Confronting the Powers that Be: Practical Nonviolence (Session 8)

Even if we lose, we shall win, for our ideals will have penetrated the hearts of our enemies. --Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister (ETP 199)

David Dellinger observes that the theory and practice of active nonviolence are roughly at the stage of development that electricity was in the days of Marconi and Edison. (TPTB 12)

This is interesting, given that Gene Sharp in The Politics of Nonviolent Action gives hundreds of examples of nonviolent action in history, many successful, with 13 of the most successful occuring in 1989 alone, as nations of the Soviet Empire and others won their freedom nonviolently.

Wink considers two parts of the problem of practicality: means and ends and the rule of law.

1. The means must be consistent with the ends: Someone remarked that we name our dogs Nero and our children Paul. Who won in the end? Nero, Hitler, Stalin and others of their ilk have disregarded the relationship between means and ends. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. did not.

Gandhi taught that nonviolent revolution is not about seizing power but about transforming relationships so that power changes hands peacefully. We now see Nelson Mandala and those who imprisoned him for over a quarter of a century working harmoniously for the good of all in South Africa.

Violent revolutions tend to produce continuing violence and to turn well-intentioned revolutionaries into what they hated and fought against.

My point is not simply that war is bad. The issue is far deeper. It is that war draws intelligent, rational, decent people ineluctably into mimetic violence. Before they realize it, they are themselves doing and condoning acts of utter barbarity and feel unable to act otherwise. ...As long as we continue to justify violence as "Christian," we will remain blind to our captivity to the hypnosis of mimetic rivalry. (ETP 201)

Once, when Gandhi was in jail, his followers held a celebration congratulating the British on arresting him. Demonstrations were illegal, but how could the government arrest well-wishers? (TPTB  116)

Wink cites examples from the tough love, which causes a battered woman to pull free and submit her husband to the justice system or enables the peaceful turnover of the government under the dictator, Marcos, in the Philippines.But the ultimate goal, he insists, is not victory but opening an aperture for God. It may involve suffering for both sides, but the nonviolent revolutionaries try to absorb the evil and its violence into their bodiesand to avoid inflicting it on others.

To use violence against the dominating forces is to join them in their evil,to capitulate in perpetuating the cycle of violence. And it has another devastating consequence: The revolutionaries, fighting the beast, in turn,become the beast. Evil is contagious. But so is good.

2. Consider the following: To overcome communist threats in Latin America we supported dictators and secretly trained their police and armies in how to fight guerrillas. We did this in countries where a handful of wealthy families controlled the economies and the political structures. We taught the most advanced techniques of torture and these were regularly used against school teachers, labor leaders, and others who were not communists. What alternatives did we have to combat communism in Latin America?

3. Discuss: Wink suggests the analogy of jiu jitsu (the "weak way") wherethe momentum of attack of the opponent is used to throw him.

Copyright © 1998 by Vern Rossman