smash-pacifism-zine

In the same article, he later states:
“The liberal is so preoccupied with stopping
confrontation that he usually finds himself defending and
calling for law and order, the law and order of the
oppressor. Confrontation would disrupt the smooth
functioning of the society and so the politics of the liberal
leads him into a position where he finds
himself politically aligned with the oppressor
rather than with the oppressed.
“The reason the liberal seeks to stop
confrontation... is that his role, regardless of
what he says, is really to maintain the status
quo, rather than to change it. He enjoys
economic stability from the status quo and if
he fights for change he is risking his
economic stability...”
(Stokely Speaks, 170)
State Co-optation of
the Civil Rights
Movement
“Nonviolent direct action did not threaten the
interests of the corporate class in the same way it threatened
those of the Kennedy administration. To be sure, the spectre
of a demonstration in front of one's factory or a boycott of
one's store might be enough to prompt a given business to
yield to protester's demands. But in the North, direct action
was not enough to force large concessions or to prompt
corporate powerholders on a national level to become either
official or unofficial sponsors of change. Riots, however,
were another matter. If the cities burned, as McGeorge
Bundy of the Ford Foundation noted in an address to the
National Urban League convention in 1966, 'the white
man's companies will have to take the losses.' Urban
violence and the black power ideologies which seemed to
fuel it hit American business leaders in
a spot where nonviolent direct action
had not: their collective economic
interests. Consequently, an
unprecedented collective response
emerged from the top of the economic
structure during the late 1960s. The
largest corporations and charitable
foundations in the US began to 'invest'
in racial reform and civil rights.”
(Black Radicals and the Civil
Rights Mainstream, p. 179)
“Did the black rioting in
Birmingham—trivial by the standard
of Watts and Detroit [the following
years], but serious in the context of the
early 1960s—weaken the effectiveness of SCLC's
campaign Given the administrations deep fear of domestic
violence and disorder, it may well have actually helped.
The Birmingham riots raised the spectre of black
retaliation, of a violent black revolt... This prospect
frightened and appalled the Kennedy's. Robert, in
particular, feared that
nonviolent protest might
give way to the violent
tactics of irresponsible
extremists. As he told a
group of Alabama
newspaper editors on
May 15, 'Remember, it
was King who went
around the pool halls and
door to door collecting
knives, telling people to
go home and to stay off
the streets and to be
nonviolent... If King
loses, worse leaders are
going to take his place.
“That was precisely the argument which King
made so forcefully in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” If
whites remained obdurate to the reasonable demands of
nonviolent leaders, he warned, 'millions of Negroes will...
seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideology...'”
(To Redeem the Soul of America, p. 136)
King shares a laugh with President John F.
Kennedy, 1963.
The quotes above show the symbiotic relationship
between reformists and the state: the reformists need the
state to enact and enforce reforms in order to remain
credible, the state needs the reformists to counter the
radicals, and in this way maintain its credibility as a
democratic institution.
As noted, the US government actively supported
and promoted the nonviolent civil rights movement. And it
did so because it feared a more dangerous alternative:
militant Black resistance and escalating social conflict, not
only in the segregated South
but across the country.
This strategy is known as
co-optation, and is
accomplished through
official state support
provided to reformist
movements or leaders. This
includes high profile
meetings with movement
leaders, public statements
promoting them, extensive
media coverage, providing
King and other civil rights leaders meet with
President Lyndon Johnson, 1964.
funding and other resources,
and limiting repression
against them. Ultimately, co-
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