Is violence the answer?

On a wet April afternoon last year, myself and a couple of friends made our way to Victoria Park in London for the Love Music Hate Racism Carnival. Despite the soggy weather and rather poor musical line-up we cheered ourselves with beer and soggy burgers. On entering the park we were left in no doubt as to the political stance of the event as we were bombarded with flyers from amongst others TUC, Unite, SWP and Respect members (including rather bizarrely a former Big Brother contestant), imploring us to support the workers and bring down capitalism etc. Unsurprisingly the majority of the festival goers displayed their political apathy by dropping the flyers a few yards from where they were handed out. Possibly the most pleasing aspect of the afternoon was when Ken Livingston was roundly jeered taking to the stage, cynically using the platform to increase his 'yoof' vote in the upcoming mayoral election.

Overall I found the event rather underwhelming, and most of the crowd seemed to think so too. As the crowd became increasingly bored of their repetitive and annoyingly catchy tripe, the lead singer from Hard-Fi would periodically to try an energise hi audience by asking: 'Who here hates racism?'. The crowd would roar with approval and the singer, reassured at hearing applause again would start playing his ridiculous melodica. While this was happening i kept asking myself the question, do i really hate racism? I do not like it certainly, I find anyone with racist views pretty abhorrent and fail to understand how a first world education system can produce people with such clearly unfounded views, but hate? I thought the main danger posed by racists is that they spread hatred. They single out people different from themselves and say they should be hated. Here i was however in the middle of a park saying everybody in the world is great, except racists, because we hate them.

It might seem like a slight point but i was reminded of this during the recent protest again the BNP outside the BBC studios, where there was a lot of hatred aimed toward that particular group of uneducated miscreants. The politicians in the studio could not control their anger and neither could the violent protesters outside. The danger in the way the whole episode was conducted is that the BNP could have been perceived as victims and actually gain support. That's the problem when any protest spills into hateful violence, no matter how justified the protesters aims they will lose the sympathy of the majority.

When i was a child, students and adolescences did not seem to protest much, they were part of 'Generation X' who did not care about anything. Now there seems to be an increase in protesting, political and moral. In a way this is great and it is to my eternal shame i did not join a friend of mine who marched on London to protest the Iraq war. At the time I agreed with the cause millions of people around the world were fighting but i just could not be bothered to make the trip. Even though Blair and Bush swept to war regardless, I wish I could say I was the one of the ones who stood up and said 'this is wrong'.

The London G20 protest on the other hand seemed misdirected and fairly futile in comparison. Did any good come of smashing the front of the local branch of RBS in Bank? Were those responsible for the credit crunch held to account? No, but a man completely unconnected to the protests might still be alive if the police had not resorted to such heavy-handed measures to try and control the protesters violence. This is not to excuse the police's methods but by the protesters being violent they were giving the police an excuse to use violent measures.

I believe protest successes in the age of mass media come through peaceful means because the image of the attacked will always draw more sympathy then that of the attacker. In the age of Youtube and Twitter these images are shown round the world, as we have seen recently with Iranian oppression following their elections. Joining in a riot at the time can seem like fun, just like getting unintelligibly drunk, but if you were to see yourself through another person's eyes you would probably be pretty embarrassed and maybe even ashamed.

This is why I think the word 'hate' and slogans like 'Smash the BNP' are counterproductive. We want people passionate about current issues but not if they are just spoiling for a fight. This is an ideological battle not a physical one. So please oppose the BNP, expose the BNP but do not hate them. Leave the hating to the fascists.