Resistance

THE FOURTH OPTION

You see the police pull over a black man driving a silver Hyundai. The police explain to the man — let's call him Richard — that only moments ago, he went slightly past the white line at a stoplight before he stopped and took a right turn. (His blinkers were on.) The police demand that Richard step out of the car. He does so quietly and calmly. As he steps out, one officer immediately flips Richard around, bends his arm, and slams Richard against the Hyundai. He then flips Richard around again, and starts punching him in the face and kicking him in the groin. As Richard screams and puts his arms up to protect himself, the other officer joins in. Soon they have Richard prone on the ground, but continue to punch, hammer, and kick him, and smash his face against the ground. All the while — as Richard simply tries to hold his arms up to protect his face — they yell, "Stop resisting!" Even when Richard is completely subdued, lying prostrate with his hands behind his back, with two large officers pinning him down, one officer continues to punch him in the back of the skull.

For all you know, they are going to kill, maim, or severely injure him. He's done nothing to warrant that. A thought occurs to you: you're armed. You could intervene, perhaps saving Richard's life.

May you do so? This book defends a controversial answer: yes, in this case, the police are rightful targets of defensive violence. You would be justified in attacking the officers to save Richard.

EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY

In the real world, almost every day, the people who hold power in democratic societies — including presidents, bureaucrats, judges, police officers, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents, and even democratic voters — use their power in deeply unjust and irresponsible ways. Thus, one pressing question for political philosophy is what ordinary citizens are licensed to do in the face of injustice.

In the famous book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, political economist Albert Hirschman analyzed three major ways that a firm's customers or an organization's members might react to bad behavior on the part of the firm or organization. They might "exit," meaning that customers might stop buying their products or members of the organization (such as employees) might leave. They might exercise "voice," meaning that they might complain to people in the organization itself, such as people who hold power over the organization, or the public at large. Finally, they might be loyal — that is, they might have a tendency to stick with the firm or organization despite their flaws. Hirschman does not say that loyalty is always an alternative to voice or exit. Instead, loyal behavior can augment one's voice or threat of exit.

Many philosophers and laypeople seem to believe that when we react to political oppression and injustice, our options are limited to voice, exit, or loyalty. Some think that we have obligations to participate in politics, protest, engage in political campaigns, and push for social change through political channels. Others think that such actions are merely praiseworthy. Most think that we have the option of keeping quiet or emigrating to another country. In general, they tend to assume or conclude that when a government issues an unjust command, behaves unjustly, or passes an unjust law, we may only comply, complain, or quit. Usually, we should obey that law, or if we break the law in protest, we should be prepared to bear the consequences of doing so, including accepting punishment. They typically tend to agree that we may not fight back against government agents, especially agents of a democratic regime.

Consider the question of defensive assassination or defensive killing. Andrew Altman and Christopher Wellman say, "Surely, it would have been permissible for somebody to assassinate [Joseph] Stalin in the 1930s." But if so, is it not also permissible to take similar action against a government official if it is the only way to stop them from harming the innocent? If you may assassinate Adolf Hitler to stop him from invading Poland, are you also permitted to do the same to a president in order to stop him from invading the Philippines, or ordering the genocidal slaughter and forced relocation of an ethnic group? If you may kill a Gestapo agent to stop him from murdering innocent people, may you do the same to a police officer who uses excessive violence?

As I noted, philosophers and laypeople often assume or argue not. They assume or argue that in liberal democracies, only nonviolent resistance to state injustice is permissible. They assume that we must defer to democratic government agents, even when these agents act in deeply unjust, harmful, and destructive ways.

This view is puzzling. The prevailing view is that when it comes to government agents, defensive violence, deception, destruction, and subterfuge are governed by different moral principles from those that govern defensive violence and subterfuge in other contexts. This presupposes that it makes a difference to the permissibility of lying to, deceiving, sabotaging, or killing an aggressor in self-defense or the defense of others that the aggressor is wearing a uniform, holds an office, or was appointed by someone who was in turn elected by my neighbors. According to the prevailing view, my neighbors can eliminate my right of self-defense or the defense of others by granting someone an office. This is especially puzzling because almost everyone today recognizes that the law and justice are not the same thing; laws can be deeply unjust.

Instead of exit, voice, or loyalty, this book defends the fourth option: resistance. I'm using "resistance" to cover a wide range of behaviors. It includes passive behaviors such as noncompliance — that is, strategically breaking the law or ignoring the state's commands whenever you can get away with it. It also includes more active forms of resistance, such as blocking police cars, damaging or destroying government property, deceiving and lying to government agents, or combating government agents. My view is that such forms of resistance are often justified, even in response to injustice within modern democratic nation-states, most of which have relatively just governments overall.

GOVERNMENTS ARE MAGIC: THE SPECIAL IMMUNITY THESIS

The standard view, which almost everyone of every ideology seems to accept, is that government agents are surrounded by a kind of magic moral force field. They enjoy a special or privileged status when they commit unjust actions. The standard view holds both that government agents have a...