Oppressed minorities hold a natural right to extralegal resistance against established hierarchies.
Evidence
I believe that there is a `natural right’ of resistance for oppressed and overpowered minorities to use extralegal means if the legal ones have proved to be inadequate. Law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy; it is nonsensical to invoke the absolute authority of this law and this order against those who suffer from it and struggle against itnot for personal advantages and revenge, but for their share of humanity. There is no other judge over them than the constituted authorities, the police, and their own conscience. If they use violence, they do not start a new chain of violence but try to break an established one. Since they will be punished, they know the risk, and when they are willing to take it, no third person, and least of all the educator and intellectual, has the right to preach them abstention. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2592
Categorization
- DEFINE: Captures Marcuse’s explicit doctrine of a natural right to resistance — a foundational Frankfurt School position on law and order.
- XREF: connects to: Marcuse asserted a natural right of minorities to extralegal resistance — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2592; Oppressed people maintained a continuous, dignified resistance throughout history; The oppressed group’s apparent weakness becomes a revolutionary advantage against the enemy — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 14 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Oppressed people maintained a continuous, dignified resistance throughout history
#corroborates(0.83) - The oppressed group’s apparent weakness becomes a revolutionary advantage against the enemy
#expands(0.78) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 14 - Resistance of colonized peoples merits support regardless of its form.
#corroborates(0.76) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 361