“Don’t ask me to be nonviolent unless you have demanded the same from my oppressor”: Armed Resistance and the Right to Self-defence

Abstract

In this paper, I raise the question of whether forms of armed resistance to oppression have legal legitimacy and are part of a historical tradition. Focusing on African-Americans’ resistance to oppression from the late 1950s to the early 1970s and Palestinians’ resistance in the Gaza Strip during the Israeli attack in the summer of 2014, I argue that armed struggle should indeed be considered a legitimate expression of resistance whose goal is to counteract the violence of the oppressor, a violence that is seldom questioned in mainstream discourse. In particular, I question why the resistance of the oppressed is only accepted as valid when it is manifested nonviolently. I question “who” is permitted to use violence, in what contexts and spaces, and to protect whose interests. I argue that, despite the rhetoric around the equality of all human beings, some individuals continue to be assessed as possessing more rights than others based on race. White violence is seldom questioned, while the racialized “other” is considered potential threat whose cause can only be embraced when appealing to principles of nonviolence.