I'm really not a fan of this structure of logic. I don't enjoy reading things that presume you're on the same page as the author without even attempting to ensure you're there. Throughout the introduction and first chapter, there are a lot of assumptions being made (e.g., that you only know one history of pacifism, that you only know one history of nonviolence within movements). It also requires that you share a vocabulary or understanding of vocabulary (and he chickens out of even attempting to define things because that would apparently be antithetical to the book).
And really, I should be in the desired audience for this kind of text, but it requires that I ignore a lot of my knowledge of how movements work in order to buy-in to what he's trying to say.
I'm also not a fan of neglecting things (e.g., the diversity of tactics) to then throw them in at the very end (of the first chapter), like that's been the point the whole time. It hasn't been. He has exclusively focused on uprisings and 'violent' responses to varying events. He's even been using the same whitewashed understanding of history as his background in a lot of cases, despite what sources he's reading state.
Despite including how leaders of varying movements (or people who saw themselves as leaders of those movements) sabotaged their followers and the related movements, regardless of whether or not they were purely focused on nonviolence or engaged in a diversity of tactics, he ignores the analysis that can come from it repeatedly. It's weird that he'll say it, but then he sidesteps it to focus again on utilising violent tactics.
He rarely stops to consider the way that nonviolent actions have been part and parcel of all movements, like mutual care, mutual support, and all the carework going on behind the scenes. Even when he mentions that there's support behind the scenes, he immediately walks away from it.
There's also this weird bit where a good chunk is "summarised" (his words) from Ward Churchill's essay. The whole first chapter feels exactly like a rehashing of Churchill's essay, which I think was done better (even though I still don't really like it and have a lot of questions). He elaborates... somewhat on things, but that seems to be one of the things he focuses on. It's also weird that, when discussing the Holocaust, he almost exclusively references (or probably "summarises") one book by Yehuda Bauer (who is a Zionist historian). I would expect him to actually engage with a wider range in order to fully contextualise Bauer, since even the books of his that I could find made me go check in on his history around Zionism and perspectives on Gaza (which weren't... good). It's like he read this one book and refused to engage beyond it.
I also have been reading both the original version and the 2018 re-release side-by-side. I don't understand the re-release for so many reasons. In terms of aesthetics and clarity, I don't understand why he reorganised the entire first chapter because the flow was better in the original between the topics. I don't understand why he smashed multiple paragraphs into one, and I don't get why he just rephrased sentences to start them with "and" or "but" when they were fine before. It's weird that he doesn't even try to update some information (such as how there is a part that confidently states that a cell linked to al-Qaeda was responsible for the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, which even the Spanish courts have said has no evidence since 2007; this is something that, since he was obviously updating the text, he could've added as either a parenthetical or a footnote at the very least). There are instances of changing spellings of names that I don't understand, with a very amusing one being a negative footnote about Colman McCarthy where he spells his name wrong (despite spelling it right in the original).
I'll finish it (one day), but I don't like it thus far. I don't see why it continues to be referred, if I'm honest; it decontextualises a lot, it misrepresents a lot, and it so far doesn't engage at all with the behind the scenes work that would be seen as people "engaging in nonviolence."
