Global Nonviolence

The recently released Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective, edited by Stephen Zunes, Lester R. Kurtz and Sarah Beth Asher, supplies an overview of contemporary struggles using largely nonviolent means. Noting that over the last 20 years there has been an increase in the use of nonviolence to topple oppressive governments and change the course of political struggle, the editors assert that nonviolence has become “more of a deliberate tool for social change, moving from a largely ad hoc strategy growing naturally out of religious or ethical principles to the reflective, and in many ways institutionalized, method of struggle.” They seek to prove this point by gathering a series of essays by an impressive array of authors, focusing upon what they term “unarmed insurrections” in a comprehensive review of the world’s major regions. The book, as they explain, becomes a “whirlwind world tour” of nonviolent social change.

The tour begins with two introductory articles of considerable merit, the first by the late pacifist economist Kenneth Boulding, an icon of the peace studies movement but not well known among activists. His review of a century of nonviolence, coupled with an analysis of what he terms the “three faces of power” (threat-based, class-based, and integrative), ends on a note of hope for the new century now upon us. Feminist Pam McAllister provides the second introduction with an excerpt from her classic work on women and nonviolence, You Can’t Kill the Spirit.

We are then taken to the Middle East, where Zunes himself discusses revolution in North Africa, Iran, Israel and Palestine. A more detailed article on the Intifada follows, in which Souad Dajani raises some challenging questions regarding the effects of that resistance campaign.

Writing about Europe, Matthew Lyons explains the widespread impact from 1972 to 1985 of the small Grassroots Revolution network, a War Resisters’ International affiliate, on the larger antinuclear West German Green political movement. Tackling key questions of ideological perspective and base, Lyons’ short piece cogently reviews the choices facing nonviolent activists regardingreformist or revolutionary politics. Kurtz and Lee Smithey conclude this section of the book by moving eastward, writing about the movements of the so-called Soviet Bloc.

The chapters on Asia include reflections on Thailand, Burma and people’s power in the Philippines; those on Latin America include one on Brazil and another recounting the origins of the continent-wide Service for Peace and Justice network known as SERPAJ. A chapter on the Ogoni struggle in Nigeria opens the section on Africa, concluded by Zunes with a review of the anti-apartheid movement of South Africa. Though he does correctly acknowledge the liberation movements, which at first embraced but later dismissed nonviolence from a philosophical perspective, Zunes does not fully take on the ideological or strategic complexities of a struggle that eventually saw both nonviolent activists and armed guerrillas, both committed revolutionaries and those seeking minor reforms, working together for an end to white minority rule.

Charles Chatfield’s essay “Nonviolent Social Movements in the U.S.: A Historical Perspective” provides the book’s final regional chapter, with a short and mainstreamed version of our own past. Secular pacifists are, for the most part, omitted from this history, as the Quakers and religious fellowships are credited with every major contribution from conscientious objection in World Wars I and II to the civil rights movement to the modern-day antinuclear campaigns. A more nuanced and historically accurate perspective including feminists, Pan-Africanists, draft and tax resisters, and disarmament (not simply “nuclear freeze”) activists is, unfortunately, missing.

Kurtz’ and Zunes’ concluding review of the field, a passionate treatise on the effectiveness of nonviolence as compared to armed initiatives, does stress some of the obstacles to unarmed insurrection and correctly calls on advocates of nonviolence to be more aggressive in “developing and disseminating what we know”—and more willing to use it in combating injustice.

As indicated by the editors themselves, Nonviolent Social Movements is only a beginning, an attempt at bringing the histories of nonviolence into an academic framework for discussion. As such, the stories of struggle recounted in this volume will undoubtedly be of interest and will provide new information to researchers and activists alike. It is regrettable, then, that some of the book’s weaknesses, such as its occasional lack of ideological clarity or direction, were not remedied prior to publication. If, for example, the decision had been made to examine the more narrow but equally important topic of nonviolent tactics used within revolutionary movements, or the historical connections between nonviolent tactics and nonviolent philosophies worldwide, perhaps the field of authors could have been drawn from within the movements being written about. (The editors admit to a problem in the “unfortunate preponderance of North American male writers,” but take up one-third of the chapters themselves.) Nevertheless, though imperfect, Nonviolent Social Movements is a book worth reading and using. If we accept Zunes’, Kurtz’, and Beth Asher’s call, more volumes like this one will follow, and greater dialogue between nonviolent activists and peace researchers—along with greater use of revolutionary nonviolence—will emerge.

One of the great feminist-pacifist theorists, Barbara Deming (1917-1984) defiantly and eloquently responded to both the pessimistic view of nonviolent struggles and the popular belief that brutality can be fair and warfare just in her 1968 essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium.” Her discussion of nonviolence versus violence addresses the views of combatant factions of the U.S. Left as well as the pervading culture of militarism during the Vietnam War.

Deming’s rhetoric is neither moralistically opaque nor excessively abstract. Rather, her point-by-point refutation of the criticisms of the nonviolent discipline are a remarkably cogent and evenhanded treatment of both sides of the issue. She repeatedly quotes from critics of nonviolent protest, replacing the words “violence” and “aggression” with more ambiguous terms for radical action in order to show how their goals can be better achieved nonviolently. She deconstructs their opinions to reveal underlying contradictions, yet her prose remains clear and reflective of a peace of mind.

Deming’s defense of nonviolent struggle centers on a crucial choice between two kinds of radical action: applying pressure and shedding blood. She employs the terms “equilibrium” and “constant motion” as metaphors for the reinvention of revolutionary thought and strategies. “The judgments I make are not judgments upon men,” she writes, “but upon the means open to us upon the promise these means of action hold or withhold.” The danger of violence is what she refers to as “vertigo” or “dizziness” (alluding to anti-imperialist psychologist Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth), a distortion of reason and compassion that occurs when our anger blinds us and we enslave ourselves with misguided malice. As history has proven, violence nearly always escalates in scope and intensity, for “one thing violence can be counted on to do is bring the antagonist forth in battle dress.” By contrast, nonviolent action defeats the opposition in “[forcing] them to consult their consciences or to pretend to have them.” Nonviolence is not a method of appeasement or of begging for the mercy of the powerful, as some of Deming’s Black Power movement contemporaries contended, but an instrument of empowerment for those who have suffered from the abuse of power. It allows victims to liberate themselves not only physically, but also emotionally and intellectually, from the constraints of convention, ending the self-perpetuating cycle of violence.

Nonviolence ensures the clarity of heart and mind that elevates one from destructive impulses to an uncompromising belief in the truth. Referring to Gandhi’s principle of “clinging to the truth,” she proposes as the cornerstone of nonviolent activism an unwavering dedication to exposing the true nature of the oppressor and “telling what seems to us the truth about the injustice he commits.” When no harm is inflicted upon the aggressor, the enemy’s guilt is suddenly and plainly manifested. The use of violence to crush peaceful protest, underneath cover-ups and intimidation, is essentially impossible to rationalize, in that nonviolence by definition does not necessitate violence. Hence, on a very basic level, civil disobedience is untouchable.

The power of civil disobedience is almost empirical in nature; it isolates the harmful variable in society and thus removes it from the context of vengeance and personal conflict, displaying it before the public in all its raw and alien ugliness. Contrary to popular criticism, nonviolent action is not a way of circumventing the core of the problem; it enables the victim to penetrate the confusion and pain that the opposition imposes and to uproot injustice with the least number of casualties on both sides. Violence, however, no matter how justifiable, is never really just, because it confuses the enemy with the evils that drive him.

Killing and destruction not only miss the target, but also harm innocents and allies, often turning them against the struggle that is responsible for such danger. To illustrate, Deming describes the resentfulness of the communities of slain enemies, which cannot sympathize with the supposedly benevolent ends of the other side. They are “unable to see the death as a political act that might help them, able to see it only as a personal loss.” On the other hand, nonviolent tactics engage even “men not naturally inclined to act for us,” particularly the agents of authority who must deal with the inconveniences precipitated by demonstrators. Nonviolence grounds itself in its integrity, while violence relies on terror.

In a violent confrontation, it is all too easy and in a sense, cowardly simply to react impulsively and return each blow. Struggling against oppressive institutions requires a fundamental change in our manner of confronting that status quo. Those who engage in civil disobedience must draw upon the deepest qualities of humanity. Deming reflects, “We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.” As human nature is a strange concoction of animal instinct and reason, she urges her readers to channel the tendency toward aggression into love and self-discipline. Reinvention of our outlook requires a balance of external and internal forces. In times of peace, war or political unrest, this principle of equilibrium has an enduring resonance: to fuse knowledge and feeling is to lay the foundations for a potent and universal justice.