Kevin's Watch

Pacifism is often regarded as implausible or at least incomplete as an approach to dealing with political violence because "it worked against Britain in India* and segregation in the American south but it would be useless against people like the Nazis" or some such dismissal. However, in A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, it is shown that even the Nazis for some reason submitted to nonviolent protest in Germany itself on occasion, or proved submissive to pacifist resistance in occupied territories.

This can't have just been because in the examples given (Germany and Denmark) the resisters were, theoretically, "Aryans" who the Nazis were reluctant to exterminate. After all, in the Netherlands they murdered tens of thousands of non-"untermenschen", and in the homeland itself vast numbers of communists and other dissenters of various stripes.

Now there might generally be an issue with the physical causality of nonviolent resistance regardless: it is obvious how shooting someone stops them from doing something, but to explain how peaceably standing up to them does the same you'd arguably have to invoke psychological determinism of some kind. But this issue aside, I think it is more or less confirmed that pacifism works, if you will, and "it won't work against extremists" ought to be seen more as an inexcusable excuse to hurt and kill others (to satisfy some violent atavism or in support of some punishment-obsessive outlook on wrongdoing) than as "realpolitik."

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*This is perhaps foolish or misguided a case to cite in defense of (for lack of a better word) militarism, seeing as Hitler invoked Britain's holocausts in southeast Asia as precedent for his horrific Generalplan Ost. You ought to keep in mind when saying that Gandhi had a nicer foe in the UK than we would have in contemporary terrorists or whoever that the UK slaughtered, enslaved, or starved to death tens of millions of people in their colonies (not to mention over a million German civilians during the First and Second World Wars, first by blockade and second by bombing).

Pacifism works in some cases I agree with that.. but sometimes fighting is the only and best alternative. Freedom is one of the things that each nation has fought for because it has never been given freely and never will be. which in my opinion is one of the leading causes of these battles around the world. Although freedom is everybody's right, Freedom is not free, you must fight to obtain it.

Zeta Prime wrote:but sometimes fighting is the only and best alternative.

I daresay there is not and never will or even maybe could be sufficient evidence for this statement.

Mighara Sovmadhi wrote:

Zeta Prime wrote:but sometimes fighting is the only and best alternative.

I daresay there is not and never will or even maybe could be sufficient evidence for this statement.

I can imaging cases where it is the only [other than dying, of course].
I think those are far rarer than humans as a whole believe.

Best? Insoluble, I think, in an objective sense.

I suspect...though I'd have to ponder and research a bunch of stuff to be sure...that technology has made pacifism--as a physical matter--less effective an option and will continue to do so. Part of the effectiveness of pacifism lies in the human connection, and drones are just the latest step in eliminating that.

OTOH, nearly instant communication with nearly total worldwide coverage/exposure possible, is a counter-force born from tech, too. And my impression is that it is slightly more potent than the other. With glitches/interruptions...

Communication in some form/media is inextricably bound with change...in individuals, in society.
I don't think even the folk who recognize it's importance, and the transformations that already have happened, have any idea what the new channels and increasing mass and speed will really lead to. I sure don't.
But reduction in violence, I am almost certain, is one that's well begun and will continue. With glitches/interruptions...

Mighara Sovmadhi wrote:

Zeta Prime wrote:but sometimes fighting is the only and best alternative.

I daresay there is not and never will or even maybe could be sufficient evidence for this statement.

Cue the lifeboat ethics.

Suppose 10 people in a lifeboat. They have little hope of immediate rescue. They have plenty of water but limited food, only enough for another 2 days for all of them, though obviously that amount could last one or two persons a considerable time longer. All are hungry but as yet they still have their strength. One of them grabs a cudgel and with a martial shout begins dispatching the others with blows to the head one at the time. Are the rest justified in physically subduing him, even if the effort requires the taking of his life? Or does some moral compunction require them to lie there and take it, and if so could you explain what that moral compunction is?

Mongnihilo wrote:Cue the lifeboat ethics.

Aren't we talking about pacifism in a larger political context? I'm not arguing against one-on-one self-defense but against war. In another thread I questioned the existence of war as anything over and above a nominalization for aggregated individual acts of violence, sure, but in this thread I'm assuming that the word "war" has some more integrated meaning.

Vraith wrote:I suspect...though I'd have to ponder and research a bunch of stuff to be sure...that technology has made pacifism--as a physical matter--less effective an option and will continue to do so. Part of the effectiveness of pacifism lies in the human connection, and drones are just the latest step in eliminating that.

Agreed. You cannot passively resist something that doesn't recognize you as a person, in this case a drone, and the person controlling the drone won't care about your passive resistance when you are a blip on a screen, even if the blip has a human face.

Pacifism didn't work too well for the people in Tiananmen Square back in 1989. Passive resistance will work only when the opposing force has limits on what it will do or if it has an essentially weak will. Any group of jack-booted thugs which doesn't mind letting people see its hands get dirty will always win once they fire a couple of rounds of live ammunition into those engaging in passive resistance, causing them to disperse or die. This is simply another form of brinksmanship, a game of truly high-stakes poker where he who blinks first loses.

Even if you are in the right, if you shoot at unarmed people you will wind up looking like the bad guy, I have to admit.

Mighara Sovmadhi wrote:

Mongnihilo wrote:Cue the lifeboat ethics.

Aren't we talking about pacifism in a larger political context? I'm not arguing against one-on-one self-defense but against war. In another thread I questioned the existence of war as anything over and above a nominalization for aggregated individual acts of violence, sure, but in this thread I'm assuming that the word "war" has some more integrated meaning.

Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me.

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:You cannot passively resist something that doesn't recognize you as a person, in this case a drone, and the person controlling the drone won't care about your passive resistance when you are a blip on a screen, even if the blip has a human face.

... Pacifism didn't work too well for the people in Tiananmen Square back in 1989. Passive resistance will work only when the opposing force has limits on what it will do or if it has an essentially weak will.

First off, we have to differentiate between passive resistance in particular and nonviolent resistance in general. They're not the same thing in all respects (something A Force More Powerful is quite at pains to explain). Secondly, the Nazi regime (and the UK in Gandhi's day) had no "limits on what it will do," and considering that they (the Nazis) sacrificed their own sanity and chances of success during war in order to ship people to death camps, it doesn't seem as if they were especially weak-willed when it came to seeing their genocidal ambitions realized. So why did they give in to the Rosenstrasse protests or the villagers of Le Chambon?

Now maybe the Christian God really does exist and really does want us to turn the other cheek, so if we really do what He according to legend ordered us to do, He'll send His Spirit into the hearts of those whose fists are punching us in the face and miraculously pacify them. Maybe that's how pacifism ultimately works. I don't believe that, however much I'd like to, though.

As for China, Tiananmen Square might be seen as a single "battle" in a "war," and sure, the nonviolent soldiery lost that battle, but that no more proves that they must've lost the war (had they kept fighting) than a single military failure proves that military force is ineffective at winning wars.

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:

Vraith wrote:I suspect...though I'd have to ponder and research a bunch of stuff to be sure...that technology has made pacifism--as a physical matter--less effective an option and will continue to do so. Part of the effectiveness of pacifism lies in the human connection, and drones are just the latest step in eliminating that.

Agreed. You cannot passively resist something that doesn't recognize you as a person, in this case a drone, and the person controlling the drone won't care about your passive resistance when you are a blip on a screen, even if the blip has a human face.

Pacifism didn't work too well for the people in Tiananmen Square back in 1989. Passive resistance will work only when the opposing force has limits on what it will do or if it has an essentially weak will. Any group of jack-booted thugs which doesn't mind letting people see its hands get dirty will always win once they fire a couple of rounds of live ammunition into those engaging in passive resistance, causing them to disperse or die. This is simply another form of brinksmanship, a game of truly high-stakes poker where he who blinks first loses.

Even if you are in the right, if you shoot at unarmed people you will wind up looking like the bad guy, I have to admit.

How well would pacifism work against the Mongols for instance? Not very well I'd imagine, as they had no reservations about slaughtering every living thing within entire cities or regions.

There is never a moral imperative that says you are obligated to be a victim, and when it comes to war at its essentials, there simply aren't any rules other than "triumph."

Mongnihilo wrote:How well would pacifism work against the Mongols for instance? Not very well I'd imagine, as they had no reservations about slaughtering every living thing within entire cities or regions.

C'mon, people, we all read the Covenant novels if we're members of this site, yeah? Our reading comprehension should be higher than average. The Khanate slaughter wasn't worse than what Britain did to India or what Nazi Germany did to Warsaw and Leningrad and Belgrade and so on. So if pacifism worked against Britain and Nazi Germany, you should be able to imagine how it would've worked against Genghis Khan. And since I cited the two European cases in the OP, well, if you actually read the OP...

Mighara Sovmadhi wrote:

Mongnihilo wrote:How well would pacifism work against the Mongols for instance? Not very well I'd imagine, as they had no reservations about slaughtering every living thing within entire cities or regions.

C'mon, people, we all read the Covenant novels if we're members of this site, yeah? Our reading comprehension should be higher than average. The Khanate slaughter wasn't worse than what Britain did to India or what Nazi Germany did to Warsaw and Leningrad and Belgrade and so on. So if pacifism worked against Britain and Nazi Germany, you should be able to imagine how it would've worked against Genghis Khan. And since I cited the two European cases in the OP, well, if you actually read the OP...

Nevermind.

Enjoy your thread.

im pretty sure pacifism alone didn't stop the Nazi's.. lots of people died fighting for the rights of others in wwII.

Mighara Sovmadhi wrote: C'mon, people, we all read the Covenant novels if we're members of this site, yeah? Our reading comprehension should be higher than average. The Khanate slaughter wasn't worse than what Britain did to India or what Nazi Germany did to Warsaw and Leningrad and Belgrade and so on. So if pacifism worked against Britain and Nazi Germany, you should be able to imagine how it would've worked against Genghis Khan. And since I cited the two European cases in the OP, well, if you actually read the OP...

It isn't a question of reading comprehension; rather it is simply a matter of you believing that the premise of the book from your initial post is correct and other people disagreeing with that assessment.

All slaughters, regardless of who committed them, are equally atrocious. Ideally they will never happen again but, as we all know, this is not an ideal world. In fact, as I write this there are slaughters (albeit on smaller scale) happening right now.

Okay, so the premise is "a century of nonviolent conflict". One century. How far back do we wish to go? 3,000 years? 5,000? 7,000? Just for the sake of argument let us consider only the last 5,000 years of human history. We have a pretty good idea about the events that took place during that time in virtually every place in the world. What do we find? We certainly don't find evidence of nonviolent conflict being victorious...well, at least I can't think of any without doing any external research. So nonviolent conflict has been "successful" for 2% of that time span? Not exactly a stellar record, especially when you consider that for that century--which I presume is the 20th--most of the conflicts were not resolved via nonviolence.

I am not saying that we shouldn't try nonviolence when appropriate. However, if you decide to engage in nonviolence as a means through which to accomplish your goals you should realize that you probably aren't going to get what you want. If you do, then I congratulate you for taking a risk and getting lucky.

If peace and nonviolence actually worked then we would be conducting ourselves according to those principles. The reason they don't work is because if my group has guns and we are willing to use them to get what we want then the only way you can stop us from rolling over you is to get some guns of your own and shoot back. I didn't make the world that way; instead, I only state it like it is.

Zeta Prime wrote:im pretty sure pacifism alone didn't stop the Nazi's.. lots of people died fighting for the rights of others in wwII.

By "pacifism worked against the Nazis" I meant that there were confirmed cases in which nonviolent resistance overcame Nazi intentions in certain locations. Don't you think it'd be a straw-man of my position to claim that I'm claiming that pacifism single-handedly ended the entire Second World War?

Sorry I read your words differently.. I thougt worked against the Nazi's somehow meat defeating them... my bad xD

and I feel like my reading comprehension is adequate.. throughout a lot of the chronicles I felt a vibe of fight for what you love.. not stand by and watch it burn.

To note, I wasn't questioning all our reading comprehension, I just didn't want to single any one out as missing any points. But I also find myself letting my temper get the best of me here at times.

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:Okay, so the premise is "a century of nonviolent conflict". One century. How far back do we wish to go? 3,000 years? 5,000? 7,000? Just for the sake of argument let us consider only the last 5,000 years of human history. We have a pretty good idea about the events that took place during that time in virtually every place in the world. What do we find? We certainly don't find evidence of nonviolent conflict being victorious...well, at least I can't think of any without doing any external research. So nonviolent conflict has been "successful" for 2% of that time span? Not exactly a stellar record, especially when you consider that for that century--which I presume is the 20th--most of the conflicts were not resolved via nonviolence.

Well, seeing as the book is just a case study of 20th Century nonviolent conflicts, criticizing it because it doesn't cover other time periods seems inappropriate.

Now as for the success rate, technically, war didn't solve conflicts very much either, did it? Instead, it often prolonged them while intensifying them.

If peace and nonviolence actually worked then we would be conducting ourselves according to those principles.

Unless most people have a tendency to violence, in which case they'd be liable to rationalize violence constantly, to the subversion of evidence that civil disobedience, etc. are effective means of conflict resolution.

Mighara Sovmadhi wrote:To note, I wasn't questioning all our reading comprehension, I just didn't want to single any one out as missing any points. But I also find myself letting my temper get the best of me here at times.

Jumping back in. So you get angry about things people type anonymously in cyberspace, but entire nations are supposed to turn into impassive statues of the Buddha anytime they come under outside attack?

You gotta know when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em...