Those that destroy property at protests do it because they recognize that the only language capitalism speaks is profit. Protest songs or banners mean nothing to the leaders of capitalism, only the price tag of suppressing protests and fixing the damage registers on their radar. Only when public resistance to their policies becomes so expense that it isn’t worth it do they change their deadly policies. That is what activists mean when they say capitalism values property more than people and that is why activists target property.
by this logic if you simply kept breaking windows even as a small group, the ruling class would eventually have to listen to you. they don’t care about broken windows, and if that were the cost of maintaining control it’d be a tiny price to pay. they only care that the working class dares to take action, to show power in any way. this is why even people who do nothing “wrong” are aggressively attacked by cops and courts
Oh don’t get me wrong, the oppression of non-violent protestors can be very intense, especially if their protests slightly inconvenience rich people or have actual revolutionary potential because they provide a real alternative to something previously provided by the state. Some non-violent acts such as the recent occupation of the Rotterdam harbor can also be incredibly expensive to power, but for such an action to be maintained (which the activists chose not to do) requires having an answer to the violence the state will put up.
I am also certainly not pretending that property destruction is a complete strategy for change, it’s not and there isn’t a single anarchist group who thinks that it is.
But it is shortsighted to count the cost (and thus the damage done to power) in violent resistance as a few broken windows. To maintain the illusion of control, the illusion that the state isn’t vastly outnumbered by it’s people and could be completely paralized by collective action, the state must treat every broken window as a threat to it’s authority. As a result it choses mass mobilizing its cops whenever a big international conference takes place, putting guards at every fancy store, hiring more PR people to cover the damage to their reputation. The threat of violence (which can only be maintained consistently if you occasionally make good on your threat) is probably what drives up costs the most.
Very simply put: if a company that murders millions has to guard every building they own against attacks that gets in the way of making a profit.
There are more reasons for destruction, such as the fact that in some cases it is the only thing that will bring media attention to a case that needs it and the fact that others will only join this form of protest if they see that it is actually possible. Quite a few people who are dealing with police brutality murdering their communities would like to start burning cop cars but see this act as a mythical impossibility. When activists show that it is possible, their numbers grow. When their numbers grow, more becomes possible.
QueerAnarchism 