when protesters enlist their power to violate the rights and safety of others through intimidation and actual violence, they too sacrifice their legitimacy. 

In On Violence and also in other writings from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Arendt reflects on the student protests against racism, the Jim Crow Laws, and the Vietnam War. While she decried violence by University administrators, she also argued against violence when it emerged in the protests. For Arendt, the protests were to be celebrated as manifestations of power, where collective action emerges and engages in political speech and action. But the protests were, at times, violent, and here they sacrificed their source of power to the aim of winning at all costs. This can happen too easily if and when the protesters, caught up in their own power and enthusiasm, come to think that everyone agrees with them. Instead of reaching out and trying to persuade others to their cause, the protesters got a bit drunk on their power and assumed that even though they were a small but active minority, they really represented the view of the majority. It is then that the protests begin intimidating others and making demands that are not yet legitimated by their power. 

Arendt’s discussion of the student protests of the 1960s are a helpful guide to thinking about the current protests as well. Despite what seems like non-stop media coverage of these protests, they represent a tiny fraction of the college-aged population, well under 1% of college students. That is why it is imperative that the protesters, if they want to build on their power and legitimacy, must moderate their tone and their rhetoric. As Weinman writes,

Arendt’s argument here is not just distinctive, it is also profoundly relevant. When Arendt writes: “Power springs up whenever people get together and act in concert, but it derives its legitimacy from the initial getting together rather than from any action that then may follow,” she is sharing a message to us today. Justification aside, whatever legitimacy the “people power” the demonstrations will have is contingent on whether or not the wider university and American community recognize themselves in the initial “getting together” of the protestors (sic) on these campuses.  On the other side of the ledger, and as Arendt also argued, the violence that has been rained on my students and colleagues, and our sacred public spaces (in particular the iconic Dunn Meadow at Indiana University), “can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.” The illegitimacy of the violence perpetrated by the Indiana State Police at the University, at the invitation of the University Administration is baldly obvious. The claims for justification made on behalf of the violence are, in my eyes, absurd, but Arendt argues, this will ultimately be decided by the judgment of community members and fellow citizens. …

In 1968-69, as far as Arendt could see, the demonstrators went wrong precisely when they embraced the use of violence to achieve what appeared to them to be ends that justified the violence. 

Today, looking back at this text that I often teach to increasingly unsympathetic student audiences, and I wonder: how can we stay together today in support of power and against violence, without shouting each other deaf about our ideological differences about policy questions?