The Limitations of Nonviolence

I've always thought that nonviolence as a tactic was absolutely brilliant--force the opponent to show their brutality, and it will be clear to all who is in the right and who is in the wrong. The church I was part of for some time got very interested in Non-Violent Communication, the Marshall Rosenberg program that says that what is important is owning one's needs and communicating them in a way that is gentle and non-threatening enough to allow one to be heard. The method is useful, I think--it's good to be able to own your reactions, so for example, instead of saying "You make me so crazy when you refuse to listen to me," you say, "When you left the room without saying anything, I felt scared and sad." It can be a useful tool, but some of the proponents of NVC want to use it as a way to solve big world problems, and my Significant Other, being from a state which was formerly a colony and having seen first hand the results of empire, has influenced me to be suspicious of the method for such a use. He's been afraid that it would become a tool of power--that those in power would use listening as a way to mollify and preserve the status quo.

I bought the June edition of Utne Reader some time back--they had a cover story called "The Future of Protest: Why Your Voice Still Matters" that was of interest to me. I picked up the magazine last night while I was waiting for some water to boil, and flipped open to an article entitled "Arms and the Movement: Pacifism equals pacified to this activist," by a guy named Peter Gelderloos. The article was excerpted from his new book, How Nonviolence Protects the State. I've read a few things about Rachel Corrie recently--the young woman who was mowed down by an Israeli bulldozer, trying to block the destruction of a Palestinian home. So I was interested, and read the article. It was disturbing to read--and at the end, I felt like my understanding of non-violence was probably too simplistic.

This article made me think about several things--Gandhi in India, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam war--in a new light. His stance is that although nonviolence had its part to play, that first that what happened in these cases was less clearly a victory for those who resisted nonviolently than the coming together of a multitude of factors, some of which were in fact violent. Second, that the outcome wasn't as rosy as we've been accustomed to think--in India, colonialism gave way to neocolonialism, and he says that the British had a heavy part to play in fomenting violence between different religious sects as a way of neutralizing the perceived threat that a united, independent India might pose. That yes, the civil rights movement won some important victories for blacks in this country, but it certainly didn't result in real equality:

In short, the largest victory of the civil rights movement came when black people demonstrated that they would not remain peaceful forever. Faced with the two alternatives, the white power structure chose to negotiate with the pacifists, and we have seen the results: The movement was successful in ending de jure segregation and expanding the minuscule black petty bourgeoisie, but fell far short of full political and economic equality, to say nothing of black liberation from white imperialism.

And then he talks about Iraq, and how hopeless it was to think that the peace movement could have stopped that war. He sums up:

From India to Birmingham, nonviolence has failed to sufficiently empower its practitioners, whereas the use of a diversity of tactics got results. Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system that is based on centralized coercion and violence.

I am still not sure what to think about all this. I have walked; I have protested war. I have walked for action against global warming. I walked on Inauguration Day in January 2001, when I was full of despair about the selection of George W. Bush. I didn't know if it was doing any good. It felt better to do something than nothing. But then, I didn't walk during the Battle of Seattle. I thought about it, but I had a baby at home. I watched the news and I was scared. I think what Rachel Corrie did was heroic--and yet, they are still bulldozing settlements.

At any rate, the article was thought-provoking. It made me question things that I thought that I knew. That process is always uncomfortable. The more you understand, the less you are sure of. But maybe that is a good thing. If you're sure you know the truth, you stop trying to find it.

Link:
"Arms and the Movement" by Peter Gelderloos