Why Does Resistance Choose To Be Violent?

IV. Why does the Resistance Choose to be Violent?

The reason why the resistance tend to use violence as a method of protest is fairly straightforward. It is simply because violent protests and activists normally catch more attention by the mainstream media, which generates more mediation opportunity to the resistance. Political violence from a mediation perspective is an extreme speech act anxiously seeking for visibility (Cammaerts, 2012: 123). It is arguably to be said that mainstream media endorse the liberal and capitalist values and will typically condemn political violence in a democracy (Cammaerts, 2012: 122). Whenever a violent protest occurs, the mainstream media tends to capture the violence and crucify as an act of anti-liberal,
From another aspect, the resistance also tends to facilitate violent behavior when the level of political opportunity declines. Another trigger to violence is when protests experience violent interactions in the streets, such as police kettling (Della Porta, 2009: 10). We refer the escalating level of political violence as a process of radicalization. Many researchers conceptualize radicalization as a process characterized by increasing commitment to and use of violent means and strategies in political conflicts (Della Porta & LaFree, 2012: 6). However it is important to notice that radicalization refers to both behavior and attitudes. These two dimensions – action (behavior) and attitude (aims and perceptions) – of radicalization are closely linked. However it should not be understood necessarily depending on or even corresponding to each other because radical attitudes do not always precede or lead to violent acts (Della Porta & LaFree, 2012: 7). It seems to be, whether it is the resistances’ initial intention to be violent or not, facilitating violence may seem to be quite a necessity organizing a resistance. We will now discuss some empirical cases of political violence that had occurred, to critically examine whether it is valid to say violence is somewhat an inevitable measure for the protests to be successful. By means of successful, it will be referring to whether
A publication statistics were drawn from 4 mainstream newspapers from the UK – the Times, the Sunday Times, the Guardian and the Irish Times. The stories were identified as relevant if they contained any of these words in relation to the World Trade Towers: “Crash”, “WTC”, “World Trade Center”, “tragedy”, “terrorist”, “terror”, “September 11”, “New York”, “Osama Bin Laden” and “attack” (Marron, 2007: 42).

The search produced a total of 93 stories. Of these 93, 28 came from the Times / Sunday Times, 52 came from the Guardian and 13 came from the Irish Times. The most intense day for coverage in the Guardian was September 12th, with 44 of the 52 stories. The Times covered 5 stories on September 12th. The Times and the Sunday Times coverage was the most intense on the date of September 15th with in total of 11 stories. The Irish Times carried five related stories on September 12th and four on September 15th (Marron, 2007: 42).

In Britain, as in the United States, media coverage was dominated by journalists’ genuine feeling of horror and outrage (McNair, 2007: 35). And through these media exposure set an agenda to the general public to be more aware of the fear of violence, radical resistance and