A Force More Powerful
There was lots of Martin Luther King, Jr. talk yesterday and like every time there’s been lots of MLK talk over the past few years I’m struck that almost no attention is given to the fact that he was a very serious pacifist. Of course, it’s a cliché at this point to note that King’s actual views were really a good deal more radical than those of the cuddly Iconic MLK that’s been created as part of the post-sixties American settlement. But I think my pet overlooked element is more noteworthy than everyone else. After all, it’s precisely because of his advocacy of non-violence that it’s possible for King to have been transformed into a non-threatening icon. King wasn’t a radical, wasn’t someone who talked about doing things “by any means necessary,” and wasn’t an advocate of rioting.
But consider how radical that stance was — and is.
By what passes for mainstream opinion about the political use of violence in contemporary America, after all, the appropriate thing for African-American residents of the segregated south would have been to try to get their way through the widespread use of high explosives throughout Dixie aimed at destroying the command and control centers of the security forces (i.e., police stations) along with vital infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail lines, power plants). That kind of widespread destruction would, of course, have caused a certain amount of loss of innocent life, but unlike the bad guys in the conflict who deliberately targeted civilians by siccing dogs on children and so forth, the good guys make every effort to avoid civilian loss of life. Some people might condemn that kind of violent campaign as obviously counterproductive, and destined to result only in northern whites completely abandoning support for civil rights and instead backing southern whites in a campaign of brutal repression. But those people would fail to exhibit the appropriate moral clarity. They would be, in effect, apologists for the system of American apartheid. What’s more, if the previous hundred years of American history had taught us anything it was appeasement wasn’t going to work to resolve this issue — white supremacists had no interest in compromising.
Obviously, King and the Civil Rights movement didn’t go down that road. And when, after King’s death, fringe elements in the black community did take steps down they road they wound up accomplishing nothing. But things very plausibly could have taken a violent turn — it would hardly be unusual for an ethnic conflict to turn persistently violent. And of course a turn to violence would have been an absolute disaster for the country, and resulted in a much much worse situation than the one we now enjoy. The legacy of racial conflict still scars America, of course, but it scars it much less than it might not only because the sins of segregation were undone but because they were undone specifically through non-violent means that allowed for relatively rapid reconciliation once the core political conflict had played out.
In retrospect, this seems obvious to everyone. The moral force of non-violent protest won friends and allies to the cause, exposed the crass immorality of Civil Rights’ opponents, and was forceful enough to bring about major change while also being low-key enough to take “yes” for an answer rather than turning into an endless cycle of recriminations. And yet these ideas about conflict and its resolution seem almost entirely absent from our present-day discourse about to think about violence and its utility. This even though King’s non-violence stemmed not from some esoteric element of his life, but from Christianity — a faith that’s pervasively present in American politics, but whose practical political upshot these days is support for large-scale and casual deployment of violence.
49 Responses to “A Force More Powerful”
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August 29th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
This even though King’s non-violence stemmed not from some esoteric element of his life, but from Christianity..
This isn’t really true — King’s non-violence stemmed primarily from his admiration for Gandhi, a Hindu.
Other then their obscure founder, practically all the important Christians have been pro-violence.
Kidding? Sort of……
August 29th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
“The good lord gave us three gifts – faith, hope and charity and the greatest of these is violence.” – A. Bunker
August 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
If you want to oversimplify, Gandhi got it from Tolstoy and Thoreau, Thoreau from William Lloyd Garrison, and William Lloyd Garrison from his simple Christian faith and basic human decency.
Nobody likes William Lloyd Garrison though, because he was so strident, and isn’t particularly quotable. But he was way, way ahead of the curve morally.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Isn’t that always the case?
But you make a good point. MLK-as-guerrilla would make for an interesting work of alternative history fiction, a la Harry Turtledove.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
“By what passes for mainstream opinion about the political use of violence in contemporary America, after all, the appropriate thing for African-American residents of the segregated south would have been to try to get their way through the widespread use of high explosives throughout Dixie aimed at destroying the command and control centers of the security forces…”, blah blah blah.
What a lame analogy. Civil disobedience worked in America because America had some semblance of a conscience. In a sense, Americans were challenged to live up to their democratic ideals. Saddam Hussein did not have any such high ideals. Neither did Milosevic. Neither does Hamas. One can question whether this or that war is really a smart policy, but it’s obvious that there are many situations around the world (like Rwanda or Darfur) where non-violent civil disobedience simply won’t work.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I think that presence of television cameras at the Montgomery event that had been organized as a reaction to the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church and the murder of four girls had more to do with winning converts to the cause than King’s commitement to non-violence. Of coursse, the concept of nonviolence is inseparable from Dr. King and the civil rights movement.
A yankee myself, I drove through Alabama last week. The memorialization of the civil rights events juxtaposed with the memorials to the confederacy underscores how even today, the conflict and tension that King gave a name to, remain alive in the American experience.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Other sources for Thoreau would be the poet Shelley & Shelley’s father-in-law, the political philosopher William Godwin, esp. for the specific doctrine of civil disobedience.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Interesting post, but to play devils’s advocate: assume the Confederacy had succeeded. How successful would non-violent protest have been in bringing about change within the Confederacy? You need consciences susceptible to moral suasion in positions of sufficient power to make a difference for the non-violent approach to succeed in anything like an acceptable time frame. In how many present day situations are those factors present?
August 29th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Yeah, all we needed to turn Saddam around was another MLK. The sheer force of his oratory would have persuaded Saddam to abandon his 20-year record of military aggression and mass murder and join the community of civilized peoples. Maybe Obama could have led us all in a stirring rendition of Kumbaya.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Saddam Hussein did not have any such high ideals. Neither did Milosevic. Neither does Hamas.
Milosevic and Hamas both won elections based saying *exactly* what you are saying, “the enemy only understands force”, unless you are using the standard version of “democracy” meaning pro-western.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
You can’t talk about the 60’s and “radical groups,” especially black radicals, without at least footnoting that the FBI’s Cointelpro program, still mostly classified, made it impossible to know who was a government provocateur and who wasn’t.
The accurate history of this era has yet to be written.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Re: the appropriate thing for African-American residents of the segregated south would have been to try to get their way through the widespread use of high explosives throughout Dixie aimed at destroying the command and control centers of the security forces (i.e., police stations) along with vital infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail lines, power plants).
Um no. Blacks were a minority and any attempt at armed rebellion like that would have been crushed– perhaps genocidally. You only resort of force if you have a chance of winning that way. Otherwise you’re just committing suicide.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Somewhere, a Republican pundit’s head just exploded.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
What I find interesting is that Matthew’s counterfactual about guerrilla war against Jim Crow is how closely Matthew’s language mirrors neoconservative foreign policy rhetoric, all the way down to the use of words like “apologists” and “moral clarity.”
August 29th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
As noted above, Gandhi’s nonviolence stemmed directly from Henry David Thoreau, an American transcendentalist and abolitionist whose myriad interests happened to include East Indian philosophy, among other things (such as the ethnography of the American Indian). Thoreau was a disciple of Emerson, who in turn was a disciple of Wordsworth and Coleridge and the German Romantics, including Herder. I am interested to learn that non-violent resistance was pioneered by the poet Shelley. You don’t hear much about him these days, but he was a very interesting figure, and, like Gandhi, a convinced vegetarian. In any case we could trace it all back to Kant (and Rousseau) and the Enlightenment generally, and only very indirectly to Hinduism.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Civil disobedience worked in America because America had some semblance of a conscience. In a sense, Americans were challenged to live up to their democratic ideals. Saddam Hussein did not have any such high ideals. Neither did Milosevic. Neither does Hamas.
Indeed. Civil disobedience also worked in India and South Africa because in each case the (essentially British) ruling class had some sympathy for the rights of all men.
The main place in the world where civil disobedience should work but we haven’t yet seen it is Israel/Palestine. In theory the Israelis have a similar conscience; if the Palestinians ever switched to civil disobedience and non-violent protest, Israel would be in a lot of trouble one way or another.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Jonp72,
At the risk of responding seriously to a joke, don’t you understand that was the whole point of the post? MY intentionally used that kind of language to highlight how much more radical and disposed to violence contemporary American political culture is. The difference is just in who the them is.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Lefty and right: While I actually mostly agree with you, I think you can make a strong case that in, let’s say 1940, or 1950 (and maybe as late as 1960) that that Southern ruling class actually had very little of this kind of conscience. And that it looked like peaceful protest would not necessarily be a good idea. That said, it would appear that a large scale peaceful protest works when the people you are protesting against are some kind of western style democracy.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
“there are many situations around the world … where non-violent civil disobedience simply won’t work”
Many people seem to think this is obvious and self-evident. It isn’t for two reasons.
First, most people do not know the history of non-violence and of non-violent movements. Non-violence has been successfully deployed in many situations where it is not expected to work because of the somehow unexceptional and un-American (or un-British) conscience of the people. Rwanda happens to be one of them: the Muslim community there (about 9% of the population) refused to participate in the genocide and protected their Tutsi members as well as protecting some Christian Tutsis as well.
Second, people misunderstand what non-violent resistance is and how it works. Non-violent movements take years to win their struggles and people do die. As my grandmother used to say, “Choosing non-violence means accepting the cross.” Non-violent practitioners need to be ready for beatings, prison, torture, and death because some of them will suffer. (And then, of course, the non-violent movement will be accused of forcing their opposition to commit those acts.)
Non-violence seems irrational. Why would vicious dictators care how many people they kill? Yet when non-violence is utilized systematically and strategically, the system – no matter how oppressive – cracks. Nazis and Communists were stymied by non-violent movements and both the American and South African apartheids were overthrown. That’s a good track record of taking on extremely repressive and violent systems.
(please note the use of the word “strategically” in the above paragraph: Strategic Nonviolent Conflict by Ackerman and Kruegler is a good starting point)
August 29th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Excellent post, which to my mind makes perfect sense. Of course MLK’s pacifism was rooted in his Christian faith. If find the argument about the enormous debt we owe this great man compelling.
The commentators above waxing on about needing to wage wars on Saddam Hussein are just rehearsing all the arguments that led to the appalling holocaust that we created in Iraq through our systematic strangulation and then decapitation.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I find it hard to believe that the MY of the first part of the decade (pro-Iraq war) would write this post. While this is clearly not a wholesale adoption of nonviolence by MY, it is clearly evidence of moral and intellectual growth, and for that Matt should be applauded.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Re: MY intentionally used that kind of language to highlight how much more radical and disposed to violence contemporary American political culture is.
???
How is modern American culture any more violent than what came before? MLK lived in the era of Vietnam and a still powerful KKK. America has never been a nation of pacifists. As one of King’s contemporaries put it, “Violence is as American as apple pie”.
Re: I think you can make a strong case that in, let’s say 1940, or 1950 (and maybe as late as 1960) that that Southern ruling class actually had very little of this kind of conscience.
So what? The South lost the Civil War. It was part and parcel of a larger nation, one that already had the consitutional mechanisms in place to insure civil rights, but was failing to use them. MLK was not playing to Bull Connor: he was playing to millions of Americans all over the country. And beyond that, America was locked in a Cold War with a rival who made much of America’s racial apartheid. MLK was playing to the whole world.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
It is always quite amusing to hear the colonialists and their descendants claim that non-violent campaigns to oust them worked only because they, the occupiers, (or in this case the racists), had conscience.
How they can make such claims with a straight face and without any self-awareness is always baffling.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
By what passes for mainstream opinion about the political use of violence in contemporary America, after all, the appropriate thing for African-American residents of the segregated south would have been to try to get their way through the widespread use of high explosives throughout Dixie aimed at destroying the command and control centers of the security forces
Uh – very silly analogy. Mainstream opinion about the appropriate political use of violence applies only to the state. If you had suggested that by what passes for mainstream opinion, some other country should have done this to us, that would make more sense.
Yet when non-violence is utilized systematically and strategically, the system – no matter how oppressive – cracks. Nazis and Communists were stymied by non-violent movements and both the American and South African apartheids were overthrown.
When did non-violence stymie the Nazis? As for the Communists, as great as Solidarnosc was, I think that external economic pressures had more to do with the end of Communism than peaceful resistance. As for South Africa, the rest of the world is what ended South African apartheid, not internal protests.
To be effective, non-violence either requires that the people being protested against have some moral compunction against genocidally slaughtering the protestors, or that those being protested against need the protestors too much to slaughter them all.
What led to the success of non-violence in India was largely the fact that the British were not willing to quash it with genocidal force. This may have been due to British morality, or maybe just to the fact that the British did not see holding onto India as being worth what it would take to do so. Either way, the British made the right decision in leaving.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
“The main place in the world where civil disobedience should work but we haven’t yet seen it is Israel/Palestine. In theory the Israelis have a similar conscience; if the Palestinians ever switched to civil disobedience and non-violent protest, Israel would be in a lot of trouble one way or another.”
From the Middle East Research and Information Project:
“In December 1987, the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza started a mass uprising against the Israeli occupation. This uprising, or intifada (which means “shaking off” in Arabic), was not started or orchestrated by the PLO leadership in Tunis. Rather, it was a popular mobilization that drew on the organizations and institutions that had developed under occupation. The intifada involved hundreds of thousands of people, many with no previous resistance experience, including children, teenagers and women. For the first few years, it involved many forms of civil disobedience, including massive demonstrations, general strikes, refusal to pay taxes, boycotts of Israeli products, political graffiti and the establishment of underground schools (since regular schools were closed by the military as reprisals for the uprising). It also included stone throwing, Molotov cocktails and the erection of barricades to impede the movement of Israeli military forces.
Intifada activism was organized through popular committees under the umbrella of the United National Leadership of the Uprising. The UNLU was a coalition of the four PLO parties active in the occupied territories: Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP and the PPP. This broad-based resistance drew unprecedented international attention to the situation facing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and challenged the occupation as never before.
Under the leadership of Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, Israel tried to smash the intifada with “force, power and blows.” Army commanders instructed troops to break the bones of demonstrators. From 1987 to 1991 Israeli forces killed over 1,000 Palestinians, including over 200 under the age of sixteen. By 1990, most of the UNLU leaders had been arrested and the intifada lost its cohesive force, although it continued for several more years. Political divisions and violence within the Palestinian community escalated, especially the growing rivalry between the various PLO factions and Islamist organizations (HAMAS and Islamic Jihad). Palestinian militants killed over 250 Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the occupation authorities and about 100 Israelis during this period.”
August 29th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
1) I think Matthew’s post is a crock of bullshit. Lyndon Johnson cut a deal with black leaders because he knew his enemies were prepared to exploit black outrage if it exploded:
a) The Soviet Union would have loved an American race war — because it would have given them a large number of our citizens as agents. Catching a foreign infiltrator is one thing –catching a hostile native American with a valid birth certificate and drivers license is something else.
b) Johnson’s rivals within the Democratic party –like Robert Kennedy — knew that blacks could be a major voting bloc within the party if unified and focused.
c) All this bullshit about “nonviolence” seems to overlook several major US cities going up in flames. And FBI infiltration wouldn’t work if no blacks would work with them, if a cell structure was adopted, and if decentralized command and control (”Kill Whitey”) was set up. The KGB would have been happy to give tutorials to the Black Panthers.
d) Yes, a black insurrection could probably have been put down. But it would have had a huge cost to the US economy –when smooth running of that economy was needed to fund the Cold War military machine. PLus we would have had a hard time keeping CLOSE allies –including in NATO — if we came across looking like South Africa. I.e., Worse than the Russians.
2) So the Power Elite tossed a few crumbs –just like they do in South American dictatorships when the natives get restless. But nothing like a decent deal. Many blacks still don’t have a pot to piss in, large numbers of them spend most of their life in prison, and upward mobility is a cruel joke when your school system is too poor to provide decent textbooks –or decent teachers — to many young blacks.
A small percentage of the people still own most of the wealth and get most of the national income. But Oprah is doing well and gets to look down on the poor rural white trash that McCain has to pander to.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Also, about the delicate European/American sensibilities that just couldn’t/wouldn’t deny the human rights of its subject peoples, may I suggest to the ignoramuses around here to pick up a history of Ireland/the Congo/Amartya Sen on the Famines/the history of the Seminole conquest/ etc. et fucking cetera.
P.S.
“In a sense, Americans were challenged to live up to their democratic ideals. Saddam Hussein did not have any such high ideals. Neither did Milosevic. Neither does Hamas.”
This would be the democratically elected Hamas government that we lovely whites tried to violently overthrow. Of course, sometimes we live up to our ideals all too well–to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dead in a country that never threatened/attacked us! Oh how morally edifying we are!
August 29th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
William Lloyd Garrison not quotable?
“I despair of the Republic while slavery exists therein.”
“Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.”
“Our country is the world — our countrymen are all mankind.”
“[The Constitution] is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”
“Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.”
“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”
“I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice.”
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”
August 29th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Man, is that an understatement.
Sure, it would have been a terrible idea, and likely have failed miserably. But that *doesn’t* mean that such a violent reaction isn’t “what passes for mainstream opinion about the political use of violence in contemporary America”.
For instance, if I were to suggest to you, six years ago, that the USA invade and occupy a Mid East country without justification, commit to occupying it indefinitely (including constructing the world’s largest embassy and dozens of permanent military bases), and commit torture against its citizens, all in the name of “democratizing” the region, you (like me) would probably have said “there’s no way that would work” and you would be right. That doesn’t mean that America as a whole would be against such an invasion.
Hehe. I can’t help but think that, in a country where most of the work is doen by slaves, if the slaves put down their tools and stopped producing anything, the society would collapse pretty soon.
August 29th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Mark, I dunno why you are going back to the first intifada. I haven’t looked, I catch “crossing the line” on my podcatcher, I’ll listen to it Monday. There is a news section in the beginning on the subject. I’ve gotten to where I don’t bother listening to it because I know what happpened: The Israelis bombed or shot up a bunch of people, The Palestinians may or may not have done anything violent, there was a demonstration which may or may not have included Israeli Jews and if there weren’t any Israeli Jews they got killed and if there were Israeli Jews they got the shit beat out of them (maybe even the Jews get beat up if they don’t have cameras and object to much). Our news will carry any Palestinian violence whatsover, will cover Israeli violence only if it killed some gruesome number of people and will present it as a responce to whatever Palestinian violence happend previously no matter how far back it goes. It will never, ever, ever, carry non-violent Palestinian protest, despite the fact that it happens every single day.
August 29th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
MLK knew that he wasn’t playing to Southern sensibilities – which would have had no hesitation throughout the period in destroying him (of course, his church was bombed and he himself was eventually murdered).
Why the Southern internal security apparatus couldn’t destroy the Civil Rights Movement utterly (as they had with previous efforts, including numerous episodes of ethnic cleansing and large internal intelligence organizations) was:
a. The result of the failed attempt to define America as the white, Protestant republic in the late teens and twenties (at it’s most extreme, manifested by the widespread appeal of the KKK, but visible in much of the mainstream politics of the period). It didn’t succeed, partially because the national business elite was dubious (they wanted more cheap immigrant workers and there weren’t enough cheap Protestants left in Europe) and partially simply because of the large numbers of Catholics that the Democratic Party needed to vote for them in the North.
b. The South hadn’t moved from the Democratic party yet. The national Democrats built their national narrative on the multi-ethnic America story (which is why every WWII-era war movie has a squad with a wiseguy Italian from the Bronx, a big farmer’s boy from the Midwest, a backwoods hick from the South, a bohunk or mick from a steel mill company town and maybe a black guy if the director was a pinko). That story is what got the national Democrats the votes, AND served as a plausible enough story to sell internationally (in that WWII-era war movie, the multiethnic squad archetypally liberates the French village or Italian hamlet or concentration camp.)
c. When the Civil Rights movement got substantial numbers of non-Protestant white Northerners involved, physical murderous attacks upon the civil rights movement then became simultaneously attacks upon the national Democratic Party’s own Northern political base. So, Kennedy and Johnson were forced to choose: either go with the national Democratic party or become a regional Southern party. It’s fairly obvious which way Kennedy was going to go.
d. Meanwhile, the Republicans were certainly not going to stick out their necks for the rabidly anti-Republican Southern political class of the time either. Besides that the national business elite (which was the driving power behind the Republicans – remember, Robert Taft was THE definitive party overlord during this period) being dubious, there was no solid harvest-able political advantage for them.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Gandhi’s pacificism had significant inputs from Jainism and Buddhism.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Please don’t do another righteous King-owning post like this ever again. You have no idea what a dilettante it makes you look like. You’re too good for this post, Matt.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Re: It didn’t succeed, partially because the national business elite was dubious (they wanted more cheap immigrant workers and there weren’t enough cheap Protestants left in Europe)
The US did choke off immigration in the 20s so it would seem the business elite did not get their way on that one.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
And yet, the overwhelming majority of peasant and slave rebellions fail.
August 31st, 2008 at 11:22 am
You’re too good for this post, Matt.
You’re too good for this comment, Mike.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Yglesias is right to note that it was nonviolent resistance that shattered racial segregation in America, and he is more right than he may know to call it “a force more powerful”. That’s actually the title of the foremost documentary film series on nonviolent conflict, which includes a segment on the Nashville sit-ins and boycotts that destroyed segregation in that city. Those tactics put intolerable pressure on the business community, which abandoned the local segregationist power structure. It wasn’t so much about the “moral example” of nonviolence, but the concussive impact that the movement’s resistance strategy had on the political and economic power structure that hosted the segregationist system.
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