The Liberal Is Always INNOCENT; He Has Nothing To Do With Anything; He Never Acts:

The Liberal is always INNOCENT; he has nothing to do with anything; he never acts:

“God forbid! I didn’t send for the Police! I didn’t intend any VIOLENCE! I just didn’t want an Unobjective Person in My Department. If he was jailed or shot by the Police, THAT’S NOT MY CONCERN; I’M COMPLETELY INNOCENT! I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT, and in any case, that merely shows what kind of person HE really was.”

The Liberal’s project is to exclude the radical from society, but he does not take responsibility for the project; he realizes his project in stages, but he is only responsible for the “innocent” first stage. OTHERS DO THE REST. The Liberal merely initiates the process, and is not responsible for what the others do.

The Reactionary hits the radical directly; the Liberal does not do his own hitting. The Liberal merely PROVOKES the radical until he responds to the provocation, and when he responds, THE COPS GET THE RADICAL. The Liberal maintains his good conscience: HE didn’t act--the radical acted; HE didn’t repress the radical--the cops did. THE LIBERAL IS ALWAYS INNOCENT; his only desire is peace and quiet.

The Reactionary throws out a radical and then has him arrested for Loitering or Conspiracy or outside Agitation if the radical returns to fight; the Reactionary “eggs on” and harasses until the radical is provoked to hit back, and then has him arrested for Assault and Battery; the Reactionary tries to exclude the radical from any sources of income in order to have him locked up as a thief. To the Reactionary, the radical is ALREADY A CRIMINAL WHEN HE EXPRESSES HIS THOUGHTS.

The Liberal knows just as well as the Reactionary that “The cops’ll get ‘im”; HE COUNTS ON THE COPS TO PROTECT HIS PEACE AND QUIET; but, as Rafferty repeatedly observed, THE LIBERAL DOESN’T WANT TO SEE THE COPS WHO PROTECT HIM.

The Liberal can be compared to the Medieval Church. The Church excommunicated a heretic, but did not itself put the heretic to death. The Civil Authority, the Secular Authority, took charge of the heretic’s body. The Church was innocent; the Civil Authorities and the Executioner were the ones responsible for physical extermination. The excommunicators of the Church maintained clean consciences.

Thus also the Liberal: All he does is to excommunicate the radical, to exclude him “spiritually”; the Civil Authorities do the rest. At every single step he applies systematic terror and violence, and at every single step he manages to maintain his clean conscience.

The Liberal ALREADY KNOWS that when his “Leftist Colleague” is an unemployed radical he will do something for which it will be legitimate to throw him in jail, but the Liberal doesn’t want to be aware that HIS PEACE AND QUIET ARE MAINTAINED THROUGH TERRORISM AND VIOLENCE. In other words, the Liberal’s weapons are the same as the reactionary’s; the only difference between them is that the Liberal doesn’t look, and has a good conscience. He’s “tolerant,” he “reads radical literature,” he’s the “only one who talks to radicals,” he’s MORAL in every single way; he goes out of his way to “help radicals”; he’ll do everything for radicals which will help him keep his good conscience WHILE HE CONTINUES TO RELY ON TERROR AND VIOLENCE.

Liberal professors and students whose situations can only be maintained through terror and violence, through systematic psychological and physical murder, advertise “Make Love Not War.” Liberal students who have ALREADY CHOSEN to help maintain the dominant project when their time comes, are busy “accumulating” large “stocks” of good conscience while they can, while their “new styles of life” do not yet conflict with their future “responsibilities.”

Liberals are not “moderate.” That’s their own self-image. They’re extremists, but unlike reactionaries, THEY’RE EXTREMISTS WITH GOOD CONSCIENCES. Their instruments are not “ideas”; their instruments are TERROR and VIOLENCE. But unlike lynchers, THE LIBERALS TURN THEIR EYES AWAY to maintain their innocence.

People are EXCLUDED; thousands of people are OUTSIDERS; yet the Liberals who forced them out are TOTALLY GUILTLESS, and have the illusion that they are the ones who are “sympathetic” to the Radical Students, the Emotionally What-Have-You Students, the Hippie Students. The Liberal who is the first to move WHENEVER SOMEONE CROSSES ONE OF HIS LINES at the same time “contributes generously” to “Left-wing organizations” and “is against the war in Vietnam.” He is a supporter of all GOOD THINGS; he is a GOOD PERSON; he’s the BEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. He is able to accept physical and psychological TERROR and VIOLENCE WITH A GOOD CONSCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN MORALS.

Kalamazoo, February 1969

I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence, Fredy Perlman