Wrote this as a response to another user’s blog, but wanted to post it up here as well.
On nonviolence as the ONLY tool for social change:
This is a very deep debate, one I don’t want to go too deep into, except to say that it’s really not as simple as people who are new to activism often make it out to be.
Historically nonviolent movements that have not been paralleled by a militant movement with broadly similar goals have been remarkably unsuccessful, and they have quite often ended up having their members massacred. We learn about Ghandi and Dr. King in elementary school, but nobody mentions that Ghandi was completely ineffective until Indian Nationalists started a massive campaign of bombings, train derailings, and assassinations that financially crippled the British occupation of India. THAT is what made the British decide to go talk to the pacifists – as a way to negotiate without appearing to cave into the militants. Likewise, Dr. King and the pacifist wing of the civil rights movement were completely ineffective until Militants starting organizing Self-Defense societies that armed and trained people in the black community to stand up to the Klan. It wasn’t until black people started shooting back that the federal government decided to support the civil rights movement against the incumbent governments of the various southern states. And don’t assume that the Pacifists were necessarily opposed to violence as a tool for self defense – on the night of his assassination Dr. King had a bodyguard with a submachine gun posted outside his bedroom door.
Pacifism is a potentially useful tactic, nothing more. When people start treating it like gospel they put themselves in a very dangerous place. As a concrete example the fact that the German socialists decided to embrace pacifism and disband their militias instead of directly opposing the nazi brownshirts in the streets with force was a HUGE victory for Hitler and a major step in his rise to power. If the left had stood up and fought back the Nazi coup could have never come off, instead they abandoned their sensibility and opted for the “moral highground” – and 9 million holocaust victims + uncounted soldiers from dozens of nations had to pay with their lives for their pacifism. I would argue that their embrace of pacifism was nothing short of morally bankrupt.
We’re not at that point yet in the USA, but we’re edging closer all the time. What will you do if/when we get there?
