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Günther Anders: In the Struggle for Peace — Violence? — Yes Or No?
A necessary discussion
Translation of the article by Ernest London, published on Lundi.am.
Original in French is here.
Ernest London - Günther Anders: Violence, Yes or No
A Book Review
Our friends at the Fahrenheit Library sent us this presentation of the review of a book with Günther Anders entitled “Violence: yes or no. A Necessary Discussion” (1987) in which he acknowledges that, following the Chernobyl accident, and although seen as a pacifist, he came to “the conviction that nothing can be achieved with nonviolence”. “We are therefore in a “state of emergency”. All the books of law, even those of canon law, not only authorize violence but encourage it in a state of emergency.
Definitely, he considers that “it is not possible to achieve an effective resistance with kind methods, such as offering bouquets of forget-me-nots to police officers who will not be able to receive them because they have their guns in their hands. It is equally insufficient, no, it is absurd to announce a hunger strike against nuclear war. (…). These gestures are really just performance”. Very clearly, he considers it necessary to intimidate “those who exercise power and threaten…
