King and Nonviolence
I think I’ve written some variation on this ever year now for several years, but I do always wish that praise and attention for Martin Luther King, Jr. would pay more attention to his teachings on violence and non-violence. Not that the calls for racial justice are unimportant. On the contrary. But from the standpoint of 2008, these are pretty easy lessons to take to heart. We’ve by no means conquered bias and prejudice or overcome the lingering scars of the major injustices of the past, but on the level of message nowadays you don’t see anyone within a thousand miles of mainstream politics denying the desirability of racial equality.
On violence, we’re in another world entirely. By the standards of today’s discourse, King would be considered deeply unserious. Serious people understand that if you think something is important, the serious way to go about expressing that is by voicing support for having other people go kill other people. Doubts about the ethics of such action are loathesome moral equivalence and doubts about their wisdom demonstrate naïveté. King wouldn’t qualify as a “civil rights Democrat”—not enough bloodshed.
The irony is that adherence to nonviolence is one of the main reasons King is such an admired and mainstream figure today. If he’d decided à la Tom Friedman that the white south needed a “suck on this” moment, or followed the lead of Hamas or Shimon Peres in deciding the best way to teach the population a lesson was to terrorize them, he’d be a jailed or executed despised criminal. And the ethic of nonviolence that King appealed to has deep roots in the Christian tradition that unites the majority of black and white Americans. And yet even though this Christian nonviolence is in many ways the most mainstream aspect of this radical figure who’s become a mainstream icon, it’s something that none dare take seriously today.
75 Responses to “King and Nonviolence”
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January 19th, 2009 at 10:50 am
good post.
but you need to fix the typo IN THE FIRST SENTENCE.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Well said.
The contrast between Friedman/’serious’ thinkers and MLK ought to be powerful enough to cause the ’serious’ thinkers to feel shame.
They won’t. But they should.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:56 am
By the standards of today’s discourse, King would be considered deeply unserious.
King’s interest in non-violence with respect to his anti-war stances were considered deeply unserious in their day and have been whitewashed out of our collective memory.
In terms of civil rights, his stance of non-violence was precisely why he was taken seriously: because it made civil rights activism seem “safe” to the general public. When it comes to opposing war abroad, preaching for peace seems “dangerous.” There’s a reason for this: the public is very uncomfortable with the idea that violence or retribution may be the solution when it comes to our own people. The idea of prosecuting — or even blaming! — members of the Bush administration for authorizing torture is considered unserious. However, when it coems to what is to be done with foreigners or people we don’t regard as our own people, anything other than threats of violence against them is considered to be coddling of an alien enemy.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:01 am
I gotta think that had the Palestinians followed a similar path to MLK they would most likely have their own thriving state today composed of the entire West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:02 am
This would be a more interesting post if you talked about Malcolm X, Matt.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Matt,
This is an excellent post and I wholeheartedly agree. Since everyone on the contemporary American political scene is either down with the civil rights movement, or else lies and pretend they would have been, the holiday has become a celebration of a milquetoast, sanitized version of the Civil Rights era.
MLK’s more controversial ideas, like non-violence in domestic protest and foreign affairs, as well as social democracy at home and abroad, while arguably more relevant to today’s politics, are largely ignored. This is a shame, but it does accurately reflect the present priorities of the American boy politic.
I don’t want to hijack this thread with the Arab-Israeli conflict, but to give one example, I’ve often thought that if the Palestinian national movement had embraced non-violence along the lines of King and Gandhi, they’d already have an independent republic by now.
And when it comes to our own economy, a more vigorous social safety net and an industrial policy geared toward black and white workers instead of irresponsible speculation on commercial paper would have been a godsend.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Amen.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I appreciate the sentiment in favor of teaching nonviolence, but I disagree with the overall point. We should be focusing MORE on King’s actual teachings about racial justice, because right now, the Southern Strategy Party has half the country convinced the Martin Luther King’s message on race relations consisted of promoting “colorblindness.”
They’re turned him into a bloody anti-affirmative action tedddy bear, whose main contribution to American society was to urge black people to be nice.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:08 am
there is an excellent blog in “edge of the American West” from last Thursday, about a speach King gave in Detroit where he acknowledged there was plenty of reason for feelings of rage and his understanding of the leaders who espoused violence as a response, but explains in a very quiet reasoned manner why he continued to believe non violence was preferable. It is a speach that should be publicised more (I think)
January 19th, 2009 at 11:09 am
To follow on about the Palestinians and non-violence, it’s worth noting that the first Intifada was mostly (not entirely) non-violent. It started off with a bunch of kids throwing rocks and getting on CNN — and some Palestinian leaders figured out that this was far more effective than terrorism. In a few years, the Palestinians came closer than they ever had to achieving statehood. Unfortunately the process broke down, but that does not disprove the point. Rather, I believe that a renewed commitment to non-violence from the Palestinians would eventually lead to own state.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:19 am
There are likely those who disagree in this discussion, with my starting point that there is a moral difference between violence employed by a sovereign political-body/community, and violence employed by members of a people (even an oppressed people) within the sovereignty.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Maybe someday they’ll get serious about teaching American history in highschool and people will start to understand this. and then maybe monkeys will fly out my ass.
great post though.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:20 am
MLK’s more controversial ideas, like non-violence in domestic protest
I’m trying to think who within the American pess and punditry would have thought a message of “violent protest against pro-segregation governments and organizations” to be “serious.”
From a standpoint of public relations, MLK’s message of non-violence was what made him more appealing, and he came across as “serious” because his demands seemed “safe” compared to the rhetoric of others fighting for civil rights for blacks.
The reason that King’s doctrine of non-violence for civil rights is valued is, in part, because for whites, the alternative was violence against them. When King used the same logic to discuss the injustice of the US’s involvement in the Vietnam War, he was roundly criticized. Non-violence is considered all well and wonderful when it saves your own hide, but when non-violence is being preached in a way that saves someone else, suddenly people take the idea much less seriously.
If anything, it is the African-American community which deserves a lot of credit for taking MLK, Jr. seriously for his doctrine of non-violence. THEIR acceptance of King deserves to be imitated. To much white America, King sounded like a guy saying, “Oh, thank God. He’s going to give us a pass on the big mess we created over the past 150 years rather than handing us over to the followers of Malcolm X.”
January 19th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Perfect. Great post.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Yes, well said, Matt. I find myself enormously frustrated every year when MLK day rolls around for this very reason. I would just add economic justice to the list of King’s ideas that should be take more seriously. The man died in a visit supporting a sanitation workers’ strike. Something to remember next time someone is railing against the dread unions.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:24 am
A few days ago Condi Rice spoke at a packed auditorium in the State Department about the legacy of Dr. King. And it’s true that, without Dr. King, we wouldn’t have black Secretaries of State or Secretaries of Anything Else. So that’s nice.
Thing is, though, Rice is a war criminal who belongs in prison along with the rest of that bunch. If Dr. King was alive today he’d tear her a new one. She did everything she could to start a war that didn’t need to happen and make torture standard operating procedure. It is obscene that someone like that would presume to stand in front of a bunch of people and lecture them about what Dr. King means.
When the focus is on racial equality, and non-violence is pushed to the background, we think that black war criminals are inspiring symbols of Dr. King’s dream coming true.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:25 am
If you want to get ahead in the world: violence.
If you want to change the world for the better: non-violence.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I agree with tomA and note a distinction: King did not rule out violent reaction to the lack of civil rights. Rather, he made a practical decision (well, moral as well) to pursue non-violence (from what I have read, he was an acolyte of Ghandi). But this does not mean that he did not see how violent reaction was a possible response.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Remember that, in his day, King was a deeply polarizing figure:
January 19th, 2009 at 11:37 am
“To follow on about the Palestinians and non-violence, it’s worth noting that the first Intifada was mostly (not entirely) non-violent. It started off with a bunch of kids throwing rocks…”
Right, and it’s worth noting that the Israeli response to the first Intifada “was mostly (not entirely) non-violent”. Israeli forces responded to rock throwers with tear gas, rubber bullets, batons, and other responses of the sort that first world police forces elsewhere would use against rock-throwing mobs.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Kent,
I’m inclined to disagree with you. The Palestinians tried that approach occasionally, and it didn’t work very well for them. To give an example, see here.
Let’s face it, if the federal government had cut off food shipments into black areas of Birmingham in response to Rosa Parks, things would have gotten violent quick.
The US civil rights movement was rather unusual in that oppression was done by a couple of state governments, in the face of mild opposition from the federal government. All that needed to be done was to force the hand of the federal government to act on their beliefs by reminding them just how horrible those state governments were. Also notable, is that black people did not really constitute a majority anywhere, so there was no realistic option of autonomy.
But most human rights problems are not like this at all. With the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Palestinians in Israel, or the Kurds in Turkey, the discriminatory policies have been established by broad national democratic majorities. Non-violent protest isn’t going to accomplish much here, since there is no powerful and benevolent force that will come to rescue them.
It’s an important distinction because, unfortunately, there have been very few successful non-violent independence movements(India was much more violent than people generally believe). There are far more examples of successful uses of terrorism toward that end.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:43 am
I think that violent resistance is only reason any attention is paid to the Palestinians outside of Israel and the territories. As Flaffer says, one reason that King preferred non-violent tactics was that he thought they would work in his particular situation. I don’t think such tactics are always appropriate, and I’ll note that King’s tactics were not very effective when he used them in the north after the March on Washington. I suspect that if the Palestinians were to adopt non-violence now, the Israelis would quietly starve the territories to death and we would hear nothing about it.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:46 am
“but on the level of message nowadays you don’t see anyone within a thousand miles of mainstream politics denying the desirability of racial equality.”
Indeed, we’d never hire or otherwise select, advance, or hold back people on the basis of race or any other prejudice anymore. Such an idea would be laughed out of circulation pronto.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:46 am
I agree with Tyro, 100%. The key to understanding how MLK became a revered figure is to realize his nonviolence was only popular when the alternative was violence against Americans. We Americans love us some nonviolence against Americans. Nonviolence against non-Americans, not so much.
His nonviolence w/r/t the Vietnamese and other “enemies of America” is the furthest thing from being “one of the main reasons King is such an admired and mainstream figure today.”
January 19th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Continuing
There’s actually an interesting comparison between when a minority uses violence or non-violence to fight oppression.
Consider: how does non-violence work? A community disobeys unjust laws, forcing the powerful to enforce them ruthlessly. They protest in mass, forcing the oppressors either to listen or to break down on them with brutality. The process continues until the oppressors are faced with a choice in a starkly growing chasm between killing whatever shred of humanity they have in order to maintain power or doing right by treating the unquiet as equals. (Niebuhr’s introduction to Irony of American History has a line which captures this choice — can’t seem to find the article.) Importantly, the rulers don’t really have to sue for peace in this scenario — in the face of non-violence, they simply cease oppression, and peace is upon them.
This certainly applies when the oppressor has at least a somewhat functioning conscience to appeal to — the French believed in revolution, so they ultimately left Algeria; the British believed in the civilization (in fact, their whole theory behind imperialism was its spread), so they left India. And, of course, Americans had the word of Thomas Jefferson, even if they also had his life. ‘
But this approach does not universally work. The Jewish people could not, Gandhi’s claims notwithstanding, have stopped the Nazi intentions to exterminate them by non-cooperation. A soldier with no compunction in sending a child to the ovens for being Jewish has no compunction in shooting a village for not obeying him.
Likewise with terrorists. While it is pivotal in any sane response to such brutality that the target people not panic and be overcome by the fear the perpetrators wield — while this is true, if the terrorists are then left to their own to respond to this solidarity, they will have no compunction in saying “Well, better luck next time”.
to be concluded
January 19th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
What Madorsky says. Remember, non-violence is a lot harder that violence. We should play Dr. King’s anti-Vietnam War speeches (particularly the Riverside Church one) as often as we re-play the “Dream” speech. It at least begins to address the dreadful militarization of American society, and the “normal” assumption that violence is the first, best response to anything we don’t like. By 1968, Dr. King was being accused by various in-and-out-of movement types as being passe, quaint, out of touch and out of date with his incessant insistence on non-violent strategy and tactics for protest. His violent death cut short the debate that was beginning again on the viability of non-violent approaches to mass action. We in America have never again approached having that debate–another dimension of the tragedy of Dr. King’s death. America’s place in the world is likely to rest on whether or not we can recapture the necessity and will to begin to have it soon.
Charles
January 19th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Re: This certainly applies when the oppressor has at least a somewhat functioning conscience to appeal to — the French believed in revolution, so they ultimately left Algeria; the British believed in the civilization (in fact, their whole theory behind imperialism was its spread), so they left India. And, of course, Americans had the word of Thomas Jefferson, even if they also had his life. ‘
WTF? The French were driven out of Algeria by a violent revolution, including a lot of what was called at the time (rightly or wrongly) to be “terrorism”. The Indian independence movement was largely peaceful, but it’s important to remember that the British Empire was broken and exhausted from having fought the Nazis to the death. In the absence of the Second World War it’s unlikely the British would have withdrawn from India without a fight (anymore than they withdrew from Ireland without a fight).
As for the Americans, nonviolent protest against us didn’t work in Vietnam, Thomas Jefferson notwithstanding. It took ten years of guerrilla war to win the Vietnamese their freedom, and the sacrifice of millions of Vietnamese lives.
It’s nice that Dr. King’s nonviolent methods worked in the United States, but they wouldn’t worked in most contexts, and have not historically worked terribly well. One would think hipster liberals would realize this, instead of seeing everything through the prism of the sacred American Civil Rights movement. Of course, no one ever said hipsters liked to learn about history. History, and wars of national liberation, are not Stuff White People Like.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
to conclude (from posts 11 & 25)
Now, what of an oppressed people responding with violence? How does that work?
There is a violent resistance. Maybe their a rebel army that engages an occupying army; maybe their an insurgency attacking occupation troops; maybe it’s a terrorist organization killing civilians of the occupying power.
How does the occupation respond? Well, as long as it distinguishes between the enemy and the oppressed people they claim to represent, their objective is almost certainly going to be to wipe out said resistance. If they have the resolve, and the distinction holds up, the occupation can carry on indefinitely until the enemy army is defeated. And if the enemy army is on behalf of an oppressed minority, then the oppressors will have the resolve.
But what happens when the oppressors cannot distinguish between those the population they oppress and those parts of them that violently resist? Suddenly, greater brutality against a civilian population has, in the minds of the rulers, a self-defense justification behind it. “If our [ruling] position is justified, then we can protect it by force.” (This can lead a power to commit heinous crimes while believing themselves to be restrained.)
Now, this is not to say that the oppression cannot end once it reaches this point. It can — but it can only come about as a result of an oppressor who cannot bring itself do carry out its crimes to their logical conclusion. Many oppressors had no such compunctions — Suharto, Milosevic, Omar Bashir. But others do.
And those that do are ultimately hampered not by futility, but by the same thing that forces their hand in facing non-violent resistance — their own conscience.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Hector
I hope my conclusion answers some of your rebuttals regarding France in Algeria and the US in Vietnam.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
The Indian independence movement was largely peaceful, but it’s important to remember that the British Empire was broken and exhausted from having fought the Nazis to the death. In the absence of the Second World War it’s unlikely the British would have withdrawn from India without a fight (anymore than they withdrew from Ireland without a fight).
The British started preparing India for eventual self-government in 1909, when the Empire was at its height. Look up the Government of India Acts. Self-government as a Dominion (along the lines of Canada or Australia) was on the cards from the start of the twentieth century. It’s true that the Second World War speeded things up; but Mountbatten has been vilified by Indian historians ever since for giving India its independence too quickly (result: Partition).
January 19th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I believe there was an offer to let Mandela out of prison years earlier if only he would renounce violence. He refused and stayed in prison, and he’s looked upon as a hero pretty much universally.
Which makes me think King’s nonviolence isn’t the reason he’s honored, it’s that he fought on the right side of the issue. King’s genius was in being the “safe” alternative for whites to work with. Nonviolence was the right tactic for him at that time and he used it.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I was at the Hawk & Dove last week from out of town and got a chance to say hi to John Lewis on his way to a tux shop. I explained to a coworker why Lewis was a hero in the most serious sense, and struggled for a moment on this – lots of people fight for their own rights and lots of people get beaten up for it. It didn’t take much thinking to realize that the key to the whole thing was and is non-violence. Violence could so easily have been morally justified, but the triumph was the unwavering commitment to nonviolence. That is what makes the movement and its achievements so awe-inspiring. And Matt, I agree, this aspect is underplayed.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Point’s point is interesting, but long. What he seems to be saying is:
With non-violent resistance, the oppressor faces a choice between doing the right thing and losing his humanity.
With violent resistance, the choice is between losing his humanity and losing.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Good post, well worth writing once a year if not more often.
In observing my children’s education, it has struck me that even before arriving in public school, and before having any picture at all of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, my kids (now ages 15, 10, and
had gotten an earful about Dr. King, how he was a great man who fought for equality for all Americans. The kids got no sense of how radical his credo of nonviolence was, or how much opposition he faced. I’m talking preschool here, and children at that age can’t absorb very much nuance, but this is the simplistic, easy-to-digest image of MLK that they hopefully will be educated OUT of.
Tim Tyson in Blood Done Sign My Name recounts a civil-rights march in North Carolina circa 1970 (so after King’s murder). The march was under the aegis of the SCLC, so nonviolence was the official position, yet many of the black men marching were carrying concealed handguns in anticipation of a KKK ambush. Probably the leadership was unaware in that case, but I think the movement was marked by a complicated wink-and-nod interplay of official nonviolence and unofficial force, or threats of force. I just mean to underscore that nonviolence is a hard thing to adopt in a mass movement.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Which is to say, non-violence was foremost highly effective. Sometimes heroism can be defined as extreme competence under duress – as with that Hudson River airline pilot.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Youngest child in comment 34 is age 8 — I’m mortified by the unintentional emoticon.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Like your definition, Bosch’s Poodle.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I’m mortified by the unintentional emoticon.
I’m pretty sure that emoticon has never been intentionally typed out. I suspect it exists in its typeable form to limit online lists to seven items.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
To much white America, King sounded like a guy saying, “Oh, thank God. He’s going to give us a pass on the big mess we created over the past 150 years rather than handing us over to the followers of Malcolm X.”
Yeah. And–I know it sounds horrible–I think that has a lot to do with the white embrace of his legacy too. On some level, we’re sort of saying, “the best kind of oppressed minority is the kind who agrees to take our abuse indefinitely and ultimately gets killed for it.”
For instance, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a number of conservatives suggest that various movements adopt King’s practice of non-violence–usually those are movements aligned against the US or Israel. Personally, I would assume those suggestions are made in bad faith–the pundits/pols don’t really want those movements to succeed in any case, but suggesting they practice non-violence is a win-win. Either the movement actually does embrace pacifism and probably gets wiped out, or it rejects non-violence and therefore gives us an excuse to wipe them out.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
For instance, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a number of conservatives suggest that various movements adopt King’s practice of non-violence
It’s odd how they never ask the more powerful side to adopt nonviolence.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
What ever happened to Mubarak Awad?
January 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Re: On some level, we’re sort of saying, “the best kind of oppressed minority is the kind who agrees to take our abuse indefinitely and ultimately gets killed for it.”
I don’t recall Dr King ever suggesting Blacks should just accept discrmination and oppression indefinitely. Perhaps you have him confused with Uncle Tom?
January 19th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
One aspect I think is important when looking at Dr. King’s message of non-violence is the context of the larger debate on how to improve the world, complete with a geopolitical expression in a conflict between America (liberal tradition) and
the USSR (communism).
Importantly, the idea that violent resistance was seen as not only necessary, but good and noble for its own sake was considered somewhat mainstream in the global dialogue. This was a time when Che was lauded by many for his violent consolidation of the “revolution”; when Sartre defended anti-colonial violence as “man reinventing himself”. For many on the global left, the slaughters of the 20th Century were not necessarily tragic.
King’s message of non-violence was in many ways the anti-thesis to this view; the antidote, if you will. What our nation’s greatest did was to help transform the idea of revolution, from a destructive to a constructive process.
Anybody disagree? Or agree?
January 19th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Anybody who thinks that non-violence would serve the Palestinians well ought to read Walt Mearsheimer’s new article in The American Conservative:
Another War, Another Defeat
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/26/00006/
People like to quote Hamas about destroying Israel – I’d say that quote above pretty much matches anything Hamas has ever said in terms of violence.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
One aspect I think is important when looking at Dr. King’s message of non-violence is the context of the larger debate on how to improve the world, complete with a geopolitical expression in a conflict between America (liberal tradition) and the USSR (communism).
This is a good point, particularly in light of one of King’s statements that people turned to communism because the west (in particular, Christianity) had lost its “revolutionary spirit.” In the context of the times, being “revolutionary” only found an outlet in Communism. What was the “liberal tradition” of the time in the United States was simply turned into a tool of the powerful in favor of segregation and adventures like the Vietnam war. King was genuinely trying to find a liberal/Christian alternative to Communism in terms of supporting revolutionary change and freedom.
January 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
And as far as the idea that the whole thing was over “tunnels”, this is the result:
Gaza war ‘failed to destroy tunnels’
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24930485-5005961,00.html
January 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Justify this.
Children found with bullets lodged in their head
http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Egypt/10276545.html
January 19th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Re: King’s message of non-violence was in many ways the anti-thesis to this view; the antidote, if you will.
Dr. King obviously disagreed with Guevara quite a lot as regards means and ends. But I doubt he would have seen himself as the “antithesis” to Che. King, I think, at the very least preferred the revolutionaries in Cuba and Vietnam to the reactionary establishments that opposed them- however much he might have disagreed with their tactics.
Point,
Interesting argument about tactics. In the revolutionary theory popularized by Guevara and his allies, the point of violent resistance is to goad the ruling regime into increasingly bloody and brutal reprisals. The theory is that ultimately the regime will become so brutal that it alienates nearly the entire population, and more and more people will flock to the revolutionaries, until the regime collapses of its own contradictions. This was more or less what happened in Cuba, and to some extent in Vietnam, although it didn’t quite work out as intended in many other places.
In other words, the Guevarist revolutionary actually _wants_ the government to respond with brutal force- along similar psychological lines to Tertullian’s dictum “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
January 19th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Justify this.
Israel kept out aid for Gaza
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/israel-kept-out-aid/2009/01/18/1232213448835.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
January 19th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
“Hipster Liberals” What the F?
As for King, let’s be honest. The only reason he’s worshipped is that he’s safely dead. We work hard to bury 90% of what he stood for and sanitize the rest. It’s lip service theatre.
If King were alive today, he’d be as despized as Al Sharpton.
January 19th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Hector
My point of King being the antithesis to Guevarism and its associates was hardly that he sought to ask them to cease the revolution. Rather he “helped transform the idea of revolution” — which implies he was a revolutionary.
But he was a successful antidote precisely because he did so in the context of revolution — after King and Gandhi, being a true revolutionary meant less and less the wiping out of the past through the sacrifice of massive bloodshed, and more an act of humanity reinventing its present.
January 19th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Thanks to Hector (post 48) for response.
“The theory is that ultimately the regime will become so brutal that it alienates nearly the entire population, and more and more people will flock to the revolutionaries, until the regime collapses of its own contradictions.”
What I was trying to get at was that when a oppressive regime or occupying force alienates its population*, the oppressors are faced not only with a “contradiction”, but with a choice. They could sue for peace by admitting defeat. Or they can take their brutality to its final conclusion — which, generally speaking, means waging a war of extermination against the rebellious faction. This is what Omar Bashir has done in Darfur, for example. (At least one reason the tactic ” didn’t quite work out as intended in many other places”.)
My conclusion from this is that violent and non-violent resistance are similar in that their success depends on the humanity of their oppressors. Which is fitting, as it is our common humanity which makes oppression wrong in the first place. The key difference is that non-violent resistance lays greater claim to working from this truth.
*assuming the condition does not catch them unawares and they find their lack of resources makes the choice for them
January 19th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Clearly, King and the civil rights movement practiced non-violence in the civil rights movement. I think it’s more to the point to say that King is not widely known for his anti-war position.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Point,
You’ve certainly got a point. Indeed, the reason that the Cuban-inspired revolutions failed in countries like Argentina (where the Montoneros had a fair amount of popular support) was largely because the guerrillas (who were mostly middle class youth) underestimated just how brutal the government was willing to be. If Batista had been more of an efficient Nazi-esque tyrant, and less of a buffoon, it’s unlikely the Cubans would have won their war.
I didn’t mean to imply that Guevara’s theory was the only theory of revolutionary warfare. It caught the attention of a lot of people because it was somewhat romantic and voluntarist- but a lot of revolutionary movements, like the Spanish Republic, were a good deal more hard-headed, and expected to win their war through main force of arms, not through inspiring the people to become disgusted with their leadership. The revolutionaries in Vietnam were somewhere in between, I think.
It’s worth pointing out that even where armed struggle is justified, it often pays for a revolutionary army to be _less_ violent and _more_ discriminating in its targets than the army it’s fighting. During the Cuban revolution it became well known that Castro’s army would release its prisoners to the Red Cross, while the government army would torture or kill them. This helped to sour the urban middle classes on the Batista government, and to see the guerrillas as noble Robin Hood figures, which is a large part of why they eventually won their war.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I take your point. It’s certainly helpful to remember that Che was hardly the end all be all of armed rebellion.
It’s also a tragedy — and an all too common one — that Castro and Che lost their restraint and discrimination once they had the power.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
“My conclusion from this is that violent and non-violent resistance are similar in that their success depends on the humanity of their oppressors.”
Or, in the case of violent uprising, their stupidity. As Hector points out, that was really the case in Cuba.
January 19th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
By the standards of today’s discourse, King would be considered deeply unserious. Serious people understand that if you think something is important, the serious way to go about expressing that is by voicing support for having other people go kill other people.
That pretty much only applies to foreign policy. I don’t think that aanyone who has any relevance today in the U.S. is suggesting that U.S. citizens who disagree with the government’s policies ought to respond with riots and killing.
MLK’s more controversial ideas, like non-violence in domestic protest and foreign affairs, as well as social democracy at home and abroad, while arguably more relevant to today’s politics, are largely ignored.
Again, I don’t think that non-violence in domestic protest is that controversial, compared to violence in domestic protest, at least in the U.S.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I agree with most of what other commenters have said regarding the hypocrisy of lauding King’s nonviolence.
@Kent: I gotta think that had the Palestinians followed a similar path to MLK they would most likely have their own thriving state today composed of the entire West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
That’s a common view among people who don’t know much about the situation. Palestinians and their allies who have tried it – and there are many, including many who haven’t given up – don’t get happy results.
I think the Palestinians would probably be better off returning to the tactics of the first Intifada. But mass participation rather than nonviolence is the key difference – those rocks weren’t thrown nonviolently. Moreover, I think its rather gross for people in the US to sit in judgment of Palestinian tactics, while “our” government throws hundreds of billions of dollars to the government which is murdering them by the thousands.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
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January 19th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
What’s happened to King has happened to many revolutionaries. As another once put it:
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries the oppressing classes constantly hound them, receive their theories with savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonise them, to hallow their names while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:24 am
I wonder what King would think of all the violence occurring these days on streets across the country named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd.
It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that you don’t want to be a light-skinned person on any MLK street after dark—at least if you value your physical safety.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Unattributed decade-old Chris Rock routines repurposed as serious social commentary = win!
Or possibly the opposite.
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