Violence has no place in Politics?  Violence IS Politics.  Wars, Armies, Police, Revolutions, Riots, Assassinations, Torture, Terrorism, Prisons, Deportations, Embargoes, Sanctions...every nation-state in the world does or uses some or all of these techniques to further their political goals and agendas.  Often the actions are covert and the general population never evn know about them, much less has the ability to consent to their use. What they really mean is that the State has a monopoly on the use of violence and the individual or group opposed to the State can't retaliate in kind.

As those of us who observe the way the world REALLY works know, the violence is often the ECONOMIC kind, be it sanctions that prevent a country from purchasing energy to insurance companies that refuse to pay for life saving medicines or procedures, resulting in deaths measured in the hundreds or thousands.  As Gen. Smedley Butler wrote, his real job in the military was as an enforcer for Wall Street.



The Economic Hitmen of the IMF enslave entire countries making loans, fomenting revolutions and coup d'etats and piecemeal selling off a nation's wealth in privatization of the commons.  It's systematic large scale violence perpetrated every day in the global political landscape.

Individuals who retaliate in kind are hunted down and vilified, despite the fact their crimes are orders of magnitude less violent than the actions of the state and the corporatocracy that controls it.  Only when people grasp that they are being violently abused and defend themselves against it will they be able to break this monopoly on violence.

RE