Peter Gelderloos | |
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Born | Peter Alan Gelderloos 1981or1982(age 42–43) |
Notable work | How Nonviolence Protects the State (2005) Anarchy Works (2010) Worshipping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation (2017) |
Movement | Anarchism |
Website | Peter Gelderloos on Twitter |
Peter Gelderloos (born 1981or1982 [1] ) is an American anarchist activist and writer.
Gelderloos first became involved in political issues as a high school student, and described the Seattle WTO protests in November 1999 as helping influence his political development. [2]
In November 2001, [1] Gelderloos was arrested with 30 others for trespass in protest of the American military training facility School of the Americas, which trains Latin American military and police. [3] He represented himself in court [4] and was sentenced to six months in prison. [5] [6] Gelderloos previously organized a student rally against the Iraq War [7] and was a member of a copwatch program in Harrisonburg. [8]
In April 2007, Gelderloos was arrested in Spain and charged with disorderly conduct and illegal demonstration during a squatters' protest. He faced up to six years in prison. [5] According to Gelderloos, he was arrested as a bystander after someone had set off a firework designed to scatter fliers through the air. [2] He claimed that he was unfairly targeted for his political beliefs. He was acquitted in 2009. [9]
He is known for his 2005 book, How Nonviolence Protects the State, which has been cited in works discussing and analyzing forms of violent and nonviolent resistance. [9] [10] [11] He has written for the publications In These Times and ROAR Magazine . [12] [13] In a review of his 2017 work Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation, William Gillis described him as "an anarchist committed to making anarchist theory accessible" and "within our movement [...] probably the least controversial anarchist writer alive". [14]
In 2024, he co-produced It’s Revolution or Death, a documentary series focused on the global climate crisis, in collaboration with media collective subMedia.Tv. [15]