No Justice, No Peace : The Ethics of Violent Protests

In a groundbreaking analysis of violent protests in democracies, Avia Pasternak provides an in-depth philosophical examination of the ethics of uncivil resistance to state-sanctioned injustice. Drawing on sociological and normative analyses, Pasternak assesses the permissibility of violent protest, demonstrating its importance in achieving instrumental and expressive goals in contemporary society.

In the summer of 2020, angry citizens took to the streets of Minneapolis after a recording of the murder of George Floyd went viral. They set fire to a police station, destroyed cars and shops, and clashed with police. In the summer of 2023, violent disorder broke out across France after police killed a seventeen year-old boy. In 2011, protests spread from London across England after police murdered a young Black man during a police arrest. State authorities were quick to denounce such uprisings as callous lawlessness. Were they right? Are violent protestors unscrupulous criminals, or might their revolt be justified despite its lawlessness and the heavy costs it imposes? In No Justice, No Peace, Avia Pasternak highlights the political nature of such protests, offering an in-depth examination of these pressing questions. Violent protestors, she argues, disrupt the peace in order to achieve justice, and to express their defiance of an unjust political order. Pasternak shows that even in liberal democracies, resorting to violence on behalf of these important goals can be necessary and proportionate. Combining empirical analysis of political oppression in contemporary states with a normative assessment of ordinary citizens'' duty to resist oppression, Pasternak asserts that violence in protest against state injustice can be permissible, while also acknowledging its key limits.