The War Against Humanity
A war has been raging for decades. It is a war affecting or involving nearly anyone. As such, it could very well be the first real βworldβ war, not in the least because this war also decides the future of this world and everything that lives on it. There are relatively few βsoldiersβ fighting this war, however, and certainly on our side. Almost all of the violence β and certainly all of the structural violence β is inflicted upon us by the enemy. That enemy is waging a war against humanity. The enemy goes by many different names: the βsuper-richβ,...
If structural violence is so entrenched that personal violence is the only effective response, then personal violence is an appropriate response.
That (i.e., the title of this short piece) is really all I wanted to say, but probably, some explanation is in order. Letβs start with the notions of βstructuralβ and βpersonal violenceβ, which were introduced by Johan Galtung in 1969: Violence with a clear subject-object relation is manifest because it is visible as action. It corresponds to our ideas of what drama is, and it is personal because there are persons committing the violence. […] Violence without this relation is structural, built into structure. Thus, when one husband beats his wife there is a clear case of personal violence, but...