They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us: Forcing Nonviolence on Forgetful Movements

How can we resist oppression in the face of ecological crisis, police violence, and white supremacy? Peter Gelderloos puts forward a radical critique of nonviolent movements in this provocative account. Weaving history, vignettes, interviews, and personal reflections, he shows how we suffer from an inability to pass on lessons from one generation to the next and explores why.

Learning from the failure of antiracist rebellions triggered by police murders from Minneapolis to Bristol and the climate campaigns that forget their colonial histories, Gelderloos shows how nonviolent protest is a symptom of social amnesia, an inability to remember what we have learned from our past. Cautioning against future waves of pacification and forgetting, he urges us to collectivize memory and develop the methods we need to fight for survival.

Peter Gelderloos is a writer and social movement participant. He is the author of The Solutions are Already Here, How Nonviolence Protects the State, Anarchy Works, The Failure of Nonviolence, and Worshiping Power.