The complex relationship between violence and nonviolence in social movements.We are living in a time of uprisings that routinely involve physical confrontation—burning vehicles, barricades, vandalism, and scuffles between protesters and authorities. Yet the Left has struggled to incorporate rioting into theories of change, remaining stuck in recurring debates over violence and nonviolence. Civil resistance studies have popularized the term “strategic nonviolence,”...

Leftwing activism of recent decades exhibits an anarchist turn evident in quantitative indicators like mentions of anarchists in news reports and by activists adopting anarchist modes of organization, tactics, and social goals-whether or not they claim that label. The authors of this Element argue that the very crises that generated radical mobilizations since the turn of the millennium have both led activists to reject other strategies for social transformation and to see anarchist practi...