Within months, more and more people openlysupported a diversity of tactics. Pacifists in the movement tried tocriminalize anarchists who assaulted politicians in the blockade of theCatalan parliament in June 2011, but when those anarchists wereidentified and arrested later that year, thousands of people came out toprotest in solidarity with them. By the time of the March 29, 2012general strike, people were fed up with nonviolence, and hundreds ofthousands participated in riots that rocked cities across the country.The labor unions, pressured by the government, took steps to preventriots in the subsequent general strikes, such as organizing their ownvolunteer peace police to help cops maintain order in the protests.Though many people did not go to work thatday, police controlled the streets, and people generally left with asense of defeat and powerlessness. The pacified strikes are universallyrecognized to be less significant than the earlier, combative strikes.The riotous general strike of March 29, 2012 created a palpable sense offreedom in the streets, with people smiling, playing amidst the fires,and laughing with strangers; and it sparked a whole new cycle ofactivity, with an energetic anticapitalist May Day protest and anotherround of general strikes in October and November. But those pacifiedstrikes, even though they achieved a similar level of participation interms of work stoppage, failed to inspire many people to throwthemselves into organizing after the smaller, radical unions announcedthey would join the major unions in establishing peace police andworking with the police to prevent riots; the mood in the streets wasmore often one of desperation, fear, or defeat; and the experience didnot inspire a new wave of activity in its aftermath, but months ofstagnation, directionlessness, and social peace. The government reactionalso shows how much less threatening they considered the peacefulstrikes. After the March strike, they were on the defensive, trying toplace blame and justify their loss of control, using the media tovillify the strikers and announcing new repressive measures (some ofwhich were repealed after generating heavy resistance). After therelatively peaceful November strike, the government was much more calmand composed. They did not have to deal with a challenge to their rule,nor reveal their antagonistic relationship with society in such clearterms.
Mark Kurlansky does not conduct any comparativeanalysis. He does not look into whether the Maori in Parihaka retainedmore of their lands than in regions of armed resistance. He does notinvestigate the possibility that what the peaceful Maori gained, ifanything, was the consequence of the authorities trying to stave offarmed resistance by rewarding peacefulness. Many times in history,governments have conceded minor victories to peaceful movements becausethey feared that not-peaceful movements would grow; these are,therefore, victories achieved througha diversity of tactics, because without the presence of the scaryradicals, the government would have no need to bargain with the harmlesspacifists.
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