Pynchon knew this in the sixties, if not before, I say....V knows it....

[Corbeau Castrum]

To be clear, on the question of political violence, I was not attempting to virtue signal or position myself as holier than thou. You (Mark) linked a right wing guy (David Frum) shitting on the "Far Left" specifically in regard to an action that was primarily property destruction targeting a factory participating in what a lot of people are calling a genocide. In my response, what I wanted to do was draw out the greater context from what you linked and suggest that we shouldn't be so quick to blanket denounce actions that fall under the category of "political violence", on account of how complex that context always is and on account of the ideological ways those actions are described by powerful and influential people.
I was not trying to disagree with your ultimate idea (violence = bad, if I understand you correctly). I was more trying to get at the fact that there are better quips about the dangers of political violence from far better people than David Frum. I'm sure, for example, that MLK would have had some things to say about Mandela's tactics—and in a way, MLK's strategic devotion to nonviolence functions as a kind of critique of Mandela (or Malcolm X, for that matter).

On Sunday, June 14th, 2026 at 14:21, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Violence is defined under international law with always differnces at the margins...
>
> I luv,simply LOVE, how quoting the pine tree on a non-violent "revolutionary"act makes your point, you think, and not mine....LOLOL
> The world and everyone in it is/are hilarious, as Pynchon knows...
>
> All of your political positioning and arguing here about the recent or current real world is irrelevant to my simple , yeah,simplistic, remarks, which you and everyone
> can disagree with but I am using to make my argument like Tracy uses what he can tomake his...
>
> I don;t have time for more than succinct....
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2026 at 8:07 AM Corbeau Castrum <filsducorbeau at pm.me> wrote:
>
>> Let us be precise here: the "political violence" to which David Frum is referring were the actions of activists from Palestine Action to sabotage an Israeli military contractor's factory (Elbit Systems) in the UK, whose weapons have been used to commit genocide, as leading human rights organizations throughout the world (and in Israel) have observed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanitarian_and_human_rights_groups_accusing_Israel_of_genocide_in_Gaza?useskin=vector). Let us not forget either that David Frum is a leading neoconservative voice and George W Bush's former speechwriter who coined the term "axis of evil." Or that Frum was responding on Twitter to British Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who was (rightly) criticizing the fact that such sabotage was characterized by the UK government as "terorrism." The only direct violence against a human was experienced by Sgt Kate Evans, who was hit with a sledgehammer which fractured her spine and couldn't work for three months. This last aspect of PA's direct action is certainly worthy of criticism, whether on ethical or strategic grounds.
>>
>> (For more information: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/12/palestine-action-activists-sentenced-terrorists-damage-elbit-systems-uk-israel)
>>
>> Pynchon in GR: "A medium-size pine nearby nods its top and suggests, 'Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn’t being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That’s what you can do'" (562).
>>
>> The problem with these kind of throwaway denunciations of the Far Left's "political violence" is that it totally presumes, without ever specifying, what exactly constitutes said "political violence" (or what constitutes the "Far Left", for that matter).
>>
>> Mark Rudd observes in The Weather Underground documentary, "We felt that more and more people would be attracted to the revolutionary violence of the Weather Underground and of the other groups. What I began to discover is that Americans are taught, again and again from a very early age, that the only violence—that all violence which is not sanctioned by the government is either criminal or mentally ill, and so our violence was categorized as that, as criminal and mentally ill."
>>
>> Perhaps we Americans need to unlearn some of these internalized ideological assumptions. After all, property damage and direct actions served Nelson Mandela and his comrades in their fight against South Africa's apartheid regime, as Andreas Malm observes in How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
>>
>> On Sunday, June 14th, 2026 at 12:12, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> <https://x.com/davidfrum>
>>> David Frum
>>> <https://x.com/davidfrum>
>>> @davidfrum
>>> <https://x.com/davidfrum>
>>> ·
>>> 20h <https://x.com/davidfrum/status/2065791865425723581>
>>> You'd think by this late date in history the Far Left would have figured
>>> out that opening the door to political violence is not a contest they will
>>> win.
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>