Is political violence ever justified?
A debate over whether force against a political order can ever be legitimate, from revolution and resistance to tyranny, or whether nonviolence is both more principled and more effective.
Overview
Almost everyone accepts some violence is justified in self-defense or just war, so the sharp question is about political violence specifically: force used to change or resist a political order, outside ordinary law. History's revolutions and resistance movements make a blanket 'never' hard to sustain, while the carnage of political violence makes 'sometimes' dangerous to license.
Clear thinking separates several cases, armed resistance to genocidal tyranny, revolution against oppression, and violence within functioning democracies, since the justification that fits one may not fit another. The strongest disagreements concern that last category.
The strongest arguments on each side
The case for Sometimes
- Resistance to tyranny. Against regimes that foreclose peaceful change, like slavery or fascism, force may be the only remaining means to stop grave, ongoing injustice.
- Self-defense writ large. If individuals may use force to repel lethal aggression, communities facing systematic violence may do the same collectively.
- Historical precedent. Many celebrated liberations, from anti-colonial struggles to anti-Nazi resistance, involved violence now widely regarded as justified.
- Last resort within limits. Just-war criteria, just cause, proportionality, last resort, can constrain political violence rather than licensing it freely.
The case for Never
- Nonviolence is more effective. Research suggests nonviolent campaigns succeed more often and produce more durable, democratic outcomes than violent ones.
- Escalation and spirals. Violence invites retaliation, normalizes brutality, and empowers extremists, often worsening the injustice it targets.
- Erosion of democracy. Within systems that allow peaceful change, political violence substitutes force for persuasion and undermines the rule of law for everyone.
- Moral status of victims. Political violence almost always harms innocents, and the certainty of that harm outweighs speculative gains.
Key thinkers
- Frantz FanonArgued anti-colonial violence could be liberating.
- Hannah ArendtDistinguished power from violence in 'On Violence'.
- Erica ChenowethShowed nonviolent resistance often outperforms armed struggle.
- Gene SharpTheorized strategic nonviolent action.
Common fallacies to avoid
- Equivocation on 'violence'. Sliding between property damage, self-defense, and lethal attacks as if identical.
- Historical hindsight bias. Citing successful revolts while ignoring the far more numerous failed, ruinous ones.
- Ends-justify-means shortcut. Assuming a worthy goal automatically licenses any means to reach it.
A short history of the debate
Just-war theory, from Augustine and Aquinas to modern international law, long sought to constrain political violence. Enlightenment thinkers debated a right of revolution, reflected in the American and French revolutions.
The twentieth century juxtaposed violent and nonviolent paths to change, Gandhi and King versus armed liberation movements, and recent data-driven scholarship has reinvigorated the case that nonviolent resistance tends to be both more ethical and more successful.