o_195qg5dto17o4rbc85q1ge61i84a.pdf

crisis to support this thesis. For example, British anarchists argue that
the 1984–5 miners’ strike provided graphic illustration of the government’s
willingness to crush dissent by force. More recently, activists
have pointed to police actions at anti-globalization rallies to make the
case. Protests at the Genoa G8 summit in July 2001 made headlines
after the killing of Carlo Giuliani, a young protestor, and the beating
of journalists and protestors in a night-raid led by the Italian
Carabinieri. One anarchist gives this account of events:
The police entered: the media and the politicians were kept out. And
they beat people. They beat people who had been sleeping, who held
up their hands in a gesture of innocence and cried out, ‘Pacifisti!
Pacifisti!’
They beat the men and the women. They broke bones, smashed
teeth, shattered skulls. They left blood on the walls, on the windows,
a pool of it in every spot where people had been sleeping. When they
have finished their work, they brought in the ambulances …
This really happened. Not back in the nineteen thirties, but on the
night of July 21 and the morning of July 22, 2001. Not in some third
world country, but in Italy: prosperous, civilized, sunny Italy.
The conclusion drawn by this activist is
anarchist rejections of the state 47
That the police could carry out such a brutal act openly … means
that they do not expect to be held accountable for their actions.
Which means that they had support from higher up, from more
powerful politicians … 8
Noting that a number of leading anarchists – Bakunin,
Kropotkin and Tolstoy – were Russians, the American political scientist
Paul Douglas argued that anarchism was a response to autocracy
and that its ‘surest cure’ was ‘for the states to lead the good life’. 9
Yet the surprising conclusion drawn by some anarchists is that the
latent violence of constitutional government is worse than the overt
violence of dictatorial rule. In the constitutional state citizens enter
into a sort of Faustian pact, consenting to violence in return for civil
rights and welfare benefits. John Zerzan has recently put this case. As
taxpayers to government ‘we’re all implicated’ in the violence committed
in our name. Giving the lie to Douglas, Tolstoy offered a
similar view, contrasting the position of subjects and citizens:
A subject of the most despotic Government can be completely free
although he may be subjected to cruel violence on the part of the